'Do you two live together?' Biggie asked us.
'We used to,' Merrill said. 'But it's a small place, so I'll go out every night and leave you two alone.'
'We don't want to be that alone,' said Biggie, leaning forward touching his shoulder. And she looked back at me, a little frightened, as if she meant this. We should only go out in crowds; being alone was too serious.
'You're not any fun to be with,' Merrill told me. 'You're in love, you know,' he said. 'And that's no fun at all ...'
'No, he's not in love,' said Biggie. 'We're not in love at all.' She looked at me for rea
ssurance, as if to say, We're not, are we?
'Certainly not,' I said, but I was nervous.
'You certainly are,' said Merrill, 'you poor stupid bastard ...' Biggie looked at him, shocked. 'Jesus, you too,' he told her. 'You're both in love. I don't want anything to do with either of you.'
And he had sweet little to do with either of us, by God; we hardly ever saw him in Vienna. We were too vulnerable to his humor; he made us aware how our casualness was faked. Then he drove the Witwer down to Italy for an early spring and sent us each a postcard. 'Have an affair,' the cards said. 'Both of you. With someone else.' But Biggie was already pregnant then.
'I thought you had a fucking intrauterine device,' I said. 'An IUD, right?'
'IUD' she said. 'IBM, NBC, CBS ...'
'NCAA,' I said.
'USA,' she said. 'Well, sure, I had one, dammit. But it was just a device, like any other ...'
'Did it fall out?' I asked. 'They can't break, can they?'
'I don't even know how they work,' she said.
'Obviously they don't work.'
'Well, it used to.'
'Maybe it fell in,' I said.
'God ...'
'The baby's probably got it in his teeth,' I said.
'It's probably in my lungs,' she said.
But later she said, 'It couldn't hurt the baby, could it?'
'I don't know.'
'Maybe it's inside the baby,' she said. And we tried to imagine it: a plastic, unfunctioning organ next to a tiny heart. Biggie started to cry.
'Well, maybe the baby won't get pregnant,' I coaxed. 'Maybe the damn thing will work for the baby.' But she was not amused; she was furious with me. 'I'm just trying to cheer you up,' I said. 'It's just something Merrill would say.'
'It's got nothing to do with Merrill now,' she said. 'It's us, in fucking love, and a baby.' Then she looked at me. 'OK,' she said. 'It's me in love, anyway. And a baby ...'
'Of course I love you.'
'Don't say that,' she said. 'You just don't know yet.'
Which was true enough. Though at the time, her long body was a blotter of my pain. And though we left before Merrill got back from Italy - if that's really where he was - we did not escape his influence. His example - maybe all examples - of surviving your own self-abuse. That impressed us, and we convinced ourselves that we wanted the baby.
'What will we call it?' Biggie asked.