The baby was crawling, discovering the world. Marina slept in bed with us at night. There was Marina, Fay, the cat and myself. The cat slept on the bed too. Look here, I thought, I have 3 mouths depending on me. How very strange. I sat there and watched them sleeping.

Then two nights in a row when I came home in the mornings, the early mornings, Fay was sitting up reading the classified sections.

“All these rooms are so damned expensive,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

The next night I asked her as she read the paper:

“Are you moving out?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll help you find a place tomorrow. I’ll drive you around.”

I agreed to pay her a sum each month. She said, “All right.”

Fay got the girl. I got the cat.

We found a place 8 or 10 blocks away. I helped her move in, said goodbye to the girl and drove on back.

I went over to see Marina 2 or 3 or 4 times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right.

Fay was still wearing black to protest the war. She attended local peace demonstrations, loveins, went to poetry readings, workshops, communist party meetings, and sat in a hippie coffee house. She took the child with her. If she wasn’t out she was sitting in a chair smoking cigarette after cigarette and reading. She wore protest buttons on her black blouse. But she was usually off somewhere with the girl when I drove over to visit.

I finally found them in one day. Fay was eating sunflower seeds with yogurt. She baked her own bread but it wasn’t very good.

“I met Andy, this truckdriver,” she told me. “He paints on the side. That’s one of his paintings.” Fay pointed to the wall.

I was playing with the girl. I looked at the painting. I didn’t say anything.

“He has a big cock,” said Fay. “He was over the other night and he asked me, ‘How would you like to be fucked with a big cock?’ and I told him, ‘I would rather be fucked with love!’”

“He sounds like a man of the world,” I told her.

I played with the girl a little more, then left. I had a scheme test coming up.

Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.