THERE WAS HEAVY TRAFFIC on the Major Deegan south and more on the approach to the Triborough that night, that crazy, crazy night.

I couldn't decide which was making my eye twitch more as we crawled across the span —the horns from the cars logjammed in both directions around us, or the ones honking from our driver's Spanish music station.

I was heading to Virginia for a job-sponsored seminar.

Paul was going to apply some face time to one of his firm's biggest clients in Boston.

The only trip we modern, professional, go-getting Stillwells were going to share this week was the ride to LaGuardia Airport.

At least I had one of the great views of Manhattan outside my window. The Big Apple seemed even more majestic than usual with its glass-and-steel towers glowing against the approaching black thunderheads of a storm.

Gazing out, I remembered the cute apartment Paul and I once had on the Upper West Side. Saturdays at the Guggenheim or MOMA; the cheap hole-in-the-wall French bistro in NoHo; cold chardonnay in the "backyard," our fourth-floor studio's fire escape. All the romantic things we did before we got married, when our lives had been unpredictable and fun.

"Paul," I said urgently, almost mournfully. "Paul?"

If Paul had been a "guy guy," I might have been tempted to chalk up what was happening between us to the inevitable. You grow a little bit older, maybe more cynical, and the honeymoon finally ends. But Paul and me? We'd been different.

We'd been one of those sickening, best-friend married couples. The let's-die-at-the-exact-same-moment Romeo-and-Juliet soul mates. Paul and I had been so much in love —and that's not just selective memory talking. That was us.

We'd met in freshman year at Fordham Law. We were in the same study and social group but hadn't really talked. I'd noticed Paul because he was very handsome. He was a few years older than most of us, a little more studious, more serious. I actually couldn't believe it when he agreed to head down to Cancún for spring break with the gang.

On the night before our flight home, I got into a fight with my boyfriend at the time and accidentally fell through one of the hotel's glass doors, cutting my arm. While my supposed boyfriend announced he "just couldn't deal with it," Paul arrived out of nowhere and took over.

He took me to the hospital and stayed at my bedside. This, while everyone else promptly hopped on the flight home to avoid missing any classes.

As Paul walked through the doorway of my Mexican hospital room with our breakfast of milkshakes and magazines, I was reminded of how cute he was, how deep blue his eyes were, and that he had fantastic dimples and a killer smile.

Dimples and milkshakes, and my heart.

What had happened since then? I wasn't entirely sure. I guess we'd fallen into the rut of a lot of modern marriages. Neck-deep into our two demanding, separate careers, we'd become so adept at meeting our individual needs and wants that we'd forgotten the point: that we were supposed to be putting each other first.

I still hadn't confronted Paul about the blonde woman I'd seen him with in Manhattan. Maybe that was because I wasn't ready to have it out with Paul once and for all. And, of course, I didn't know for sure if he was having an affair. Maybe I was afraid about the end of us. Paul had loved me; I know he had. And I had loved Paul with everything I had in me.

Maybe I still did. Maybe.

"Paul," I called again.

Across the seat of the taxi, he turned at the sound of my voice. I felt like he was noticing me for the first time in weeks. An apologetic, almost sad expression formed on his face. His mouth started to open.

Then his blasted cell phone trilled. I remembered setting his ring tone to "Tainted Love" as a prank. Ironically, a silly song we'd once danced to drunk and happy had turned out to aptly describe our marriage.

Glaring at the phone, I seriously considered snatching it from his hand and flinging it out the window through the bridge cables into the East River.

A familiar glaze came across Paul's eyes after he glanced down at the number.

"I have to take this," he said, thumbing open the phone.

I don't, Paul, I thought as Manhattan slid away from us through the coiled steel.

This was it, I thought. The final straw. He'd wrecked everything between us, hadn't he?

And sitting there in that cab, I figured out the exact point when you call it quits.

When you can't even share a sunset together.

OMINOUS THUNDER CRACKED in the distance as we pulled off the Grand Central Parkway into the airport. The late-summer sky was graying rapidly, bad weather was approaching with speed.

Paul was jabbering something about book values as we pulled up to my stop at the Continental terminal. I didn't expect him to do something as effort-filled as kiss me good-bye. When Paul had his low "business voice" going on the phone, a bomb couldn't make him stop.

I reached quickly for the door when the driver switched the radio from the Spanish station to the financial news. If I didn't escape, I feared the insectile buzz of investo-speak in stereo was going to make me scream.

Until my throat bled.

Until I lost consciousness.

Paul waved from the back window without looking at me as the cab pulled away.

I was tempted to wave back with one finger as I rolled my suitcase through the sliding doors. But I didn't wave to Paul.

A few minutes later, I sat in the bar, waiting for my flight to be called, thinking very heavy thoughts. I took out the ticket as I sipped my cosmopolitan.

From the overhead speakers, a Muzak version of the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" was playing. How do you like that? The folks at Muzak had discovered my childhood.

It was good that I was feeling so manic and upbeat, because normally that realization might make me feel old and depressed.

I tapped the ticket against my lip, then very dramatically tore it in half before I finished my drink in one shot.

Next, I used the bar napkin to dry the tears in my eyes.

I was going to move on to Plan B.

It was going to be trouble, for sure. Big troubles, no bubbles.

Copyright © 2007 by James Patterson.