The Fourth Hand

It was the second photo that shocked him. He'd still been asleep when Mrs. Clausen had taken it, a self-portrait, with the camera held crookedly in her hand. No matter--you could see well enough what was going on. Doris was ripping the wrapper off the second condom with her teeth. She was smiling at the camera, as if Wallingford were the camera and he already knew how she was going to put the condom on his penis.

Patrick didn't stick that photograph on his office dressing-room mirror; he kept it in his apartment, on his bedside table, next to the telephone, so that he could look at it when Mrs. Clausen called him or when he called her.

Late one night, after he'd gone to bed but had not yet fallen asleep, the phone rang and Wallingford turned on the light on his night table so that he could look at her picture when he spoke to her. But it wasn't Doris.

"Hey, Mista One Hand ... Mista No Prick," Angie's brother Vito said. "I hope I'm interruptin' somethin' ..." (Vito called often, always with nothing to say.)

When Wallingford hung up, he did so with a decided sadness that was not quite nostalgia. In the at-home hours of his life, since he'd come back to New York from Wisconsin, he not only missed Doris Clausen; he missed that wild, gum-chewing night with Angie, too. At these times, he even occasionally missed Mary Shanahan--the old Mary, before she acquired the certitude of a last name and the uncomfortable authority she now held over him.

Patrick turned out the light. As he drifted into sleep, he tried to think forgivingly of Mary. The past litany of her most positive features returned to him: her flawless skin, her unadulterated blondness, her sensible but sexy clothes, her perfect little teeth. And, Wallingford assumed--since Mary was still hoping she was pregnant--her commitment to no prescription drugs. She'd been a bitch to him at times, but people are not only what they seem to be. After all, he had dumped her. There were women who would have been more bitter about it than Mary was.

Speak of the devil! The phone rang and it was Mary Shanahan; she was crying into the phone. She'd got her period. It had come a month and a half late--late enough to have given her hope that she was pregnant--but her period had arrived just the same.

"I'm sorry, Mary," Wallingford said, and he genuinely was sorry--for her. For himself, he felt unearned jubilation; he'd dodged another bullet.

"Imagine you, of all people--shooting blanks!" Mary told him, between sobs. "I'll give you another chance, Pat. We've got to try it again, as soon as I'm ovulating."

"I'm sorry, Mary," he repeated. "I'm not your man. Blanks or no blanks, I've had my chance."

"What?"

"You heard me. I'm saying no. We're not having sex again, not for any reason."

Mary called him a number of colorful names before she hung up. But Mary's disappointment in him did not interfere with Patrick's sleep; on the contrary, he had the best night's sleep since he'd drifted off in Mrs. Clausen's arms and awakened to the feeling of her teeth unrolling a condom on his penis.

Wallingford was still sound asleep when Mrs. Clausen called. It may have been an hour earlier in Green Bay, but little Otto routinely woke up his mother a couple of hours before Wallingford was awake.

"Mary isn't pregnant. She just got her period," Patrick announced.

"She's going to ask you to do it again. That's what I would do," Mrs. Clausen said.

"She already asked. I already said no."

"Good," Doris told him.

"I'm looking at your picture," Wallingford said.

"I can guess which one," she replied.

Little Otto was talking baby-talk somewhere near the phone. Wallingford didn't say anything for a moment--just imagining the two of them was enough. Then he asked her, "What are you wearing? Have you got any clothes on?"

"I've got two tickets to a Monday-night game, if you want to go," was her answer.

"I want to go."

"It's Monday Night Football, the Seahawks and the Packers at Lambeau Field." Mrs. Clausen spoke with a reverence that was wasted on Wallingford. "Mike Holmgren's coming home. I wouldn't want to miss it."

"Me neither!" Patrick replied. He didn't know who Mike Holmgren was. He would have to do a little research.

"It's November first. Are you sure you're free?"

"I'll be free!" he promised. Wallingford was trying to sound joyful while, in truth, he was heartbroken that he would have to wait until November to see her. It was only the middle of September! "Maybe you could come to New York before then?" he asked.

"No. I want to see you at the game," she told him. "I can't explain."

"You don't have to explain!" Patrick quickly replied.

"I'm glad you like the picture," was the way she changed the subject.