Read As Husbands Go for Free Online Page A

superbug he’d caught in the hospital. Jonah carjacked, bound and gagged in the black, near airless trunk of his BMW.
    “I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Detective Sergeant Coleman said, “but has Dr. Gersten ever, uh, not shown up before? Not come home?”
    “Never. Jonah is completely reliable. I can always count on . . .” The tears I’d held back in the kitchen started to spill. I wasn’t actually crying; my eyes just became full and overflowed, like a stopped-up sink. “He’s so responsible.” It came out as a froggy sound because I was choked up. “That’s why I think it must be something bad, because . . .” The tears cascaded down my cheeks. Coleman sat there. Instead of averting his eyes, he watched. A tiny spiral-bound notepad rested on his knee. Its size seemed grossly inadequate for recording the huge facts of Jonah’s vanishing.
    Finally, I found the energy to propel myself up. “Excuse me,”I said. I rushed into the guest bathroom, blew my nose, wiped my eyes.
    When I returned to the living room, Coleman was still at the edge of his chair. “I didn’t know whether to call the police this soon,” I told him. “I remember from movies when detectives say they have to wait forty-eight hours or three days until they can look into a matter.”
    “Oh no, ma’am. If someone who keeps a regular pattern suddenly doesn’t show up, we should know about it. A lot of times the local precinct only sends in regular officers to take the initial report, like if it’s a teenager who’s probably with a friend, or if it’s someone with a history of instability. The next day, if that sort of person is still unaccounted for, the department follows up with a detective. But with someone like Dr. Gersten, what with his position in the community, well, you know.”
    “Right.”
    “Now, when we were in the kitchen, you mentioned your last conversation with your husband was yesterday afternoon.”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you recall what each of you said in that conversation, ma’am?” I was examining a medallion of roses and laurel leaves on the needlepoint rug. He repeated “Ma’am?” louder, which made me jump.
    “I don’t know. Let me think. It was a regular late-afternoon phone call. Jonah still had a couple of post-op patients to see. Then he had some odds and ends to do in the city before he came home.”
    “Did he happen to say what they were, ma’am?”
    “The only thing he mentioned was maybe going to Tod’s. It’s about twenty blocks downtown from his office. A shoe store.”
    “To . . . ?”
    To have a martini, shmuck. “To try on a pair of shoes,” I said. “Brown suede lace-up shoes. He’d seen them in the window. But he was pretty tired, so chances were he wouldn’t bother.”
    “He said he probably wouldn’t bother, or was that your sense of things?”
    “He said it.”
    “Had he been under any special pressure lately?” I must have given him a Duh look because he added, “That he was tired from a more-than-usual workload? Or maybe family pressure?”
    “No. I mean, he’s in a great surgical practice. Well, it’s been less than stellar lately, the economy being what it is, but they’re doing better than most of their colleagues. So far, so good.” Coleman blinked. I noticed he had no sign of beard, as if he used Nair instead of a razor. Imagining stroking a hairless, almost poreless man’s cheek was so repulsive that I forgot I was in the middle of answering his question. When Coleman uncocked his head and looked into my eyes straight-on, I quickly said, “Sorry, I lost my train of thought.”
    “You were saying your husband wanted to build up his practice,” he said.
    “Right,” I said. Coleman wiped the tip of his pen on the pad. He seemed ready to jot down some significant detail. “A lot of his business comes from referrals from other doctors, so he needs to stay active in the medical community. Like if a woman asks a doctor she knows, ‘Can you recommend