John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

"Like a felony?" Win wondered, at the same time teaching Will by example that one's place setting was provided with two long-shafted fondue forks so that one's next beef bit could cook while its now-done predecessor was garnished and eaten.

"Simile upon simile!" that greenhorn marveled. "We're three-deep now, by my count; want to go for four?"

"In your resident Near-Boy's considered opinion," put in Al, "mixed-metaphoric triangles should be compounded no more than thrice. Let's quit while we're ahead."

There was upon this banter a palpable voltage — as if, so it felt to Will, his fondue-mates were on to something that he was not, of a character more mattersome than the timbre of chrome-steel triangles, the compounding of tropes, or the oil-boiling of beef. As if, moreover, each of those two knew something further that the other did not, at least for certain, yet. Unsophisticated as he was in many a department, young Narrator-Aspirant Wilfred Chase had some feel for interpersonal voltages.

"As to that, " next declared Winnie—"I mean quitting while we're ahead? — I suspect it's too late already." Dinging then her fondue fork on the pot rim as if signaling the room's attention, "Bombshell time, everybody!" she announced, and went on to report that for the very first time since her menarche at age fourteen, she had, just a fortnight past, missed one of her regular-as-moonphase menstrual periods. Should she similarly, a fortnight hence, skip her next, one or the other of her fellow fonduers was an expectant father, the odds being by her estimate between three and five to one in the Three Freds' bassist's favor, "and what in God's name are our parents going to say when we tell them?" Teary-eyed now, "And what the damn hell are we going to do?"

When stunned Wilfred had regained his breath, if scarcely his composure, he inhaled deeply, closed and then opened his eyes, dinged one of his brace of fondue forks in like manner, declared "My turn now," and to Al (who'd seemed not at all startled by Winnie's announcement) confessed that, other things equal, the paternity odds were in fact shamefully closer to fifty-fifty than to five or even three to one, himself and Winnie having been at it over the past two months rather more often than on their Al-allotted, post-Trivium Friday nights. He, for one (but he was sure Win felt the same), was contrite at their having so abused the generosity and trust of the best, most valued friend he'd ever had. "I feel like absolute shit, man."

Too angry now for tears, "You are absolute shit!" affirmed Winnie. "Squealing on us without giving me a chance to come clean first!" For a moment she seemed ready to attack Will with her fondue fork; then she flung it down instead and buried her face in her paper dinner napkin. "You shit! "

"Ding-ding, guys," wearily here interjected Al, and rapped his fork now on the fondue pot like (Will could not help noting to himself) the aforefigured triangle sounding through the rest of the orchestra. "My turn in the bombardier's seat now?"

Before adding his tuppence to this dinner-table truth-telling session, he then calmly declared, he wanted to remind his tablemates once again that this Friday-night deux et un peu Al/Win/Will routine had been his questionable idea in the first place, in his self-assumed role of Hero's Helper; if it had gotten out of hand, as he'd lately been pretty much aware that it had, he supposed he deserved the consequences. In a parody of his classroom lectorial voice, he reminded all hands further that his use of the term hero in this context by no means implied a conviction on his part that young Willie Chase of Blue Crab County was destined to do Big Things. Among its other parallels, the Wandering Hero shtick was just Everyman's story writ large, or nearly every man's; the odds against any given Young Talent's grandly fulfilling its promise were in his opinion comparable to those against any given spermatozoon's thrashing successfully upstream through its swarming fellows and nailing the ovum, pardon his analogy. What he'd come to feel, and strongly — a preoccupational hazard, he supposed, given his dissertation topic — was merely that Comrade Chase, despite whatever shortcomings in the sophistication way, belonged distinctly in the category of Swimmer, and himself, just as distinctly, in that of Coach-Facilitator.

Shrieked Winnie, "Would you stop it already with the sperm and eggs? I'm pregnant, damn it! Knocked up!"

"Quite possibly." Taking her hand across the table corner, "And when we know for sure, we'll deal with it."

Steadier now despite her tears, What did he mean deal with it?? she wanted to know — as, very much indeed, did Will.

Their companion shrugged. "Either we move up our wedding date and make the kid more or less legit, or we consult Matson," Winnie's gynecologist, a colleague of Al's father, "about fixing it for us, if that's what we'd prefer. And if Matson declines," these being pre— Roe v. Wade days, when abortion was still officially prohibited in the US of A, "we fess up and ask Dad for suggestions."

"What's this if we'd prefer?" But she didn't snatch back her hand. "D'you think I want a kid that might even possibly not be yours? I'm not ready even if it is yours!"

Patting her his-held hand with his other, "So we have ourselves a chat with Doc Matson when the time comes. But —as I was saying?" He dinged the pot again for attention and resumed his mock-lectorial tone: "What we-all find ourselves presently approaching on the not-so-merry-go-round of the Heroic Cycle" — he indicated by fork each Fred in turn: "Hero-Aspirant malgré lui or anyhow Protagonist in potentia, Prematurely Pronged Princess, and Has-Been Helper — is the So Long, Sidekick scene, celebrated in song and story."

The first- and second-named of that triad froze in baffled apprehension, borderline alarm. Has-Been? So Long?

"Said Sidekick's addio aria," Al went on, "commences with his gently informing Miz Princess that the fruit of her womb, whether nipped in bud or nurtured to harvest, is almost certainly not of his planting, he having learned among other interesting things in a recent clinical workup (a) that his sperm count is low almost to the point of nonexistence, and (b) that roughly ninety percent of his paltry output are nonmotile. Ergo, guys, whether or not it's bye-bye baby this time next month — and I, for one, rather hope it won't be — the odds against its being Baumann's wee bastard in there are… what? About a quarter-million to one? Half a million?"

Too stricken to reply, Winnie pushed aside her plate and plopped her head face-down on the table before the bubbling pot. Soul-shaken Wilfred, suddenly more apprehensive than before, wondered, "So what else did the docs have to say, Al?"

Their bass-figured leader smiled at his questioner and then at Winnie (sitting upright again, face drained). Speaking as if to their clasped hands, "In a properly constructed story," he declared, "there'd've been a few strategically placed foreshadowings before now: I might've mentioned joint pains ten pages ago, for example, or you two could've remarked between fucks that old Near-Boy was looking weaker and paler in Part Two of this yarn than he looked in Part One…"

"Al?"

"At least we should've planted a little bleeding from mouth, nose, and asshole — or, as the Merck Manual elegantly puts it, quote thrombocytopenia giving rise to pete-chiae and ecchymoses unquote." To Will, "Don't you love that lingo, man? You could have the guy's girlfriend find him reading the seventh-edition Merck one night in bed when she comes up from downstairs, and sort of wondering, What the fuck? But she figures it's just another of his gotta-know-everything things, so she nods off worrying about her period instead…"