Seated at a table of former Ringler clerks and their spouses, I endure the usual struggle getting a vegetarian meal. The waiters in their cutaways look at me as if I'm a heathen. Who wouldn't want that baked chicken, rigid as a hockey puck? I have asked to sit next to Milan Dornich, who was my co-clerk for a year. When I split with Charlie, Mike Dornich was one of those guys who came to my mind; mild, angular, witty. With Malta one night, watching Nikki play with Clara, Malta's older daughter, I confessed these thoughts. Marta was alarmed. 'Jesus, Sonny,' she whispered, 'he's gay.' I realized instantly she was right, and felt amazed by myself, the way we forever see others through the lens
of our own needs. Always happy for one another's company, Mike and I whisper together, conspiring over the absurdity of the event. The $200 I spent for two tickets, one of them unused, is a mild extravagance. Many lawyers from our era have rounded the bend into plum law-firm partnerships. Daniella Grizzi, my immediate predecessor in Ringler's chambers, makes millions every year in her P.I. practice and is listed as a $10,000 patron of the event. Only Mike Dornich, now second in command at the State Appellate Defenders, and I remain in the public sector, the poor mice at a banquet of fat rats.
The dessert and speeches come together. It's a work night and everybody wants to be gone by 9:30. I kiss Mike and slip out before the crowd. In the vast, carpeted reception room where cocktails were served and name tags applied, I catch sight of Chief Judge Brendan Tuohey. Three highballs along, he is glad-handing and waving to other early escapees, as he returns from the men's room. He greets me in a mood of apres-work geniality, his nose red as sunburn from the lick of whiskey. He seems so happy I'm afraid he might even kiss me.
'Sonny, Sonny,' he says, 'how are you this evening?' He takes my hand and with the other grips me near the shoulder in an impressively neutral way. 'I've been meaning to give ya a call. So your trial is going on, Sonny?'
'Yes, Chief,' I answer, despairing, as ever, over the ludicrous salutation. Which tribe did I join? The judges all call each other by first names. Old-boy stuff. But I could never bring myself to 'Brendan' with this man.
'Seems to be quite a Donnybrook mess.'
'Yes, sir.'
He shakes his head in wonder at the tirelessness of human disputes. With a jolly smile, I beg off and hurry into the little corridor where the cloakroom and the Johns are secreted. In the full-length mirror, beside the coat check, I look myself over. Good enough. Black sheath and pearls. All those years of looking for a style of my own - not camp, not trite, not hippie or yippie or
yuppie or commercial - have resolved themselves in a sort of residue of fashion that says I don't have the time to fuss too much with hair or makeup, a look of having let go gratefully of a little of the heat and glory of the past.
Just as the young girl hands back my coat, I hear my name once more from behind. Tuohey again. Something slipped his mind. I have one of those instants of alarm the Chief Judge always provokes. Brendan Tuohey can turn a corridor, even a well-lit one, into a sinister enclave. He comes one step too close.
'Glad I caught you.' His voice is lowered and he speaks between his teeth. 'Happen to see Matt Galiakos tonight?'
I've nearly asked 'Who?' when I recollect: Galiakos is the state chair of the Democratic Farmers & Union Party. The people who count with Brendan Tuohey would no more fail to recognize Galiakos's name than John XXIII's.
'Interested in your trial,' says Tuohey. ‘I guess he'd been lookin at tonight's news. Loves Lloyd Eddgar. Course we all do.' Lloyd? I marvel. Lloyd! Tuohey's tongue actually appears as he wets his lips. 'Says to me, he says, "What's that gal doing? Don't she know we're in the same party? I thought she was a friend of his.'"
Tuohey laughs - oh, he's merry. He shivers in glee and is gone at once, his step spry with power and feigned delight, never again meeting my eye. Not because he's afraid of what he's done; he can tiptoe down the line as precisely as Nijinsky. Or because he hopes to mute his message, invisible and awful as the odor of plague. No, he wants to give me time. So I recognize it's in my interests to comply. He's some kind of genius, this man, with his narrow, crafty, wizened face. He couldn't have done this better if he'd staged rehearsals. All the phony confidentiality. We love Lloyd Eddgar. We're in the same party. Thought you were a friend of his. I've been at the law a dozen years - a clerk, a prosecutor, a judge - in each role wearing the borrowed mantle of public power, and have never faced anything like this. I stand here in the hall, alone in the bank of deep shadow between the sconces, weakened by rage.
