Right there outside Morton's window overlooking Georgetown across the Potomac where he and Emily will be moving this coming weekend into a $900-a-month townhouse that Emily claims they can well afford now that she got her promotion and so long as Morton gets a decent raise this year.

"It's about time we showed some upward mobility," Emily told him last month when they looked at the cozy red-brick house on Q Street just a couple of blocks from Georgetown Med School. "A lot of doctors live in this neighborhood."

But nine hundred dollars. A steal, Emily called it. Almost three times the rent on their place in Rosslyn, Morton objected.

"And three times the class, twice the space," Emily said. "Were going to need both if we have a baby."

"When we have the baby." She kissed him. "Whenever, I refuse to raise a kid in a dump."

"Our place isn't such a dump," Morton said.

"It's cramped, it's ugly, I killed four cockroaches in the kitchen last night: it's a dump. Come on, we're moving up in the world."

Right there, down outside Morton's window, down the street to the Rosslyn Metro Station: catch the orange line to the District and transfer downtown to the red line to Union Station and hop on Amtrak's metroliner to New York and get off at Penn Station where it says right here on page six of the Washington Star, right here at the bottom of column four, how a young guy about Morton's age was stabbed for no apparent reason right through the heart right in the middle of the crowded train station by a preppie-looking kid with a 12-inch butcher knife.

And the guy lived to tell about it.

Morton folds the paper, sets it down beside the typewriter humming on the desk before him. Beyond his desk, out the window, across the river, Georgetown begins to sparkle in the heavy summer dusk. Emily should be home soon. Called around six, said she'd be working late. Had that gynecologist appointment this morning so she fell behind at the office. She hung up without saying how the appointment went.

Which means she's not pregnant.

At first, the idea of having a baby terrified Morton. A kid was a huge responsibility, he told Emily last winter, one you had for the rest of your life. Was she willing to give up her career to raise a child?

"No," Emily said. "We'll hire a sitter."

"You know how much full-time child care costs?"

"About half your salary," she said. "We can handle it."

But there were other responsibilities. You had to watch a kid all the time: it could get hurt in ways he didn't even want to think about. What if you raised it wrong? What if it turned out to be an obnoxious bully or, worse yet, some meek little sensitive creature the world would surely eat alive? What if it grew up sickly, scared, scarred for life from something you did or didn't do? What if it turned out stupid or ugly?

"A kid of ours?" Emily said. "Don't be ridiculous."

"These are things we might have to deal with."

"So we deal," Emily told him. "Day to day, like our parents did. Don't invent problems."

Eventually, she talked him into it.

But Morton still worries. A woman's not safe on the street after dark what with all the crazies running around. Don't worry, Emily told him when she called. She's working with Ben: he'll drive her home. Ben's got a brown belt in Tai Kwon Do. Emily's got a keyring holster full of mace. Who could threaten such a dynamic duo?

Georgetown sparkles.

Morton's going to miss this view. The place may be a dump but it's comfortable and you don't find rents like this anywhere in the Washington area except in the southeast where you don't want to live for fear you'll be walking down the street some night looking to buy a pack of smokes or something when suddenly somebody'll shove a knife in your chest.

Morton reads his lead again, suddenly rips paper from typewriter, crumples it, trashes it. He rolls in a new sheet, types the head.

"What's the slant?" Morton said.

Morton's boss rolled her eyes. "Slant," she said. "Slant. The competition's going under and he wants a slant. Do me a favor, just write it."

So he's been trying, all afternoon at the office researching and now at home looking through today's Star for inspiration and staring out the window feeling stupid. His boss is playing with him, he knows, just like she did last winter when he first told her he wanted to write. We hired a copy editor, she said: edit copy. But Morton kept after her until finally she said you want a chance, here's your chance, and she had him writing obituaries the rest of the week. Plenty of jokes at his expense for days after that. Then John Lennon died.

Morton loved John Lennon.

"That's feature stuff," his boss said when he asked if he could write a tribute. She smirked. "Stick to the local stiffs."

But Morton persisted until she said you write it, I'll read it, that's it, no promises.

