That was obvious. She began to grin along with me. I was glad she was taking it lightly. I just didn’t know how to break the bad news to her. There was no way in hell I would have been down for something like that. So I decided to break her armor down piece by piece.

“Okay, so what happens when the kid asks who his father is?”

Kim shook her head. “I won’t even go there. And why do you assume it would be a he?”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” I told her.

“Well, I’ll tell my child the situation, and explain that the father’s identity is confidential.”

“And what if this child looks just like me?” I didn’t want to talk about it out in the open, but Kim obviously felt comfortable with it.

She smiled and said, “So if I decided to use you, I wouldn’t be able to work with you anymore.”

It sounded ridiculous. She had to be joking.

“And you think people wouldn’t be able to connect the dots?” I asked her.

“I don’t think anyone would care. I’m not a public figure. Why would they be investigating my life?”

She had a point, but it was still a crazy idea.

I said, “Now, how do you think I’m supposed to feel about all of this? I would know that it’s my child.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want children, so it wouldn’t matter.”

“It would matter. That would be like me being a deadbeat dad. I couldn’t tell myself that it’s not my child. What if the child got sick or in trouble? Am I not supposed to care about that?”

What the hell was she talking about? This was the same Kim O’Bannon who made all the sense in the world before, but now she was bouncing off the walls in insanity. She may as well have been wearing a straitjacket.

She said, “So, you do have attachments?”

“Attachments? What do you mean?”

“I mean, you have the capability to actually become attached to something.”

I felt a little offended by that. I mean, I may be selfish, but I wasn’t that selfish. No way in the world.

I said, “Shit, I’m human. Of course I would have an attachment to that.”

“Well, some men don’t,” she told me.

“Yeah, because they get twisted into the shit, and a lot of them are not ready for it, and then you actually have to start paying money for the rest of your life. So they get pissed off at the whole thing, and unfortunately take a lot of it out on the kid. But it’s not the kid’s fault.”

I totally felt my fellow man’s point of view. I figured Kim should have known that already. She knew me better than to think I would go along with donating sperm to create another fatherless child. What in the world was she thinking?

She nodded her head to herself. “Okay, so now I know how you feel. And honesty is the best policy. That’s why I decided to just spring it on you in person, rather than try and coach you through it, because that would have been unfair.”