The waiting room was the specific, neutral beige of a room designed to offense nobody.
Nathan sat in the chair with his coat in his lap and his hands folded on top of it and looked at the wall opposite — a framed print of something soft and botanical, the kind of art chosen by committee for its complete inoffensiveness — and felt the specific, ambient wrongness of being here. Not the wrongness of a doctor's office in general. The particular wrongness of this waiting room, this Wednesday morning, the chair beside him containing Maryanne and three feet of air between them that carried more weight than the room's tasteful background music was equipped to address.
They had not spoken in the car.
This had been, he suspected, a mutual and unspoken agreement — the specific, practical ceasefire
