Rescue by Anita Shreve Page A

not driving to Albany.”
    She put a finger to her cheek, mock thinking. “The bar at my place is open,” she said, as if it had just occurred to her.
    “At this hour?”
    “Yup.”
    “Don’t you have to work?”
    “I’m at the dentist’s,” she said with a smile. “That’s what Geezer thinks, anyway.”
    “I have to clean the equipment, pack it away. Talk to the next crew. Give me twenty minutes.”
    Webster worked steadily, aware of the glances of the other medics. If one of them was going to report him for fraternization,
     then so be it. He should be mad at Sheila for so casually jeopardizing his job.
    After he left Rescue, he got into his car, Sheila already in the passenger seat.
    Once inside the house with the jalousie porch, he took a quick glance around the kitchen, then grabbed her by the soft sleeve
     ofher jacket, turned her around, and kissed her. She broke away and laughed at him. She guided him onto the porch. He didn’t
     care about being close to the road. Let the whole world watch.
    She sat on the daybed and took off her clothes in a perfunctory way, as if she were alone. Another woman might have made a
     tease of it. For the first time, Webster saw her breasts, her pubic hair, the scar across her belly.
    “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he said. Then he nodded in the direction of the scar. “Won’t that hurt?”
    “I doubt I’ll notice it,” she said. “Though if you stand there with your jacket on much longer, I might get bored and fall
     asleep.”
    The Sheila who’d had a no-nonsense way of removing her clothes slipped into a woman who was at least as pent up as Webster.
     It might be weeks before they could learn to take it slow.
    Webster watched Sheila sleep in the overheated room of the B and B, the sheet pulled up over her breasts, a slender arm exposed
     and relaxed. The glossy brown hair on the pillow had always been a talisman for him. Around her, the flowered wallpaper and
     the antique reproductions faded out to nothing. In recent weeks, she’d become a tourist.
    “You have wanderlust,” he’d once said to her in the car.
    “What’s that mean? I like to fuck and walk at the same time?”
    Webster slipped back into the bed, unwilling to be away from her. He knew how her skin felt everywhere—the down of her arms,
     the hard muscle of her inner thigh, the sweet curve of her hip. If she woke with a hangover, she hid it well, apart from a
     terrible thirst.
    He stroked her arm from the shoulder to the wrist. He wantedto wake her. He liked to see her eyes flutter open, the moment of pleasure when she saw him. Sometimes, she smiled. He had
     the water glass ready. She would prop herself up on an arm and drink it down, and eventually, after they’d had sex, he’d get
     her another and a couple of Excedrin.
    That morning, however, she woke as if reluctant to enter the world. Webster enjoyed the anticipation. But then she bolted
     up in bed, putting her fingers to her nostrils.
    “What’s that awful smell?” she asked.
    Webster sniffed the air. “Coffee? I used the coffeemaker on the bureau. It’s terrible, but I didn’t want to walk out naked
     in search of a coffee shop.” He ran his fingers from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.
    “Webster,” she said, bowing her head.
    He didn’t like the way she’d said his name. He waited. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “Fuck.”
    She can’t do this anymore, and she’s going to say it. He shut his eyes. He couldn’t stop her.
    “You want it straight out?” she asked.
    “Always.”
    “I’m pregnant.”
    The word stunned him. Pregnancy had never crossed his mind.
    “You sure?” he asked.
    She brushed the hair off her face and turned to look at him. “Very.”
    “How far along?”
    “Ten weeks.”
    “Have you seen a doctor?”
    “Yes.”
    A dialogue repeated, he imagined, thousands of times between thousands of couples. Only this time it was unique, as if he
     were the first man ever knocked out