“You need to stay calm. I’m sure everything will turn out all right. I would tell you that it’s in God’s hands, but I know what you’d say.”
“Girls, your coffee’s getting cold!” calls my mother.
“She’s waiting for us,” Angie says. “And I still have to go to the bathroom.”
I get up, reluctantly. “I wish we could get time to talk, Ange. We never talk. I don’t even know how you’re doing. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, with a pat smile, the same smile you’d give to a bank teller.
“Really?”
“Really. Now go. I have to pee.” She ushers me out the door. “I’ll pray for you,” she calls from inside.
“Terrific,” I mumble, walking down the stairs to a darkened living room. The double-header is over, and my father is standing in front of the television watching the Phillies leave the field. Red, blue, and green lights flicker across his face in the dark. Despite the carnival on his features, I can see he’s dejected. “They lose again, Pop?”
He doesn’t hear me.
“They lose, Pop?” I shout.
He nods and turns off the ancient television with a sigh. It makes a small electrical crackle; then the room falls oddly silent. I hadn’t realized how loud the volume was. He yanks the chattery pull chain on the floor lamp and the room lights up instantly, very bright. They must have a zillion-watt bulb in the lamp; the parchment shade is brown around the middle. I’m about to say something when I remember it might be because of my mother’s eyesight.
“You want some cannoli, honey?” my father asks tenderly. He throws an arm around my shoulder.
“You got the chocolate chip, don’t you? ’Cause if you don’t, I’m leaving. I’ve had it with the service at this place.”
“What kinda father would I be that I don’t have the chocolate chip? Huh?” He gives me a squeeze and we walk into the kitchen together.
My mother clucks about the cold coffee as we sit down, and Angie joins us at the table. My father’s soft shoulders slump over his coffee. We carry on the conversation around him, and my mother chatters anxiously through dessert. Something’s wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is. Angie senses it too, because after my father declines a cannoli for the second time, she gives me a discreet nudge.
“Pop,” I say, “Have a cannoli. I’m eating alone here.”
He doesn’t even look up. I don’t know if he doesn’t hear me or what. Angie and I exchange glances.
“Pop!” Angie shouts. “You okay?”
My mother touches my hand. “Let him be. He’s just tired.”
My father looks up, and his milky brown eyes are wet. He squeezes them with two calloused fingers.
My mother deftly passes him a napkin. “Isn’t that right, Matty? You’re tired?”
“Ah, yeah. I’m tired.” He nods.
“You’re leading the witness, Ma,” I say.
She waves me off like an annoying fly. “Your father and I were talking about Frank Rizzo last night. Remember, it was this time of year, Rizzo had the heart attack. It’s a sin. He coulda been mayor again.”
My father seems lost in thought. He says, half to himself, “So sudden. So young. We couldn’t prepare.”
“It’s a sin,” repeats my mother, rubbing his back. With her lipstick all gone, her lips look bloodless.
“Pop, Rizzo was almost eighty,” I say, but Angie’s look silences me. Her eyes tell me who they’re grieving for. The one who loved percolated coffee, the Phillies, and even an occasional cigar — Mike. I feel a stab of pain inside; I wonder when this will stop happening. I rise stiffly. “I better get going. It’s a school night.”
My parents huddle together at the table, looking frozen and small.
Angie clears her throat. “Me too. I have to change back.”
I walk to the screen door with its silly scrollwork D, looking out into the cool, foggy night. I remember nights like this from when I was little. The neighbors would sit out in beach chairs, the women gossiping in Italian and the men playing mora. Angie and I would sit on the marble stoop in our matching pajamas like twin mascots. It was a long time ago.
I wish I could feel that air again.
I open the screen door and walk down the front steps onto the sidewalk. The air is chilled from the fog, which hangs as low as the thick silver stanchions put in to thwart parking on the sidewalk. A dumb idea — all it does is force people to double-park on the main streets. Like my father says, in South Philly the cars are bigger than the houses.
