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“Like an Oriental potentate,” I said.

She considered that, as though it had been a real answer, then said, “Really?”

“Not really. For one thing, I don’t have my pick of the harem.”

“You’re damn right you don’t.” Then she linked her arm with mine and gazed around at the day and said, “It’s beautiful out here.”

“It sure is.”

“I hate having to go back to work.”

“It’s only one week,” I pointed out. Ginger had had to pull some strings and request special favors to get most of July off, and at that she couldn’t wangle the entire month. Next week, from the eleventh till the fifteenth, she’ll have to commute, getting up every morning to take the 7:15 ferry — locally known as the “Death Boat” — then returning on the 6:05; the “Daddy Boat,” though not in this case.

“I don’t like leaving you here alone,” she said.

“I won’t be alone. I’ll have the kids. And Mary.”

“That’s what I don’t like about it.”

“Oh, come on, Ginger,” I said. “Don’t try to tell me you’re jealous of Mary.”

“She wants you back.”

“Granted.”

“She’ll work her wiles on you when I’m gone.”

“Mary doesn’t have any wiles,” I said.

She laughed, and disengaged her arm from mine. I said, “Don’t get mad for no reason.”

Brooding, she said, “Sometimes I’d like to know what a man thinks about.”

“Sex.”

She nodded. “Good idea.”

So it was back up to the bedroom we went. It must have been way over ninety in there by then, but did that stop us? Unfortunately not.

So there I was, engaged in perfectly legitimate intercourse with my mistress, while my wife was up at the beach and my girlfriend was off on the 3:10, when all of a sudden a perfectly awful noise threw the both of us off-stride and then some. It sounded like a cat fight, it sounded like mongooses mating, it sounded like a beached whale, it sounded like the death-cry of an elk, it sounded like... I don’t know what it sounded like.

But, looking out the window, I found out what it was. It was Bryan, blowing into the clarinet he’d been given last Christmas. I’ve been paying for lessons, of course, and Mary had told me he was being fairly diligent with his practice, but since I don’t actually live with the kid I’d never heard these terrible sounds before, so naturally I screamed out the window, “Bryan! For God’s sake!”

He stopped squawking, looked up at me, and smiled happily. “That’s Jingle Bells,” he said.

“The hell it is! Take that thing off into the sand dunes somewhere if you’re going to play it! Take it to Atlantique!”

Behind me, Ginger was saying, “Don’t discourage him, Tom, let him play.”

“Play!” I yelled at her. “You call that play?”

“I don’t get to practice anywhere,” Bryan complained on my other flank. “How am I going to grow up to be Artie Shaw?”

Where did he ever hear of Artie Shaw? And why on Earth would he want to grow up to be him? “Take — that — away, I yelled, pointing toward Europe.

So he moped off, clarinet at half-mast, body doing a whole great exaggerated number on how mournful he felt. Clarinet! That’s what Christmas is!

Meantime, Ginger was nagging, saying, “That’s no way to act toward a child who’s taking an interest in something.”

“Under this window?”

“You could have spoken to him gently and reasonably.”

“I didn’t feel gentle and reasonable.”

“You certainly didn’t.”

So much for sex; we spent the time instead arguing about me mistreating my children. Well, it made a change from our argument about me mistreating her children.

Wednesday, July 13th

Stabbed!

Betrayed!

Bewildered.

There must be a logical sequence of events here. The events are by no means logical, but maybe the sequence can become so.

At about ten-thirty this morning, with me deep in the Central American rain forests among the Mayans, Vickie phoned. She bandied no words, but got to the point at once. “Hello, Tom,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Don’t worry, it isn’t you,” she said, sounding somewhat bitter.

“It isn’t? Who is it?”

“Well, that’s the problem,” she said. “You and I met the end of March, and the doctor says I was already pregnant then, and the way the timing works it must have been the last week in February, right after Washington’s Birthday. That’s when I took a week off and went to Club Med.”

“Oh.”

“So that’s that,” she said.

I said, “Wait a minute. Vickie, you’re four and a half months pregnant, and you didn’t know it?”

“Well, I’ve always been very irregular,” she said. “My GYN says it’s a neurotic reaction. I just thought, well, I’m crazier than usual because I’m fucking a writer.”

Letting that one pass, I said, “So what now?”

“Well, it’s too late for an abortion. I’m going to Fort Lauderdale, talk it over with my mother, brood about things. I may keep the kid, if it’s fairly attractive.”

“How long—” My voice failed me, because I suddenly saw why she was phoning. “How long will you be gone?”

“That’s hard to say. Depends on a lot of things. I’m asking for a year’s absence. Without pay, of course. Let my mother support me, the nasty bitch.”

“You aren’t my editor any more,” I said.

“I’m sorry about that, Tom,” she said. “There’s a couple books I’m really sorry to leave behind, and that’s one of them. I enjoyed working with you. You know, the fucking too, but also the book. It’s nice to work with a professional.”

“Thank you,” I said, while my other hand crumpled mounds of paper. This is why she’s been gaining weight!

“I’ll stay on till the end of the week,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll see they give you to somebody good.”

There is no such thing. I said, “Not the man who edits the war books?”

“Funny thing about Hiram,” she said. “He died last month.”

“Hilarious.”

“Died at his desk. Apparently he was there three or four days, nobody noticed. Finally one of the cleaning women one night, vacuuming around him, she noticed the smell.”

“Well, somebody goes and somebody comes.”

“It’s been nice coming with you, Tom. I don’t suppose you’ll be in the city the next few days.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m all tied up out here.”

“Ah, well. Maybe next year sometime.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“So long, Tom,” she said.

“So long. Say hello to your mother.”

“I suppose I’ll have to,” she said, and that was that.

Well, that ended the Mayans for today. Even though I’d heard Mary moving around downstairs, I abandoned my desk and my privacy at once, too shaken to worry about what she might want to say to me.

The problem is, out here in the humid sunny heat, with everybody damn near naked anyway, Mary’s sexual encounters are getting steamier and steamier, and she just insists on telling me about them. “There was a man up at the beach in one of those very skimpy swimsuits,” she said the other day, “sitting on a towel facing me with his knees up and his legs spread. He kept looking at me, and sort of running his fingers up and down his own thigh, like this—” She showed me, running her own fingers up and down her own thigh, not quite to the swimsuit-covered crotch. “—and I could see he was getting an erection. Well, I—”