Vigil Read Free Page A

sparkle, when the store windows gleamed, the falling leaves littered the pavement, and even the pretzel carts looked tempting. For a second, Carter thought about stopping at one—all he’d had for lunch was a microwaved burrito—but then he remembered the New York Post exposé about the vermin in the warehouse where the carts were kept overnight, and he kept on walking. At times like this, he was often sorry he’d ever read that article.
    The appointment he had to keep, in just forty minutes, was in midtown, and right now he was only in Washington Square. But if he walked briskly, he figured he could still make it in time. A cab would cost a fortune, and the idea of descending into the subway on such a beautiful afternoon was too painful. Zipping up his jacket, with his briefcase bulging at his side, he set off, up Fifth Avenue, for an appointment that he was, in all honesty, not that eager to get to.
    It was another doctor appointment, this time with a fertility specialist, one that Beth had found through her friend Abbie. Beth was only thirty-two, and Carter one year older, but they’d been trying the baby thing for over a year, and so far nothing was happening. Part of Carter wanted to know what the problem was—and part of him didn’t—but this afternoon, he was afraid he was going to find out either way.
    They’d been married for six years, and for most of that time the whole subject of kids had been tabled. No, he couldn’t even say that it had been tabled; it just hadn’t come up at all. For one thing, they were both so wildly passionate about each other, the idea of actually making love for some other purpose—to start a family—would have seemed absurd; sex was just for sex, and why would they have wanted to confuse the issue with . . . issue? That wasn’t a bad way to put it, he thought. They’d existed, quite happily, in a kind of little bubble, and there was nothing inside that bubble but each other. And it didn’t feel like anything was missing.
    The other consideration had been their work—Carter had always said he didn’t even want to think about starting a family until he knew that he was going to get his career on track—until he knew, for instance, that he was going to get tenure somewhere. His nightmare was to wind up like so many of the other postdocs he knew, a gypsy scholar drifting from one temporary post to another, one year in New Haven, two years in Ann Arbor, with a wife to support and a couple of kids in tow, and nowhere to write, no time to think, no freedom to go where he needed to go in order to get the work done that would make his reputation. But that was not a problem anymore. Eighteen months ago, New York University had given him tenure—along with the newly funded Kingsley Chair of Paleontology and Integrative Biology—so there went that excuse.
    At Thirty-first Street he made a right and headed toward the stretch of First Avenue he’d come to think of as Medical World. When he’d once been involved in a cab accident, this was where the ambulance had taken him. When he went to see an orthopedist about a climbing injury to his right leg, this was where he’d come. And when he’d had to undergo some physical therapy afterward, the clinic, too, had been just half a block from the avenue. All things considered, he was entering pretty familiar territory.
    But that didn’t mean he felt comfortable there.
    Dr. Weston’s office suite was on the second floor of an undistinguished hospital annex. A pair of polished oak doors bore his name on them in raised gold letters six inches high, and below that the letters P.C. —for “private corporation.” Since when, Carter wondered, had doctors started to seem more like businessmen? As he was ushered through the elegantly appointed reception area and down the hall—polished wood, with an antique Persian runner on it—to Dr. Weston’s inner sanctum, Carter felt more and more like he’d entered an investment banking house and