A baby, I thought the next morning as I drove the Jeep down lonely Highway 93 toward Las Vegas. A baby, I thought, replaying the whole argument.

“We’re not even married yet,” I’d said to Karen as we sat on the edge of the hot tub.

“We will be in two months,” she answered.

We’d decided on an early-October wedding out at the ranch of our best friends, the Milkovskys.

I trotted out some old cliche I’d seen on a talk show. “But I thought we’d have some time together just as a couple before we brought a third person into it.”

“We’ve been living together for almost two years,” she reminded me. Then she got pissed off. “And how dare you speak of our baby as ‘a third person’?”

It had sounded so good on television, too.

“The damn thing’s not even born yet,” I muttered. Mistake.

“‘The damn thing’?! The ‘damn thing’?”

“You know what I meant.”

She looked at me accusingly. “You don’t want a baby.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do,” I answered. “Just not right now.”

“When?”

“What, you want a date?”

“Yes, a date.”

I thought about it for a second, then said, “In two years.”

“Two years?!” she screeched. “Neal, I’ve been getting weepy over McDonald’s commercials!”

“Maybe it’s just one of those hormonal things,” I said.

That did it. She got up and stomped into the house before I could say, “And then maybe again it isn’t.”

So early the next morning when I said, “Karen, honey, I’m leaving,” she just said, “Good.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of days.”