Vigil by Robert Masello

linger too long, Beth got embarrassed and pushed him away.
    “I care,” she said. “I’ve got to face these people every day.”
    “Then let’s go to lunch. My treat.”
    “Rumpelmayer’s?”
    “Central Park, the lake. It’s beautiful outside.”
     
On the way to the park, they stopped at a deli and picked up sandwiches and drinks. But their favorite bench overlooking the little lake on Central Park South was already taken; so were all the other benches, in fact. “I guess I wasn’t the only one with this idea,” Carter said.
    They found a place to sit on a big flat rock, just off the pathway, and spread out their lunch there. While Carter twisted the top off Beth’s bottle of Snapple, she said, “So you never did tell me—what were you doing uptown today?”
    “Seeing you for lunch.” He handed her the open bottle.
    “Really?” Beth said, smiling but skeptical. She took a sip from the bottle, then carefully placed it on the rock. “So, walking all the way to the park to have this little picnic . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “This was all just a spontaneous display of your affection?”
    “Absolutely.”
    She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed it slowly, put the sandwich back down on the wrapper, and said, “Okay, I can’t stand the suspense anymore. How bad is it?”
    “What?
    “The problem you’re about to tell me about.”
    Carter feigned indignation. “A guy can’t surprise his wife with a romantic lunch on a beautiful autumn day?”
    “Not when it’s a guy who thinks he’s crossing the Rubicon when he goes above Fourteenth Street. You don’t make that trip unless it’s for a darn good reason.”
    Why, Carter thought, did he ever think he could sneak one past her? But no point in dragging it out now. “I did have one piece of good news to share with you,” he confessed. “Remember that package I had from Joe Russo?”
    “Of course. You told me all about his big discovery.”
    “Well, in a few days he’ll be able to tell you all about it himself. He’s coming to New York.”
    “That’s great. I’d love to meet him.” Acting as if the danger had passed, she picked up her sandwich again and took a big bite.
    Carter plunged ahead. “That should be no problem,” he said. “In fact, he needs a place to stay while he’s here.”
    Her jaw stopped moving midchew.
    “And I told him it’d be okay to crash at our place.”
    She swallowed. “Where? In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a guest room.”
    “He’s not particular. The sofa in the living room will do.”
    “That sofa’s not even comfortable to sit on.”
    “He’s slept on worse. In Sicily, we slept on rocks and scorpions.”
    Beth blew out a sigh, and Carter knew she was already giving in to the idea. “How long will it be for? A week or two?”
    “I don’t really know,” Carter said. “Maybe more. Depends on how long it takes us to finish our work.”
    “What work?”
    “Didn’t I mention that? He’s bringing the fossil to New York with him. We’re going to work on it, here, together.”
    “He’s bringing that massive fossil you told me about—”
    “Over three thousand pounds!”
    “—all the way to Manhattan? Just so you can work on it together, like old times?”
    “That’s exactly what he said. Almost.”
    Carter knew he was asking a lot—Beth liked her privacy, especially lately, while they worked on the baby issue—but he also knew she’d never do anything to stand in the way of his work. One of the thousand and one reasons he loved her so.
    “Anything else I should know?” she finally said.
    “Well, he’s built on kind of a grand scale. He smokes like a chimney—but I’ll tell him not to in the apartment—and he never has any money.”
    “I like him already.”
    Carter laughed and threw an arm around her shoulders. “And weren’t you the one who said you wanted to hear the patter of little feet around the apartment?”
    “ Little feet,” she replied. “The operative word