“Feels like thirty.”

Chapter 18

FOR THE NEXT few weeks, we lived together like shadows.

As a rule, not talking or making love to Glenna for so long would have sent me around the bend and kayoed the concentration I needed to work. However, I was popping black beauties like pistachios to research and write my Madame Restell story. The deadline was tight; it was my longest assignment to date; and I was either at the Brooklyn College library or pounding away through the night on my typewriter in the kitchen, where I had relocated so as not to disturb Glenna’s sleep.

Every now and again, despite the vitality and fearlessness that amphetamines supply, whenever I’d stop working long enough to go outside and smoke a cigarette, I had moments of bewildering loneliness that served as a scary preview of what life would be like for me without Glenna. But then I would down another black beauty and get back to the story, and in this manner I persuaded myself that Glenna and I would get it together when the article was done.

Too bad then that on the day I delivered the piece to Garden City and came back to the house to crash, Glenna, Biff, Robin, and their NYMSRAL cronies were on a bus to Albany to attend the Assembly’s final debate on the abortion-reform bill.

Assemblyman Cohane had assured the media that he had eighty-two votes in support of reform, six more than needed for passage. What Cohane hadn’t counted on, according to the news I listened to that night on the clock radio, was Assemblyman Martin Ginsberg, a Republican from Nassau County, who had contracted polio as a baby. As the five-hour debate dragged on, Ginsberg stood up with the aid of crutches and leg braces and attacked a provision in the bill that would permit doctors to abort a fetus if there was evidence that the child would be grossly malformed. Ginsberg declared that if his colleagues were willing to prevent a person from entering this world malformed, weren’t they saying it was proper to remove a person, currently in the world, who became malformed?

Since the bill didn’t mention executing the handicapped, Ginsberg’s objection wasn’t exceedingly logical. But an orderly mind isn’t a prerequisite for political office—some would say it’s a detriment. For as Ginsberg lowered himself into his seat, he was rewarded with a standing ovation from the legislators, fourteen of whom defected from Cohane’s camp, and abortion reform was defeated for the third year in a row.

I fell asleep and dreamed that someone was whispering my name. The dream improved when a tongue darted into my ear. I rolled over, and the lamp on the apple crate snapped on. I opened my eyes, and Glenna was sitting beside me in a pleated, black skirt and white blouse.

“You’re not still mad?” I asked.

“I miss you too much to be mad. You mad at me?”

“Always.” I smiled. “But mostly I don’t get why you invited Rick without mentioning you went out with him. And I’m scared that I don’t get it. And I was wondering if it might not have scared you, too—inviting him without thinking it through.”