“Because you asked me, honey. And I was. It just happened to be the truth. And as far as my new status goes, I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China. So quit worryin’ about it, why don’t you?”

“Because your boy friend was impotent? Is that why?”

“Yeah. That’s why.”

Berry-berry stood straight and took a long drink of whisky. Then he sat down in the big chair and threw his leg over the arm of it.

“Did you ever try to—help him?”

Clinton watched Echo’s face. The meaning of Berry-berry’s question reached her slowly. Then she looked at him and said: “There wasn’t anything there to help. You understand what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

Echo took another sip from her glass, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Berry-berry reached for it. She gave it to him, and lighted another one for herself.

“Why is it,” Berry-berry said, “you never married anybody else?”

“I guess I’m just backward.”

“Or even went to bed with anybody else?”

Clinton felt there was a definite edge on Berry-berry’s voice; he seemed to be trying to provoke an argument, and Echo knew it.

“You know, Berry-berry,” she said, “something tells me not to answer that question.”

“Why?”

“I think it might make you sore. Am I right?”

“Maybe. Would that be so terrible?”

“Maybe not. But let’s just skip it anyway.”

“No, I want to know. Why?”

“You know why.”

“Because you didn’t love anybody else?”

Echo made no attempt to answer this question.

Suddenly Berry-Berry said:

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you.” He made it sound more like a statement than a question. When Echo offered no comment, he repeated, with unmistakable annoyance in his voice: “Aren’t you.”

In the moment that these words hovered in the air, in the moment before they set out on their path toward the future, Clinton saw, as in a dream of war—thunderous bright red explosions and the aftermath, blood and pain and death—saw and heard all the colors and sounds these words would evoke: saw the officer’s wife in Norfolk, the Christmas madonna in Biloxi, numbers of wounded and bleeding women, saw these words as palpable things like buttons that had been pushed, releasing some terrible energy that no one could ever stop; it would go crashing blindly into the next moments, bruising, cutting, crushing whatever lay in its path, and then go on, careening into the hours that followed, the weeks and months, and perhaps into the years as well. —But he knew with even greater certainty that there was nothing he could do about it; only listen. And watch.

Echo continued to work on the puzzle. “Whether or not I’m pregnant,” she said, slowly and with a careful effort at making herself understood, “is none of your business.”

“Because you aren’t ready to spring it. Is that it? Want to choose your own moment?”