Final Option

straight for the kitchen, propelled as much by optimism as hunger. I opened the refrigerator door and was repaid by the vision of two bottles of Evian water, a clove of garlic of uncertain provenance (since neither Claudia nor had ever, to my knowledge, actually cooked) and a half-full bottle of wine. I knew better than to look in the freezer.
    I cracked open one of the bottles of water and wandered into the living room to check the answering machine for messages.
    “Katharine Anne Prescott Millholland, this is your mother,” came the voice after the squeal of the rewinding tape. Mother’s voice never carried much affection, but whenever she used all of my names I knew I was in trouble. I sat down in a fat armchair, my spine prickling with reflexive dread. “I just had a telephone conversation with your friend, Stephen Azorini,” continued my mother’s recorded voice. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered that you hadn’t bothered to invite him to dinner this evening. How could you be so thoughtless?”
    Her question was rhetorical, but there was an answer.
    I had called Stephen earlier in the week to invite him—no, beg him—to join me for dinner at my parents’, but he’d been in L.A. on business when I called.; When he called back I was in Phoenix negotiating an acquisition for Cragar Industries, and when I came back Bart Hexter drove me so crazy canceling meetings that I just forgot....
    Stephen’s voice came next, after the beep: “Hi, Kate. Looks like I stepped in it with your mother. It seems’ she’s expecting us for dinner. I have a meeting with the head of the hematology research division, but I can pick you up at six forty-five. I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble. See you.”
    I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to six. I stripped off my clothes as I listened to the rest of the day’s messages—someone for Claudia trying to sell prepaid burial plots, a reporter from Knight Ridder and another from The Wall Street Journal, both looking for quotes about Hexter.
    I didn’t really have time to run, but I plucked a pair of sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt from the pile on the floor of my closet anyway. Then I laced up my shoes and headed out the door at a sprint. I cut across the park to the pedestrian bridge at Fifty-first Street and picked up the bike path that followed the lake. The park was still thick with people, though the retreating sunshine had left the air chilly. I ran south, dodging cyclists around the rocky peninsula known as the Point, and then across the footbridge at the Fifty-seventh Street Beach. There, with a view of weary tourists dragging their exhausted children through the parking lot of the Museum of Science and Industry, I forced myself to do ten sets of stairs as fast as I could. Then, sides heaving, I stretched it out for the six remaining blocks between me and home.
    I took a much shorter shower than I would have liked and, out of a sense of deprivation mingled with mounting dread, I poured myself a Chivas on the rocks. Drip-Ping and wrapped in a towel, I picked my way through the war zone of my closet, searching for something to Wear. For safety, I chose a pair of black wool trousers and a blouse of white silk. By the time Stephen rang the bell I was dressed, brushed, and after two scotches, halfway resigned to dinner at my parents’ house.
    I answered the door, and Stephen walked in like he enters every room—as if he owns the place. Stephen always seems to walk in a spotlight. Six feet five, with his dark hair and chiseled profile, he has long grown used to attention. As the president of his own pharmaceutical company, he has learned to use his looks, and the power of his personality, to his advantage.
    Stephen and I have been drifting in and out of each other’s lives since high school. And there are times when I’ve felt the impact of his appearance at low ebb. But there is always someone who brings his looks back into focus. Women stare at him in the street. Waitresses stammer inanely in restaurants. Men look at the two of us and I see in their faces what they are thinking—he could do much better than her.
    While there is no denying the physical attraction, ours is primarily a relationship of convenience. Both of our lives are filled with work and neither of us has the patience for the vagaries of dating and nascent relationships. We have fallen into this pattern of accommodation, caught in that strange space between friend and