“Don’t say that,” I mumbled, burying my face in his shoulder. Either he hadn’t heard me or he didn’t want to, because all he did was kiss me again—and after we’d pulled apart, he stared at my mouth and grinned.
“I’ll be damned,” he marveled. “You do have a dimple.”
“What was that supposed to mean?”
“Trade secret,” he retorted cryptically. Then we turned off the lights and raced each other back to the courtroom before anybody had a chance to disbar me.
Someone’s been talking to him.
Superior Court of the State of New York in and for the County of Saratoga
JODY B. KESSLER,
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CASE NO. Fam. 81699
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Petitioner,
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FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1998
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10:00 A.M.
vs.
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ANNETTE KESSLER MUELLER,
)
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Respondent.
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_____________________
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HEARING ON PETITION FOR JOINT CUSTODY
The Honorable John J. Costanzo, Judge Presiding
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
Attorneys for Petitioner, Jody B. Kessler:
Craig S. McKenna, Esq., Charleen Webb, Esq.
Attorney for Respondent, Annette Mueller: Lawrence F. Dysart, Esq.
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BAILIFF:
Superior Court of the State of New York for the County of Saratoga, the Honorable John J. Costanzo presiding. All rise.
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THE COURT:
Be seated.
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BAILIFF:
In the matter of Kessler vs. Kessler, docket number 81699, Hearing on Petition for Joint Custody.
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THE COURT:
The Court would like to make two preliminary remarks. First, it’s difficult to argue against such unanimity of opinion. Second, if I deny this petition, Mr. McKenna will only file another one. Is that correct, counsel?
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MR. McKENNA:
It is, Your Honor. But not until after I nail the Pioneer Scouts to the—
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THE COURT:
That’s enough, counsel.
Pending Mr. Kessler’s relocation to Saratoga Springs and the commencement of his employment, joint custody is awarded to the father for a six-month trial period, at which time the Court will review the matter again.
Petition granted.
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MCKENNA & WEBB
A LAW PARTNERSHIP
118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866
MEMORANDUM
TO: Charleen
FROM: Craig
DATE: June 12, 1998
SUBJECT: Peace in Our Time
* * *
I appreciate the fact that you and Jody have moved from attorney-client privilege to fornicating on the kitchen floor, and further that he intends to pop the question momentarily (which is supposed to be a state secret, but if I didn’t spill the beans I wouldn’t be Craig any more—and I know you wouldn’t want that). But did he have to kiss me too? In front of the bailiff? What if somebody thinks I’m queer?
Clayton and I have made up. Sort of. Stay tuned. He didn’t exactly say he’ll dump me if I run for office, but the implication was left sitting there just the same. Now I know how Vicki Lester felt when she sang “The Man That Got Away.”
I’m still a little forlorn. Can you tell?
MCKENNA & WEBB
A LAW PARTNERSHIP
118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866
MEMORANDUM
TO: Vicki Lester
FROM: Charleen
DATE: June 12, 1998
SUBJECT: Men Who Get Away
* * *
Of course I can tell. Nobody does forlorn better than you do. That’s why I hit on you in college. Before I found out you were irredeemable.
Craig, at last count there were only sixteen constants left in this otherwise witless world, and—together—you and Clayton are one of them. Even when you stop speaking for three and a half years, you’re still inseparable. So if you’re worried about losing him, it’s way too late for that. You belong to each other in ways that no one else can touch. Learn to live with it.
Lunch is on me. We need to celebrate. You can practice dolorous on your own time.
Ch
P.S. Thanks for alerting me to my impending proposal. Please let me know when I’m pregnant too.
CLAYTON’S HARDWARE
serving Saratoga Springs since 1988
Honey—
I was reminded recently that you like snapdragons. Three dozen may be over the top, but when I say I’m sorry, I mean it.
I’ll be home in time for dinner, but we have a lot to talk about. One thing you need to know: whatever happens, I’ll back you all the way. You’re not the only one who’s grown up since Harvard.
I love you. Always.
C
Craig McKenna
Attorney Notes
When they write the history of the twentieth century, they’re going to have to title a whole chapter “What If?” What if Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas? What if Hitler had been stopped at Munich? What if the Titanic had hit the berg head-on? What if Bucky Fucking Dent had had diarrhea on October 2, 1978? What if Barbra Streisand’s parents had had a boy? What if Margo Channing had figured out that Eve was a louse right off the bat? What if Craig and Charleen hadn’t eaten lunch at the Sweet Shop on June 12, 1998, at exactly 12:43 P.M.? What if Craig hadn’t looked up from his chopped Italian salad exactly when he did?
