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[continued from page 3]
His eyes droop and his face becomes soft. It takes him a long time to say anything. “What?”
I get up and go to my purse. I bought a pack of cigarettes today, and I don’t know why.
“You’re pregnant?”
He is sitting up now. He’s as alert as he can be, which isn’t very alert. He looks like a cheap Halloween mask that’s melted. He looks ugly.
I tap the box of cigarettes against my palm and then unwrap the cellophane. I try to toss the plastic on the coffee table, but it sticks to my hand. So I shake it off. It doesn’t come off. I try to shake it off again. It continues to stick.
“Do you believe in that?” he asks.
I shake my hand again. “What?” I ask. Finally the cellophane floats down to the table. I take a cigarette out. “Smoking while I’m pregnant?”
He looks like he’s going to throw up. “No.” He rubs his head. He coughs a little more. He picks up the joint again. “I mean. I’m not really ready to be a dad.”
“Clearly,” I say. “You’re twenty-nine and not ready for a job.”
He acts offended. “I have a job.”
“You drywall.”
“I do other work on the side.”
“You fix your friends' cars in exchange for beer.”
“You hang out with me while I fix my friends' cars,” he says.
I go into my purse again and pull the baby out. I toss it to him and he catches it. We look at each other and that look says good catch.
He puts the joint on the table, and I pick it up. I take the smallest of puffs. He is looking at the baby. Turning it around in his hands. Rubbing it between his fingers.
“You’re mean,” he says, looking up at me. He puts the baby on the table. It falls over. He tries to sit it up against the candle, and it falls again.
I exhale. “Good one,” I say. I drop the joint on the table.
I pick up my purse, the baby, and the cigarettes and walk out of the house, tripping over his dirty work boots near the door. I kick them out of my way.
Driving home he calls me, and I answer as I’m turning, which almost makes me get into an accident. “Shit,” I say as I pick up the phone. “Shit, shit.”
He doesn’t say anything for awhile.
“Are you coming back tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably not. Maybe tomorrow. I’m going to my apartment right now.”
I turn the phone off. I hang my left arm out of the window with my fingers wrapped around an unlit cigarette. I think about the baby in my purse.
Stephanie Austin's fiction has appeared in The Pacific Review, Fiction, Kitchen Sink, Thin Air Online, and The Blue Guitar. She has a story forthcoming in The Fiddlehead. She is working on her MFA in the low residency program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
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