“No thank you,” Monica said.

Then, reconsidering: “Why don’t you wait until Saturday? I could leave by nine-thirty. I could never forgive myself if you had an accident, driving all that distance alone.”

“I don’t intend to have an accident of any kind,” Sheila said stiffly. “But I’d certainly appreciate your company.”

“It’s a long drive,” Monica said.

“A long dull drive,” Sheila said, “—alone.”

In the car Sheila spoke of her Tangier adventures, her “two or three” Arab lovers, her meeting with her old friend Henri.

“Ah— ‘Henri’!” Monica said in a neutral voice.

“Henri’s secret—which isn’t of course a secret to me—is that he’s gay, masquerading as straight, and women exist soley to prove to him that he is straight when in fact—as Henri well knows—he isn’t.” Sheila glanced at Monica, as if Monica might be drawn into sympathetic laughter; but Monica stared ahead at the turnpike traffic. “Still, he always wants to try; and he always fools me; he’s so sincere. And so attractive. The son of a bitch is attractive, don’t you think?—you saw his picture. But it was all very disappointing—very frustrating—and afterward he showed me a snapshot of a baby—his baby!—olivish skin but very fair hair and eyes. Henri’s baby! But the joke, Monica, is,” Sheila said, speaking now rapidly, excitedly, and paying very little attention to her driving, “—you won’t believe it but the joke is, Henri wasn’t involved at all, not involved with any woman, I mean not as such, the mother is a French lesbian, a poet, she’s well-known evidently but I had never heard of her, she’d been impregnated by a lesbian ‘midwife,’ as they call them, using Henri’s sperm—semen—isn’t it wild?—freaky-wild?—he told me proudly he masturbated into a bottle and gave the bottle to the midwife and she prepared a spray solution or a syringe solution, or whatever—I was laughing so hard by then I couldn’t hear—isn’t it funny!—Henri, a father!—and anyway, Monica, they squirt it up into themselves and if it connects, it connects, and they have their babies sans men, and they’re ‘married’ most of the time—the women, the lesbians—and they’re said to be devoted mothers. Can you believe it! Isn’t it wild! Can you believe it!”

Monica was watching the turnpike; Monica’s teeth were on edge.

“Jesus, can you believe it!” Sheila said, thumping the steering wheel. She was laughing in short soundless spasms. “And poor Henri was so proud, he kept boasting, ‘My son, look,’ and I thought of him masturbating into a bottle, and I couldn’t stop laughing. . . .”

“Watch where you’re going,” Monica said sharply.