"And Mary, too. Call and tell her what happened."

"Okay."

Hap trotted out to the ambulance and climbed in. Billy Verecker shut the doors behind him and then called the other two. They had been staring into the wrecked Chevy with dread fascination.

A few moments later the ambulance pulled out, siren warbling, red domelight pulsing blood-shadows across the gas station's tarmac. Stu went to the phone and put a quarter in.

The man from the Chevy died twenty miles from the hospital. He drew one final bubbling gasp, let it out, hitched in a smaller one, and just quit.

Hap got the man's wallet out of his hip pocket and looked at it. There were seventeen dollars in cash. A California driver's license identified him as Charles D. Campion. There was an army card, and pictures of his wife and daughter encased in plastic. Hap didn't want to look at the pictures.

He stuffed the wallet back into the dead man's pocket and told Carlos to turn off the siren. It was ten after nine.

CHAPTER 2.

There was a long rock pier running out into the Atlantic Ocean from the Ogunquit, Maine, town beach. Today it reminded her of an accusatory gray finger, and when Frannie Goldsmith parked her car in the public lot, she could see Jess sitting out at the end of it, just a silhouette in the afternoon sunlight. Gulls wheeled and cried above him, a New England portrait drawn in real life, and she doubted if any gull would dare spoil it by dropping a splat of white doodoo on Jess Rider's immaculate blue chambray workshirt. After all, he was a practicing poet.

She knew it was Jess because his ten-speed was bolted to the iron railing that ran behind the parking attendant's building. Gus, a balding, paunchy town fixture, was coming out to meet her. The fee for visitors was a dollar a car, but he knew Frannie lived in town without bothering to look at the RESIDENT RESIDENT sticker on the comer of her Volvo's windshield. Fran came here a lot. sticker on the comer of her Volvo's windshield. Fran came here a lot.

Sure I do, Fran thought. In fact, I got pregnant right down there on the beach, just about twelve feet above the high tide line. Dear Lump: You were conceived on the scenic coast of Maine, twelve feet above the high tide line and twenty yards east of the seawall. X marks the spot.

Gus raised his hand toward her, making a peace sign.

"Your fella's out on the end of the pier, Miss Goldsmith."

"Thanks, Gus. How's business?"

He waved smilingly at the parking lot. There were maybe two dozen cars in all, and she could see blue and white RESIDENT RESIDENT stickers on most of them. stickers on most of them.

"Not much trade this early," he said. It was June 17. "Wait two weeks and we'll make the town some money."

"I'll bet. If you don't embezzle it all."

Gus laughed and went back inside.

Frannie leaned one hand against the warm metal of her car, took off her sneakers, and put on a pair of rubber thongs. She was a tall girl with chestnut hair that fell halfway down the back of the buff-colored shift she was wearing. Good figure. Long legs that got appreciative glances. Prime Prime stuff stuff was the correct frathouse term, she believed. Looky-looky-looky-here-comes-nooky. Miss College Girl, 1990. was the correct frathouse term, she believed. Looky-looky-looky-here-comes-nooky. Miss College Girl, 1990.

Then she had to laugh at herself, and the laugh was a trifle bitter. You are carrying on, she told herself, as if this was the news of the world. Chapter Six: Hester Prynne Brings the News of Pearl's Impending Arrival to Rev. Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale he wasn't. He was Jess Rider, age twenty, one year younger than Our Heroine, Little Fran. He was a practicing college-student-undergraduate-poet. You could tell by his immaculate blue chambray workshirt.

She paused at the edge of the sand, feeling the good heat baking the soles of her feet even through the rubber thongs. The silhouette at the far end of the pier was still tossing small rocks into the water. Her thought was partly amusing but mostly dismaying. He knows what he looks like out there, she thought. Lord Byron, lonely but unafraid. Sitting in lonely solitude and surveying the sea which leads back, back to where England lies. But I, an exile, may never- Oh balls!

It wasn't so much the thought that disturbed her as what it indicated about her own state of mind. The young man she assumed she loved was sitting out there, and she was standing here caricaturing him behind his back.

