Pictures of Houses with Water Damage: Stories by Michael Hemmingson

okay.”
    “Things,” she said.
    “I know,” I said.
    She asked how I’d been and I gave her a smile. I couldn’t help myself, I reached to kiss her, but I kissed her cheek, and ran my tongue to her neck, then moved away.
    “That's nice,” she said. “I like that.”
    I asked how things were going with her husband.
    “Same as always,” she said, “but now we’re parents.”
    “Does he still hit you?” I asked.
    “Not as much,” she said, “but sometimes I wish he would.”
    “Why?”
    “I like it,” she told me, looking at me with her blue eyes. “I like it because I like to feel alive.”
    “We’re alive,” I said, looking at the carriage.
    “Sometimes I don’t feel like it,” she said. “That's why I have affairs. But it's not so easy now because I have this baby to look after. You were the only one who liked me when I was pregnant, so I didn’t think you’d mind.”
    I took her hand and said I still wanted her and would always want her.
    She looked at the sky and said, “Oh my, oh.”
    I peered in on her baby boy and asked, “Does he resemble his father?”
    She said, “No.”
    She added, “I’ve been wondering if this is really my husband's kid.”
    I looked at her.
    She said, “It could be one of several others. I told you that you weren’t the only affair. I’m not so sure who—”
    I asked, “How many?”
    She said, “Does it matter?”
    I leaned back on the bench.
    She said, “Now you don’t want me.”
    “Maybe the baby is mine,” I said.
    “Impossible,” she said. “We didn’t know each other until—”
    “It should be mine,” I said.
    “He, he's a he.”
    “He should be mine,” I said. “I would like that.”
    “I’d like that, too,” she said.
    We listened to kids playing in the park, cars driving by.
    She said, “Four.”
    I said, “What?”
    She said, “I had brief affairs with four other men around the same time, so any of them could be the father, but maybe he's my husband's baby after all. I don’t know.”
    I said, “Helen.”
    I moved close to her.
    “Take me home with you,” she said.
    “With the baby?”
    “Do you mind?”
    “No,” I said.
    “I can only stay awhile,” she said.
    I held her. There were tears on my chest.
    “I’m not bad,” she murmured. I just can’t help myself. I find men attractive and I like sex so much and I can’t help the things I feel, the things I do.”
    I told her it was okay.
    “The fruit,” she whispered, “the tree—”
    “What?” I said.
    “The garden,” she said.

You Will Not Believe What Happens to Me, But Does it Matter? It Only Matters That I Know What Happens
     
1.
     
    The night my daughter is born, I spend it with a hooker and her deranged ex-boyfriend.
2.
     
    In the delivery room: I see it happen, I see my daughter come out of my wife and it is the most beautiful, smelly, disgusting, strange, wonderful, perverse thing I have ever been witness to. I’m not sure what smells or looks queerer: my purple bloody infant or the afterbirth that follows, which seems like something out of a science-fiction movie.
    My wife sleeps. I pace. Don’t know what to do.
    Look in on my baby girl in the newborn nursery. Don’t know what to do. She looks like a stranger to me.
3.
     
    Go out for a drive. My body: it shakes. Have no friends. We have just moved into this town where I have a new job at the university as a lecturer in 19 th century British literature. So I have no one to celebrate with. A new father should be passing out cigars, having drinks with his guy friends. Feel like something is missing in my life.
    I drive past a stripper bar.
4.
     
    You will not believe what happens to me, but does it matter? It only matters that I know what happens.
5.
     
    Arrive at 11 P.M. A slow night. There are more dancers than customers—ten of them, six of us. Men come and go and I know this is a business that operates in waves.
    A young woman with dark hair and brown skin, early 20s, immediately sits