pig
1
once upon a time, in the city of new york, a beautiful baby boy was born into this world, and the
joyful parents named him lexington.
no sooner had the mother returned home from the hospital carrying lexington in her arms than
she said to her husband, ‘darling, now you must take me out to a most marvellous restaurant for
dinner so that we can celebrate the arrival of our son and heir.’
her husband embraced her tenderly and told her that any woman who could produce such a
beautiful child as lexington deserved to go absolutely anywhere she wanted. but was she strong
enough yet, he inquired, to start running around the city late at night?
‘no,’ she said, she wasn’t. but what the hell.
so that evening they both dressed themselves up in fancy clothes, and leaving little lexington in
the care of a trained infant’s nurse who was costing them twenty dollars a day and was scottish
into the bargain, they went out to the finest and most expensive restaurant in town. there they
each ate a giant lobster and drank a bottle of champagne between them, and after that they went on
to a nightclub, where they drank another bottle of champagne and then sat holding hands for
several hours while they recalled and discussed and admired each individual physical feature of
their lovely newborn son.
they arrived back at their house on the east side of manhattan at around two o’clock in the
morning and the husband paid off the taxi driver and then began feeling in his pockets for the key
to the front door. after a while, he announced that he must have left it in the pocket of his other
suit, and he suggested that they ring the bell and get the nurse to come down and let them in. an
infant’s nurse at twenty dollars a day must expect to be hauled out of bed occasionally in the night,
the husband said.
so he rang the bell. they waited. nothing happened. he rang it again, long and loud. they
waited another minute. then they both stepped back on to the street and shouted the nurse’s name
(mcpottle) up at the nursery windows on the third floor, but there was still no response. the house
was dark and silent. the wife began to grow apprehensive. her baby was imprisoned in this place,
she told herself. alone with mcpottle. and who was mcpottle? they had known her for two days,
that was all, and she had a thin mouth, a small disapproving eye, and a starchy bosom, and quite
clearly she was in the habit of sleeping too soundly for safety. if she couldn’t hear the front
doorbell, then how on earth did she expect to hear a baby crying? why this very second the poor
thing might be swallowing its tongue or suffocating on its pillow.
‘he doesn’t use a pillow,’ the husband said. ‘you are not to worry. but i’ll get you in if that’s
what you want.’ he was feeling rather superb after all the champagne, and now he bent down and
undid the laces of one of his black patent-leather shoes, and took it off. then, holding it by the toe,
he flung it hard and straight through the dining-room window on the ground floor.
‘there you are,’ he said, grinning. ‘we’ll deduct it from mcpottle’s wages.’
he stepped forward and very carefully put a hand through the hole in the glass and released the
catch. then he raised the window.
‘i shall lift you in first, little mother,’ he said, and took his wife around the waist and lifted her
off the ground. this brought her big red mouth up level with his own, and very close, so he started
kissing her. he knew from experience that women like very much to be kissed in this position,with
their bodies held tight and their legs dangling in the air, so he went on doing it for quite a long
time, and she wiggled her feet, and made loud gulping noises down in her throat. finally, the
husband turned her round and began easing her gently through the open window into the dining-
room. at this point, a police patrol car came nosing silently along the street towards them. it
stopped about thirty yards away, and three cops of irish extraction leaped out of the car and started
running in the direction of the husband and wife, brandishing revolvers.
‘stick ’em up!’ the cops shouted. ‘stick ’em up!’ but it was impossible for the husband to obey
this order without letting go of his wife, and had he done this she would either have fallen to the
ground or would have been left dangling half in and half out of the house, which is a terribly
uncomfortable position for a woman; so he continued gallantly to push her upward and inward
through the window. the cops, all of whom had received medals before for killing robbers,
opened fire immediately, and although they were still running, and although the wife in particular
was presenting them with a very small target indeed, they succeeded in scoring several direct hits
on each body – sufficient anyway to prove fatal in both cases.
thus, when he was no more than twelve days old, little lexington became an orphan.