She began to walk out along the pier, picking her way with careful grace over the rocks and crevices. It was an old pier, once part of a breakwater. Now most of the boats tied up on the southern end of town, where there were three marinas and seven honky-tonk motels that boomed all summer long.

She walked slowly, trying her best to cope with the thought that she might have fallen out of love with him in the space of the eleven days that she had known she was "a little bit preggers," in the words of Amy Lauder. Well, he had gotten her into that condition, hadn't he?

But not alone, that was for sure. And she had been on the pill. That had been the simplest thing in the world. She'd gone to the campus infirmary, told the doctor she was having painful menstruation and all sorts of embarrassing eructations on her skin, and the doctor had written her a prescription. In fact, he had given her a month of freebies.

She stopped again, out over the water now, the waves beginning to break toward the beach on her right and left. It occurred to her that the infirmary doctors probably heard about painful menstruation and too many pimples about as often as druggists heard about how I gotta buy these condoms for my brother-even more often in this day and age. She could just as easily have gone to him and said: "Gimme the pill. I'm gonna fuck." She was of age. Why be coy? She looked at Jesse's back and sighed. Because coyness gets to be a way of life. She began to walk again.

Anyway, the pill hadn't worked. Somebody in the quality control department at the jolly old Ovril factory had been asleep at the switch. Either that or she had forgotten a pill and then had forgotten she'd forgotten.

She walked softly up behind him and laid both hands on his shoulders.

Jess, who had been holding his rocks in his left hand and plunking them into Mother Atlantic with his right, let out a scream and lurched to his feet. Pebbles scattered everywhere, and he almost knocked Frannie off the side and into the water. He almost went in himself, head first.

She started to giggle helplessly and backed away with her hands over her mouth as he turned furiously around, a well-built young man with black hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and regular features which, to Jess's eternal discomfort, would never quite reflect the sensitivity inside him.

"You scared the hell hell out of me!" he roared. out of me!" he roared.

"Oh Jess," she giggled, "oh Jess, I'm sorry, but that was funny, it really was."

"We almost fell in the water," he said, taking a resentful step toward her.

She took a step backward to compensate, tripped over a rock, and sat down hard. Her jaws clicked together hard with her tongue between them-exquisite pain!-and she stopped giggling as if the sound had been cut off with a knife. The very fact of her sudden silence-you turn me off, I'm a radio-seemed funniest of all and she began to giggle again, in spite of the fact that her tongue was bleeding and tears of pain were streaming from her eyes.

"Are you okay, Frannie?" He knelt beside her, concerned.

I do do love him, she thought with some relief. Good thing for me. love him, she thought with some relief. Good thing for me.

"Did you hurt yourself, Fran?"

"Only my pride," she said, letting him help her up. "And I bit my tongue. See?" She ran it out for him, expecting to get a smile as a reward, but he frowned.

"Jesus, Fran, you're really bleeding." He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and looked at it doubtfully. Then he put it back.

The image of the two of them walking hand in hand back to the parking lot came to her, young lovers under a summer sun, her with his handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. She raises her hand to the smiling, benevolent attendant and says: Hung-huh-Guth.

She began to giggle again, even though her tongue did hurt and there was a bloody taste in her mouth that was a little nauseating.

"Look the other way," she said primly. "I'm going to be unladylike."

Smiling a little, he theatrically covered his eyes. Propped on one arm, she stuck her head off the side of the pier and spat-bright red. Uck. Again. And again. At last her mouth seemed to clear and she looked around to see him peeking through his fingers.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm such an asshole."

"No," Jesse said, obviously meaning yes.

"Could we go get ice cream?" she asked. "You drive. I'll buy."

"That's a deal." He got to his feet and helped her up. She spat over the side again. Bright red.

Apprehensively, Fran asked him: "I didn't bite any of it off, did I?"

"I don't know," Jess answered pleasantly. "Did you swallow a lump?"

She put a revolted hand to her mouth. "That's not funny."

"No. I'm sorry. You just bit it, Frannie."

"Are there any arteries in a person's tongue?"

They were walking back along the pier now, hand in hand. She paused every now and then to spit over the side. Bright red. She wasn't going to swallow any of that stuff, uh-uh, no way.

"Nope."

