The waitress came by, and they both ordered salads and coffee.

Then they spent a couple of minutes in dragging chitchat until Catrin said, "I called you up because you're the only person I can call up and talk to. I'm in pretty bad shape."

"You look terrific. You even look happy."

"More like anesthetized," she said. Then she shook her head. "I shouldn't be here."

"Why not?"

"I can't even tell you that. I mean, I would tell you if I knew."

"Have a little trouble sleeping? Can't stop your head going around, big dark dreams keeping you up?"

She tilted her head to one side and looked at him curiously. "I'm not suffering from depression, if that's what you're asking. But you did, huh? I recognize the description."

"Yeah."

"I had a friend with the problem. We were worried about her. She eventually got straightened out."

"Chemicals."

"Of course. What'd you do?"

"I had this superstition about chemicals, so I just waited until it went away. I knew what was going on, and I read about it, and in most cases, it'll go away. So I waited. I hope to Jesus it doesn't happen again, but if it does, I'll do the chemicals. I'm not going through it again."

"Good call," she said. "But my problem it's the good old midlife crisis, Lucas."

"Haven't really had mine yet," he said.

"Knowing you, you probably won't. Not until you're about sixty-five, and realize that you're not married and you don't have any grandchildren, and then you'll wonder what happened."

"I could have grandchildren," Lucas said, a little truculently. "I've got a kid."

"Who you don't see much."

"What are we talking about here?" he asked, suddenly irritated.

"Maybe I'm dragging you into your midlife crisis with mine," she said. The waitress came with the salads and nobody said anything until she was gone, and then Catrin said, "Way back when, after I left you, and you didn't call"

"I called."

"Yeah. Twice. If you'd have called four times, I would've come back. The next time I saw you, you were walking around with some skinny blonde with a terrific ass and these little bell-bottoms, and you stopped on a street corner and she tried to stick her tongue down to your tonsils."

Now Lucas blushed. "I don't even remember," he said.

She maneuvered a lettuce leaf into her mouth and crunched on it, watching him. He pushed his salad bowl away and waited. "Anyway" she said, "About two days after I saw you with the blonde, I met Jack and we started dating and I liked him a lot and I liked his parents and they liked me, and my parents were delighted, he was one year away from his M.D. So we just got married and he did his hitch in the Army and then we went down to Lake City and bought a house and had kids and dogs and sailboats and goddamnit"testing the word, goddamnit "here I am, twenty-five years later. What happened tome? I thought I was gonna have a movie, but all I've ever been is the woman in the background of somebody else's movie."

She thought about that, and poked her salad fork at Lucas and said, "That's what we're talking about. Metaphors. The other day when we met, I used that movie metaphor. It just jumped up and I said it. I've been thinking about it ever since. When'smy movie?"

Lucas sat looking at her for a long moment, and Catrin said, "Say something," and Lucas sighed and said, "If I could only figure out a way to run for the door without freakin' out the restaurant."

She sat back and didn't quite snarl at him, "You'd run for the door?"

"Catrin I know women who run businesses and make a zillion dollars a year and drive around in Mercedes-Benzes and every night they go home and wonder what the hell happened, how they could've forgotten to have kids. They're forty-five years old and have everything but kids, and that's all they think about: no kids. Then I meet people like you who have these great kids and they're all messed up because they're not running General Mills."

She'd wiped her mouth with a napkin, and now tossed the napkin into the middle of her unfinished salad. Her eyes were bright and a little too wide, and he started to remember her temper. He thought, Uh-oh, and she said, her voice rising a notch, "So all I'm going through is some kind of routine female bullshit that I'll get over."

He shook his head. "No. You see women thinking along these lines, and about half the time it ends in disaster. They walk on their old man and their kids and they get their freedom and they wind up living in a crummy apartment and selling cupcakes in the local foo-foo dessert bar. If you ask them if they'd go back, they think a long time and most of them say, There's no way to go back,' but if they could, on some kind of negotiated terms, they would."

"What about the other half, the ones who don't walk?"

"Then, they come to some kind of accommodation, but I'm not sure how happy they ever are, not having tried it."

"So you're saying I'm fucked," she said.

"Well, you've got a problem. You've got to think about it a long time."

She looked away and said, "I'm thinking about moving out. I didn't tell you that the other day. I wanted to impress you with how wonderful I was, after all these years."

"Does your husband know?" Lucas asked.

"At some level, maybebut he wouldn't want to think about it. I mean, he seems happy enough. He's got all the prestige and his patients like him and he's delivered half the kids in town and we've got a sailing club and he's got a hunting shack across the river in Wisconsin, and all his buddies."

"You'vegot friends, too, don't you?"

"Housewives. Waiting for death. Three or four of them have actually taken off."

"What happened to them?"

"They're selling cupcakes in foo-foo dessert bars," she said, and grinned at him.

"Not really."

"One sells real estate and not very well. One works in a decorating business and doesn't make much. One went back to school and became a social worker and got a job in St. Paul, and she's okay. One's a waitress who's trying to paint."

"And you'd take pictures. Photographs."

"Maybe. You think I couldn't?"

"I don't even know how you'd go about it."

"It's not like I'd be broke. Like I said the other day, we'vegot money."

"So why don't you just go ahead and do what you want, without walking? Just tell him, 'Look, I'm gonna be busy for the next couple of years. Remind me to stop by once in a while.' "

" 'Cause he's in the way," she said. "Anything I'd do, it'd be a hobby. We'd have to go to London for shows and someplace for family medical conventions, and I'd have to cook at Thanksgiving and Christmas for the kids and we'd have to keep up with our friends I couldn'tthink. I just need tothink."

"And what happens to Jack?"

"You know what I think?" She looked at him steadily. "I think if we got divorced in January, he'd be married again by December."

"You've got somebody in mind for the job?" Lucas asked.

"No. He doesn't fool around. But he needs a wife to hold him up, and if I moved out, there are plenty of women around town who'd sign up as candidates."

Lucas shook his head. "You know what? I bet he'd be devastated. I bet he wouldn't be married in five years. You'd be a little hard to get over."

She smiled at him, a sad smile. "Thanks."

"You gotta think about it," Lucas said. "Probably the most important thing you've thought about since you got married, or got pregnant."

"I didn't think about those things. I just did them," she said.

"So think about this."

She nodded. "Let's get out of here."

Outside, on the sidewalk, she said, "This whole conversation took a kind of unexpected turn. It was more like therapy than anything You've thought about this more than I expected you would have."

"I had a woman I wanted to marry, and didn't. She wouldn't. I'm still not over it," Lucas said. "When I look around City Hall, or the County Courthouse, the place is full of wounded people. I don't know what happened. I don't remember this happening to our parents' generation."