He looked at her eyes, and knew that what was falling inside him would not stop falling till it broke. He said: “No.”

“No what? I’m not pregnant? Did you think you were shooting blanks?”

“No, don’t do it.”

“I’m twenty-two years old, I’m going to New York, and you want me to have a fucking baby?”

The falling thing in him hit and broke and he trembled and said: “Not a fucking baby. Our baby, Susan. Our baby.”

He had to look away from the death of everything he saw in her eyes.