John Lutz - Burn

She glanced down at the contents of the small plastic tray he’d placed between them. “I think I’ll just drink my soda, Fred. You know this isn’t my favorite place. The food tastes like a bad day at cooking class.”

“I forgot you didn’t like it here,” he explained, squeezing a plastic envelope and squirting hot sauce on his taco. Some of it splattered onto his shirt. Oh, hell! He wiped at the stain with a finger and made it worse.

“I’m not hungry anyway,” she said, “Maybe it’s because-”

“An irregular appetite is one of the symptoms,” he interrupted.

She smiled. “I’m reassured I have an expert to consult.” She touched a long, red fingernail to the side of her soda cup but didn’t drink. She began pecking the fingernail against the cup, making a persistent tapping sound. “What are we going to do, Fred?”

“I don’t know. Are you absolutely sure you’re pregnant?”

“The doctor’s sure. At least six weeks. I’ve missed two periods, and the uterus. . well, never mind.” She stopped tapping with her fingernail and laid her hand in her lap. “Believe it. I’m pregnant.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he poked at the taco in front of him as if it might have something to add to the conversation.

Beth touched the back of his hand very lightly. “Do you want me to have this baby?”

He continued staring at the taco. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry either. An infant certainly didn’t figure in his plans. And he was too old to be a father for the third time.

Still, somewhere in the core of his mind or soul, he was pleased by the news. He told himself it was a dangerous reaction, some reflexive thing that happened to help ensure survival of the species. Something out of the ooze. But he really was pleased.

“Fred?”

“My gut instinct is to say yes, have the baby.” He tried to tilt the umbrella sprouting out of the center of the table so it blocked the low angle of the sun. Something was wrong with the aluminum mechanism and the umbrella kept rocking back to its previous position. He reached into his shirt pocket for his sunglasses and put them on, wondering if Beth would think he didn’t want her to read his eyes. “There are problems, of course.”

“Of course,” she said.

“But as of this moment. . yes.” He fought a crazy impulse to leap up and whoop, as he had when Laura had told him about her first pregnancy.

“I’m not sure I’m going to go through with this, Fred.”

He’d somehow known she was going to say it. The prospect of parenthood had been hanging off-kilter over them, like the umbrella. “Is it your decision alone?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything right now. Goddamned hormones or something.”

“You’re not going to cry again, are you?”

“I make no promises.” But she didn’t look as if she was about to cry.

“We talking about an abortion?” he asked.

“Yes.” She looked directly into his eyes, her own dark eyes still with a hint of the pain he’d glimpsed in his office.

He removed his sunglasses and wiped their lenses on his shirt, watching a bus bluster and bully its way through traffic on Magellan until it passed out of sight, leaving behind it a low, dark haze of diesel exhaust that dulled the gleam of sunlight on the lineup of less aggressive vehicles.

“How do you feel about abortion, Fred?”

“In this case, I don’t know. It’s different when it isn’t in the abstract, when it’s you.”

“I always thought it was strictly the woman’s call and that I’d opt out of a pregnancy,” Beth said. “Maybe I still feel that way, but I gotta tell you, it’s weighing on me. And I don’t want to leave you out of it.”

He put his sunglasses back on and smiled. “You want to share the guilt?” He hadn’t meant to say it; he believed in a woman’s fundamental right to control her own reproductive system.

“Dammit, don’t start laying that kind of shit on me, Fred.”

Quickly he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. . Jesus, I don’t know!” He bit into his taco savagely and dribbled more sauce on his shirt. Quite a mess. He held the taco in one hand and used the other to pick up his napkin and wipe his shirt as clean as possible. “You’re right,” he said, dropping the taco, “these don’t taste good. Not this evening, anyway.”

“I’ve got to think hard on this, Fred. I don’t know what I’m going to decide. What I have a right to do-or not do. It’s a tough decision either way. I never did believe that bullshit about millions of women having abortions as a casual form of birth control. Now I know it’s not true; nobody could take this lightly.”

“A few people could,” Carver said. “You’re not one of them.”

“Who I am is part of the problem, too.”

“Meaning?”

“The child will be biracial. That carries its own troubles.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped, defending his offspring already.

“Not to you or me, obviously. But it matters to some people, and the child would suffer for it. I’ve seen people caught in that cold, empty zone between the races. And it ripples through generations. I’ve seen it cause agony and even death.”

“I’ve seen it work out OK,” Carver said.

“Yeah, some of the time it does.”

“Some of the time’s enough.”

She half turned in her chair and stared at the boats looking white and antiseptically clean in the sunlight, and at the sea beyond them, gone from blue to deep green in the evening light. Night was on the way.

Then she stood up, very erect, still lean-waisted. “I’ve got to give this a lot of thought, Fred.”

He shoved his chair back, scraping metal over concrete, and grabbed his cane. He didn’t stand up, though. “Do you want me to be with you tonight?”

“I’d rather you weren’t,” she told him. “I need to think on it alone.”

“I’ll drive you back to your car.”

“No, I’ll walk along the beach awhile, then I’ll take a cab. Do me good.”

“You sure?”

She leaned down, careful not to bump her head on the umbrella, and kissed his cheek. “I’m sure.”

He gathered up all the uneaten food and the wrappers and placed them on the plastic tray, preparing to leave.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

He used his forefinger to push his sunglasses back up where they’d slid from the bridge of his nose. “If she’s home, I’m going to talk to W. Krull.” He stood up and carried the tray to a trash receptacle, dumped its contents, and sat it on top of a stack of identical trays around which several fat flies droned. “I’ve got to do something.”

He watched Beth walk out of sight before he started the car and pulled out into traffic on Magellan.

As he drove, he thought about his son, Chipper, who’d been burned to death by a mentally disturbed killer five years ago. The son who would forever be eight years old in Carver’s mind, the age at which he’d died.

For the first time in years, he found tears tracking down his cheeks.

He thanked God he was wearing dark glasses.

After he parked on Fourteenth Street across from W. Krull’s apartment, Carver peeled off his sunglasses and slid them into his shirt pocket. He’d stopped by the office to get his light gray sport jacket. He removed the jacket from its wire hanger, hooked over one of the convertible top’s steel struts, and shrugged into it, fastening a button: instant officialdom, and the taco sauce stains on his shirt were concealed.

A young, blond woman and a tall Hispanic man were leaving the building as Carver limped with his cane around the dry pool with its maimed fish fountain. The man thought Carver was staring at the woman and shot him a glance that carried a mild warning. Carver wondered if they were married, or had children.