The fountain wasn’t deep.  A few nights before, I’d run through it, drunk with my friend, and the fountain was only half-way up our calves, but the baby at the bottom looked further down than that.

“Miss,” I said to the woman sitting next to me.  She had dyed blonde hair and a book on her lap.

“Miss,” I said.  “Is that your baby?”

“No,” she said, “but you see it too?”

“Of course.  What do we do?”

I felt a slow dread come over me like two weeks before when I was sick and kept falling asleep at the doctor’s office.

“Pull it out.  I don’t think it’s alive, but we should pull it out,” the woman said.

I wondered why we were both so calm with that baby in the fountain.

I dipped in my arm without rolling up my sleeve, and the water made the cloth cling to my skin.

“Is it even real?” the woman asked.  Her mouth had a curve in it.

The baby hadn’t been down as far as it had looked.  It was small.  Most of it could fit in my hand.  The baby’s skin looked like imitation skin.  Its nose looked loose.

I brought the baby close to me.  It was made like a real baby, only different.

“It must be a joke.” I said.

“It can’t be real,” I said.

“Should we call the police?” I said.

“For a prank?  That’s stupid,” the woman said.

“I guess,” I said.

The woman’s hands looked too big for her wrists.  She closed the book on her lap.  It was written in Russian, or a language with letters that look like Russian written out.  She scratched at the price sticker stuck to the back.

There was a weird ticking in my head.  It said: you should be more confused.  Why are you so calm?  I thought maybe I was still asleep at the doctor’s office.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“You pulled it out.  It’s your problem.”

The woman stood, and then she was gone.  I watched her go before I thought I should stop her.  Tick, tick, tick.  I looked around like maybe this was a book or a movie and she left a note or something.  There was nothing but that ticking in my head.

The baby, or the thing that looked like a baby, weighed five pounds, maybe four.  I wasn’t sure if that was how babies weighed.  It seemed too heavy for a baby that small.

The park was empty except for me, a woman with a shopping cart, and a family at the playground a field away, but I still felt dangerous holding what looked like a baby, a baby that wasn’t moving or anything.  I wrapped it in my magazine and tucked it in my bag.  And the whole walk home I thought: What if I’m the guy walking around with a dead baby in his bag?  I didn’t feel scared though.  I felt curious.  I was curious in a, this is an interesting thing to happen to me, type way.

I walked as gently as I could, holding my bag away from my legs.

I set the baby on my kitchen counter and drank that morning’s coffee straight from the pot.

I stood a ways back and looked at the thing on my counter.

The coffee tasted thick.

I thought: If I wasn’t so calm, I’d be anxious about being so calm.

Tick, tick, tick, my brain said back to me.

I’d held the thing for five minutes while I was at the park, but now I was afraid to touch it.

It wasn’t fragile.

I called my friend, but he wasn’t home.  He wouldn’t be helpful, but I wanted to call him.  I wanted to call my older brother, but I hadn’t talked to him since Christmas.  I wanted to put the thing that looked like a baby in my garbage, but if it was a real dead baby and they found it in my garbage, they wouldn’t believe I found it in the park and brought it home.

The thoughts came one at a time, like I’d once read a Wikipedia page about what to do if you bring what looks like a baby home from the park and I was just remembering what the page had said.

I pulled a beer from my fridge and looked at the baby again.  If it really was a baby, something would happen.

It was then I noticed I’d left my apartment door unlocked and wide open.