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need some time to do the job right. But that is the grossest kind of projection at this point. Norton Reese has hardly been my biggest supporter since I exposed the way he was using money budgeted for the forensic pathology unit to finance new cardiac surgery equipment. I think he would cut off an arm before he would have me as a department chief in a hospital he administrated."
    "How much time?" Jared's voice was chilly.
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    "Please, honey. I'm begging you. Let's do this when we can sit down in our own living room and discuss all the possibilities."
    "How much?"
    "I ... I don't know. A year? Two?"
    Jared snapped the stick shift into first gear, sending a spray of ice and snow into the air before the rear tires gained purchase. "To be continued," he said, as much to himself as to her.
    "Fine," she said. Numbly, she sank back in her seat and stared unseeing out the window. Her thoughts drifted for a time and then began to focus on a face. Kate closed her eyes and tried to will the thoughts, the face, away. In moments, though, she could see Art's eyes, glazed and bloodshot; see them as clearly as she had that afternoon a dozen years before when he had raped her. She could smell the whiskey on his breath and feel the weight of his fullback's body on top of hers. Though bundled in a down parka and a warm-up suit, she began to shiver.
    Jared turned onto the narrow access drive to the club.
    To Kate's right, the metallic surface of the Atlantic glinted through a leafless hardwood forest. She took no notice of it.
    Please Art, don't, her mind begged. You're hurting me. Please let me up. All I did was take the test. I didn't say I was going to apply.
    "Look, there are the Carlisles up ahead of us. I guess we're not late after all." Jared's voice broke through the nightmare. Dampened by a cold sweat, she pushed herself upright. The assault had taken place the day after the second anniversary of her previous marriage, and only an hour after her husband, a failure first in a pro football tryout, then in graduate school, and finally in business, had learned that she had taken the Medical College Admission Test, and worse, that she had scored in the top five percent. His need to control her, never pleasant, had turned ugly. By the evening of that day she had moved out.
    "Jared," she pleaded quietly, "we'll talk. Okay?"
    "Yeah, sure," he answered. "We'll talk."
    The ball rainbowed off Jared's racquet with deceptive speed. A perfect topspin lob. From her spot by the net, Kate watched Jim and Patsy Carlisle skid to simultaneous stops and, amidst flailing arms, legs, and racquets, dash backward toward the baseline. The shot bounced six inches inside the line and then accelerated toward the screen, the Carlisles in frantic pursuit.
    "You fox," Kate whispered as Jared moved forward for the killing shot they both knew would not be necessary.
    "That was absolutely beautiful."
    "Just keep looking sort of bland. Like we don't even know we're about to beat them for the first time ever."
    Across the net, Patsy Carlisle made a fruitless lunge that sent her tumbling into the indoor court's green nylon backdrop.
    Kate watched the minidrama of the woman, still seated
    ;>
    on the court, glaring at her husband as he stalked away from her without even the offer of a hand up. Husbands and wives mixed doubles, she thought: games within games within games. "Three match points," she said. "Maybe we should squabble more often before we play." A look at Jared's eyes told her she should have let the matter lie. "Finish 'em with the of' high hard one," she urged as he walked back to the service line. Her enthusiasm, she knew, now sounded forced--an attempt at some kind of expiation.
    Jared nodded at her and winked.
    Kate crouched by the net. Eighteen feet in front of her, Jim Carlisle shifted the weight of his compact, perfectly conditioned body from one foot to another. A