The babies were in the machines in there, pristine under metal.

The crowd pressed ahead.

“Will you look at them now,” he said to me.

I looked at him. His damp brow. Dark eyes. The face filled with something other than wonder, it seemed to me. Rebuke, perhaps. Or grief. Maybe grief, come to think of it. The cut of the hair. A shadow, arid, under the flesh, the angle of the jaw that was familiar to me.

We had been here before—the hall, the lines, the birth of
incubation, thrall of the heat. I thought everyone had, that second summer of the fair. The air smelled of perfume, of molten gardenia, and also of stains.

There was a woman selling salt.

The babies were stirring ever so slightly, underneath the
instruments, each in isolation.

“Imagine,” he said.

Weight, breath: The nurses were jotting all the necessary
measurements.

I, of course, agreed with him, although I did not know what to imagine.

Oh, what a fair! You have not seen the like, I can promise you that. Halfway to 1935, July in a curdle. The skyride over the whole of the lakefront. Lights, sweets. The jewel on my finger. The heart of Chicago beating in the water, the world beneath our feet. We walked and walked. Kraft, Ford, Goodyear. The great halls of Science, of Travel and Transport; the Hall of Religion. Out on the midway, a palace of freaks. That poor young girl with eight wild limbs, as if she had another person in her body, craving escape. A fortress intended only for show. In the hot Streets of Paris, the scandalous dancer, Sally Rand—for us, only rumor. A taste in our mouths. A house that was constructed of prefabricated elements.

Milk. Ice.

The grand planetarium, catcher of starlight—the light of the past—was built for us.

And yet it was this: the babies, for whom we stood, we all stood—the coiled line made faint with heat.

The Havoline thermometer registered a record.

“Impossible,” he said, meaning maybe just the opposite. Lungs unformed; the seen veins. And still they were breathing.

His hand was on my arm, in a manner of possession or possibly distress.

The doctor intended to save them all: these dreamers,
translucent; these citizens in ovens.

Sailor, baker, mother, lover, captain of industry.

What were the odds?

Did I say that I was to marry this man?

We looked and then walked. It was required of us, and there was everybody waiting.