Free The Job by Douglas Kennedy Page A

shouldn’t conceive again.”
    It was over three hours before I was allowed to see her. She was tucked in bed, attached to a drip, her face ashen from the loss of blood. But what immediately struck me were her eyes. They were shell-shocked.
    I sat down and clasped her hand tightly.
    “I suppose you’re relieved,” she said quietly.
    I felt as if I had been slapped across the face.
    “You know that’s not true.”
    Suddenly she leaned forward, buried her head in my shoulder, and began to sob uncontrollably. I held her until the crying subsided.
    “It’ll be fine next time,” I finally said.
    “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.
    So the subject was dropped for the night. The next day, when I returned to the hospital to take her home, I made the mistake of faking an upbeat tone.
    “As soon as you’re better, we really should try again.”
    She stared at the floor and said nothing. So I took the hint and didn’t raise the subject of the miscarriage again. For the first week her anguish was palpable-yet so was her equally strong desire not to discuss the matter with me. As she tried to cope with her grief, she erected a temporary wall between us. And though I respected her need for that thing called “space,” I couldn’t help but fear that a distance had opened up between us-that, for the first time since we met, an aura of doubt about me had been raised. And I kept privately kicking myself for having greeted her pregnancy with gloom, for letting my own anxieties and self-doubt cloud what should have been a great moment between us.
    But after that first week her mood seemed to lift, and with relief
    I watched the gap between us begin to close. I didn’t mention the failed pregnancy again. Nor did Lizzie-until tonight, when we had yet another of those silences that now seem to occasionally descend onus.
    But hey-this is probably par for the course after a miscarriage. Most of the time neither of us is exactly taciturn. We’re still happy as hell together. It’s just a phase, something that we’ll get beyond in time. By which I mean soon. Real soon.
    “I’m going to try to sleep,” Lizzie said, turning to kiss me.
    “Don’t worry about anything. That’s my job.”
    She turned off her light, embraced her pillow, and was unconscious within seconds. I stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to arrive. And telling myself, There really is nothing to worry about. Because you’re a winner, right? And only the winner goes to dinner.

FOUR
    Dan Sugarman was serving for the set when he began to have doubts. Having broken my serve in the sixth game, he was now up five-three, thirty-love, just two more points to win in order to clinch the set. But then he double-faulted, slamming down a blistering second serve that went way east of the box.
    Thirty-fifteen.
    I glanced at my watch. 6:41 A.M. Nineteen minutes to go in our designated hour on court. Sixty-four minutes before my breakfast with Chuck Zanussi. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, I told myself. Just concentrate on the next point.
    Sugarman’s first serve was another slam-dunk attempt at an ace-and one that I just managed to get my racket on, sending it airborne. It was a shallow lob and Dan came racing in, ready to perform the coup de grace. But taking his eye off the ball, he volleyed it right into the net.
    Thirty-all.
    Now he tried a change-of-pace serve: low velocity, yet with considerable tops ping But I managed to position myself properly and hit a clean forehand winner right down the line.
    Thirty-forty.
    As Dan returned to the baseline, he shook his head, muttering something inaudible. Then he glanced up quickly at me-a look of ambivalence and uncertainty, of hesitancy and lack of belief. The look only lasted a second-but it said it all. I knew that I was going to win the set.
    A ferocious first serve, just wide of the center line. Then an ultra-cautious “shit-it’s-break-point” second serve that plopped right down in