“For me?”
“For anyone,” Jesse said, ‘that
knows what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, and is smart enough not to get pregnant when they don’t want to, or get AIDS, or get a reputation.“
“I’ve had sex,” Michelle said.
Jesse nodded soberly.
“I figured you had,” Jesse said.
“I don’t think it’s such a big
deal.”
“Sometimes it is,” Jesse said.
“Depends, I guess, on who you have sex with and when and how you feel about
Jesse ,paused and smiled.
“Though I gotta tell you,” he said.
“I’ve never not liked it.”
Michelle glanced down at the two ratty-looking boys at the end of the wail and lowered her voice.
“If a guy, you know, shoots off, and you get some on you, can you get pregnant?”
“He needs to shoot off in you,” Jesse said.
“In… down there?”
“In your vagina,” Jesse said.
“There may be someone who’s gotten pregnant by getting it on her thigh, but it’s not something I’d worry about.”
Michelle was silent, her feet dangling, looking at the ground between her feet.
Jesse looked across the common some more at the fall foliage.
What made the leaves of the hardwoods so bright, he realized, was the undertone of evergreens behind and between them. The turning trees were made more brilliant by the trees that didn’t turn. Must be a philosophic point in there somewhere, Jesse thought. But none occurred.
“So are you?” Michelle asked.
She was still looking at the ground, and as she talked she pointed her toes in and then back out.
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Embarrassed to say?”
“No,” Jesse said. “But you
don’t go out with someone and then tell everybody what you did.”
“I’ll bet you talk about it with the other cops.”
“No,” Jesse said.
“That’s weird. You ever been
married?”
“You divorced now?,
“Yes.”
“Is it because you didn’t love each
other?”
“No. I think we love each other.”
?So what is it?“
“None of your business,” Jesse said.
“Jeez, another thing you won’t talk
about.”
“I don’t talk about you and me,
either,” Jesse said.
Michelle was startled.
“We’re not doing nothing,” she
said.
Jesse grinned at her.
“That makes it easier,” he said.
Michelle tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She giggled.
