As Robin opened a fresh carton of Breyers, she said, “Palmer had breakfast with Andy Westrich.”

“How is he?” Glenna asked.

Biff said, “He’s out of jail. But his lawyer says he’ll eventually have to do a year. And he’s going to lose his medical license.”

“What a drag,” Glenna said.

“I liked your article,” Robin said to me, holding up a copy of the Long Island Press Sunday Magazine. I’d left my copies on the coffee table when Glenna and I had come in from the candy store.

“Same here,” Biff added. Since I’d threatened to strangle him with his scarf, he had cut out his condescending digs, but his mentioning that he liked the Restell piece should have tipped me off that something was up. “Your article and Andy’s arrest gave me the idea.”

Robin said, “NYMSRAL is branching out. Taking over for Andy.”

“You’re gonna help?” Glenna asked Robin.

“She’s chicken,” Biff replied. “Some revolutionary.”

“I’m a practical revolutionary,” Robin said. “Marx wrote that nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If I got busted, my MD would be useless; I’d never get a license.”

Biff smirked at her. “And your parents would kill you.”

“That, too,” Robin said, and ate a heaping tablespoon of mint chocolate chip.

Biff looked at Glenna. Robin was also looking at her. “I don’t know,” Glenna said.

Was this douche bag for real? Just when Glenna and I were in the groove again, and her worst rotations were behind her, she’s supposed to hide somewhere with Biff the Brooks Brothers Mouse and do abortions?

Biff said, “NYMSRAL worked within the system and then Ginsberg gives a speech and that’s why abortions are illegal? Because of that drivel? That’s ludicrous. It’s in Gordon’s article. Until 1828, abortion was the termination of a pregnancy at roughly eighteen weeks, past the quickening, when the mother could feel the baby move. Before then, abortion didn’t violate any laws. The legislature outlawed it because doctors didn’t want lay people performing them. Doctors didn’t want to lose their monopoly. It wasn’t about morality for doctors. All they cared about was money.”

“Unlike today,” I said.

Biff replied, “I’m a doctor and I don’t care about money.”

“Lucky you have a trust fund,” I said.

Biff shot Glenna a disapproving stare.

“Don’t stare at me,” Glenna said to Biff, and glanced over at Robin, who, naturally, was the one who had told me about his family dough.

Robin said, “You shouldn’t be so modest about it, Palm. It’s not like you got rich inheriting railroads. Didn’t your great-grandfather invent instant coffee?”

“His own brand of it,” Biff said. “Now, can we get back to the topic at hand?”

“Good idea,” I said to Biff. “Even if outlawing abortion had to do with money, it also had to do with the fact that women were constantly dying from unskilled abortions. So, to some extent, the law was passed to protect them.”

He said, “Madame Restell did her thing before Joseph Lister. Do you know what that means?”