it was 10 p.m. fritz said good night to his wife. she was watching tv. he went to bed. tomorrow was a *g day. it was his last day of work. thirty years with the federal government. thirty years of flying out of town for weeks on end. thirty years of interviews, meetings, and heavy briefcases1. tomorrow it would all be over. not that he didn't like it. he had enjoyed his career.
fritz felt blessed. his father had had a tough life as an unskilled laborer2. when*r fritz was a *t discouraged or upset, he thought about his overworked and underpaid father. he thanked god for his own good life, and for the fact that he had been able to make his dad's last years comfortable.
his two children were married and had their own careers. his wife paige kept busy with, among other things, her bridge club. she had tried to get him interested in bridge, but without success. fritz was content with his own friday night poker3 group.
friday morning, he went to work for the very last time. those who knew him well would miss him. fritz was a genuinely nice guy. he n*r had a bad word to say about anyone. some people might have thought he was a little dull, but he was intel*t, a hard worker, and a team player. he had taken only three weeks of sick leave in 30 years.
a small group took him out to lunch. when he returned from lunch, the whole office gathered around for cake, ice cream, a farewell card, and a few short speeches. they presented him with various going-away gifts, including a *g, *back4 us atlas5. it listed all the motels6, campgrounds, national parks, tourist spots, and other *rmation to * guide a leisurely7 traveler throughout the good old usa. he had told his friends that he and paige were going to spend a couple of years visiting all the places that he n*r had gotten to explore while there on business. as a final gift, his supervisor8 told him to take the rest of the day off.
paige's car wasn't in the driveway when he got home. she was probably shopping for some traveling clothes. maybe she was out arranging a dinner at a restaurant that *ning for just the two of them. that would be nice.
but something was wrong. when he hung up his jacket, he saw that the bedroom closet was half empty. paige's clothes were gone. her shoes were not on the closet floor. confused, he looked around the bedroom.
he saw an envelope on the lamp stand. inside it were two pieces of *. one notified9 him of a spanorce proceeding10. the other was a hand-written note from paige. "i'm so sorry," it began. she said that her lawyer had told her to wait until today. if she had sought spanorce a year earlier, like her boyfriend had suggested, she would not have been able to qualify11 for 50 percent of fritz's pension. she hoped that he would find it in his heart to forgive her. she felt terrible about this, she wrote, because "you've been so good to me. but i can't ignore my own heart."
fritz sat immo*le on the edge of the bed. her note was in his hand; her words were burning in his brain.
maybe an hour later, the phone rang. he picked it up on the fifth ring. it was bob, wondering if fritz was going to play poker later that night.
__
