Baby proof

'Anytime,' he says. 'And I mean that.'

Jess is a mess when I return to her place. She is sitting cross-legged in the corner of her room and there are at least a dozen cigarette butts in one of her white saucers on the floor beside her. She quit smoking a few years ago, but picks the habit back up whenever she's in the middle of a stressful deal or an emotional crisis. She looks fragile, vulnerable. To see her now, you'd never guess that she can buy and sell companies worth billions of dollars.

I hug her and say that I'm sorry. That I know how badly she wanted things to work out with Trey. I refrain from calling him a lying bastard. For now.

She says, 'I really believed in him,' and then starts to cry. It's heartbreaking to watch. Another reason not to have a child. The thought of watching your child suffer feels unbearable. Still, as I listen to Jess romanticize her relationship with Trey, I can't help feeling the way I do when friends lose pets and grieve as if a person died. Yes, it's sad, but it's not that sad, I always think. I know you loved Flash, but he was a basset hound, for God's sake, not your son. But maybe that's because I never had a dog growing up (my mother is allergic to them). I feel sort of the same way about Trey. I've never been with a married man, but I want to say to Jess, 'Yes, you liked him, and you loved having sex with him. But how could you love him? He is married to another woman. With children. He is emotionally unavailable to you. He is a fraud. You were never, even at your peak romantic moment, really together. So you haven't really lost anything.'

I might say all of this at some point, but now is not the time. I just let her cry. I remember that she did the same for me. Not that Ben and Trey should ever be compared.

'I know you couldn't possibly understand this,' Jess says after a long silent stretch. 'But I thought he was going to be the father of my children. I've invested two years in him. Two years. I feel too old to start looking again.'

'You're not too old,' I say. 'That's ludicrous.'

'I'm almost thirty-five,' she says. 'I'm running out of time. I'm running out of eggs.'

'You have plenty of good eggs left,' I say. I am trying hard to be a supportive friend, but I can't help fixating on the other part of her statement. The part about me not understanding. I don't want to make her angst about me, as my mother does whenever someone else is experiencing trauma, but I can't help asking, 'Why do you think I can't understand this?'

Jess and I never argue, so she has no experience in detecting the edge in my voice now. She has no way of knowing how annoyed I am. How much I am regretting calling her back at all. I could still be at Richard's. I wish I were. Almost. Actually, I'm not sure about that-in some ways it was nice to get the natural out. Much easier than deciding for myself whether I should spend the night.

But what I do know is that a man like Trey should not have the power to infiltrate my romantic life. It's bad enough that he has impacted my best friend's.

I look at Jess, waiting for an answer. She lights another cigarette as she says, 'Because you don't want kids.'

Right, I think to myself. And I guess that means that I also have no imagination, no empathy, no feelings. I can't possibly fathom how another woman feels when I don't want to be a mother myself. After all, what kind of a woman doesn't want to be a mother?

fifteen

The next day Daphne calls me from the waiting room of her fertility clinic. I'm about to go into our weekly editorial meeting, and I want to take the time to either review my notes or say good morning to Richard or both. I called him back last night, after my conversation with Jess, but I still feel strange about leaving so quickly after we slept together for the first time. I tell Daphne that I can't talk and will call her back after my meeting.

'But it's nine-twelve,' she says.

'Yeah. So?'

'So your meeting doesn't start at nine-fifteen, does it?'

I know precisely where she's going with her line of questioning, but I still fall into her trap and say, 'No. It starts at nine-thirty.'

'You have a few minutes then, right?'

I shake my head and sigh. Daphne seems to think that because I have my own office and phone, I should always be able to talk. But instead of delving into the details of my meeting or anything of my evening with Richard, I say, 'Okay, Daph. I have about three minutes. What's up?'

I can feel her victory smile over the phone. 'So,' she says, 'we're here at the doctor's office. Tony is getting his tests. You know, to see if something is wrong with him.'

'Right,' I say, checking my e-mail. I have one from Richard. Just the sight of his name makes my heart flutter. He was so good last night.

She says, 'The first step is his semen analysis.'

'Uh-huh,' I say. 'That makes sense.'

'So they put him in this little room with all these porn videos and girly magazines and stuff.'

I laugh and say, 'Poor Tony.'

'Poor Tony?' Daphne says. 'He's looking at naked women right now. I don't think you need to feel sorry for him.'

'I'm sure he's embarrassed, though,' I say as I quietly click open Richard's e-mail and read, When can I see you again?

I smile and type back, At 9:30. Aren't you coming to the editorial meeting?

Daphne continues, 'He's not embarrassed in the slightest. He thinks the whole thing's hilarious. He was cracking jokes, asking the nurse if they had any girl-on-girl videos.'

'Tony cracks jokes when he's embarrassed. Remember when he forgot to put his car in park that one Thanksgiving?' I say, remembering how his new, black Acura rolled backward, causing a four-car pileup. 'He made self-deprecating remarks about that maneuver for years. He still brings it up.'

'That's different,' she says. 'That was sort of funny. After the fact, anyway.'

'This will be funny someday, too,' I say as I read Richard's virtually instantaneous response: See you alone. As I saw you last night.

'So is it totally unreasonable for me to be annoyed?' Daphne asks.

This is her trademark question; Daphne always wants me to gauge the unreasonableness of her emotional reaction to something. I consistently want to tell her that, yes, she's being unreasonable, an instinct Maura gives in to, but I've learned to tread carefully.

'I can see why you would be annoyed,' I say to Daphne as I compose an e-mail back to Richard: As soon as possible.

'I mean, it's just gross,' she says. 'And it adds another layer of humiliation to this whole process.'

'Try not to think of it that way,' I say. 'Just get through it.'

'Well, don't you think Tony should have told them he didn't need… props? Don't you think he should be thinking about his wife? Instead of jerking off to porn?'

'I'm sure he is thinking about you. Give him the benefit of the doubt, Daph.'

'Yeah, right,' she says. 'Our sex life sucks. Unless I'm ovulating, it's nonexistent. And when I am ovulating, it's a total chore.'

'It will get better,' I say, thinking of Richard again. How good last night felt. How I will never have to experience the drudgery of procreational sex. 'You guys are just under a lot of pressure.'

I glance at my watch. It is 9:19, and it takes approximately four minutes to take the elevator up three floors and walk to the conference room. Which leaves me only seven minutes to look over my notes.