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blast.”
    “If you didn’t want to go you should have said something.”
    “Maybe if you gave me the chance—”
    “I can’t tell what you want to do. I’m not a fucking mind reader.”
    “Asking me might’ve helped.”
    “What’s so bad about having dinner with them?”
    “They’re annoying.”
    “I don’t think they’re so annoying.”
    “Well, I do. Besides, I thought the point was to spend a weekend alone.”
    “It’s just dinner.”
    “And what was with your attitude before?”
    “My attitude? ”
    “You were getting so competitive.”
    “We were playing a game.”
    “Exactly—a game.”
    “The object of a game is to win.”
    “No, the object of a game is to have fun.”
    “It’s possible to win and have fun.”
    “You didn’t seem to be having much fun.”
    “ Me? ”
    “Miss My-Forehand-Is-a-Lot-Better-Than-Your-Backhand.”
    “So I got competitive. It’s better than being lazy.”
    When we got back to the room I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long shower. Knowing that Paula was sweaty and anxious to wash up, I took my sweet time.
    I knew what Paula had really meant was that I was lazy with my career, that I wasn’t ambitious enough. She had hit me with similar put-downs over the years, ever since she had gotten her MBA. She used to encourage me to go back to school all the time, casually mentioning the husbands of friends of hers who had just completed law school or gotten their MBAs—hint, hint! Her passive-aggressiveness cooled while I was raking in the big bucks at my last job, but now that she was a vice president and I was fighting to keep my sales career alive she was starting to get her digs in again.
    Finally, I came out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist. Paula was lying in bed, watching a movie on TV.
    For a few minutes, while I was getting dressed, we didn’t speak. Then Paula said, “I’m sorry. You’re right—I shouldn’t’ve snapped at you.”
    “It’s my fault,” I said, tired of being angry at her. “I was making a big deal about nothing.”
    “If you really don’t feel like having dinner with them tonight of course we can cancel. You know I’d rather eat alone with you—I just didn’t want to be rude.”
    “It’s all right,” I said. “Maybe I just had a bad first impression of them. Maybe they’re not so bad.”
    After Paula showered and got dressed, we took a drive up Route 7 to Lenox. The small New Englandy town catered to the Tanglewood Music Festival, which wouldn’t open for another couple of months, so it was even quieter and more deserted than Stockbridge.
    I didn’t want to complain to Paula, but so far this weekend had been depressing and not very relaxing and I wished we had just stayed in the city.
    Back in the room, I napped while Paula watched TV. I slept in an awkward position and woke up with neck pain and a headache. I took a couple of Tylenols, which helped the pain, but I was still groggy and in a generally lousy mood. Paula got surprisingly dressed up for dinner, wearing a black cut-velvet dress she had bought a few weeks ago for four hundred dollars at a boutique on Madison Avenue. I put on a pair of chinos and a black button-down shirt from Banana Republic.
    At seven o’clock, we arrived in the lobby and saw Doug and Kirsten waiting near the main entrance. They were decked out. Kirsten looked like she had stepped out of Vogue, in a long brown dress with two- or three-inch heels, and Doug was Mr. GQ in a beige linen sport jacket and a white linen shirt and beige slacks. We exchanged hellos, then walked in the cool night to the restaurant. Doug was talking about tennis—how he had been playing since he was five years old and how he was once a ranked amateur player in New Jersey. I zoned out, still trying to get out of my bad mood. The sun was setting and the wind had died down.
    The restaurant was small, but surprisingly active. There were about six or seven tables and they were all filled. Doug had