The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
264
knocked up and aborting them is the easiest thing in the world if they come to me right 
away. I curette ‘em like you scrape a frying pan. Freddie Corleone is a real terror. By my 
count he’s knocked up fifteen girls while I’ve been here. I’ve seriously considered giving 
him a father-to-son talk about sex. Especially since I’ve had to treat him three times for 
clap and once for syphilis. Freddie is the original bareback rider.” 
Jules stopped talking. He had been deliberately indiscreet, something he never did, so 
that Lucy would know that other people, including someone she knew and feared a little 
like Freddie Corleone, also had shameful secrets. 
“Think of it as a piece of elastic in your body that has lost its elasticity,” Jules said. “By 
cutting out a piece, you make it tighter, snappier.” 
“I’ll think about it,” Lucy said, but she was sure she was going to go through with it, she 
trusted Jules absolutely. Then she thought of something else. “How much will it cost?” 
Jules frowned. “I haven’t the facilities here for surgery like that and I’m not the expert at 
it. But I have a friend in Los Angeles who’s the best in the field and has facilities at the 
best hospital. In fact he tightens up all the movie stars, when those dames find out that 
getting their faces and breasts lifted isn’t the whole answer to making a man love them. 
He owes me a few favors so it won’t cost anything. I do his abortions for him. Listen, if it 
weren’t unethical I’d tell you the names of some of the movie sex queens who have had 
the operation.” 
She was immediately curious. “Oh, come on, tell me,” she said. “Come on.” It would be 
a delicious piece of gossip and one of the things about Juice was that she could show 
her feminine love of gossip without him making fun of it. 
“I’ll tell you if you have dinner with me and spend the night with me,” Jules said. “We 
have a lot of lost time to make up for because of your silliness.” 
Lucy felt an overwhelming affection to him for being so kind and she was able to say, 
“You don’t have to sleep with me, you know you won’t enjoy it the way I am now.” 
Jules burst out laughing. “You dope, you incredible dope. Didn’t you ever hear of any 
other way of making love, far more ancient, far more civilized. Are you really that 
innocent?” 
“Oh that,” she said.. 
“Oh that,” he mimicked her. “Nice girls don’t do that, manly men don’t do that. Even in 
the year 1948. Well, baby, I can take you to the house of a little old lady right here is Las 

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