[SIX]
4730 Avenida del Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0230 11 April 1946
Cronley turned in the bed to switch off the bedside lamp.
Ginger was standing halfway between the bed and the door. She was wearing a dressing gown and, under it, pajamas. She had Baby Bruce in her arms.
When she saw that he had seen her, she walked over to the bed.
She thrust the sleeping infant toward Cronley.
“Take him,” she said. “You know he doesn’t bite. Breaks wind with wild abandon, yes, but no bite.”
He had no choice but to take the child.
“What the hell are you up to?” Cronley asked.
“When I went to check on him, I had an epiphany. He’s another of your goddamn problems. Being a father scares you to death.”
Cronley didn’t reply.
“So,” she went on, “tell me what you want me to do with him. I’m open to anything but putting him up for adoption or drowning him.”
“You’re crazy . . . drunk . . .”
“Probably. You make me crazy and
drive me to drink.”
The infant made a sound.
Cronley saw that the baby’s blanket was covering his mouth and that he was trying to push it away.
Very carefully, using his index finger, Cronley moved the blanket away. Baby Bruce smiled and then reached for and grabbed Cronley’s finger.
“Christ, he’s beautiful! And I think he really likes me!”
“So do I—we do. What the hell else do you need?”
He looked up from the baby’s blue eyes and saw that Ginger had slipped out of the dressing gown and was unbuttoning her pajama top.
“What the hell else do you need?” she repeated.
When he didn’t reply, she put her fingers in the hem of her pajama bottoms and slid them off her hips.
“For Christ’s sake,” she said, her voice breaking, “what the hell else do you need?”
“Right now, I can’t think of a thing. But what we do with what’s his name?”
“We put a pacifier in his mouth and put him on the couch.”
She slipped out of her pajama top and came to the bed and reached for the child.
“And his name is Bruce. Try to remember that.”