Jolly by John Weston Page A

with the glasses.
    “Well, never mind that.” He took the glass she extended. “Here, sit.” He spread his legs some and dropped his hand on one knee.
    She stepped back and drank from the glass. Might as well tell him now, she figured. Might as well see what’s going to happen. She took another drink and moved past the foot of her bed and placed one hand on the crib. Jamie turned to watch her.
    “Come here,” she said.
    “What the hell you got there?” He stood and peered over the bed. “Well, I’ll be damned. That a baby?”
    “Yes. Come here.”
    He stood beside her. “You got a husband around here someplace?”
    She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Do you like him?”
    Jamie laughed shortly. “Well, yeh. I guess so. A kid’s a kid, I guess.” He drank the last of his drink. The ice cubes rattled in the glass. “Where’d you get him? Do you know—well, I mean, is he yours?”
    “Yes,” she said and faced him. “And yours.”
    “What?” He grinned. “What are you talking about? And I’m dry again.”
    She touched his arm. “Wait, Jamie. I’m saying this is our baby. Yours and mine.”
    He watched her face for a long moment while the room whirled in front of her eyes. “What do you mean, it’s ours, for chrissake? I haven’t even seen you for years.”
    “Two years, Jamie. You left before I knew.”
    “How do you know it’s mine?”
    “I know what you’re thinking. And a lot of it’s true. But not till after, Jamie. Not till long after.” She turned from his eyes toward the crib again. “He’s yours, all right,” she said. “Look at him, Jamie. Can’t you see?”
    He walked across the room. “No, I don’t want to.” His mind went back to that other baby, the one he himself had delivered. His stomach turned again. It always did. He wondered if it would ever not turn when he thought of that or saw pictures of new-born babies. Or even older babies. He sat down abruptly in the chair.
    “Jamie? Listen, Jamie, I know we—”
    “Shut up for a minute, can you? Just shut up for a minute.” He bent forward with his hands on his face.
    Mandy watched him from where she stood beside the crib. She held the railing tight with her hand to keep herself still. She stared at his back where the muscles were taut beneath the shirt, and at his head where the white, long fingertips were buried in his black hair. She knew that black hair, too; knew the coarse feel of it, had twisted it about her own fingers, and right now her fingers itched. God, she thought, what will he do? How else could I have said it? She could not know, of course, that it was less her news that troubled him, had only reminded him of another time and place.
    “I’m going now,” he said at last.
    Be calm. Be reasonable. “Jamie, listen.” She touched his shoulder. “You don’t have to go.” Maybe it would work again. After all, it had in the first place. “Look. You can stick around, can’t you? We could—well,” she laughed, “we could pick up where we stopped. Look, we’ll forget about—”
    Jamie placed both hands on her shoulders. “Stop, Mandy. It’s not that. I’ll come back tomorrow night.”
    “Will you, Jamie?”
    “Yes,” he grinned. “I promise. Only not now. Not right now.”
    She saw the gray door close from where she stood in the center of the room. She watched it as if it might open again and no longer be gray. At last she twisted her arms to the side to unfasten the pins in the blue dress.

 
FIVE
     
    SOMEONE did die in Cortez on the next day, Saturday. A businessman, the nondescript man who sold typewriters at Case and Walker, and who plaited his long side hair over the top of his balding head. He left the store early in the afternoon, just to lie down awhile, he said, because his breath was short. Dozens, perhaps a hundred people passed him on the sidewalk as he walked the four blocks to his small house. Probably Jolly saw him pass from the store window at Penney’s where he worked