“No,” said Gloria. “He hates things in bed with him. Likes the whole place to himself. Don’tcha, kiddo?”

He smiled and stuck his arms out to the sides. “Can’t fall out,” he said.

“After the crib, we put him in a twin. He fell out of it six times, so now he’s got a double.”

I checked on Regina. She was reading comic books in bed, and the food was untouched. She would not look at me, and we said nothing to each other. I simply closed the door and went downstairs.

“How about some more coffee to go with the grass?” said Gloria. “It’ll keep everything in check.”

I perked a pot and we sat down at the dining room table. Gloria pulled out the joint. When we got it smoked down too far to hold, she produced a roach clip and showed me how to suck in the last of the smoke. I soon felt the mellowness come over me, and the room seemed to cool off considerably.

“How about some music? I can put on FM.”

“No,” she said. “No music, if you don’t mind. You know what I love to do? I love to take a few puffs, settle into bed and read. But always the same stuff—S. J. Perelman or Dorothy Parker or Flannery O’Connor. I read them over and over again. I tried Waugh once but it didn’t work.” She giggled. “Waugh was a flop in bed.”

“Doesn’t Pat ever want to . . . you know?”

“Have sex? We take care of that earlier. And without grass. Then he goes to sleep and I puff and read.” She smiled wistfully.

“You miss him?”

“Ummm. Every now and then I need to be away from him. But I do miss him. I learned my lesson.”

“What lesson?”

“He left me once. When he found out I was having an affair.”

“You had an affair?”

“For about two months. I was pregnant with Brian. That just about killed Pat. ‘You let another man put his prick in you while you’ve got my baby in there?’ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it isn’t touching the baby.’ I was an out-and-out bitch.”

“Who was he? How did it start?”

“He was a cashier in the supermarket, a drifter, forty-five years old. I knew I had to leave the college to have Brian and I guess I was afraid of the middle-class setup I’d be falling into. Anyway, this guy kept giving me the eye and I was dazzled by the fact he had no roots and didn’t give a damn. That was before I realized half the state of California is filled with drifters and they’re a dime a dozen. So one day he’s ringing up my order and he says to me, ‘Did you ever lie naked on pine needles?’ He was so matter-of-fact, it fascinated me. We never made it to the pine needles, but I went to his house every morning for two months.”

“Every morning?”