"A lying bastard." That wasn't the ceiling talking. That was him. Did he want to go through life thinking of himself as a liar every time he lathered up with his shaving brush? Some people wouldn't care. Some people would figure rejection made their promise null and void.

But he'd given that promise after Laura Secord had rejected him, in spite of her rejecting him. His headache had only a little to do with the hangover. He sighed, fogging the mirror. That proved he was still alive. He knew what he would do. He'd never tell Fred Sandburg. Fred wouldn't let him live it down if he found out. He'd do it anyway.

It was Saturday morning. The banks would be closed. The post office was open, though. He could send a money order-if he had two hundred dollars in cash. By turning the apartment upside down, he came up with $75.27. He cursed under his breath for a minute, then telephoned Fred Sandburg.

"Hullo?" When Sandburg answered the phone, he sounded as if he'd just been raised from the dead and wished he hadn't been.

"Hello, Fred," Moss said cheerfully-the aspirins were working. "Listen, if I write you a check for a hundred and thirty bucks, can you cash it?"

"Yeah, I think so," his friend answered.

"Good. See you in a few minutes," Moss said. Sandburg started to ask him why he wanted the money right away, but he hung up without answering. Throwing on some clothes, he drove the few blocks to Sandburg's flat.

"What the hell is this all about?" Sandburg asked. He looked like a poor job of embalming; he'd had more to drink than Moss had. "You eloping with some broad and you need to buy a ladder?"

"Got it the first time," Moss told him. He wrote a check and thrust it at his friend. In return, Sandburg gave him two fifties, a twenty, and a gold eagle. "Thanks, pal, you're a lifesaver," Moss said. He headed out, leaving Sandburg scratching his head behind him.

At the post office, Moss discovered he couldn't buy a money order for two hundred dollars. "Hundred-dollar maximum, sir," the clerk said, "but I can sell you two." Moss nodded. The clerk went on, "That will be $200.60-thirty-cent fee on each order." Moss gave him the money. When he got the money orders back, he put them in an envelope he'd already addressed. For another two cents, the clerk sold him a stamp.

After that, he drove home. Now that the deed was done, he wondered how foolish he'd been. Two hundred dollars foolish, he thought-and sixty cents. When he asked his parents for money, as he'd eventually need to do, they'd want to know where it had gone. They were liable to suspect he'd spent it on a loose woman. He laughed mirthlessly. If only Laura Secord were loose, or even a little looser!

He returned to the study of the law on Monday. Every day when he went home, he checked the mail in hope of finding another envelope with an overprinted stamp. Ten days later, he got one. The note inside read simply, / see there are decent Yanks after all God bless you. He read it a dozen times, convinced beyond contradiction that that was the best two hundred dollars he'd ever spent.

Nellie Jacobs opened her eyes. She was lying on a hard, unyielding bed, staring up into a bright electric light bulb. When she blinked, the bulb seemed to waver and float. It also seemed much farther away than a self-respecting ceiling lamp had any business being.

Hovering between her and the lamp were her daughter and her husband. Hal Jacobs asked, "Are you all right, darling?"

"I'm fine." Even to herself, Nellie sounded anything but fine. What she sounded was drunk. She felt drunk, too, at least to the point of not caring what she said: "Don't worry about me. I was born to hang." She coughed. That hurt. So did talking. Her throat was raw and sore and dry. As she slowly took stock of herself, that was far from the only pain she discovered. Someone had been using her belly for a punching bag.

"Do you know where you're at, Ma?" Edna Semphroch asked her.

"Of course I do," she answered indignantly. That bought her a few seconds in which to cast about through the misty corridors of her memory and try to find the answer. Somewhat to her own surprise, she did: "I'm in the Emergency Hospital at the corner of Fifteenth and D, Miss Smarty-Britches." Recalling where she was made her recall why she was there. "Holy suffering Jesus! Did I have a boy or a girl?"

"We have a daughter, Nellie," Hal said. If he was disappointed at not having a son, he didn't show it. "Clara Lucille Jacobs, six pounds fourteen ounces, nineteen and a half inches-and beautiful. Just like you."

"How you do go on," Nellie said. A little girl. That was nice. Little girls, thank God, didn't grow up to be men.

Someone new floated into her field of view: a man clad all in white, even to a white cloth cap on his head. A doctor, she realized, and giggled at being able to realize anything at all. Businesslike as a stockbroker, he asked, "How are you feeling, Mrs. Jacobs?"

"Not too bad," she said. "I had ether, didn't I?" She remembered the cone coming down over her face, the funny, choking smell, and then… nothing. The doctor was nodding. Nellie nodded, too, though it made her dizzy, or rather, dizzier. "I had ether, and after that I had the baby." The doctor nodded again. Nellie giggled again. "A lot easier doing it like that than the regular way," she declared. "One hell of a lot easier, believe me."

"Most women say the same thing, Mrs. Jacobs," the doctor answered. Her cursing didn't bother him. He'd surely heard a lot of patients coming out from under ether. He hadn't even noticed. Edna had, and was smirking.

Nellie went on taking stock. She'd felt a lot of labor pains before Hal and Edna brought her to the hospital, and a lot more before the doctors put her under. But she'd missed the ones at the end of the affair, and those were far and away the worst. And she'd missed the process of, as one of her fallen sisters had put it many years before, trying to shit a watermelon. Sure as sure, this was better.

"Would you like to see your daughter, Mrs. Jacobs?" the doctor asked.

"Would I ever!" Nellie said. Smiling, the doctor turned and beckoned. A nurse brought the baby, wrapped in a pink blanket, up to Nellie. Clara was tiny and bald and pinkish red and wrinkled. Edna had looked the same way just after she was born.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Hal said.

"Of course she is," Nellie answered. Edna looked as if she had a different opinion, but she was smart enough to keep it to herself.

"If you want to give her your breast now, you may," the doctor said.

What, right here in front of you? Nellie almost blurted. That was foolish, and she figured it out before the words passed her lips. He'd had his hands on her private parts while delivering Clara. After that, how could she be modest about letting him see her bare breast?

But she was. He must have read it in her face-and, of course, he would have seen the same thing in other women, too. He said, "Mr. Jacobs, why don't you step out into the hall with me? I think your wife might have an easier time of it with just the ladies in here with her."

"Oh. Yes. Of course," Hal said. He followed the doctor out of the room, looking back over his shoulder at Nellie as he went.

"Slide down your gown, dearie, and you can give your wee one something good," the nurse said. She was a powerfully built middle-aged woman with the map of Ireland on her face. After Nellie exposed her breast, she set the baby on it. Clara knew how to root; babies were born knowing that. She didn't need long to find the nipple and start to suck.

"Ow," Nellie said, and made a hissing noise between her teeth. She'd forgotten how tender her breasts were and would be till nursing toughened them up.