At the Fair 3

Word Count: 2312

Sunday – continued

The sun was at full force and the day was every bit as hot as the auguries had foretold. Our stroll back towards Ted and Steve was a significantly more leisurely than the outward bound journey had been. After sampling the fair food, I wasn't particularly hungry, but I had worked up a powerful thirst. When we finally got level with the booth, Steve was turned around in his chair, talking to the replacement crew who were rooting around for something in the boxes towards the rear of the tent.

He turned towards us as our shadows fell on him. Taking in our tattoos, shopping bags and the balloons with a condom company's logo on them, he observed, "it looks like you two got into the spirit of things."

"We did. It was a lot of fun." I pointed to the half empty plastic beer cup, with the sweat beading promisingly on the outside. "Is that yours?"

"Ted's. He just went to get some more pamphlets out of the car."

"Well, he won't mind if I take a sip." In one of those awkward moments, my hand, reaching for the beer, collided with Steve's, spilling the beer all over the table. "Oh, bother, I'm sorry." Steve tipped the table up enough so the beer ran down onto the ground rather than all over their promotional tchotchkes.

"Not a problem." He turned around and called out, "hey, John, toss me the paper towels - they're on the chair next to you." He caught the toss deftly and proceeded to wipe up the spill. He held out the roll to me. "Do you need these?"

Jennifer and I did quick self-assessments. She'd escaped entirely, my sandals were a bit beery, but they'd dry soon enough. "No, the advantage to being a klutz is that I'm usually pretty quick at getting out of the way of my spills. I should go get Ted another beer. Do any of you want anything?"

"I see Ted coming up. Why don't we wait a few minutes, and then we can all go get something to eat."

"Okay. Hey," I continued, as Ted sidled past me to put a cardboard box in the tent, "I owe you a beer - I spilled yours."

His worried look puzzled me, until I remembered that it wasn't that long since my labile moods and alcohol had proven a bad combination. "It's okay. I was just going to take a sip, but I knocked hands with Steve and spilled it. I guess I'll just stick to soft drinks today."

"Oh, sure, well just let me put these down, then, if you want, we can all go get lunch."

"Sounds like a plan," Jennifer agreed.

Once Ted had placed his burden inside the tent, Steve led us to what was essentially a buffet of picnic food - a fixed price to fill a plate with whatever one chose. Despite having been grazing for a good part of my peregrinations with Jennifer, I managed to fill a plate with various temptations - including, I noticed, Steve's potato salad, which I'd helped to make, but had not sampled.

As we settled ourselves on the ground under a tree, I noticed that Steve and I had gotten our money's worth, Ted not so much, and Jennifer's plate would have seemed inadequate for a supermodel. Oh, well, some people are weird about fair food. I assuaged my thirst with a big sip of my cola and then started the comparative potato salad trials. Steve and I agreed that the variant with bacon was interesting, but ultimately weird tasting and scallions need to be added with a light touch if at all. We split on the version that had been sweetened - I rather liked it, Steve thought it was an abomination. And I came dangerously close to heresy when I had to confess that Steve's potato salad was quite as good as my mother's - although no better, I declared. We'd diverged on the other foods we'd taken, so once we were done comparing and contrasting, the conversation became more general. Since neither of them mentioned it, I kept my observation that both Jennifer and Ted were picking at their food to myself.

"So, what do you want to do next?" I asked.

"Well, I was promised drag queens," Jennifer pointed out. We both turned to look at Steve, like he might have some in the cargo pocket of his shorts. He, in turn, looked at his watch.

"They should be starting soon. The show was supposed to start at eleven, so twelve-thirty should be just about right. If you don't want to be in the sun too much, Harry, I'm looking at you, we could raise the back flap of the tent, and you could watch from there."

I looked at Jennifer; she nodded agreement.

"So, you going to come enjoy the entertainment with us?"

"No," Steve answered, "we thought we'd take a look around for a while - I was thinking I'd pick up some rainbow-dyed t-shirts for Ted. He could wear them on casual Fridays."

Despite my resolve not to take part in teasing Ted anymore, I was helpless to resist the laughter that washed over us - even Ted chuckled at the image. We all headed back to the tent, where Ted and Steve raised the tent flap enough to create our own little viewing booth. Jennifer and I settled ourselves on the ground and then the guys took off. There were signs of life on the sound stage - the MC's body language made it quite clear that she had been ready for the last hour and a half, even if no one else was.

As the silence lengthened, I remembered that the original impetus for the outing had been so that Jennifer and I could talk in a drama friendly setting. I didn't know what to say. Fortunately, Jennifer cracked first.

"Harry, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about for a long time."

"Unhnn," I unhelpfully acknowledged.

"I'm getting older - I just turned thirty-one this summer."

Not the opening I'd been expecting.

"I think I"ve dated every straight, single guy in the city and a few who turned out to be neither, and I'm not any closer to finding someone to share my life with than I was when I moved here."

Well, we were at a LGBTQ festival - had that given her the idea of expanding her search parameters? Oh, noes!

"Oh, well um Jennifer, you know, I'm sure there's someone out there. . . you just need to keep looking." Please! Not at me!

"I did. I found him."

"Really?" Didn't she just say. . . ? "That's great. What's his name? Is he cute?"