Despite repeated tries, I can get only one arm into my coat. Half-frantic, I give up and ride down the escalator clutching the free sleeve against my side under my purse. But like the victim always, I feel cheapened and shamed. A few weeks ago, Brendan Tuohey was the one giving me all that malarkey: 'You're the right judge for this case, Sonny. Tricky situation, but it comes with the robes.' All the stuff I wanted to hear. And now he tells me the real reason: so I can smooth things out for my 'friend' Eddgar. For Godsake! I'm sick, as ill as if I'd stepped from a rocking boat, when I catch my reflection in the Parker's revolving doors and see the truth: I've compromised myself. I stayed on a case I should have given up, and now must stand still while a mangy alley cat like Brendan Tuohey rubs his flanks against me.
I rush across the street, high heels clacking on the glistening pavement of Mercer Avenue, which is rimed with salt and snow. By the time I reach the lobby of the Gresham, I'm actually shaking. I lay my hand over my chest and grip the pearls at my throat. In the old days, a judge who complied with a communication like this received a visit - and an envelope - a few weeks later from somebody connected, a lawyer, a councilman. Now discipline is a matter of negative reinforcement. Brendan Tuohey can send me to Housing Court, to listen to the endless lament of deadbeat tenants, or to Night Narcotics Court, so I'll never see Nikki during the week. Send me for the 'good of the court,' with no other explanation. That's what I'm supposed to think about, while he slides off to let Galiakos know the word has been delivered.
Can I even drive? I'm desperate, as so often, frantic for someone to talk to. I can't call Cy Ringler tonight. Sandy Stern! He'll know what to do. In fact, he already foresaw the very situation. There were a dozen friends, colleagues who were jealous when word leaked that Ray Horgan had called to sound me about the bench. Stern, alone among the persons whose advice I cared for, warned me against it.
'Pay no attention,' he told me. 'Dismiss what Raymond Horgan and his Reform Commission promise you.' Stern's soft face, with the tiny dark eyes surmounted in plump flesh, was suddenly reproachful, as I recited Horgan's commitments: A felony court assignment within two years. Complete independence. I must have sounded to him like Shirley Temple. Stern leaned across the linen cloth at the Matchbook, where we were eating, probably stifling the impulse to wag a finger. 'For today, Brendan Tuohey needs you and your spotless reputation. Two years from now the Commission will be an amusing part of history, one more toothless sop of briefly agitated public opinion, and they will force you to choose between your fine assignment or succumbing to their ways. You are not the first, Sonia. This, I remind you, is Kindle County, where great capacities of human invention have been set for a century on devising systems utterly invulnerable to reform.'
At the bank of telephones in an alcove, I probe the recesses of my purse. Nearby, the lobby of the Gresham, a towering space constructed in the Gilded Age, churns with sound and motion. Dramatic marble columns, the size of sequoias, offset by long curtains of green velvet, extend the entire height of the room. Five floors above, the ceiling is encrusted with gilt and cherubim and a poor Italianate mural of Venus and Cupid. On the marble shelf before the phones, I begin removing items. Kleenex. Lipstick. Where's the damned address book? When I was younger, I could have remembered the bloody number! Stern is not at home. I could call Marta, but she tends to show a tough, inflexible side on matters like this. She'll badger me to report it. To whom, for Godsake? And how do I keep these events f
rom turning against me? Tuohey is too cagey to catch. He'll change a word or two and portray his remarks as innocuous and me as hypersensitive and unfit. Within a week, his minions will be clamoring for my resignation.
And then I realize that Seth is staying here, in this hotel. Seth! The thought of him - reliable, open, happy to help - is an inspiration. 'Mr Weissman,' I tell the operator when I move down
two bays to the house phone. There is no Weissman. 'Frain,' I say.
