The yellow director's chair in the sun room was lying on its side, so she picked it up and put it in the right place, and then she noticed some dirt on the floor and swept that up, and all the little odds and ends of cleaning and straightening took time, and the time got away from her. She should have known. Whenever she invited the neighbor's children in for cookies and games, or when she babysat them while their parents were out for the evening, a mess resulted - a mess she always enjoyed, but that she was sometimes too tired to clean up until the next morning.

The phone rang as she was getting ready to leave. It was Owen, wanting to know why she wasn't at the office yet.

"I didn't think there was any hurry," she said.

"I have to go soon, and I need you here to answer the phone."

The drive to his office always depressed her: empty lots, houses with cracks zigzagging up the brick, peeling paint, even some land with demolished buildings that hadn't been hauled away yet. Boarded-up businesses. Next time, instead of Troost and Gillham she'd take Main, although the traffic made her nervous.

She hung up her coat and asked, "Any idea yet when Mary will be back?"

"No. It depends how long her mother lingers. She said it could be a week, or it could be months."

"Poor girl. Should we send a card?"

"Good idea. Would you? There's a letter to type. It's on the desk. I have to go."

She had to throw away the letter unfinished four times before she was satisfied. She hated the way whiteout marred the look of the page and she was a poor typist.

After she'd finished and addressed the letter she started the filing. Her first day, and she already felt behind in the work; she should probably stay late. She could only hope that things had piled up because Mary had been gone, and that there wasn't always this much to do, or she would never catch up. Owen called for his messages in mid-afternoon.

"Someone named David Grady tried to reach you three times. He has a southern accent and an area code I don't recognize." She read him the number. "Who is he?"

"He wants to buy me out."

"What?"

"I don't have time now. I'll explain later."

She gave up on the filing and sat staring out the window. Everyone was entitled to a fifteen-minute break; it was time to take hers. The atmosphere was getting to her - the problem with working in an office was that you couldn't hear the birds or feel the outside air. It was too quiet, and the air was processed by machines, and the space was impersonal.

What would Owen do without a business to run? Would he stay home? She hoped not. Would they have to move to Atlanta? She definitely hoped not. Or would Owen work for this David Grady here? He was probably too independent for that.

She watched a city bus pull up at the stop across the street and discharge several passengers. A tall black girl walked into the auto repair shop. She was leading a little girl by the hand. Get in line, Ada thought. Get in line and wait, for who knows how many years. Too many couples, too few babies. She was willing to adopt an older child, but Owen wanted an infant. She was willing to go to Korea, but Owen wanted a child that could pass as their own. All the interviews and paperwork were done, and now they faced a long wait. Maybe it was time to consider hiring a surrogate mother. The adoption seemed to be taking forever.

The black woman had beads in her hair. For a moment Ada considered doing the same thing, but it probably wouldn't work - her own hair was straight and red. The little ceramics were beautiful in black hair, though; she loved the things black women did with their hair: the Afros, the cornrows, the beads, the cylindrical curls hanging in every direction; even the dreadlocks. Such variety and artistry. But Ada knew that beads wouldn't work on her. It would be out of character, and she lacked the nerve to try it.

She really should be working. There was too much to do. She sighed and returned to the filing cabinet. This wasn't much better than the gruntwork she'd done when she'd finished school.

There were several possible ways to file some of the papers, and she set those aside. She was only half done by seven p.m., when she heard a knock on the door. A teenage boy in a red shirt was waiting in the hall, holding a padded rectangular bag.

"Pizza."

"I didn't order one."

"Someone did." He looked at the name on the ticket. "Fischer?" When she said that was her husband's last name, the boy slid the box out of the insulating bag. "Large supreme."

Even if it was a practical joke she was hungry, so she paid and took it to the table. She poured a cup of stale coffee - it had been on the burner too long, and she made a mental note to bring a thermos to the office - and sat down. She had just begun eating when Owen walked in.

"Thanks," he said. "I see you paid. I got caught in traffic or I would have beat it here." He went to the back room for a soda.

"Now tell me about David Grady," she said when he returned. He ate pizza more meticulously than anyone she knew, prying a piece loose and editing it so nothing hung off the edges, brushing off the olives and bits of meat at the edge and folding the little strings of cheese over the top of the wedge before he ate.

"Grady and Toole made an offer for the company. That's why David Grady flew in from Atlanta that day you dropped by here."

"Your company."

"Yes."

"You're not going to sell, are you?"

"Yes. It's a very generous offer."

"How much are they paying?"

He snickered. "It's hard to value companies like this. But twice what it's worth, give or take."

"But, Owen, that's not honest. How can you do that?"

"Are you serious? The company's worth whatever I can get. It's a free market."

"I wish you wouldn't do this."

"Baby - "

"It isn't honest."

"Well, it's done. Knock wood. They know they're paying a premium. If they didn't buy me, they'd have to build a company here from scratch. They'd miss the wave. It's cheaper to buy me."

"What will you do after you sell?" Something was wrong with her vision, or her sense of balance. The room tipped and then righted itself.

"I'd have to train my replacement. All the ins and outs - which contractors to work with, the zoning and laws, everyone I know. Then in a couple of years I could quit and do something else."

She sighed. "I don't understand this. I thought you wanted to build something that would last."

"Not necessarily. If selling out - selling - brings more money, then that's the rational thing to do."

"Rationality," she said, "is usually an excuse for you to do whatever you wanted to do anyway."

"Well, this is what I want to do."

"I wish you'd talked to me first."

"Why?"

"Because I'm your wife," she said. "But I shouldn't have to explain that."

