Free The Adjustment by Scott Phillips Page A

as I was with old man Collins for the sake of the job.
    It wasn’t the war years that changed her, then. It was the little intruder gestating in her belly. I thought long and hard about what Dr. Groff had told me about those chemical and hormonal changes, and I suspected that when the baby abandoned its claim on Sally’s womb the natural urges and imperatives of motherhood would counteract the waning of those chemical changes as her body returned to its normal state. In other words, her transformation to simpering homebody risked being permanent.
    Her capacity for anger returned, however. I was almost grateful to see the old spitfire resurrected when I walked into the apartment on my return from KC. There was shrieking and crockery was thrown—just a coffee cup, but a nice Maggie-and-Jiggs touch—and a detailed discourse on what a rotten son of a bitch I was to leave her alone with no way to reach me. It turned out that the whole time I was gone Millie Grau was trying to get hold of me, and was very surprised to be told that Mr. Collins had sent me on a business trip. While Sally railed at me, I stuffed the message into my shirt pocket. Maybe when I walked back into Collins’s office I’d have a job offer to scare him with.
    “You get right on the horn and tell the old man you’re sorry you disappeared. You have a wife and a baby to support.”
    “First of all,” I told her, “I’ll tell him whatever I damned please. Second, I don’t have a baby yet.” I proceeded to explain to her my theory about the change in her behavior, and suggested that I knew people who could take care of the situation for us if we wanted to return things to the way they’d been before the war, when we were happy.
    Her weapon this time was a cast-iron skillet that had belonged to her mother. Even though it just clipped the back of my skull it drew blood; curiously, this got me no sympathy. I retreated and with Sally screaming obscenities and threats from our open door I ran down the building’s main staircase to the street, where I hopped into the Olds and headed straight for the Eaton Hotel, where I got a four-dollar room for the night. This, I suspected, was not going to blow over without my eating a lot of crow.
     
    IN THE MORNING I went to see Dr. Groff again. He didn’t seem surprised to see me back so soon.
    “I want to know if there’s any way to induce an abortion without the woman knowing.”
    “Use your head, Ogden, how’s she supposed to not know she’s not pregnant any more?”
    “I mean is there a way to do it so it looks like a miscarriage?”
    He shook his head, scowling. “Nope. None that I’ll be part of. I’ve done my share of angelmaking, but never without it being the woman’s express wish. I don’t know of any other doctor who’ll do such a thing either.” He drew back and his expression softened. “Listen, you’re a nervous first timer, it’s understandable you get crazy ideas. Don’t worry about it, things won’t change as much as all that. Look at it this way: every single ancestor of yours back to Adam and Eve did it. Why should you be the one to break the chain?”
     
    I WENT STRAIGHT to my office and found another envelope addressed to DWAYNE OGDUNN on my desk. I put it into the cardboard grocery box I’d brought along with me and started cleaning out the desk for dramatic effect. Mrs. Caspian immediately dialed Miss Grau, without having spoken a word of greeting. My intention was to empty the desk and get out, the better to leverage my position, but as I was on my way out with the desk’s meager contents I found Herman Park blocking my path.
    “You need to come with me, Mr. Ogden.”
    “I’m going home,” I said.
    “You’re coming with me to see Mr. Collins at his house, on his orders. Now you’ve treated me decent, Mr. Ogden, and I’ve got no itch to hurt you, but Mr. Collins said I was to go ahead if that was the only way.”
    “Let me follow you in my car.”
    “You don’t