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have to know? I mean, until it was too late.”
    “You know what they do, don’t you, to people who try and pull that kind of stunt? To the man as well as the woman?”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Well, I do.” Then, to close the discussion: “Jesus Christ.”
    She gathered all the hair at the back of her head and fumbled a knot into her strand of yellow yarn. She tried to make the next suggestion sound spontaneous. “We could go to Mexico.”
    “Mexico! Goddamn, don’t you read anything but comic books?”
    Birdie’s indignation was all the more fierce for the fact that not that long ago he’d made essentially the same proposition to Milly. “Mexico! Boy oh boy!”
    Frances, her feelings hurt, went over to the mirror and started in with the lotion. Birdie had known her to spend half a day scraping and rubbing and puttying. The result was always the same scaly, middle-aged face. Frances was seventeen.
    Their eyes met for a moment in the mirror. Frances’s skittered off. He realized that his letter had come. That she’d read it. That she knew. He went up behind her and took hold of the spindly arms inside the bulky sleeves of the robe. “Where is it, Frances?”
    “Where is what?” But she knew, she knew.
    He bent the two arms together like a spring exerciser.
    “I—I threw it away.”
    “You threw it away! My private letter?”
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I wanted you to be—I wanted just another day like the last couple.”
    “What did it say?”
    “Birdie, stop!”
    “What did it fucking say?”
    “Three points. You got three points.”
    He let go of her. “That’s all? That’s all it said?”
    She rubbed her arms where he’d held her. “It said you had every reason to be proud of what you’d written. Three points is a good score. The team who scored you didn’t know how much you needed. If you don’t believe me, read it yourself. It’s right here.” She opened a drawer, and there was the yellow envelope with its Albany postmark and the burning torch of knowledge in the other corner.
    “Aren’t you going to read it?”
    “I believe you.”
    “It said if you wanted that one extra point you could get it by enlisting in the service.”
    “Like your old friend Jock, huh?”
    “I’m sorry, Birdie.”
    “So am I.”
    “Now maybe you’ll reconsider.”
    “About what?”
    “The pills I bought.”
    “Will you leave me alone with those pills? Will you?”
    “I’ll never say who the father is. I promise. Birdie, look at me. I promise.”
    He looked at the black, bleary eyes, the greasy, flaking skin, the hard little lips that never smiled far enough to betray the fact of her teeth. “I’d as soon jerk off into the toilet as give it to you. Do you know what you are? You’re a moron.”
    “I don’t care what you call me, Birdie.”
    “You’re a goddamned subnormal.”
    “I love you.”
    He knew what he had to do. He’d seen the thing last week when he’d gone through her drawers. Not a whip, but he didn’t know what else to call it. He found it again at the bottom of the underwear.
    “What was that you just said?” He thrust the thing into her face.
    “I love you, Birdie. I really do. And I guess I’m about the only one who does.”
    “Well, this is how I feel for you.”
    He grabbed the collar of her robe and pulled it down off her shoulders. She’d never let him see her naked before and now he understood why. Welts and bruises covered her body. Her ass was like one big open wound from being whipped. This was what she got paid for, not being fucked. This.
    He laid into her with his whole strength. He kept going until it didn’t matter anymore, until he had no feelings left.
    The same afternoon, without even bothering to get drunk, he went to Times Square and enlisted in the U.S. Marines to go and defend democracy in Burma. Eight other guys were sworn in at the same time. They raised their right arms and took one step forward and rattled off the Pledge of