Travis placed the jewelbox on a small drop-down table near the door and rustled up the coats from the floor. He held Laura’s for her, then shouldered his own on, as Laura jabbered inanely about where things were, how often Marcie was to look in on Jenny, how late they thought they’d be, where (for God’s sakes yet again) the diapers and the pins and the formula and the bottles were. For some reason, he could not catch her eyes as she gabbled. Overprotective, hyper, even paranoid—that’s the way Laura had been about Jenny from the first, dressing her too warmly, leaving the thermostat on way too high, fussing interminably over her face and clothes when she held her. But something beyond nervousness was working at Laura now.
And when he tested his puzzlement on Marcie, the flat plane of her gaze told him she knew what it was, that they were both holding back from him, and that Laura was ready to spill something that made Marcie at least mildly uncomfortable.
“…oh, and in case of emergency, I’ve put a signed medical form on the kitchen table. You know where to find us, and… oh shit, Marcie, I know it’s not a good time but it never seems to be a good time, please can’t we tell him now, it’s—”
“Tomorrow. Now you two go and have a good time—”
“Tell me what?” The air felt odd. Were they hiding a great gift, a bludgeon, what?
“Take a hike, ya lousy swami-lovers,” said Marcie in her best tough-guy voice, hustling them toward the door, “or the baby buys it.” God she smelled great, her sweet strong face set off by her chop-cut red hair, new kind of tai-kwon-do affectation, but it looked great on her. And he loved being strong-armed by her; what a wrestler she’d be bare-naked, the full spread of her huge firm breasts a treat in teased evasion, her flexed oiled thighs coming up and about to encuntify his mouth, to force him to feast as she devoured him below, parting her labia nose-deep around his nasal wedge and—
“Marcie and I are lovers.”
With barely a hitch, Marcie freed him, veering Laura off to the right. “Now you’ve done it,” she said.
His mind went umpteen ways, putting together dropped hints, unanswered phones, misinterpreted looks. Confusion passed. Elation lit and flared. “Oh, but that’s—!”
“No!” Laura’s voice exploded through her sobs. “You don’t… he doesn’t…” She grabbed breath, riding its blast.
“You’re out of it… it’s just Marcie and me… and the baby, I’m taking her with me.”
Marcie seemed put off by Laura’s display, even as she put a protective, supportive arm about her. In the baby’s room, Jenny cried sharply as if a safety pin had opened to stab her out of sleep.
“Take a hike, ya lousy swami-lovers,” said Marcie in her best George Raft, “or the baby buys it.”
Laura blurted out, “Marcie’s pregnant.”
Marcie veered Laura off, then with overblown disgust and genuine dismay: “Jeez, you had to tell him.”
“Well I think it’s great,” his wife protested, “and I’m sorry—I won’t tell anyone else!—but I just couldn’t keep it from Travis one second longer.”
“Marcie, that’s incredible,” he said, going after her to catch her in a hug. He was amazed at his thoughts. He wished the child were his, though his lovely neighbor had, God damn her eyes, rebuffed his one early advance and had never invited a return attempt; he wondered which ungodly creep it was, or whether—and he imagined that this would be worse for her—
it had been Pierre, in one of his final dribble-shots into her; he saw instantly their households fusing, him as her Lamaze coach, loving her child, as she and Laura did likewise, and welcoming her inevitably into their marriage bed.
Then, two feet shy of an embrace, the baby screamed. It was not a troubled whine ready to lapse as soon as it began, nor was it even a wide-awake startle and wail that required backpats and pacings-about and soothings before she could be replaced in her bassinet. No, these sounds meant sudden pain or upset, a slipped pin rolled over on, or something worse.
Laura reached the door first but he was close behind and felt the blast of frigid air over the incessant whine of the space heater. He saw the window thrown wide and a lingering glove gripping the casing and then gone, flings of slush still flying through the air from a disappearing boot.
Race to the sill, past the empty bassinet, Laura’s misgivings about a first-floor apartment replaying in his head, and there, through the diminishing squit-squit-squit of boots on snow and the wrenching wails of his child, he saw her kidnapper, her white-slaver, dwindling swiftly in the ill-lit alley, pools of light by backdoors, dumpsters lined along brick walls. “Catch him, catch him!” Laura’s hands were shoving him over the sill, almost throwing him off balance, but he kept his eye on the nightmare, so that just as he found his feet and felt the cold seep up inside his pantleg and was poised to run, he saw their ski-masked nemesis look back even as two shadows emerged from the dun of a dumpster and shudder-halted him so jarringly that his boots went awry and his bundle of baby flew into the hands of a slighter third figure. Saved, thought Travis, elated as Laura and Marcie joined him out the window.
But then, instead of beating the man into submission, they appeared in the dim light to be pushing their heads against him so that he jittered and screamed as though electrified. And the third carried Jenny into the light, and he saw a meat-slung jawbone and a wandering eye and his daughter brought like some corncob to that mouth; and her sleepsuit bunched and reddened, her cries punched quiet from her, as, behind them, packed snow squeaked and Travis turned too late.
Laura reached the door first but he was close behind and took in the overheated room, the space heater humming at full capacity as Laura lifted Jenny into her arms.
“She okay?” Marcie asked.
Laura nodded, arching her back and soothing the tiny face open wide in terror at her shoulder, features almost lost in the laced, peaked, buttoned sleepsuit-head.
“Must’ve been gas pains,” he said.
Laura replaced the baby in her bassinet, zip-slashing the zipper, reaching in to feel diaper, rezipping, kissing one mittened hand. Travis was starting to sweat, the room was so hot and his heavy coat was meant for fierce cold.
“Diaper’s a smidge damp, but she’ll be fine.”
The baby sneezed but her lid-heavy eyes did not open. Her lips parted for air, a soft pooch of pink budding. No more than two dark dots, her nostrils.
“Poor baby has the sniffles,” Laura said and pointed them toward the door. The instant it closed behind them, Jenny’s face winced as if to scream again, but her bowels and bladder gave way then, emptying, and her face relaxed into sleep.
Where Laura had felt for sop, a lip of cotton bridged between the freshly soaked diaper beneath plastic pants and the layers of cloth working outward to the soon-to-be-ammoniated sleepsuit.
“Say,” said Marcie, “hadn’t you two better be on your way?”
Travis checked his wrist. Quarter to eight. “We’re a brisk ten-minute walk away, so we’re cutting it close, I guess. One last hug, Marcie dear. Mmmmwah! What a woman you are.”
Her kiss lingered like a warm slap on his lips.
Laura began: “Now don’t forget to—”
Marcie swept his compact woman up in a tremendous hug and stopped her frettings with a kiss, short, startling to them both, not wet. “Hmm,” she said, “what an interesting impulse.”
“Hold that thought,” Travis said. “If Apadravya can no longer strut his stuff, we may be back quicker than we expect, ready to explore other paths to salvation.”
Laura’s eyes still held shock. “Help yourself to the fridge.
Nothing’s off-limits.” She brightened, kept back from saying something, then tugged him out the door. Try as he might, Travis couldn’t shake two contrary feelings: that something very wonderful awaited them at the end of a very wonderful evening; and that venturing out tonight was a terrible mistake, one they might not live long enough to regret.