Elizabeth A. Brice, Attorney-at-Law, had won another not-guilty verdict for another guilty client.

Just as she decided that first thing Monday morning she would raise her hourly billing rate to $500, the merry voices of the kids and parents at the concession stand brought her thoughts back to the moment. She looked that way as the cool evening breeze hit her. She wrapped her arms, but the cold she felt was inside her. A vague sense of unease invaded her mind, as if the wind had whispered in her ear.

Grace.

She beeped the Lexus locked and hurried toward the vacant soccer fields and the solitary spectator sitting in the stands.

Where John was saying into the phone, “Oh, and what do you know about love, dude? Lou, are you aware that the boot sequence required to produce an orgasm in a full-grown American female is more complex than the ignition sequence of a neutron bomb?”

She saw him before he saw her. But he felt her presence, like one felt impending doom.

“Spousal unit alert,” John whispered into the phone.

He lowered the phone from his ear-he could still hear Lou yell, “Don’t mention my name!”-pushed his glasses up, and saw her eyes locked on him like proton blasters as she approached at a rapid pace from midfield in her Elizabeth Brice, Attorney-at-Large mode. Fear shot through his brain like a bullet- Cripes, what did I do wrong this time? His wife appeared very much as she had when they had first met in Washington ten years earlier; she was forty now but still insanely attractive (even when she was in a bad mood like now) and just as intimidating, looking totally perfect in her best closing argument outfit (black on black on black) and acting in complete control of herself and everything and everyone she touched. Elizabeth Brice was a perfectionist control freak, hardwired at the factory. Which made them a complete mismatch, like a Wintel program on a Mac. Which made John wonder, as he had often wondered: Why did she ask me to marry her?