The Funhouse

me, for Christ's sake?”
        “Just a little help. Decency. That's all.”
        “You can't make me marry you.”
        “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I can cause you a lot of trouble, and maybe I can force you to contribute to the support of the baby.”
        “You can't force me to do anything if I'm in another state. You can't make me pay up from California.”
        “Well see about that,” she said, although she thought he was probably right.
        “Anyway, you can't prove I'm the father.”
        Who else?”
        “How should I know?”
        “You're the only one I've been doing it with.”
        “I sure wasn't the first,” he said.
        “You bastard.”
        “Eddie Talbot was the first.”
        “I haven't done anything with anyone else since I started going with you six months ago.”
        “How do I know that's true?”
        “You know ,” Amy said, loathing him. She wanted to kick him and hit him and scratch his face until it was a bloody mess, but she restrained herself, hoping she might yet gain some concession from him. “It is your baby, Jerry. There's no doubt about that.”
        “I never came inside you,” he argued.
        “A couple of times you did. Once is all it takes.”
        “If you tried to nail me in court or something like that, I'd get five or six friends to swear they'd been in your pants during the past couple of months.”
        “In my whole life there's never been anyone but Eddie and then you!”
        “In court it'd be your word against theirs.”
        “They'd be committing perjury.”
        “I've got good buddies who'd do anything to protect me.”
        “Even destroy my reputation?”
        “What reputation?” he asked, sneering.
        Amy felt sick.
        It was hopeless. There was no way she could force him to do the right thing. She was alone.
        “Take me home,” she said.
        “Gladly,” he said.
        The drive back to town took half an hour. During that time neither of them said a word.
        The Harper house was on Maple Lane, a solidly middle-class neighborhood of well-manicured lawns and shrubs, fresh paint, and two-car garages. The Harpers lived in a two-story, neo-colonial house, white with green shutters flanking the windows. Lights were on downstairs, in the living room.
        As Jerry pulled the Chevy to the curb and braked in front of the house, Amy said, “We'll probably be passing each other in the halls during final exam week. And we'll see each other at graduation two weeks from now. But I guess this is the last time we'll be talking.”
        “Bet on it,” he said coldly.
        “So I wouldn't want to miss this opportunity to tell you what a rotten son of a bitch you are,” she said as evenly as she could.
        He stared at her but said nothing.
        “You're an immature little boy, Jerry. You're not a man, and you'll probably never be a man.”
        He didn't respond. They were parked beneath a street light, and she could see his face clearly, he was impassive.
        She was angered by his refusal to react to her. She wanted to leave with the knowledge that she had hurt him as badly as he had hurt her with his comment about her reputation. But she was not very good at vituperation. She didn't have a talent for quarreling. Ordinarily she preferred to live and let live, but in this case the injustice she had suffered at Jerry's hands was so great that she felt an uncharacteristic urge to retaliate. She steeled herself to make one last attempt to sting him.
        “One other thing I want to tell you as sort of a favor to your next girlfriend,” Amy said. “There's another way you're like a little boy, Jerry. You make love like a little boy. You're immature in that department, too. I kept hoping you'd get better at it, but you never did. You know how many times you managed to make me come? Three times. Out of all those nights we made love, I climaxed only three times. You're clumsy, rough, and quick on the trigger. A regular minuteman. Do your next girlfriend a favor and at least read a couple of books about sex. Eddie Talbot wasn't all that great, but compared to him you're really a lousy fuck.”
        She saw his face darken and tighten as she spoke, and she knew she had finally gotten to him. Feeling a sick sort of triumph, she opened her door and started to get out.
        He grabbed her wrist and held her in the car. “You