Jean walked into the kitchen. It was narrow, the space between the sink and the counter where Carl leaned, and her belly, their child, rasped against his rear as she passed. This sort of thing occurred more often now. He wasn’t sure if the touching was always an accident, a slight female misjudgment of her increasing diameter. Maybe there was something more basic to it, like magnetism. He was right to think there were other reasons for the rub. She knew what she was doing.

What she was doing in the kitchen, though, was getting something to drink from the refrigerator. Carl heard a rattling of condiment bottles as the rubber seal of the appliance gave up its grip. He turned to her.

“Wouldn’t go to sleep?” he said.

“She was fussy. She wouldn’t go down unless I let her lie in our bed.” Jean poured some dark green tea into a glass, replaced the pitcher in the fridge, and sipped.

“You’re almost out of that,” he said. “I’ll make some more for you in a minute.” He noticed some things about her. For starters, the tea. It was a tonic, you could say. Wrung from the leaves of raspberries and stinging nettles, it did what needed to be done for the blood and organs of a woman in her condition. The Indians knew about it, and so did others.

He also noticed places on her body. How could he not? There weren’t any parts of her he hadn’t thought about, or kissed. He was able to smell the warm oils of her skin even when he wasn’t with her. And her hair, the darkness of it, held stories neither of them yet understood.

“You’re looking in the Yellow Pages?” she said.

“I’m looking for something. Another job,” he said. “Remember? We agreed, as long as it’s part time.” He moved back toward the counter.

“I remember. Of course I remember,” she said. “What’d you find?”

Carl hooked an arm around her middle and danced her to his side. He slid his index finger in circles across the page as if the point of the finger were a roulette ball, and the page was the wheel. Inside of her, the child grew a tiny bit, an even expansion in all directions. The child was a girl, and she could hear her parents’s voices, even then.

Carl’s finger slowed, and the circle it traced diminished in circumference. It finally stopped in the middle of a small red square near the center of the page. The printing within the square was black, and the largest of the letters, at the top of the ad, spelled out ‘Sapphire Limousine Service’. This was the job he had chosen, just like that, and this was company that would hire him.

“Sapphire Limousine,” she said. “You’ll drive a limousine.”

“Yes,” he said.

Jean lifted her glass of tea toward Carl. He met her glass with his own, then snaked his forearm around hers, intertwining elbows. They drank their drinks. They were that much in love.