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Now, he thought, here is trouble.

"What can we do?" Helen asked Garp. She had made Harrison Fletcher forget his "special" student; Harrison now thought that Helen was the most special thing in his life.

"You started it," Garp said to her. "If it's going to stop, you've got to stop it, I think."

"That's easy to say," Helen said. "I like Harrison; he's my best friend, and I don't want to lose that. I'm just not very interested in sleeping with him."

"He's interested," Garp said.

"God, I know," Helen said.

"He thinks you're the best he's had," Garp told her.

"Oh, great," Helen said. "That must be lovely for Alice."

"Alice isn't thinking about it," Garp said. Alice was thinking about Garp, Garp knew; and Garp was afraid the whole thing would stop. There were times when Garp thought that Alice was the best he'd ever had.

"And what about you?" Helen asked him. ("Nothing is equal," Garp would write, one day.)

"I'm fine," Garp said. "I like Alice, I like you, I like Harry."

"And Alice?" Helen asked.

"Alice likes me," Garp said.

"Oh boy," Helen said. "So we all like each other, except that I don't care that much for sleeping with Harrison."

"So it's over," Garp said, trying to hide the gloom in his voice. Alice had cried to him that it could never be over. ("Could it? Could it?" she had cried. "I can't jutht thtop!")

"Well, isn't it still better than it was?" Helen asked Garp.

"You made your point," Garp said. "You got Harry off his damn student. Now you've just got to let him down easy."

"And what about you and Alice?" Helen asked.

"If it's over for one of us, it's over for all of us," Garp said. "That's only fair."

"I know what's fair," Helen said. "I also know what's human."

The good-byes that Garp imagined conducting with Alice were violent scenarios, fraught with Alice's incoherent speech and always ending in desperate lovemaking--another failed resolution, wet with sweat and sweet with the lush stickum of sex, oh yeth.

"I think Alice is a little loony," Helen said.

"Alice is a pretty good writer," Garp said. "She's the real thing."

"Fucking writers," Helen mumbled.

"Harry doesn't appreciate how talented Alice is," Garp heard himself say.

"Oh boy," Helen murmured. "This is the last time I try to save anyone's marriage except my own."

It took six months for Helen to let Harry down easy, and in that time Garp saw as much of Alice as he could, while still trying to forewarn her that their foursome was going to be short-lived. He also tried to forewarn himself, because he dreaded the knowledge that he would have to give Alice up.

"It's not the same, for all four of us," he told Alice. "It will have to stop, and pretty soon."

"Tho what?" Alice said. "It hasn't thtopped yet, has it?"

"Not yet," Garp admitted. He read all her written words aloud to her, and they made love so much he stung in the shower and couldn't stand to wear a jock when he ran.