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jerking in unison as if he were practising running away. I wished babies were contagious.
    Vernal took my hand saying he hoped Grace and Al would excuse us but we had a table reserved for dinner. Al said go ahead, they were sticking to their liquid diet these days, and ordered two more beers.
    Gracie’s baby wasn’t exactly her own, Vernal hastened to explain in the dining lounge where we were shown to a table by the window. It was a life-size model of a baby that cried at random intervals, came with all the accessories, and was inescapable. Gracie had volunteered to participate in the Baby-Think-It-Over Program, designed by Social Services to teach young, drug-using mothers the realities of parenthood. As a trial parent she had to wear a “care-key” around her neck, and if she neglected her baby it would register in a computer chip inside the baby’s head. A red light behind his eyes meant she was handling him too roughly, a yellow light that he had been left to cry longer than a minute, and a green light that he needed to be fed.
    â€œIf the lights go out, it means . . . what?” I said.
    â€œSounds like they had a close call last night, doesn’t it?”
    Our server set a pitcher of ice water in the centre of the table between us. I picked at the oysters Vernal had ordered for me — local oysters served on a bed of white rocks. I had no energy, or the desire, to eat the steak au jus that came next, especially after our server brought complimentary motion sickness bags.
    Grace Moon’s story got worse: her particular doll was underweight having been modelled on a crack baby, born addicted to the drug his mother smoked all during her pregnancy. The cries we’d heard were the tape-recorded cries of a real drug-affected baby, which explained why they sounded familiar. But not even Angel, as he lay sickening at the Clínica Desaguadero in the jungle, had screamed as desperately when I tried to quiet him in my arms after the faith healer swept his body with flowers and sweet basil, and suspended amuletos over his head to prevent the onset of mal de ojo , the evil eye.
    â€œThe program’s supposed to change your mind about getting pregnant in the first place,” Vernal said, “but if it happens . . . in certain cases . . . Social Services wants you to think pretty seriously about giving the baby up for adoption.”
    Vernal said Grace’s social worker wanted Grace to sign her baby over before he was even born. Grace said no way, she didn’t want anyone else raising her kid. “As you can imagine,” Vernal continued, “that Al’s not stoked about being a stepparent, either.”
    I asked what, if anything, Vernal knew about Al — if he had any idea why a woman like Grace would be attracted to such a man.
    â€œNot much,” Vernal said, in response to the first part of my question.
    â€œHe can dress himself, at least,” I said. “He’s got that going for him.”
    Vernal scoffed at my remark. “As far as I can see his best quality is his bank account. His father owns, I don’t know, all the hotels in Mexico. Al can stay high off his interest, if he’s motivated enough.”
    I laughed at this. Vernal came from old money himself, the kind so fusty with age and respectability no one remembers it was ever clean and new. Or how it was made, and who dirtied their hands in the process. We had argued from the day we met about the unfair division of wealth in the world. The Christmas we’d been burglarized the thieves took the telescope Vernal had given me so I could look out over the city to see how poor people lived.
    â€œI say something to make you laugh?” Vernal asked. “I haven’t heard you laugh like that since . . . I don’t know when. Before we were married, come to think of it.” I didn’t comment, and then Vernal added that he thought Gracie was wasting her life when she could be