“Football?”
“Soccer and track.” She slurped her Coke. “And fucking.”
Henry squeezed her fingers.
“I knew of at least a couple of affairs he had right after we married. He’s probably having one now.” She rubbed her eyes. “He doesn’t want a baby because he’s an immature little piss-ant.”
“A deadbeat.”
“A son of a bitch.”
They laughed together.
All along, these last few days, Henry had been thinking of Ben as The Bastard. Anyone who’d give up ample Kate —
“Well,” she said. “It’s a weary old story.”
“Not to you. To you it’s your life.”
She looked at him, over the cooling basket of fries. “You’re a nice man, Henry.”
“I like you.”
“I know,” she said. Behind her, Marilyn tried to fluff down her skirt.
He fed Kate a fry. “Where would you live if you could?” he asked.
She told him she’d been a high school exchange student in Germany, and loved the countryside, but the rules! “I couldn’t survive long in such an ordered world.” She bobbed her head to the music from the jukebox. Her bun loosened just a bit. “What? Why are you laughing?” she said.
He described his life under Meg’s iron rules.
“Poor Henry.”
“Oh, it wasn’t — ”
“Really, Henry. She doesn’t sound human.”
“No?”
“More like a robot. Perfectly programmed.”
Had he made her sound so bad? He hadn’t meant to. “She tried hard,” he said quickly. “She wanted things to be nice.”
“Still,” Kate said. “Even so.”
Uneasy (on Meg’s behalf?), he squirmed, ordered a second Coke.
That early Saturday morning, back from her trip, Meg had looked entirely too human, Henry thought: pale, almost ill.
In those first few minutes, when he’d tried to learn where she’d been, he’d said, “I even called your office. They didn’t know anything.”
“I didn’t tell them I was leaving,” Meg had said.
“You just took off?”
“That’s right.”
“How will you explain your absence to your bosses?”
“I’ll give them a reason they’ll be too embarrassed to challenge.” She’d thought for a moment. “I’ll tell them I had an abortion.”
A mind like an instruction manual, Henry thought, full of tight little plans, even under pressure.
Kate didn’t want the rest of the fries.
They walked slowly back to her place in prickly, misty rain, bright from reflections of the buzzing curbside signs. On the sidewalk in front of the liquor store, near the stairs that led to her door, her bun finally unraveled, a shock, a gift, a festival of fragrance. “Kate,” Henry whispered, and kissed her.
In bed she rubbed his thighs. He spread almond oil on her belly. “That’s wonderful,” she said. She closed her eyes. “My doctor says some women, when they’re pregnant, lose all interest in sex.”
Henry tickled her navel, an oval bloom as delicate as that of his old girlfriend, Markie. “Yes?”
“It hasn’t been true for me.”
Fertile Kate! “I’m glad,” he said.
“My breasts are a little sore. Go easy.”
“How’s this?”
“Mmmm.” She lay in his arms. “Henry?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could do me a favor tomorrow?”
He raised his head.
“Can you drive me to the clinic? I have an appointment at two with my doctor. More tests.”
He pictured his desk calendar. He could rearrange his meeting with the shoe man. “Sure.”
“Henry?”
He kissed her shoulder. “What?”
“I know it’s probably a little soon to say this — ”
“Say it anyway.”
“What’s going to happen with us?”
He turned to face her. “Right now …” he said. “Right now, what’s going to happen is, you need to take good care of yourself. I’d like to help.”
“Ben called me last night,” she said. “After you’d left. I wasn’t going to tell you.”
“Oh?” His scrotum tightened.
“I think it finally struck him,” Kate said. “He’s going to be a father whether he’s with me or not — and his daughter’s going to grow up without him.”
Henry swallowed hard, surprised at the breadth of his panic, stunned by his commitment to this woman already. “Does he want to come back?” His voice shook.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he knows. I do think he’s having a fling. I mean, all the signs are there — ”
“Like you?”
She reached for his hand. “This isn’t just a fling. I don’t know. I don’t know. There was a different tone in his voice — I think he misses me more than he thought he would.”
Henry brushed her hair with his hands. “This is what made you so glum in the hamburger place, isn’t it?”
She shrugged.
“What do you want? I mean, with Ben?”
Kate shook her head against his chest. Clearly, she was too upset to say more now.
“Guess what,” Henry said swiftly then, smiling, trying to slam-dunk the lump in his throat. “Last night? Last night was my birthday.”
“Wherever Your Heart Wanders,” said the magazine ad on his desk, “Pace Shoes Will Take You There in Comfort!” A couple, holding hands, ran through a meadow of poppies, wearing bright-yellow sneakers. If that’s the best they could do, Henry thought, it’s no wonder this lousy outfit cratered last quarter.
He’d already spoken to Mr. Pace, rescheduling for tomorrow. Now, the receiver piped “The Way We Were” into the folds of his ear. The cellos swelled like tight little bags of microwave popcorn.
Meg finally came on the line. “Larsen,” she said.
“What can you do for sports shoes?”
He thought he heard her smile. “Forget it. Nike’s cornered the market. How are you, Henry?”
“Good. You?”
“Splendid. What can I do for you? Happy birthday, by the way.”
“Thanks. It’s sweet of you to remember.”
“Do anything fun?” She almost sounded tender.
“Actually, I forgot till the end of the day.”
“And what’ve you forgotten now?”
“Nothing. I was just calling to — ”
“Really, Henry. I’m busy.”
“Well.” He hesitated. “You know that green recliner?”
Instantly, the climate of her voice eroded a few degrees. “The green recliner. Yes. You can forget that too.” Icy, icy. “We settled this.”
“Except — ”
“I forgot. Nothing’s ever settled with you, is it? It’s easier for me to become a virgin again than it is for you to make up your mind about something.”
Same old edge. She might as well have nicked him in the lungs. “Can we not be nasty?” he wheezed. “I’ve got some things of yours — that old Cindy Crawford workout book — ”
“All right. I can’t talk, I’ve got a meeting now. How ‘bout Saturday at nine? If that doesn’t work, leave a message on my home machine. Bye, Henry.”
A little detonation in his ear. Damn Barbra Streisand. And holding hands, he thought. Robert Redford too.
The ob-gyn clinic was tucked away in the back of a strip shopping center south of Rice. It shared a parking lot with a CD store, a ski shop, and a Hallmark card outlet. How did the city get so ugly, so repeatedly convenient and bland? Henry thought, staring at the mud-brown walls, the windows full of dull and expensive merchandise.