Free Five Days by Douglas Kennedy

getting pregnant. Gazing at Brad – so tall, so lean, so deeply preppy in a town where preppy wasn’t a common look – all I could think was:
He is going to break her heart.
    I watched the car zoom away, and saw Sally put her arm around Brad as they headed off into the actual sunset. Immediately I thought back to the time when I was seventeen, on the cusp of everything, so determined to succeed. I reached for the wine bottle and splashed a little more in my glass. In the wake of Sally driving off Dan had stepped outside and lit up another cigarette. The joylessness in his eyes was palpable. Seeing him staring out at the world beyond I felt a desperate stab of empathy for him, for us. Coupled with the realization:
He is now a stranger to me.
    I set the table. I took out the meatloaf and the potatoes. I ladled sour cream into a bowl. I rapped on the glass of the kitchen window. When Dan swivelled his head I motioned for him to come inside. Once back in the kitchen he looked at the dinner ready to be eaten and said:
    â€˜You should have let me do all that. I was making dinner. I didn’t want you to have to do anything tonight.’
    â€˜It was no trouble at all. Anyway, I thought you might need a little time out.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    He came over and put his arms around me. As he buried his head in my shoulder I felt a momentary shudder come over him and thought he was about to cry. But he kept himself in check, while simultaneously holding me tightly. I returned the embrace, then took his face in my hands and said:
    â€˜You know I am on your side, Dan.’
    His body stiffened. Had I said the wrong thing again – even though I meant the comment to be reassuring, loving? Could I ever say the right thing anymore?
    We sat down to eat. For a few moments silence reigned. I finally broke it.
    â€˜This is wonderful meatloaf.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ Dan said tonelessly.
    And the silence enveloped us again.
    â€˜For me, it really is one of the great modern novels about loneliness,’ Lucy said, motioning to the waitress that she should bring us two more glasses of chardonnay. ‘And what I loved about the novel was how it so brilliantly captured forty years of American life in such an economic way. I mean, I couldn’t get over the fact that the novel’s only two hundred and fifty pages long . . .’
    â€˜That really intrigued me as well,’ I said. ‘How he was able to say so much about these two sisters and the times they passed through in such a compressed way, and with such descriptive precision.’
    â€˜This is one of those rare instances when you can actually say there’s not a wasted word in the novel, along with this absolute clear sightedness about the way people talk themselves into lives they so don’t want.’
    â€˜And by the end, we really feel we know these two women so desperately well. Because their lives and choices are a reflection of so many of our own wrong choices, and the way despair and disappointment color all our lives.’
    â€˜I’ll drink to that,’ Lucy said as our two glasses of wine arrived.
    Lucy and I were sitting in a booth in the Newcastle Publick House – a rather decent local tavern, where the din was never so overwhelming that you couldn’t have a conversation – engaged in our weekly book talk. Actually ‘book talk’ makes this weekly get-together sound formal, rule-bound. The truth is, though we have been having this Thursday get-together for over a year, the only principle that we follow is that the first part of the conversation is all about the novel we have agreed to read that week. That’s right – we try to read a different novel every week, though when we tackled
The Brothers Karamazov
a few months ago we gave ourselves a month to work through that mammoth enterprise. The only other rule we have is that we take