“I thought this afternoon I’d take Isabelle to get boots, and then on the way home I thought we’d pick up Maggie.”

Wilson waits behind his paper.

“Would you do me a favor and call the vet to let him know?”

“Ruth,” Wilson says. He lowers a corner of the paper to look at his wife. “Don’t you think the vet told us Tuesday for a specific reason? That Maggie might need until then to heal enough to come home?”

“Oh, come on, Wilson. Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning. It’s a matter of hours. You really think it will make that much of a difference?”

Wilson shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “But frankly, I don’t want to have anything to do with it if it does.”

“Isabelle is under the impression that Maggie is coming home today.”

“Yes, she is, and how did that happen? Look, Ruth, this is your thing, you do what you want. I leave it entirely up to you.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Ruth says. She picks her paper back up, and Wilson sets his down.

It’s after seven now, but outside the light is still dawnlike and dim. Winter is so sudden, Wilson thinks. Just last week there was a day warm enough that he could leave his overcoat at home; now the sky has come down on them. The branches of the trees that grow in the courtyard outside their window are covered in a layer of ice and clack in the wind. Chimney smoke is whisked from the roof of the building beyond. Outside, the snow already will be lying in gray, dirty piles along sidewalks otherwise salted bare of snow. Maybe he’ll walk to work through the park, Wilson thinks. The park will be empty and quiet on a day like this one, the snow still mostly clean except for urine holes burned in the snow by dogs, cigarette butts, bits of litter.

He sets his coffee on the bedside table and throws the covers back. Ruth lowers her paper again. “You getting up?” she says.

“Yuh,” Wilson says, stepping back into his slippers as he stands. He crosses the room to his dresser, where he’s left the list of things he has to do today. He’s got a ten o’clock meeting, twelve phone calls to return and eight to make, a lunch with prospective clients, the dentist at two thirty. He’d forgotten about the dentist, and the thought soothes him somewhat. He enjoys going to the dentist. He enjoys having no choice other than to recline, to be still, to shelve all duties for an hour. He could use a visit to the dentist about now.