“Oh, Craig,” snapped an exasperated Charleen, relieving me of two olives and an anchovy. “The man sent you three dozen snapdragons. Does it look like he wants to leave you?”
“Try telling that to my inner child,” I retorted grimly, going for my traditional Tony nomination (“Best Dramatic Performance Over Lunch”). “He’s a tougher sell than I am. He’s practically…he’s…he’s—” And that was when I spotted them. Right over Charleen’s left shoulder. The sparkly eyes I could never hide from—gazing directly into mine for the first time since we said goodbye to each other a life and a half ago. And even though I’d been expecting him to turn up any minute, it still seemed to take another pair of decades before we both stopped staring at each other long enough to stand.
Okay, Craig. One foot in front of the other. That’s the way it usually works. Do we talk first or hug first? Hug first. Who the hell needs words?
“How did you find me here?” I mumbled into his ear.
“Peabody’s Contemporary Criticism,” he mumbled back.
After he’d squeezed into our booth with us and turned Charleen’s pimentos upside down, we got a Reader’s Digest version of an odyssey that could only have been concocted by Smerko. Charleen, of course, was still a novitiate, so she couldn’t afford to miss a word—but having earned my Ph.D. in Travis twenty years earlier, I was able to patch it all together without even working up a sweat.
“But the Craig McKenna in Murfreesboro was an ichthyologist, so I knew that couldn’t be you…then I had an atomic anxiety attack when your mother answered the phone…but I didn’t think I really had the nerve to head for St. Louis until Alexander Hamilton convinced me…so I broke into her office by pretending I was a maid…and I found out that in Missouri they arraign people in the middle of the night…because she named her Buick Robert Mitchum…but I knew I’d need to assume a new identity after Neiman-Marcus put a hit on me…so when we got your answering machine and heard Clayton’s voice, my life ended for the third time that week…and the only thing I could think of was to ask him if he’
d build me a house…A.J. spied on you and found out stuff like you and Jody falling in love—by the way, congratulations…but when Clayton gave me a Tic Tac and told me about kissing you at Harvard, I knew I could never take you away from him…I mean, what if he became a priest and it was all my fault?…and that’s how I got here.”
By then Charleen and I were both punchy with laughter—not just because it isn’t something you hear every day, but because he was so serious about it. Only Travis could have gotten away with a story like that and still managed to keep his eyebrows furrowed.
“You were right,” mused Charleen reflectively as I led her to the door. “All this time, I’ve thought that the Craig McKenna I first met was just another lovesick brat who positively adored feeling sorry for himself.”
“Oh, I do,” I assured her eagerly.
“But Travis really was worth the broken heart,” she conceded, throwing down the gauntlet once and for all. Then she glanced back at Smerko (still organizing olives) and took the same kind of pause she generally draws just before delivering her closing argument to a jury. “Craig, pay attention,” she insisted, reaching for my hand. “You’ve got a lot of decisions to make and some of them are going to hurt—but for the first time in your life, there aren’t any wrong choices. Only right ones. God, you’re brave.”
It’s tough to say who hugged who first, but I think I beat her by a hair. And it wasn’t merely for what she’d just said, but for the past twenty years as well.
Travis and I found a run-down old gazebo in Saratoga Park and settled into a wrought-iron love seat so we could compare notes on the two or three things that had happened to us since that awful day at the airport. (“I started college, made trouble, met Clayton, turned into a lawyer, got this offer from the Democrats, and missed you. Your turn.” “I started college, found the sacrifice fly rule in The Federalist Papers, earned my teaching degree, broke up with twenty-seven boyfriends who all looked like you, got a $30,000 grant that I put on hold when I heard ‘Almost Like Being in Love’ again, and missed you back.”) Once that was out of the way, we spent the rest of the afternoon reliving what neither one of us had ever forgotten.
“Smerk, if you hadn’t fallen off that ladder and into my arms, we wouldn’t even be here now.”
“You really think that was an accident?”
“You mean it wasn’t?”
“Duh.”
“Remember when you nearly got us fired from the record store for grabbing my ass?”
“Look who’s talking. What about my birthday? We did it four times that night.”
“Three. That thing by the refrigerator didn’t count.”
“Like hell it didn’t.”
I also discovered that the absolutes upon which I’d constructed my entire life hadn’t changed a bit since our summer on West 92nd Street: he still straightens out his french fries, his shoelaces still point in the same direction, he still doesn’t eat his popcorn until the movie starts, and he still loves me with his whole heart.
“But you and Clayton belong together,” he said gently, doing his damndest to make me believe him. “It’ll work out because it’s meant to.”
