Sam comments on the perfume at dinner. She is glad that he doesn’t say it smells like autumn, but only that it smells good. He takes her wrist in his hand for a second to sniff it. Sam has always been a little in love with her. She would like him anyway, because he is a nice person, but she likes him a little more because she knows about his secret love. They talk a little about his wife. She thinks he’s secretly in love with his wife as well. She doesn’t like his wife; she’s the sort of woman who gives in to everything: she eats too much and is overweight, she thinks too hard and is always dissatisfied, turning all conversations to politics and the state of the country. She was never pleasant to have to dinner. A little embarrassed that he’s talking about his wife again, Sam closes off with a bit of flattery: “And she wasn’t as good a cook as you.” They are eating a roast beef dinner. Baked stuffed potatoes. Very American — Sam’s favorite kind of food. She likes to cook what people particularly like; it makes everything more pleasant. And sure enough, Sam isn’t feeling blue any more when they’ve finished eating.
Late that night they go to a little restaurant for French pastry and espresso. She could have served that at home, but Sam likes to take them out — he feels a little guilty that he can’t reciprocate any more. When Jim goes to the men’s room Sam speaks hurriedly. She didn’t expect that at all — was there an undercurrent all night she didn’t catch? Sam says that he is worried about Jim. Jim doesn’t go out much, and he seems at loose ends now that he isn’t working. Sam laughs, a little embarrassed, sensing, no doubt, her surprise at all this hurried talk. “I don’t want everybody to fall apart,” he says. Then he asks outright if their arrangement is that Jim can’t work when she works. No — he could if he wanted to. It’s just that he doesn’t have to. Sam seems confused by that. Or embarrassed. He says that it’s all none of his business. But then he speaks again, a question she can’t answer because Jim is walking toward them as he asks: “Wouldn’t it be better if he went back to work?”
Sam’s question nags at her. Back at work on Monday, she thinks about calling Jim. She’s busy, though, and forgets to do it, or else when she remembers the phone is in use. By five o’clock she feels differently. Sam meant to be helpful, but he misunderstood. She regrets wasting so much of her day thinking about what he said. She regrets the weekend, too — Saturday was wasted; she had felt vaguely depressed all day, and now she realizes that Sam was responsible. Not only what he said about Jim — or what he insinuated, really — but his presence, a reminder of what can happen to a marriage, the distressing realization that two adults who care about each other, as Sam and his wife do, can’t reach some agreement, have some arrangement that will make them both happy.
A car coasts along beside her. She recognizes the driver, a man she has spoken to several times in the elevator. “Parked all the way in the back?” he asks, and she tells him she is. She does what she knows is expected: she shrugs and looks a little perturbed about what everyone calls “the parking problem.” She’s sure that telling him she parks there deliberately would sound too preachy. So when he leans over and swings open the door on the passenger’s side, she has to get in. They drive up alongside her car in a minute — too short a time to start a conversation, he says. She agrees. And instead of getting out she sits there. She smiles, which is something she hasn’t done all weekend. During the next hour they have a conversation — in a bar. The conversation lasts about an hour, and then they go to a motel and go to bed. She thinks, then, of Jim — as she has most of the afternoon. She can’t think of what to tell him, so she stays in the motel for another hour, thinking. Eventually they leave. He drives her back to her car. They smile again. This time there is no conversation, and she gets out.
He isn’t in the apartment when she gets back. She knocks and he doesn’t open the door. She imagines he’s sulking, so she rummages through her purse until she finds the key and goes in, ready to defend herself. He isn’t there. She looks for him like a dog searching for a missing bone, feeling foolish as she does it. Then she collapses in the chair. She falls asleep and is awakened by a key in the door. Jim looks terrible. Through the darkness of the room, and half asleep, she can tell that. He has a bag with him, which he sets on the floor by the chair. He smooths her hair. He tells her she looks tired. He has been out looking for shallots. It was his mistake to have slept away most of the afternoon, but who would think shallots would be impossible to find? He had to take the bus crosstown, and then he found them at that reliable specialty store next to the dry cleaner’s.
Even with the shallots, the trout does not taste very good to her.
The next day she doesn’t go to work. She gets up at seven-thirty, as usual, and dresses, but she parks at a downtown garage and goes shopping. For some reason, she’s still tired. She would have preferred to stay at home, but she didn’t want him to think anything was wrong, and she couldn’t say that she didn’t feel like going to work, because she had already told him how much she liked the job. She has no respect for women who say one thing one minute and another the next. She buys another bottle of perfume — a more expensive bottle — from the same salesgirl. She has been in the store several hours, going leisurely from department to department, when she realizes she hasn’t left a list of instructions for Jim. Has he called her office? Does he already know she isn’t there? In a panic, she asks a salesgirl where there is a telephone. She calls immediately. There’s no answer! What does that mean? Then she hears his voice. He’s been asleep. She’s lucky, because it’s late in the afternoon — two o’clock. She keeps her voice steady; she has called because she forgot to leave the list. “What did you want me to get?” he asks. Her mind goes blank. Finally she thinks of something: lobster. And ground pork. Consomme. She will fix lobster in lobster sauce. “We had fish last night,” he says sleepily. He’s right; she’s forgotten even eating last night. She never makes a mistake in menu planning. He’s just pointed out an error; he knows she’s slipping … “But that sounds good,” he says. “Any spices we don’t have? Let me write this down.”
It is a delicious dinner. They eat earlier than usual because she’s so hungry. She didn’t want to eat lunch at the store, because it was just a cafeteria; it was too much trouble to move the car to go somewhere else. As she eats she concentrates, but still has no memory of having eaten dinner the night before. He sighs with contentment, spooning the rice onto his plate, ladling sauce over top of it. It is a particularly good dinner. She prepared it very slowly, with much care, fascinated herself by what she was doing.