Morton hates his boss. She must think he's some kind of ghoul. Take this guy in Penn Station he happened to read about and can't get off his mind. Guy like you or me: takes the train to work every morning, home every night; living his life day after day until one day somebody he doesn't even know kills him. Next day he shares a couple columns of wire service copy with his murderer; tomorrow he's yesterday's news. End of story. The fact that he was once alive no longer matters: not to you, not to me, not to loved ones soon enough except for a dull ache that comes and goes some sleepless night or maybe a convulsive sigh deep in the middle of a boring conversation at some cocktail party later on sometime somewhere that's misunderstood and you don't feel much like explaining anyway.

Last winter Emily stayed home from work the day John Lennon was murdered. She spent the morning listening to Beatles' albums and was still sniffling when Morton called her early afternoon to tell her the boss was giving him a shot at the Lennon tribute.

"You have to find some significance," she told him. "His death has to mean something."

"What could it mean?"

"You tell me," Emily said, voice breaking. "It's just so senseless."

Morton thought hard the rest of the afternoon, managed to decide that John Lennon's death signified the last-gasp knee-jerk of America's death-throes by the time copy deadline rolled around.

His boss grinned. "What's the matter? Couldn't come up with anything?"

"I guess it just hit me too hard," Morton said.

The next day Emily went back to work and Morton went back to copy editing.

It's dark now and still Emily's not home. He calls her office: no answer. Not to worry. Reliable man, Ben: he'll get her home all right. Morton met him at last year's Christmas party. Handsome guy, tall and trim, brilliant smile. Touch of grey across the temples, self-assured grip when Morton shook his hand. Emily said Ben was a parasitologist called back from that malaria project in Zaire to head up Acquisitions and Training.

"Which makes him my boss," Emily said.

Ben moved from circle to circle, joined any conversation in an easy, knowledgeable, charming manner: all smiles and good will and full of stories about African food and plumbing that had Emily teary-eyed with laughter.

"So, what's your line of work?" he asked Morton.

"I'm with the Post."

Ben raised his eyebrows, nodded. "Good paper."

"Thanks," Morton said.

"He's too good to be true," Emily said later in bed. "Intelligent, capable, sweet, funny, gorgeous. I can't believe he's still single."

"Maybe he's gay," Morton said.

Emily's eyes glittered. "What a waste if he is."

"Care to find out for sure?"

"Care to hear about it if I do?"

"Only if it's good."

Emily licked her lips, mock seductress. "With me," she said, voice low and throaty, "it's always good."

Morton rolled on top of her, pinned her arms, tickled her helpless.

"Stop!" she said, squirming beneath him. "You're my man, my only man."

"The best," Morton coaxed.

"You're the best," she said, gasping and giggling. "The best ever."

Morton stood up in bed, strutted unsteadily in his underwear, grinned and swaggered. "The best," he said, hands on hips. "I'm the best," he chanted over and over until Emily tripped him, wrestled off his shorts, climbed atop him and said prove it. They made love then, laughing like a couple of kids playing doctor behind the garage.

Afterwards Emily told Morton she'd been thinking about it a lot lately and she'd decided it was time for them to have a baby.

"Right now?" Morton said.

Emily smiled. "We can talk about it first if you want."

They talked about it pro and con off and on for the next few weeks. Then one cold night in early February they agreed to give it a shot.

And they've been giving it shot after shot for the past half-year without success. No physical problem with either of them. Just no luck. The thing that kills him, though: Emily got pregnant before they were married, back when they were in college together. Morton drove her to the clinic, paid for his half of the abortion.

Neither of them ever brings this up.

Morton wanders into the kitchen. Porkchops slump defrosted and draining watery blood in the sink. Maybe he should start dinner. That guy didn't even know he was stabbed at first, according to the Star. Just thought the small well-groomed kid in the long-sleeved V-neck sweater punched him hard in the chest until he shoved the kid away and saw the bloody knife handle growing from his shirtfront. Imagine. Should have known better.

Who wears a sweater in August?

Emily unlocks the front door, walks into the living room. Morton looks up from the typewriter.

"It's late," he says. "I was worried."

She drops her briefcase on the couch. "Jesus, what a day." Brown frizzy hair spills out of a loose bun; her white linen jacket hangs creased and rumpled from narrow shoulders. She sighs, shrugs off the jacket. "I'm beat," she says.

