Lawrence Block - Threesome

“Well, if you’re obsessed with the idea of the two of us on an equal footing, that might be easier.”

“Actually, it isn’t. There’s tons of legal crap to go through to get divorced. To get married, you just need a license and a blood test and some clod to marry you.”

“But Harry’s already married.”

“You keep saying that. But if you don’t tell the clod, how is he to know? They don’t check these things out, you know. It’s not like getting a passport where they go and consult the records. All you do-”

“Is get married.”

“Right.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Priss?”

“I’m positive. And it’s especially a good idea with the baby coming. You don’t want him to be illegitimate, do you?”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Well, think about it.”

I thought about it. “Actually,” I said, “the kid’s going to have trouble enough anyway wondering why he’s got two mothers.”

“Which is precisely why he should damn well have a father. And since your child is going to be Harry’s actual child and not a cuckoo’s gift, that’s all the more reason why he should have the Kapp name.”

Enough. I do not want to report more of this conversation, or of the similarly inane conversation that took place when the proposal was broached to Harry. (Broached?) Suffice it to say (suffice? Where am I finding all these words?) that he thought it was a fine idea, and that I found it sufficiently appealing to my own overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous, so that ultimately, in my eighth month, Harry and I were united in holy if unlikely matrimony by a Universalistic minister in a nearby town. He pretended not to notice my condition, which of course was so overwhelmingly noticeable that I felt this was almost a rudeness on his part, but I didn’t object noisily.

Priss gave the bride away.

And about seven weeks later I gave birth to Judith Elizabeth, who is one of the two most beautiful babies ever born on this or any other planet, the other of the two being James Oliver, who appeared two weeks and three days later.

And we live happily ever after.

Mr. and Mrs. and Mrs. Harry Kapp. And family.

There will someday be problems. We all realize this, although we dwell on it as little as possible. Children, after all, ask embarrassing questions, and keep asking them until they get answers. But here, I think, our isolation helps us. Eventually the kids will learn that other families are structured rather differently from ours. There will no doubt be a certain amount of culture shock involved. But we are so close, and love each other so much, that I don’t doubt for a moment that it will all work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds, amen.

Meanwhile we share child-raising chores as if this were a sexual kibbutz, which perhaps it is. I sometimes nurse James, and Priss sometimes nurses Judy. Tit for tat, Harry calls it.

One thing does come to mind from time to time. At the present it’s wildly premature, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it, and I have mentioned it to Priss and Harry, and we all agree it’s something that will ultimately come to pass.

Sooner or later, James Oliver and Judith Elizabeth are going to want to screw each other.

Well, the hell with them. Let them write their own book.