“Yeah,” the Wire said, “but the thing is, this bitch is all fucked up. First she says she wants an abortion, then she wants the kid, then she wants to have the kid and just dump him in an orphan joint, and now she wants the abortion again. Dumb-shit’ll probably end up having the abortion and keeping the kid anyway.”

“T.W., are you certain you planted the seed?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” the Wire said proudly. “She don’t screw no one but me. Like one night I tried to talk her into blowing Costa while I porked her up the ass, you know, just to prove her love to me, but she wouldn’t go for it.”

Jack frowned. “Prude.”

“Yeah,” the Wire said, “she’s a little old-fashion so I told her to forget it. I said she didn’t have to blow no one except me if’n she didn’t want to.”

Jane nudged me and said, “Who said chivalry is dead?”

At eleven o’clock two carloads of women arrived led by Bunny Cote. The Wire pointed her out to Jack and said, “There’s another one with a major social disease.”

“Which one?” Jack asked.

“Bunny. The one with the big floats.”

“I mean which social disease?”

“Same one,” the Wire said. “She’s pumped up. Pregnant as they come.”

Jack looked at me and said, “Introduce me to Bunny, Dunph.”

“Why?” Jane asked. “You heard the Wire. She’s pregnant.”

“Exactly,” Jack said, craning to get a better look. “No reason to hold back now.”

I looked for Jane’s reaction.

“Don’t worry, Dunph,” she said. “I’m not saying a word.”

When Bunny plowed her swollen breasts near us, I introduced her to Jack and Jane.

“That’s a nice camel-skin sweater,” Jack said.

Bunny looked around the room. “It ain’t camel-skin,” she said, absent-mindedly. “I think it’s polyester.”

Jack felt her sleeve. “Jesus, you’re absolutely correct. I noticed the humps and just assumed. …”

“Hey, Dunphy,” Bunny said, “you seen DeCenz anywhere?”

Before I could answer, Jack took Bunny by the arm. “I told him I’d meet him in the other room,” he said. “Come on, let’s track that fucker down.”

Jack led her straight into the old man’s bedroom. He shut the door and the lock clicked. It gave me a funny feeling, my old man’s bedroom and all.

Jane followed me into my bedroom. I locked the door. She stood in the middle of the room examining the pictures and posters that my brother had hung on our walls. There was a poster of two hippos humping with a Make Love, Not War slogan, and another of two pigs fucking beneath a Makin’ Bacon sign. There were old Red Sox players like Joe Foy and Mike Ryan and Jim Lonborg on my door and a “Carl Yas-trzemski. For President” sticker on the lamp shade.