"Donor 37. I've never seen him, but I have seen pictures of some of his babies and they're adorable."

My brain seemed to have received a shutdown signal, because all processes suddenly ceased.

"You've already said you don't approve, so there's no need to lecture me - I know what I'm doing and this is my choice."

I managed to scrape my chin off the ground. "You're going to have a baby? Really? When are you starting . . . " Suddenly her lack of appetite . . . attributed to female issues, appeared in a new perspective. "Have you already started taking the fertility drugs?"

"No drugs. The problem wasn't my fertility; it was finding someone to be fertile with."

"But, I don't understand. Then why are you sick?"

"It's called morning sickness, Harry."

"You mean you're already pregnant?"

"Yup, it's too late to try to talk me out of it."

"You're going to have a baby?" I found myself smiling as foolishly as if the little snuggle-bunny were already nestling in Aunt Harry's arms. "That's so awesome."

"I thought you didn't approve of single parenting." Her tone suggested that she still doubted my enthusiasm.

"I don't know about 'approve' - I think you're crazy, but I also think you'll be a wonderful mother. Do you know what it's going to be yet? Boy or girl? Do you have pictures of the donor's other babies? What does he look like?"

Jennifer laughed at my rush of questions. "According to the profile, he's tall, nordic looking-" I restrained an unexpected upswelling of baby lust. "I don't know what he does, but he's supposed to have a very high IQ. I don't have pictures, but sometime later, I can show you some on-line, and, no, I'm only about two months along, so I still don't know what color to pain the nursery."

"Oh, let's stencil a border - butterflies are nice, and they're appropriate either way. And we need to start child-proofing. You think it's too soon, but trust me, they're into everything practically from the moment they're born. Speaking of which, how are you going to . . . ?"

"Generous maternity leave, and then, I've already had a discussion on a hypothetical level with Eleanor, and I should be able telecommute and only come in to the office a couple of days a week for the first year. I've put away a good bit of money, and I'm planning to have someone come in during the days, get a bit of a break, so I don't go crazy."

"Wow. You've really got this all figured out. Damn! I wish I'd known sooner."

Jennifer's 'why?' suggested she still thought I might rain on her parade.

"Don't you remember? There was a vendor with the cutest 'Love Makes a Family' onesies. If I'd known, I'd have picked up a stack of them. I wonder if I'll be able to find them again. You're going to need lots of them - and those all-in-ones, just make sure that everything you get is easily diaper accessible. One time I was. . . oh, this is going to be so great. Does Ted know? Does anybody know? Can I gossip with Ellen about this?"

"No, not yet - I want to wait until I'm safely past the three month mark before I tell people. Are you really happy?"

"Stunned. Happy, too, though. I always knew you wanted children, and I wasn't kidding, I think you'll be a great mom. . . . But, the only thing is, you do family law; you know how hard it is for one person to raise a family alone."

"It is. I struggled with that. But, usually, in the families I see, the worst part is the breakup itself: the fighting, the bitterness, using the kids as ground soldiers in the war against the other parent. This, what I'm doing, it isn't perfect, but at least that's not going to be one of the problems. For the rest, money's another big problem. I'm not rich, but I have a job that can comfortably support me and a child. To the extent that anybody is ever prepared for this, I think I am."

"What about your family? Have you told them yet?"

"No, definitely not going to say anything about it to them until I'm past the first trimester."

"Are they gonna freak?"

"Yeah, some. I'm planning on punting, a little - instead of telling them this is a planned thing, I'm going to, um, suggest that it was just the opposite. My mom's always been really pro-life, goes to rallies and everything. When I tell her that I found myself pregnant and decided to keep the baby, well, what can she say?"

I shuddered to think. To myself, of course.

"Well, I hope you tell Ted and Steve, soon, because otherwise I'm going to be like a juggler's bottle of champagne."

"You can do it Harry, I remember that time you knew about that big merger that was coming up, and you didn't tell anybody." She took a swig of her soda and said, "looks like the show's about to start."

I looked at my watch. "Seriously, in my next life I want to be a diva - have the show start when I say it starts."

"Harry, for that I'm pretty sure you'd need to be able to, you know, sing?" She started to get to her feet - even though she was nowhere near showing or having limited mobility, I had to fight down the impulse to offer her a hand.

"Do you need to go to the bathroom again? We could take a walk back to civilization, or, the port-a-potties might not be too gross."

"No, it's not that. I've been really sleepy lately. I'm ready to go home and take a nap."

"But . . . , " I gestured to the stage, where the first bars of an Abba tune were already blaring forth. Jennifer shook her head. "There'll be next year."

"Do you want be to give you a ride home?"

"No, you should enjoy the day out. At least you can be sure of not meeting anyone from your old church here. You need to have some fun. I'll take the bus and be home in half an hour."

"Okay, well, see you tomorrow then, Mommy." I scrambled to my feet to give her a hug and watched as she navigated through the dim tent and back into the sunshine on the other side.

I lowered myself back to the ground and turned my face, if not my attention, to the stage.

"You look sad."

I looked up to see a young, well younger than me, woman standing just outside the tent flap. Her red hair glowed in the sunshine.

"At the Fair 2" *************************************************************************************"At the Fair 4"