“What about us?” I asked glumly, staring down at the four feet that used to play with each other so frivolously. “Didn’t you once tell me that it was you and me always?” I knew I was beginning to piss him off, because his forehead instantly went into overdrive.
“Craig, listen to me,” he blurted, taking my hands the way he last had on September 14, 1978. “For 2,829.9 miles, all I thought about was kissing your nose and chin-in-the-neck and tickling your belly button every two and a half minutes for the next eighteen months. But guess what? That’s the part we don’t need. Remember when I promised you that we’d share our lives with each other until the end?”
“So?” I replied, glancing up hopefully.
“So we’re back in a gazebo saying ‘I love you’ just like we used to. And we don’t even have to be naked to do it! See? Who could ask for anything more?”
Then he nailed me with his baby blues and won the round on the spot. Home free. When he quotes Ethel Merman, he means every word.
“Travis, I’m so mixed up,” I sighed miserably, squeezing his fingers so he couldn’t let go. “What do I do?”
“Look at me,” he said, grinning.
So I looked at him. And for the first time since I was 18, I found in his eyes the Craig I’d started out to be.
MCKENNA & WEBB
A LAW PARTNERSHIP
118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866
June 12, 1998
VIA FACSIMILE
Mr. Wayne Duvall
New York State Democratic Committee
151 State Street
Albany, New York 12207
Dear Wayne:
Sorry I’ve made you wait until the eleventh hour, but there were some personal matters that required resolving before I came to a decision.
I’m honored to accept the Committee’s nomination to run for State Assembly. Though I’m something of a rookie in this regard and may need a little help learning the ropes, I don’t intend to disappoint anybody who believes in me. I trust you already know that you’re getting a pain in the ass—and what I can promise you is more of the same.
Looking forward to an exciting campaign.
Best regards,
McKenna & Webb
Craig S. McKenna
cc: Noah Kessler
Six Years Later
14
Craig AND Travis
Congressional Record
NOTES
Rep. Craig McKenna (D-NY) is expected to introduce a sweeping federal hate crimes bill that would outlaw all acts of violence based on race, religion, ethnicity, age, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation. Last Tuesday, McKenna stood behind his proposed legislation in an informal debate with Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), televised nationally on CNN.
LITERARY DIGEST
Book Corner
Travis Puckett, author of last season’s surprise bestseller The Late, Great Game, has just completed his second nonfiction title for Random House. Here She Is, Boys! Here She Is, World! Here’s Rose! links the evolution of alternative sexuality in twentieth-century America with the career of musical comedy legend Ethel Merman, and is scheduled for release on January 16—Merman’s birthday.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF
Travis Puckett
A.J. and Robert Mitchum hadn’t given up on me after all. We made it back to L.A. in four and a half days, with only a few unscheduled stops along the way. (“What happened to the freeway? Where are we?” “Granada, Colorado. There was a Japanese American internment camp here that I thought we should—” “Another one?! Beaver, switch places with me. I’m driving.”) She and Gordo were married a year later and—pursuant to my instructions—began providing me with godchildren at the rate of one every twenty-seven months. Katie’s only 2, but she can already sing “Bushel and a Peck” all the way through without cheating, and Jessica—age 4—knows the entire score to How Now, Dow Jones. Uncle T takes no prisoners.
Andrea decided in the end not to assassinate me, so I got my grant back, paid off Neiman-Marcus, and finished the book. Before it was even Xeroxed, I’d already lucked into my agent, Gail—a centrifugal force with voice mail who lives in Brooklyn and talks faster than I do. (Our first lunch meeting at an Italian restaurant on West 44th Street exhausted every waiter within earshot.)
Craigy called me every night. Sometimes the issues were complicated—
“Smerko, my campaign is teetering on the verge of collapse. Are you busy?”
“Not for the next six hours. Is that going to be long enough?”
“Maybe.”
—and sometimes they were cakewalks.
“Trav, what was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me?”
“Getting your cock stuck in the vacuum cleaner hose.”
“Was that worse than the
M&M thing?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Naturally, he won the election in a landslide (who wouldn’t vote for him?), and by the time he’d convinced most of New York State that it needed hate crimes legislation on the floor, he already had his own cable modem on Capitol Hill. Washington hasn’t even begun to recover.
* * *
TO:
[email protected] FROM:
[email protected] Smerk, help me out here. This Matthew Shepard bill is already two days late, and what I’m trying to say is that I’ll push it through even if I have to stump all fifty states myself. What’s a good word for that?
* * *
* * *
TO:
[email protected] FROM:
[email protected] U-B-I-Q-U-I-T-O-U-S. Duh.