Suddenly a powerful car barrels by, driving much too fast for this narrow street. It comes so near the curb in front of me that I feel a cold chill in its wake.
“Hey, buddy!” I shout after him, then do a double-take. It looks just like the car from last night.
I run into the middle of the street, squinting in the darkness. I catch sight of the car’s flame-red taillights as it turns right at the top of the street and disappears into the dark. My father comes out of the house, followed by my mother.
“Pop! Did you see that car? What kind of car was that? Was that an Oldsmobile?”
“What?” He cups a hand behind his ear, making a lumpy silhouette in front of the screen door.
“Ma! Did you see that car?”
“What car?” she hollers, from behind her bullet-proof glasses.
Behind them both, at a distance, is Angie.
5
“I would say this is Evil mail, wouldn’t you?” Brent asks grimly. He holds up a piece of white paper that reads:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR
PARTNERSHIP, MARY
The letters are typed in capitals. It looks computer-generated, like the laser printers we use at Stalling. State-of-the-art. The paper is smooth. The note is unsigned.
I read it again. “Weird.”
“Very.”
“It’s not a nice note, is it?”
“No.” Brent’s face looks tight.
“Who do you think it’s from?”
“I have no idea. There’s no return address, either.”
“Let me see.” I take the envelope, a plain white business envelope, and flip it over. On the front is my name and Stalling’s address in capital letters. Also laser-printed. The stamp is a tiny American flag. “I don’t understand.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“I think somebody’s jealous of you, that’s what I think. The news about your motion is all over the department. Everybody knows you won before Bitterman. It was a big deal for an associate. I even heard it in the secretaries’ lunchroom, so you know the lawyers are talking about it.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You’re a star, kid. Your enemies will be comin’ out of the woodwork now. It just proves my theory.”
“What theory?”
“I never told you my theory?”
“You told me your cancellation theory, about how assholes marry each other. You never told me your theory about hate mail.”
“Well. My theory is that you find out who your true friends are when something good happens to you, not when something bad happens to you. Everybody loves you when something bad happens to you. Then you’re easy to love.”
“That’s sick, Brent.”
“But true. And this is a good example. There must be somebody who you think is your friend, but who isn’t really. Not a true friend. They’re jealous as shit of you, secretly competing with you. Whoever it is, they smile in your face.”
His words make me uneasy. “Who?”
“Think about it. Who’s competing with you right now to make partner? Judy and Ned. We know it can’t be Judy, so that leaves Ned. I never liked that guy.” He looks bitter.
My thoughts race ahead. Is the note connected to the car? To the phone calls? Is it one person or more than one? Holy Christ. I hand Brent the envelope. I don’t even want it in my hand.
It’s getting worse, says the Mike-voice. First the calls. Then the car. Now
a note.
“Mary? You okay?”
I plop down into my chair. “I think this has something to do with the phone calls.”
“Mystery Man?”
“Brent, something’s the matter.”
“What?”
“Close the door, okay?”
“Mare, what’s going on?” He shuts the door and sinks into one of the chairs opposite my desk.
“I think somebody might be watching me. Following me.”
“What?” His eyes widen.
I tell Brent about the car on my street and then at my parents’ house. He barely lets me finish before he has a conniption. “You have to call the cops! Right this instant!” He points to the telephone on my desk. “What are you waiting for?”
“I can’t do that. I’m not even sure about the car. Maybe I’m imagining—”
“Mary, you’re not imagining this!” He waves the note in the air like a warning flag.
“I can’t just call the cops. Can you imagine? Cops asking everyone in the department — even partners — about me? That would be terrific right now, right before the election.”
“Mare, what’s the matter with you? Someone is stalking you and you’re worried about making partner?”
“They’re not stalking me, you don’t have to make it sound like that.”
At that moment, my telephone rings and we exchange uneasy looks. Brent takes charge. “Let Lucinda get it. And they are stalking you. What do you think it’s called when someone follows you around?”
