3 is not a Crowd

Now all that I can call this is a sign from God. I do not go to church or think particularly much about God and perhaps should not be free with His name, but then you could call it a sign from Nature. Because it had crossed my mind that the three of us living together might be unnatural; in fact I had used that word myself when talking of it. But after living this way the most truly natural thing of all happened, with me becoming pregnant, and that had to be a sign.

And now with Junie having a baby, and we are so happy about that, that we are both having Gordon’s children, well, it may be a question as to how to keep people from knowing. There could be a problem to this. We could let it be known that June was going with some married man from Dayton or Cincinnati who fathered the child, but we would want the child to know that Gordon is the father. We might move right after the baby is born to some other area and have the story that Junie is a widow. Or we might just stay here and let people make their own guesses and tell the children the truth when they know enough to understand.

But one way or another I know it will work out all right.

Jerry & Peggy & Kay

JWW: Jerry and Peggy Klein and Kay Jordan live in an architect-designed ranch house on a hillside in northwestern New Jersey, not far from the New York and Pennsylvania borders. None of them is a native of the area. Jerry was born in New York, Peggy in Connecticut, Kay in a suburb of Chicago.

Jerry, thirty-one, is a commercial artist. His work consists almost exclusively of paperback and magazine covers, primarily in the field of science fiction, where he has achieved some prominence. He is medium in height and build, with shaggy lank brown hair and a Mexican bandit moustache. There is occasionally a theatrical flair to his speech. He is extremely articulate, but tends to use the word “fucking” as more confined souls use commas. While his income is above average, a substantial inheritance of Peggy’s obviates the necessity of living within it. Thus the architect-designed house, the spectacular view, the frequent vacations for the three of them, and the option of undertaking only such artistic assignments as Jerry finds appealing.

Peggy and Kay are both twenty-eight, and less than two months apart in age. (My notes do not seem to indicate which one is older, nor does it seem to much matter.) Peggy is a lithe blonde, an avid gardener, a lover of animals. Her face is very expressive, changing considerably with her moods. Kay is quite bookish and less talkative. She is auburn-haired and possessed of a full-blown figure.

Jerry and Peggy make an extremely attractive and charming couple.

So do Jerry and Kay.

So do Peggy and Kay.

KAY: When you write this up, I hope you won’t make me look like the third wheel. The interloper. After all, I knew Peggy before Jerry did.

JERRY: And knew her well.

PEGGY: Biblically, one might say.

KAY: One, indeed, might.

PEGGY: You needn’t be smug about it. If memory serves—

JERRY: It also stands and waits.

PEGGY: —I was the one who seduced you.

KAY: You were the experienced one. I was young and innocent and wet behind the ears.

JERRY: Among other places.

PEGGY: I wasn’t all that experienced.

KAY: I wasn’t all that innocent. Or all that hard to seduce. I’m a notoriously easy lay.

JERRY: That’s why you’re so popular around here.

KAY: I knew there was a reason. And here I thought it was my personality.

JERRY: You have a notoriously easy personality.

KAY: You say the nicest things.

PEGGY: I’m enjoying this too, but John—

JWW: So am I, actually.

PEGGY: —John wants to write this up, God knows why, unless he’s just a lech or Allen Funt in disguise or—

JWW: No, this is for real.

PEGGY: So John wants to write this up, and here we are impressing him with our wit, which may or may not be impressive, but it won’t make a book.

JWW: A chapter in a book, actually.

JERRY: Just a fucking chapter?

KAY: We’re not worth a whole book?

JWW: You’re probably worth a trilogy, but the plan is for three or possibly four case histories on the one theme.

JERRY: Oh, the others are in the same bag? Triangle sets?

JWW: Uh-huh.

PEGGY: So we’re a third of a book or a quarter of a book or whatever. In any case, wouldn’t it be simpler if one of us talked and the other two cooled it for the time being, so that we can let a story develop instead of playing Three Characters in Search of a Bed?

KAY: So talk, lovey.

PEGGY: Who, me?

JERRY: Oh, Christ—