"Maybe next time. It's too late now."

"Is it? Or do you only want me to believe that?"

They ate in silence. When she had finished her second slice, he had eaten four.

"I need some help with the filing," she said. "I'm not sure where some of the papers should go. Are you going to be in the office tomorrow?"

"No. You're better off to call Mary. Just tell her what there is, and she'll tell you where it goes. Right now, I'm supposed to be meeting someone for a drink in Westport. Want to come?"

"No. I'll close up."

"By the way, would you wear not wear jeans, in case someone drops by? A dress, maybe?"

"Next thing, you'll want me to start carrying a purse... Oh, all right. I'll dress up."

"Thanks."

She pulled the list of instructions from her pocket, neatly typed by Mary, complete and clear. She felt less anxious, looking at them. Things to do: call the answering service and have them take over the phone, then turn out the lights and turn on the alarm and lock up. She picked up the phone.

She stood at the door, checking the room, ready to set the burglar alarm. There was almost nothing of Owen in the office: no memorabilia, no photographs or awards, no college diploma on the wall, no knicknacks, only the name of his company on the door and a picture of her on his desk. At least the sole personal touch was a photograph of his wife; as his wife, this gratified her. But she'd always assumed that he was emotionally committed to this business, that he was in it for the long term. Maybe he saw it as expedient, a means to an end. Money? Recognition? Self-worth? Sometimes he was as alien to her as the birds in her garden. His office was only a space to him, a requirement for getting his work done. It had apparently never occurred to him to decorate it. The pictures on the wall looked like they'd been there before he rented the space; she didn't recognize them. Tomorrow she would bring in a few things and hang them. A vase would help; flowers were always a cheerful touch. Maybe a little Oriental rug in front of his desk. She had a spare. The place was so impersonal it was depressing. Something had to be done.

Everything will be different, even the bread, and the buildings, and the weather, and the sunlight. It wasn't only that there was more infrastructure - better roads and buildings - but everything was so impersonal, even more impersonal than Owen's office. Bureaucratic. Sterile. Oh, Monteverde, Green Mountain. People revealed themselves more directly, more naturally there. Maria was as unaffected and spontaneous as a human could be. She didn't assume that she had to protect herself against someone taking advantage of her. She grew from her native soil. The native soil of the people around Ada now was cement.

She stopped at Nina's house and borrowed the large photograph of Owen with his fraternity brothers, and two pastels she had always liked. At home she added a vase and the little rug, and left everything in the back seat of her car. In the morning she stopped at the florist, and when she got to the office she filled the vase with water and arranged the flowers and put everything else where she wanted it. He wasn't in the office that day, but he was there the next morning. He didn't notice anything - not the pastels, or the vase of flowers by the window, or the rug. Ada waited two hours, listening to him talking on the phone, rustling his papers, looking at blueprints.

When he started to leave, she asked, "Don't you notice anything?"

"Yes. You wore a dress. Thank you."

"No. About the office."

He looked around. "The flowers. You put out flowers. Nice."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Look at the walls."

He looked around. "Sure. The guys from my house."

"Anything else?"

"No... Okay. Don't look so disappointed. Just tell me."

"The pastels. I borrowed them from your mother."

"Really. It doesn't look any different."

She went to the storage closet and pulled out the drawings that had been on the walls until that morning. "Maybe these look familiar."

"Sure. I see now."

"And I put a carpet in your office."

"Yeah, I remember sort of noticing that."

"I thought you'd appreciate it. This place - "

"Remember that house I had in Lawrence? One time I came home and I'd been sitting in the living room for an hour before I realized someone had sneaked in and rearranged all the furniture. Your effort's wasted on me. Look, I've got to go now. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's just an office. It doesn't matter what it looks like." Then he was gone.

There was little to do. She'd caught up on the filing and the letter-writing. Most of his business seemed to happen in the field, or at other people's offices. She pulled her novel out of the desk drawer and started to read. She was having that annoying dizziness and optical disturbance again. The letters were bending and moving in front of her.

She woke with her face on the desk, her nose and forehead feeling sore from pressing against its surface. She was canted to the side. The sound of the phone ringing had wakened her. She reached for it, too late, and heard the dial tone. Her watch had cracked against the desk and stopped. She compared the time on its face to the time on the wall clock. She must have been out for a quarter of an hour. She closed the office and drove herself to the emergency room, where a young intern thumped her back and listened to her chest and questioned her closely.

Ada hated hospitals, hated the lack of privacy, the people seeing you in a gown that opened in the back. She hated the waiting on other people. Most of all, she hated these places because they always reminded her of her earliest memory, when she was separated from her mother at the clinic in Mexico.

A procession of doctors came and went, doing things to her and asking questions. Finally the first doctor came back and looked at her and tapped his chin with his index finger and said, "I wish I could characterize this." He admitted that he had no idea what was wrong with her; it could be any number of things. "I'd like to schedule some tests," he said.

She dressed herself, refusing to listen to anyone, signed herself out, and drove home, hoping she wouldn't faint again. Owen was there. It was late, and he was wearing his wound-up look. She knew that look. An argument always followed.

She said, "Before you start shouting at me, I was in the hospital. I'm fine. I was dizzy and I fainted." Now she had to go through the same explanations and descriptions with her husband that she'd gone through with the white coats in the emergency room. But Owen actually looked frightened, a look she'd never imagined was in his repertoire, and she felt a wave of compassion and took him in her arms and stroked his hair and kissed him and assured him that she was going to be fine, and that she would call her doctor in the morning and make an appointment.