"Ben drive you?"

"Yeah."

"You should have invited him in for a drink."

"He had to get home." She unbuttons her blouse, damp at the armpits. "Working?"

Morton flips off the typewriter. "More or less."

"You didn't start packing?"

"Sorry, Em." Morton runs both hands through his hair. "I've been working on this thing all afternoon. Tomorrow, okay?"

Emily's jaw tightens. Morton's been saying tomorrow for the past week, she says. They're moving at the end of this week. "I'm so busy, I don't have time to do anything." She kicks her shoes off. "This Botswana proposal's giving me a million headaches."

Morton says he's sorry, he'll start packing tomorrow, he swears to God.

Emily heads for the bedroom. "I need a shower," she says.

"Should I start dinner?"

"Let me have a shower and a drink first," she shouts. "I'll cook later."

Morton hates it when she tries to carry on a conversation from another room. Today was unbelievable, she's shouting now. She missed a staff meeting for her doctor's appointment. That looks bad, especially to those old farts who think that women are always out sick with cramps. And since she wasn't at the meeting to protect herself, she gets a million projects piled on her desk, all marked priority. Jesus.

Morton dimly understands Emily's career, tries always to express an interest. She works for a firm that puts together teams of medical professionals for government-sponsored health projects overseas: cleaning up typhoid and malaria, immunizing for measles. Morton pictures fever-blistered kids with bulging bellies and wide black eyes, staring, staring. He doesn't know. Emily keeps files of personnel they've used on previous projects; Ben's in charge of recruiting new talent: together they try to put together a sufficiently impressive team at a cost lower than the competition's. The Agency for International Development sponsors most of the projects they work on. Safe drinking water's the big thing this year; Africa's the big place: all kinds of work up for bid now, Emily's saying. That's why she's putting in the overtime. If they get their teams together quickly, Emily says, Ben says they can sew up most of Africa.

"But the headaches," she says, "you would not believe." She walks out of the bedroom in her bathrobe. Morton appreciates the fluffy, girlish look terrycloth always gives her. "This Botswana deal, for example: you need medicals and lab people--we have that covered--but you also need engineers and building contractors with experience in sewage treatment. And they all have to speak the language."

"What's that?"

"Setswana."

"Never heard of it."

"Neither have most engineers and contractors."

She sits on his lap, kisses him. Morton tastes the stale perfume of gin.

"Ben speaks it," Emily says. "It sounds funny."

Morton nods slowly. "Botswana," he says. "There's a war going on there, right?"

"I think so. Anyway, we finished the proposal. I think we came up with a pretty good team. We'll see." She looks over her shoulder at the typewriter. "What are you working on?"

"Retrospective on the Star."

"They should have gone to mornings," she says. "Who reads afternoon papers?"

"I do."

"That's your job. Nobody else does." She bends closer. "Catchy title. This took all afternoon and evening?"

"Don't jinx me, Emily." Morton taps his head. "It's all up here."

Emily frowns. "Better get it on paper."

Shower hisses, typewriter hums, Morton stares at Georgetown. Emily still hasn't said anything about the gynecologist's. Give her time. Rumor around the city room says the Post already has hooks on twenty of the Star's best writers and editors.

What's the significance?

The Post came out of Watergate looking like God's own word, leaving the Star, like so many other afternoon papers, with a dwindling readership. Traditionally, afternoon papers serve the blue collar. White collar has time in the morning for a cup of coffee, piece of Danish, and the early news. Blue collar goes off to work earlier, waits until he gets home afternoons to kick off his boots, grab a beer, puzzle through today's headlines. But blue collar work's dying out. Auto industry's laying them off. Rubber, glass, plastic industries cutting back production. You can buy your girders cheaper from Japan. Labor pool's upgrading, moving to the sunbelt. Detroit assembly-liners keypunch actuary tables on Houston terminals. Cleveland mill workers peddle insurance in Atlanta. You too can have a rewarding career.

Morton rips paper from typewriter again, rolls in a fresh sheet.