The phone rings again, and Brent looks at it angrily. “Fuck! Can’t she get off her ass for once? I pick up for her!”
The phone rings a third time.
I reach for it, but Brent heads me off. “No, let me. If it’s that asshole, I’m gonna scream my fucking head off.” He snatches up the receiver. “Ms. DiNunzio’s office,” he says, in a crisp telephone tenor. Then his face blanches. “Okay. Right now.” He nods, hanging up.
“What?”
“Berkowitz wants to see you.”
“Why? Is something the matter? Was that him?”
“It was Delia. She said he wants to see you right away.”
“Great. This is all I need.” I dig in my purse for my compact and check my reflection in its round mirror. A circle of dirty-blond hair, shoulder length. A circle of dark brown eye, an extended-wear contact lens afloat on its cornea. A circle of whitish teeth, straightened into Chiclets by orthodonture paid for in installments. Mike used to say I was pretty, but I don’t feel pretty today.
“What are you doing? Get going! You’re worse than Jack with that mirror,” Brent says. Jack is his lover of five years, a bartender at Mr. Bill’s, a gay bar on Locust Street. Judy calls him Jack Off, but Brent claims he thought of it first. “Go, girl, you’ll be late!”
Berkowitz’s corner office is on Pride, and Delia’s desk blocks its entrance like a walnut barricade. She types as she listens to the teaching of Chairman Berkowitz through dictating earphones. Even the ugly headset doesn’t mar her good looks. Lustrous red hair, a perfect nose, the sexiest pout in legal history. Brent is right. Delia is a stone fox.
“Hi, Delia.”
“I’m busy.” She doesn’t look up but continues to hit the keys of her word processor with spiky acrylic nails. Click-click-click-click. It sounds like a hail on a rooftop. Too bad it will look like jciywegwebcniquywgxnmai. I know, I’ve seen her work.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“He’s in there.” Click-click-click. Oreuhbalkejeopn?
“I’ll just go in, then.”
“Suit yourself.”
This is even more attitude than I’m used to from Delia; I wonder what’s bothering her. I walk to the open doorway of Berkowitz’s office, but his brawny back is to the door. A tailored English suit strains at its shoulder seams as Berkowitz hunches over. The only time Burberrys has dressed a major appliance.
“Go in already!” snaps Delia.
The command startles me into the sanctum sanctorum. Berkowitz is on the telephone and doesn’t turn around. I walk the three city blocks to his desk and sit down in a massive leather wing chair. The decor here screams Street Kid Who Made God — I mean, Good. The desk is a baroque French antique with a surface that was polished by a Zamboni. The high-backed desk chair could have belonged to the Sun King. Photographs of Berkowitz’s first, second, and third sets of children adorn curly-legged mahogany end tables. I feel like a scullery maid at Versailles.
“I don’t care, Lloyd! I don’t give one flying fuck!” Berkowitz bellows into the telephone, as he swivels around in his chair. “You tell that little bastard if he thinks he’s going to fuck me, he has another thing coming! We can take his fucking little pisher of a firm, and we will!” Berkowitz is so engrossed in making what constitutes Terroristic Threats under the Pennsylvania Crimes Code that he’s oblivious to me altogether. This is why Judy calls him Jerkowitz, but I think she’s being unfair. Berkowitz grew up in tough West Philly and made it to the peaky-peak on sheer brainpower and force of will. If your Fortune 500 Company is in deep shit, he’s one of the few lawyers in the country who can save your sorry ass. Guaranteed. But not in writing.
“Where the fuck does he get off? I told him what the agenda was, and he tries to make a fool out of me! He’ll be offa this committee so goddamn fast it’ll make his head spin!” Berkowitz is yelling at one of his apostles on the Rules Committee, which he chairs. It’s a twelve-man panel of federal judges and prominent litigators that meets at our offices to propose changes in federal court rules. If something didn’t go well at a recent meeting, heads will roll, and balls too. Everything rolling, off down the hall.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I am calm!… No! No! No! You deal with him then!”
