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mad at me, Jesse?”
    Clearly, things were not going as she expected. Yet as she nuzzled her leg against mine, damn it if I didn’t get aroused.
    “Look, Linda, do what you want with your life, but I’m not interested in changing mine. Do you get it?”
    “Of course, Dr. Falcon.”
    We both laughed in spite of ourselves.
    “Okay, we have maybe five minutes.” I loosened my belt. “But after today, this is it , do you understand?”
    “Of course, Dr. Falcon.”
    She unzipped my fly and got down on her knees.
    The instant I was done, she walked a few feet to my office water cooler and drank two mini-cups of cold water, one right after the other. Some women found the taste of semen repulsive, which always annoyed me. If they liked giving blowjobs so much, what was the big deal? It made no sense.
    “I’m pregnant,” Linda said.
    “Somehow I knew that was coming.” As I caught my breath, I turned away from her and looked out at the city. “I want nothing to do with it. Assuming it’s mine.”
    In a fury, she threw her wet paper cup at me, though it landed only inches in front of her. “Who the hell else’s would it be? My dumbfuck husband’s ? Christ, give me some credit. Rubbers aren’t a hundred percent, as I’m sure you are old enough to know.”
    “Don’t ruin my carpeting. Look, I’ll pay for half the abortion. Deal?” I offered my hand hopefully.
    “Abortion? Abortion? ” She narrowed her eyes as if she suddenly was this great moralist.
    “Yes, abortion. As in, terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Ever hear of it before?”
    “I’m having this fucking baby, damn it. I’m not getting any younger, and this is my one chance for happiness.”
    “So go and be happy. But not on my dime.”
    In the end, I needed my receptionist plus the building security guard to remove Linda from my office. She alternated between cursing me out and crying like a helpless baby every step of the way, but luckily for me she never spilled the beans about the kid. I hoped against hope that she took the hint that I had no intention of becoming a father again.
    I got two more calls that day from the stupid credit people. So I called my brother, my lawyer, and the police. Before long, the situation degenerated into a limbo of endless and contradictory letters and phone calls, each more pissy than the one before.
    From my brother, I learned that someone claiming to be me got that damn twenty thousand dollar credit line, put it into my account, and withdrew the money. But there were what the cops called additional legal complications to the case that they would not specify. Then there was a tug of war between my local police and the police where I used to live as to whose jurisdiction it was. Soon the FBI got involved. Then the FBI got uninvolved. One day I got a voice mail from the out-of-state police saying they had apprehended the person who did it, but when I called to find out who it was they said there was no record of this and I must have misunderstood the message. The most I could get out of the local police was that there were several persons of interest but not enough evidence to prosecute anyone. I called my lawyer about the possibility of suing all the cops and the FBI for incompetence, but he talked me out of it.
    “Be patient,” he told me. “They’ll find who did it. Give them a chance to build their case. Besides, the debt’s been removed from your account. They know it wasn’t you who spent the money.”
    Everyone—even Linda Goldstein—kept saying this to me, until I wanted to strangle somebody. “Let’s see how you feel if it happens to you!” I screamed at my lawyer. “It’s like . . . it’s like a form of rape. Someone thinks they can use my good name to get money that doesn’t belong to them. What if he does it again?”
    “Jesse, I think you’re taking this a wee bit over the top. Would you really rather get raped than lose a few bucks? Yes, a few bucks, given your total net worth. And