Page 11 of Three Times You

“I’ve never been this happy before.”

She throws her arms around me, and I feel guilty. Then I embrace her, holding her tight, ever tighter.

“Hey, you’re hurting me!”

“Sorry, you’re right.” And I loosen my grip. “We have to be careful now.” I smile at her.

“You know, it was beautiful to feel you come inside me, to know that everything’s already happened…”

“Yes.” I don’t know what else to say. And at that exact same instant, I’m reminded of that night with Babi, six years earlier, having sex with her after the party, both of us drunk. She wouldn’t let me go, thrilling to the experience and riding me wildly as if I were a horse. And she wanted me again, and again, and again. And she would only let go of me after I’d come. That’s when it must have happened.

“My love? What are you thinking about? Where are you? You seem so far away…”

“No, I’m right here.”

“But are you happy that we’re going to have a baby?”

“Certainly, I’m overjoyed. But how did it even happen?”

“Well, I have some ideas, you big dummy. Would you tell me what’s going through your head?”

I try to come up with something plausible. “I was thinking that, this evening, you really filled me with surprises. You left me speechless.”

“Yes…but you didn’t seem all that upset about it, after all.”

“No, actually, I guess I wasn’t. But I don’t understand how all these fantasies popped into your mind.”

“You’re the one who gave me the book! InThe Dream Merchantsby Harold Robbins, there was a scene where she did exactly the same things that I did to you this evening.”

“Seriously? I didn’t remember that…”

“I thought it was a subliminal message and that you wanted to teach me new sex techniques…”

“I have to be a little more careful about the books I give you.”

“You’re right. I’m going to have to start behaving now that I’m going to become a mother.”

And so we go on chatting, laughing, and joking lightheartedly, eating the leftover berries with whipped cream from last night’s dessert. Gin puts on my shirt, and I grab a T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms, and we wind up in bed. Gin starts to fantasize about the gender and names for our baby. “If it’s a baby girl, we’ll name her after my mother, Francesca. But if it’s a little boy, I was thinking about Massimo. It’s a name I’ve always loved. What do you think?”

I can’t believe it. It’s as if life is doing it on purpose, two children, from two different mothers, but with the same name.

“Yes, why not, maybe so…It’s a name for a great general.” That comes spontaneously to me, paraphrasing Babi. And I drink some more rum, and by now I feel as if I might have drunk too much rum, and I wonder if I shouldn’t stop drinking and tell her the truth.

“My love, I have a surprise for you too. Today I saw Babi…”

“Oh, really, and that’s the way you tell me?”

“And that’s not all, just think of what a remarkable coincidence: turns out I have a son with her, and his name just happens to be Massimo.”

But I don’t say a word. Gin goes on chatting, cheerful and contented, and I feel tremendously guilty because I understand that her joy is hanging by a thread, a thread that I could snap easily, forever shattering her beautiful smile.

“Just think about my folks when they find out. They’re going to be overwhelmed, but with happiness. Anyway, I’ll tell them after the wedding. You know, they’re kind of old-fashioned that way, if they find out that I’m already expecting…I know my father. He’d tell me I’m a hussy, that I could have waited. No, not really, my father adores me. He dotes on me…”

And I pour myself another dollop of rum and toss it back at a single gulp, as if that could somehow help me. And as I listen to her chatter away about which of her girlfriends to choose as her maid of honor, the readings to do in church, and the honeymoon, I see a shadow at the far end of the room, sitting in that chair. It’s him again, my friend Pollo, but this time he isn’t smiling at me. He’s chagrined because he sees that I’m uneasy. He can read my mind but he can’t seem to understand my answer to the question he asks me over and over again, incessantly. “But, do you love Gin?”

Chapter 13

This is Alice.”

---