“I get so fucking sick of cool old men. Every time he goes to town he comes back with another ‘cool old man’ story. An old crock he gives a nickel to on the street. The fat fart who pumps the gas. If he doesn’t meet a new one he reminisces about an old one, Wittgenstein, or the art teacher in his junior high school. Every old turd in the milk is a wise man.” She sneered. Her eyes were dark and cold. It frightened me, until she started to cry.

“It used to be so good with us. Sometimes when we make love it’s still beautiful. But sometimes it’s horrible.”

She blinked and more tears slid down her cheeks into her hair.

“That Laura. With the mink. Aram really thinks she’s something. She’s staying at the cabin, but one night there were a lot of people here, her friends. They were all stoned, except me. I went to bed and when I woke up, Aram was beside me and there was Laura and some guy on the other side of me and a couple of people on the floor. They were saying, ‘Come on, Aram, show us how you fuck a pregnant woman!’ and he was trying, and Laura was doing it with this guy next to me, and I just couldn’t. Aram couldn’t, either, but he kept trying. Rubbing against me, all soft, till he was sweating. Then he jumped up and went outdoors and didn’t come back all night. I think he slept in the cabin. But all the others were passed out by then anyway. I went out and slept by the stove.”

She stared at the sky and calmly blinked out her tears. I put my face down on my knees so I didn’t have to watch for a while.

“The next morning Laura and all of them woke up really hungry and ate up everything in the house without even asking,” she went on. “Aram came in talking about how he was going to make a lot of money going around the woods gathering rare herbs. I don’t know what he wants. I just want to be happy and think about my baby.”

Her hands climbed the mound of her belly and kneaded it gently. The grass in the lawn was yellowed and stiff. It stuck up between our legs and cracked faintly beneath us. The sweetness was gone, but I pulled the grass slowly from its husk and chewed.