The shower stops. Usually Emily sings in the shower, her nasal alto bouncing old rock standards off the tiles. Not tonight. Is she thinking about the baby they haven't conceived again this month? It must be killing her. It's killing him. He was scared at first, sure, but over the months of trying he's gotten comfortable with the idea of being a father. He pictures himself rolling on the floor with daughter or son, showing her how to throw a ball, teaching him to count his toes. His heart warms and aches at the same time.

Emily comes out of the bathroom toweling her hair. "I don't hear any typing," she says.

"I'm thinking."

She comes up behind him, leans on his shoulders, shakes her hair: sweet shampoo fragrance spatters gooseflesh down his neck.

"Don't think," she says. "Write." She drapes the towel over his head. "I'm making myself a drink. Want one?"

The weirdest part of the story is that after the guy got stabbed, after he pushed the kid away and saw he'd been stabbed, he held on to the handle of the knife and started running. Running, up out of the train station and onto the street, blood pumping, running, as if to stop running were to die. Which may well have been the case. A police cruiser caught up with him three blocks from Penn Station: cops made him lie down on the dirty sidewalk, listened to his strange, choking story. And, story finished, he did die, right there on the street amid a mob of gawkers. Autopsy showed the knife had pierced his rightì ventricle. Should have died instantly, medical examiner said: just one of those freak cases, one for the books.

Emily comes out of the kitchen with two gin-and-tonics, gives one to Morton. He prefers scotch in the evening, doesn't mention this.

"Sit with me a second," she says.

Morton flips off the typewriter, lets her lead him to the sofa. She holds his hand, sips her drink, stares into it.

"I'm not pregnant," she says.

Morton nods. "What did the doctor say?"

"Same as last time. I'm okay, you're okay, I'm just late again, that's all. I asked was it wishful thinking or what. She said maybe I'm trying too hard, thinking about it too much. I told her I wasn't thinking about it much at all, I'm too busy thinking about work. She said maybe that's the problem, you need to relax. I said I don't have time to relax now, maybe next week. She said then maybe next week you'll get your period." Emily lets go of his hand, stirs her drink with her little finger. "That bitch is beginning to get on my nerves."

Morton puts his arm around her. "Don't worry, we'll get pregnant."

"Sooner or later." She sucks her little finger, pulls her lower lip into a thoughtful pout. "According to the doctor, anyway."

"Did you ask her about fertility drugs?"

"Forget it, Morton. I don't want to give birth to a litter."

"You said you'd ask. What's wrong with just asking?"

"I'm tired," Emily says. "I don't want to argue." She stretches, rubs her neck. "Probably just as well I'm not pregnant. I couldn't deal with morning sickness right now."

Morton looks at her.

"Come on," she says, "don't give me those puppy dog eyes."

"I just thought it wouldn't hurt to ask."

"Look," Emily says. She takes a deep breath, rubs his leg nervously. "I've been thinking, Morton, and the more I think about it the more I think maybe now isn't such a good time for me to get pregnant anyway. Now just wait. Let me finish. People at work have been telling me what a problem it is finding good child care. There's all kinds of cases of abuse and neglect, you don' know who to trust."

Her voice rises, words spill out. The more she thinks about it, the more she's starting to see how unfair it is to hand a fresh-born infant over to a sitter you can trust, even: unfair to both mother and child at a time when bonding is so important. Ben says a couple of years from now she'd be able to take a leave of absence at half pay, do some consulting work at home maybe, but now just isn't a good time.

Morton squints. "You don't want a baby?"

"I want a baby." Emily says. "I'm just talking about timing."

Morton shakes his head. It's not registering. "All these problems," he says, "we've talked about these before. This isn't anything new."

"Plus the first year of life is unbelievably demanding. You end up losing a lot of sleep, you're up nights walking the floors with a crying baby."

"I know," Morton says. "I'll help, I'll walk the floors."

"I've just been thinking," Emily says. "It's a lot to deal with, that's all, and things are going to get even more hectic at work in the next year. Ben says--"

"Who asked him?" Morton says. "What does Ben know? I'll stay home. I'll quit my job and take care of our baby."

A muscle jumps in Emily's neck. "I'm serious, Morton."

"So am I," he says, and as he says it he realizes he is.

It's simple. Emily earns more than he does, Emily likes her job more than he likes his, Emily's got a chance to go places in her career: let Morton raise their kid.

