"Guess their parents couldn't figure out what was causing those pregnancies. So they just kept having more babies." I decided to try to insert some humor, deflect the conversation. "Maybe we should tell Paula and Carly."
"Very dumb." Arlene bit at a long, red, false fingernail, a perennial habit for as long as I'd known her. "We should mind our own business, that's what we should do."
"Works for me. But it also proves we were smart not to shoot any footage of the kids. The whole world would realize something's funny." Then I had an idea. "Want to come downtown to my place after we unload? Have some deep thoughts over what all this means?"
First the kids, then the call. What was this guy Alex Goddard, whoever he was, up to? Definitely time to talk to somebody. . . .
"Gee, I'd love to," Arlene was saying, "but I can't. I gotta go out to Kew Gardens for my mom and dad's anniversary tonight. Their thirty-fifth, can you believe? Of course, I was a very late baby." She blinked her dark, languid eyes, as though rehearsing the line for a downtown club.
"A miracle of modern fertility science, right?" Shit. Arlene, I need you.
"Right." She giggled, then seemed to study the flashing lights on the elevator's control panel. "God, those kids, they're too good to be true. I'd love to have one like that." She impatiently pounded the number one a couple of times, perhaps hoping to speed our creaky descent. "I can get bonked every night of the week, but I can't get a serious boyfriend. New York's clubs aren't exactly brimming with the vine-covered-cottage-and-picket-fence type. And as for the pickings at work, given the kind of pictures David makes, forget it. Last thing I need is some twenty-year-old pothead who thinks with his wang."
"I'm afraid I'm not helping you much with this one." I'd cast Baby Love mostly with Off-Broadway unknowns. The actress Mary Gregg was a veteran of Joseph Papp's original Public Theater, the experimental enterprise downtown. The few male parts all went to guys who were either gay or married.
"Oy, what can you do, right? If it happens, it happens." Arlene watched the door begin to stutter open as we bumped onto the lobby level. Then she zeroed in on me. "You really want a kid too, don't you? I mean, that's why you did this script, right? Which, by the way, is great. I mean the script."
"I think most women do, down deep."