James Patterson: The Quickie

Maybe I still did. Maybe .

"Paul," I called again.

Across the seat of the taxi, he turned at the sound of my voice. I felt like he was noticing me for the first time in weeks. An apologetic, almost sad expression formed on his face. His mouth started to open.

Then his blasted cell phone trilled. I remembered setting his ring tone to "Tainted Love" as a prank. Ironically, a silly song we'd once danced to drunk and happy had turned out to aptly describe our marriage.

Glaring at the phone, I seriously considered snatching it from his hand and flinging it out the window through the bridge cables into the East River.

A familiar glaze came across Paul's eyes after he glanced down at the number.

"I have to take this," he said, thumbing open the phone.

I don't, Paul, I thought as Manhattan slid away from us through the coiled steel.

This was it, I thought. The final straw. He'd wrecked everything between us, hadn't he?

And sitting there in that cab, I figured out the exact point when you call it quits.

When you can't even share a sunset together.

OMINOUS THUNDER CRACKED in the distance as we pulled off the Grand Central Parkway into the airport. The late-summer sky was graying rapidly, bad weather was approaching with speed.

Paul was jabbering something about book values as we pulled up to my stop at the Continental terminal. I didn't expect him to do something as effort-filled as kiss me good-bye. When Paul had his low "business voice" going on the phone, a bomb couldn't make him stop.

I reached quickly for the door when the driver switched the radio from the Spanish station to the financial news. If I didn't escape, I feared the insectile buzz of investo-speak in stereo was going to make me scream.

Until my throat bled.

Until I lost consciousness.

Paul waved from the back window without looking at me as the cab pulled away.

I was tempted to wave back with one finger as I rolled my suitcase through the sliding doors. But I didn't wave to Paul.

A few minutes later, I sat in the bar, waiting for my flight to be called, thinking very heavy thoughts. I took out the ticket as I sipped my cosmopolitan.

From the overhead speakers, a Muzak version of the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" was playing. How do you like that? The folks at Muzak had discovered my childhood.

It was good that I was feeling so manic and upbeat, because normally that realization might make me feel old and depressed.

I tapped the ticket against my lip, then very dramatically tore it in half before I finished my drink in one shot.

Next, I used the bar napkin to dry the tears in my eyes.

I was going to move on to Plan B.

It was going to be trouble, for sure. Big troubles, no bubbles.

I didn't care. Paul had ignored me too many times.

I made the phone call that I'd been putting off.

Then I rolled my suitcase back outside, climbed into the rear of the next available taxi, and gave the driver my home address.

The first drops of rain hit the windows as we pulled out, and I suddenly envisioned something huge slipping under dark water and beginning to slide, something monumental, slowly, irretrievably sinking. Down, down, down.

Or maybe not – just maybe, I was heading up for the first time in a long while.

IT WAS FULL-OUT POURING by the time I stepped back into my dark, empty house. I felt a little better when I switched my wet business suit for my old Amherst gym shirt and a pair of favorite jeans.

And a lot better when I put Stevie Ray Vaughan on the stereo to keep me company.

I decided to leave the lights off and crack open a dusty case of calla lily-scented candles from the front-hall closet.

Pretty soon, the house was looking like a church, or maybe a loopy Madonna video, given the way the drapes were blowing around. It inspired me to scroll my iPod down to her pop highness's "Dress You Up" and to crank up the sound.

Twenty minutes later the front doorbell rang and the baby lamb chops I'd ordered on the cab ride home arrived.

I took the small, precious brown-paper package from the FreshDirect delivery guy, went into the kitchen, and poured myself a glass of Santa Margherita as I chopped the garlic and lemons. After I put the red potatoes on for the garlic mashed, I set the table.

For two.

I took my Santa Margherita upstairs.

That's when I noticed the insistent red blink on my answering machine.

"Yeah, hi, Lauren. Dr. Marcuse here. I was leaving the office and just wanted to let you know that your results haven't come back yet. I know you're waiting. I'll let you know first thing after we hear from the lab."

As the machine clicked off, I pulled back my hair and gazed into the mirror at the faint wrinkles on my forehead and at the corners of my eyes.

I was three weeks late with my period. Which normally wouldn't be a concern.

Except that I was infertile.

The results that my ever-helpful gynecologist, Dr. Marcuse, was referring to were from the blood work and ultrasound he'd urged me to get.

It was a race at that point. A neck-and-neck downhill heat.

Which would fail first? I thought, lifting my glass.

My marriage or my health?

"Thanks for checking in, Dr. Marcuse," I said to the machine. "Your timing is impeccable."

AT THIS POINT, my heart was starting to race. Dinner for two – and neither of them was Paul .

After I finished my glass of wine, I went downstairs and did the only sensible thing under the circumstances. I found the bottle and took it back upstairs with me.

After I had filled my third glass, I carried it and my wedding picture onto my bed.

I sat and drank, and stared at Paul.

At first, I'd been pretty resigned to Paul's change in behavior after his latest and most pressure-filled promotion at work. I definitely thought it was unhealthy for him to be so stressed out all the time, but I also knew that investment finance was what he did. It was what he was good at, he'd told me many times. How he defined himself.

So I let it slide. His distance from me. The way he'd suddenly begun to ignore me at meals, and in the bedroom. He needed every ounce of concentration and energy for the office. And it was temporary, I told myself. Once he got up to speed, he would ease back. Or, at the very least, he would fail. I'd lick his wounds, and we'd be back to normal. I'd get to see those dimples again, that smile. We'd be back to being best friends.

I opened the night table drawer and took out my charm bracelet.

On my first birthday after we were married, Paul had bought it for me from, of all places, the preteen store Limited Too. So far I had six charms, the first, and my favorite, being a rhinestone heart, "for my love," he'd said.

I don't know why, but every year, each chintzy, puppy-love charm meant a million times more to me than the meal in the fancy restaurant he always took me to.

This year, Paul had gotten us into Per Se, the new white-hot spot in the Time Warner Center. But even after the crème brûlée, there was no gift.

He'd forgotten to get me a charm for the bracelet. Forgotten, or decided not to.

That had been the first sign of real trouble.

The Times Square neon billboard for trouble came in the form of the twenty-something blonde outside his office on Pearl Street – the one he'd taken into the St. Regis.

The one Paul had lied to my face about.

I WAS DOWNSTAIRS IN THE KITCHEN, laying the pink chops down into sizzling butter, when there was a hard rap on the window of the back door. The butterflies swirling in my stomach surged, changed formation. I looked at the clock on the microwave.