Emily shakes her head. "Just like John Lennon, huh?"

"Why not?"

"It won't work. We need your income."

"Hey!" He grabs her knee. "Maybe my boss can give me some part-time work at home. All I need is a word processor with a phone hook-up." He pictures himself teaching his baby to rattle a rattle, crawl, do somersaults. "And we don't have to move to Georgetown, do we? We could save a lot there. We could find a nice place in Fairfax or Tacoma Park or somewhere a lot cheaper."

Emily rubs her eyes.

"What do you think?" Morton says. "I think it's a great idea, it's perfect. I'll tell you the truth," he says, ducking his head and laughing, "I'm a little sick of my job anyway."

Emily covers her face. Her shoulders begin to tremble.

"Emily?"

She looks up. She's crying. "Today was awful," she says, voice shaking and nasal. "I'm tired, I have a million things on my mind, I want a baby just as much as you do, more even, but something's wrong, I can't get pregnant, and all I'm saying is even if I do I don't know if I can handle it. That's all I'm saying, Morton."

"Hey," he says softly. He tries to put his arms around her but she stiffens, stands, drains her drink in one gulp.

"I'm just tired," she says. "Give me a break, okay?"

"Okay," Morton says. He gives her a break.

Something died today, Morton types. Stops. Stares out the window. Georgetown beckons.

Somebody died, he types. Stops.

"How about a vegetable?" Emily calls from the kitchen.

"Fine."

"Cauliflower or broccoli?"

"I don't care."

She's trying to make up, he realizes. She's calmed down, put the problem out of mind: now she's ready for the snug reassurance of their daily life together. Give her a break. She has a rough day, she joins Ben for a drink or two after work, she pours her heart out in a way she somehow can't with her own husband, Ben gives her advice somehow more authoritative than anything her own husband has to say. Morton pictures Ben leaning across the table idly stirring his manhattan with sword-impaled cherry, arching his eyebrows, telling Emily in this voice vibrant with amused concern that yes, babies can be wonderful, but really now, Emily, let's put this in perspective. Morton doesn't want to picture more than that.

"We could have cauliflower with a cheddar sauce," Emily calls, "or broccoli with hollandaise."

"Either's fine," Morton says.

Somebody or something died, Morton types, out there beyond my window and beyond my control. That's right, out of the head and onto the page so it doesn't end up the aborted germ of an idea. They need a vacation, a trip to some tiny tropical island somewhere away from everybody. But she won't take time off from work. Maybe a weekend trip, up to the rolling Maryland hills for a picnic in somebody's horse pasture or maybe west into Virginia where they used to swim in an abandoned quarry they found when they'd only been married a year or two.

"We don't have to have a sauce if you don't want."

"Cauliflower," Morton says. "I want cauliflower."

"With the cheddar sauce?"

"Plain."

So what's the significance? For a few days I'll be anxiously aware of preppie-looking kids in subways. I'll never write. I won't care. I'll begin to resent and distrust my wife. Love will die. I'll never be a father.

"Don't let me interrupt," Emily says. She's standing in the kitchen doorway, head of cauliflower in one hand, paring knife in the other.

"Plain cauliflower always tastes so plain." She laughs, nose wrinkling, eyes dancing. "Are you sure you don't want cheddar sauce?"

Morton shakes his head, stands. He walks towards her. "You do not want a baby more than I do," he says.

"Morton, please."

But there's no stopping him. When she turns away, he holds her arm. When her eyes mist up, he hardens his heart. Morton wants a baby. Morton doesn't care what they have to do or how difficult things will be. Morton does not want to move to Georgetown. Morton does not care what Ben thinks of anything and, as a matter of fact, Morton does not care to hear anything concerning Ben at all.

He's holding her by the shoulders now. She's crying again.

"Do you ever stop to think what I want?" she says.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I do. I know what you want. I know what I want." He pulls her to him, holds her tight, head of cauliflower pinned between them, knife in her other hand held low and to the side.

"Let go," she says, but he hangs on, desperate now. He rubs her back, croons yes, yes, that's my baby, shush now, until her sobbing loosens, muscles unknot. She drops the cauliflower, leans into him, and Morton hugs her tighter and tighter, heart racing, waiting for the clatter of the knife on the floor.