She nodded.

"My wife'll give me a lift."

Neil wasn't upset about the car so much as bemused. "It's not like this is a bad neighborhood." He was waiting for her to agree.

"I never could understand why you took chances like that," she said. "You act like the universe will suspend the rules for you."

"Five minutes. That's just plain dumb to steal a car parked right in front of the door."

They drove in silence for a few blocks, just the radio buzzing some tune too low to register, the hum of the car's engine. She searched for some neutral conversational topic – the threatened nurses' strike, the new stadium that was going up – but every subject she tested in her mind sounded false against the quiet. Neil, on the other hand, seemed comfortable. The intimacy of that annoyed her unreasonably.

"I'm not your wife anymore, you know."

He looked at her blankly.

"You told the policeman I was your wife."

"Did I?" He grinned. "Do you want to go back and set him straight?"

They stopped at a traffic signal and waited for a ridiculously long time, the only car at the intersection, while the ghosts of daytime traffic were ushered through.

"Maybe it'll turn up," she said.

"Yeah, I suppose so."

She sensed his attention had shifted. His mind was onto something else and he was waiting for her to redirect the conversation, to pry loose his thoughts with a series of deft questions. This had been their pattern. Elaine resisted.

The light changed, and they drove through downtown. At night, it looked like a scene from a science fiction movie, silent and swept clean of humanity. The wide streets were deserted, traffic signals washing the empty pavement green, then yellow, then red. Warning lights winked from the tops of dark office towers, all jutting mirrored surfaces. A few squat buildings remained from the days when this was still a bedroom community. The old 76 filling station on the northeast corner was a video store now, its fluorescent interior spilling white light onto a row of empty parking spaces. Kitty-corner from the filling station was the Eastlake Savings and Loan where they'd taken out the loan for the second house; it was now a branch of one of the big interstates, but it looked more or less the same, smaller against the backdrop of high-rises.

Elaine finally relented. "The kids told me about Nicole. I'm sorry." The funny thing was, she truly was sorry. She could remember predicting bitterly that he would someday realize what a flimsy piece of packaging he'd traded her in for, all spandex and peroxide, but now that she'd been proven right, it gave her no pleasure.

"Did they tell you she's suing me for support?"

"Can she do that?"

"Nothing to stop her from trying, I guess." He shook his head, with a kind of rueful bewilderment. "No fool like an old fool, right?" He seemed to be actually asking her the question.

"Do you want me to contradict you?"

"Well, you could tell me I'm not so old." He smiled wooingly.

In spite of herself, she smiled back. "Face facts, Neil. You're an old goat."

Somehow that satisfied him. He nodded, oddly pleased.

"Do you remember what we paid for the house on Phinney?" he asked.

"Thirty-seven thousand."

"I drove by there last month. It's on the market. Just out of curiosity, I called up the realtor. They were asking three twenty for it."

"You're joking." She was continually shocked by how fast things changed.

"That was a cute little house."

It had been the first of three houses, just four doll-sized rooms but with a wide covered porch and an old maple that shaded their bedroom with dancing green light. Darcy had been conceived in that room, and then slept in the bottom drawer of the dresser because there was no space for a crib. They would throw impromptu parties, half a dozen interns and their wives or girlfriends drinking sangria and dancing in the yard. Elaine felt a dull pang in her chest, something like grief for her child-husband and her younger self, the two of them bumbling and careless and, for a long while, lucky.

She passed the high school and the park and the Methodist church and then turned right into the neighborhood where Neil lived now. She found his driveway and left the engine running.

"Have you had dinner?" he asked.

"It's after eleven," she said, as if this were an answer. In truth, she rarely sat down to a meal, just threw one of those little frozen pizzas in the microwave or nibbled at whatever was handy. It was a holdover from being married to a doctor. When the kids were little, she had fought to keep their dinnertimes regular, but it often meant she had cooked dinner in two shifts and picked in between.

"Well, how about a glass of wine or something?"

"I've got to get home and get this stuff in the fridge."

"You can put it in mine. I hate eating alone," he added.

She was curious.

The extra house key was hidden under a pot next to the back door, exactly where anyone would look first. They entered the kitchen through the back door, and when Neil flipped on the lights, Elaine blinked in the sudden glare. Every surface gleamed antiseptically under bright fixtures: an enormous stainless-steel gas range, a matching Sub-Zero refrigerator, double steel sinks deep enough to bathe a large dog in, frosted glass cabinets with metal pulls. What had surely been touted as modern and functional instead screamed "operating arena." Elaine could almost picture patients being prepped on the granite slab countertop of the island. He could bring his work home.

"Wow," she said stupidly.

"Do you like it?" he asked, and she was surprised to see that he wanted her approval.

"It's pretty impressive," she nodded.

"I've gotten into cooking," he said. "Mostly stir-fry and grilling, but I make my own marinades." He had the doors of the behemoth Sub-Zero opened wide and was unloading his groceries.

"Better get that ice cream in the freezer," he said, taking her grocery bag.

"I changed my mind on the ice cream. Just milk." He looked pleased.

"So, what do you say to some sauteed chicken breast, maybe a little pasta?"

"Really, just a glass of wine is fine. I can't stay long. I spent the day helping my mom pack up her house and I need a shower. I'm pretty filthy."

"I wasn't going to say anything." He grinned, but then quickly added, "You look great, Elaine. Really." He smiled. This was new, a carefulness with her feelings that she wouldn't have credited him with.

"Here, sit." He gestured to a bar stool on the far side of the island. "Pinot grigio okay? I'll make a little extra chicken. Once you smell the garlic, you'll change your mind. So Polly's moving?"

She sat back with her glass of wine and watched as he piled ingredients onto the countertop, pulled down a saute pan and pasta pot from the overhead rack, and set the water on to boil. A few sips of wine and the tightness she'd been feeling all day began to unravel.

"She's on a tear. You remember her china? Blue rims with little birds and berries?" But no, of course he wouldn't. "Sixteen place settings of Haviland and she was ready to haul it off to Goodwill."

Neil selected a chefs knife from a butcher block and began expertly mincing garlic. "Did you take it off her hands?"

"I'm putting it in storage. Darcy may want it when she gets settled."

He smiled good-naturedly. "Don't hold your breath, Elaine." Their daughter was living with a bunch of people in a farmhouse outside of Eugene, Oregon. She had spent the previous year living in trees for their own protection. It was their daughter's form of rebellion to actually live out the ideals of the sixties, in contrast to her parents who had merely smoked a little pot and feigned the styles.

"Well, tomorrow's the last day, then we're done. Except for the sideboard. I have to find some movers to take it to my house." She felt self-conscious when she referred to the house as hers. "You can't believe the estimates I've been getting just to haul one sideboard and a couple of chairs across town."