"Good." She squeezed his hand and smiled at him reassuringly. "I'm pregnant."

"Really? That's good. Do you know who I saw in Port-"

He stopped and looked at her, his face suddenly inflexible and very, very careful. It broke her heart a little to see the wariness there.

"What did you say?"

"I'm pregnant." She smiled at him brightly and then spat over the side of the pier. Bright red.

"Big joke, Frannie," he said uncertainly.

"No joke."

He kept looking at her. After a while they started walking again. As they crossed the parking lot, Gus came out and waved to them. Frannie waved back. So did Jess.

They stopped at the Dairy Queen on US 1. Jess got a Coke and sat sipping it thoughtfully behind the Volvo's wheel. Fran made him get her a Banana Boat Supreme and she sat against her door, two feet of seat between them, spooning up nuts and pineapple sauce and ersatz Dairy Queen ice cream.

"You know," she said, "D.Q. ice cream is mostly bubbles. Did you know that? Lots of people don't."

Jess looked at her and said nothing.

"Truth," she said. "Those ice cream machines are really nothing but giant bubble machines. That's how Dairy Queen can sell their ice cream so cheap. We had an offprint about it in Business Theory. There are many ways to defur a feline."

Jess looked at her and said nothing.

"Now if you want real ice cream, you have to go to some place like a Deering Ice Cream Shop, and that's-"

She burst into tears.

He slid across the seat to her and put his arms around her neck. "Frannie, don't do that. Please."

"My Banana Boat is dripping on me," she said, still weeping.

His handkerchief came out again and he mopped her off. By then her tears had trailed off to sniffles.

"Banana Boat Supreme with Blood Sauce," she said, looking at him with red eyes. "I guess I can't eat any more. I'm sorry, Jess. Would you throw it away?"

"Sure," he said stiffly.

He took it from her, got out, and tossed it in the waste can. He was walking funny, Fran thought, as if he had been hit hard down low where it hurts boys. In a way she supposed that was just where he had been hit. But if you wanted to look at it another way, well, that was just about the way she had walked after he had taken her virginity on the beach. She had felt like she had a bad case of diaper rash. Only diaper rash didn't make you preggers.

He came back and got in.

"Are you really, Fran?" he asked abruptly.

"I am really."

"How did it happen? I thought you were on the pill."

"Well, what I figure is one, somebody in the quality control department of the jolly old Ovril factory was asleep at the switch when my batch of pills went by on the conveyor belt, or two, they are feeding you boys something in the UNH messhall that builds up sperm, or three, I forgot to take a pill and have since forgotten that I forgot."

She offered him a hard, thin, sunny smile that he recoiled from just a bit.

"What are you mad about, Fran? I just asked."

"Well, to answer your question in a different way, on a warm night in April, it must have been the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth, you put your penis into my vagina and had an orgasm, thus ejaculating sperm by the millions-"

"Stop it," he said sharply. "You don't have to-"

"To what?" Outwardly stony, she was dismayed inside. In all her imaginings of how the scene might play, she had never seen it quite like this.

"To be so mad," he said lamely. "I'm not going to run out on you."

"No," she said more softly. At this point she could have plucked one of his hands off the wheel, held it, and healed the breach entirely. But she couldn't make herself do it. He had no business wanting to be comforted, no matter how tacit or unconscious his wanting was. She suddenly realized that one way or another, the laughs and the good times were over for a while. That made her want to cry again and she staved the tears off grimly. She was Frannie Goldsmith, Peter Goldsmith's daughter, and she wasn't going to sit in the parking lot of the Ogunquit Dairy Queen crying her damn stupid eyes out.

"What do you want to do?" Jess asked, getting out his cigarettes.

"What do you you want to do?" want to do?"

He struck a light and for just a moment as cigarette smoke raftered up she clearly saw a man and a boy fighting for control of the same face.

"Oh hell," he said.

"The choices as I see them," she said. "We can get married and keep the baby. We can get married and give the baby up. Or we don't get married and I keep the baby. Or-"

"Frannie-"

"Or we don't get married and I don't keep the baby. Or I could get an abortion. Does that cover everything? Have I left anything out?"

"Frannie, can't we just talk-"