Berkowitz slams down the telephone receiver. The glaze in his eyes tells me he’s back on Girard Avenue, decades ago, fighting off the punks who want a peek at his foreskin. Or lack thereof.
Berkowitz shakes his head, his face still florid. “Can you believe this fucking guy? Can you fucking believe this guy?”
I gather the question is rhetorical and say nothing.
He rubs his eyes irritably and leans back in his chair. His look says, Heavy is the head that wears the crown. “You want my job, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary?”
“What?”
“I’m asking you. You want it?” He isn’t smiling.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to be here someday? Run the department, head the committees? When I was your age, I wanted to be me so bad I was on fire.” He gazes out of a massive window at the best view in the city. From his vantage point, you can see all the way to the Delaware River and the snaky black border it makes between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. An occasional tourist ferry travels in slow motion under the Ben Franklin Bridge. We ain’t the port of call we used to be.
“I would have killed to be me,” Berkowitz says absently. Suddenly he snatches a pack of Marlboros from his desk and lights one up, belching out a puff of smoke so thick it looks like the Industrial Revolution took place in his office. I pretend the smoke doesn’t bother me, which it does, mightily. I try not to breathe.
“But you’re not interested in this shit and neither am I. You’re wondering why I called you up here.” He takes a slow drag on the cigarette and squints at me through the smoke.
I nod, yes.
“Two reasons. One: That was a helluva result you got on the motion before Bitterman. I saw him at the Rules Committee meeting” — at this he winces — “and he told me you had great potential.”
“Uh… thank you.”
“He’s an ugly bastard, isn’t he?”
I laugh.
“Two: Harbison’s GC is sending me a new case. You know how they like to spread their business around, get all the firms competing with each other. They sent the case to Masterson originally, but the GC thinks we can do a better job. We can, right?”
“Right.” So we stole a case from Masterson, Moss
& Dunbar, the firm at the apex of the holy trinity. We must have snaked them with our win before Bitter Man and some pillow talk by Berkowitz. He doesn’t say these things, but I don’t need a crib sheet to translate Latin One.
“It’s another age discrimination case. They demoted a CFO, so it’s very high-profile. And they won’t settle. They want to crush the bastard.” Berkowitz blows an enormous cloud of smoke upward, which is something he does at meetings when he thinks he’s being considerate. “I’m assigning the case to you, Mary Mary. You make all the calls, just be sure you blind-copy me on the correspondence. I don’t want to look like a smacked ass if the GC calls. There’s a pretrial conference scheduled for today at three-thirty. It’s your baby. Any questions?” He sucks on the cigarette throttled between his thick knuckles. Its red tip flashes on like a stoplight.
“And… Martin?”
“Forget Martin!” he says, breathing smoke. “You don’t need Martin, do you?”
“No, I just… I thought he handled your matters.”
“Well, he doesn’t. I told him the other day. He’s fine with it. You want this case or don’t you?”
“I do. I do.”
“Good. Then we’re married.” He erupts into laughter.
I laugh too, with relief and wonder.
“Now get out of my office. Can’t you see I’m a busy man?”
I laugh again, but the meeting is over. I get up to leave.
“By the way, Ned Waters was in here bitching today. He heard that only two of you will be making partner in June. You hear anything like that, Mary, Queen of Scots?”
“No,” I lie.
“Fine,” he replies, knowing I’m lying. “It’s not true.”
“Good,” I reply, knowing he’s lying.
As I leave his office, I see that Delia’s headset is off, resting at the base of her neck like a cheap choker. As I walk by, she’s sipping tea in a genteel way from a white china cup. An affectation she’s picked up from Berkowitz, who likes to stub out his Marlboro in the saucer.
“See you later, Delia.”