It's rung twice, when I suddenly slam the handset down. Seth? I think. Am I crazy? Tell Seth? Hobie's friend? I lay my fingertips, bloodless, frigid, against my forehead. Leaning over the small shelf beneath the house phones, awaiting my composure, I catch, incongruously, a sudden pleasant scent of my own perfume. If I phone Stern's office, I'll get his service. A criminal defense lawyer is like a doctor, always on call, available for midnight bailings, visits to a crime scene. They'll locate him. He'll remonstrate mildly, say he told me so, then figure out what to do.
And then - naturally, isn't that life? - I spot Seth across the lobby. He's dressed casually, in the white dress shirt he wore to court and a pair of khakis. He has magazines in one hand and, I think, a candy bar. Observed from one hundred feet, he appears humble and appealing: a tall, slender man, blondish, bald, pleasant-looking. He is chatting with a desk clerk. After a week and a half in the hotel, he has acquaintances. He's being himself, wholesome and engaging. He laughs, and then, by whatever magic there is in this, feels the weight of my glance from a distance and actually jolts a bit at the sight of me. He comes my way so quickly that he's gone several yards before he recollects the clerk, to whom he tosses a departing wave. Arriving in front of me, he is perfectly still.
'Hi,' I answer. ‘I was at a dinner here. Across the street actually.'
'Jeez, you look fantastic' He does a real routine, mouth open, ending by quickly touching his heart. As if makeup and hair spray turned me into Helen of Troy. I manage an expression of pleasant tolerance.
'I'm not feeling fantastic at the moment. I had something really, really rotten happen to me just now.'
Beneath the fair brows, his greenish eyes search me. I hold up my hand. It quakes involuntarily, as if I'd been struck by palsy. The display nonpluses us both.
'You want a drink?'
God, do I! We set off together for the saloon across the lobby
and actually reach its swinging doors. Mingled voices and the jazz piano well out of the dark room. Before my eyes adjust, I can make out only a large illuminated aquarium behind the bar, through which angel fish and other bright tropical creatures travel amid the bubbles. A quarter of the lawyers in Kindle County will be in here shortly, pausing for a nightcap before they ride up the parking elevator to collect their cars. Brendan Tuohey, who has watered himself in this place for years, is among the likely arrivals. Not the company I want to keep right now.
'Forget it,' I say. 'Bad idea.'
'What?'
'Appearances,' I answer.
'So come upstairs. We'll raid the mini-bar in my room. Come on.'
When I issue a prim look, he makes a face. 'Don't be ridiculous.' With my elbow in hand, he steers me into the old gilded elevator, a gorgeous cage of brass and mirrors. 'So what happened?' he asks as we are rising.
‘I don't know, Seth,' I answer, which is almost true. 'I had an unpleasant encounter with another judge. Something about this case.'
'Uh-oh.' His mouth narrows in a discreet pucker and he says no more until we reach his rooms. There, I fall into a barrel chair with a cane backing which is just inside the door. Seth's suite is the real thing, a relic of the grand era when suites were the refuge of the rich and not a promotional toy, offered like a free breakfast. There are mock-heirloom pieces with Queen Anne feet and satin-sheened wallpaper with a classic green stripe. Seth is at home here. He has a laptop computer open on the desk in the corner and the walnut doors of the armoire, which holds the mini-bar where he's bending, have been thrown back, revealing the dead eye of the TV. Newspapers from many different cities litter the room. In the bedroom, I can see a four-poster with those carved wooden pineapples atop the posts. Another pair of khakis has been heaved over one of them.
‘I just need to settle down for a second.' I bolt half the Chardonnay he gives me.
'You don't want to talk about this, right?'
‘I shouldn't, Seth. I just need some company. Somebody passed a remark about Eddgar. It's smarter not to get into it.'
'Yeah,' says Seth, 'that he belongs in the seventh circle of hell, right?' He laughs bitterly. 'God, I despise him. What a heinous creep he is.'
I do not answer, do not dare. What am I supposed to do for Eddgar? I wonder suddenly. I don't even know. A momentary fear takes hold that I might conform to Tuohey's wishes by accident. Considering that prospect, I emit a brief moan. But I have no choices now. With a few minutes to absorb all this, I can see that there's no backpedaling, no sidesteps. The only direction to go is forward. I have to finish as well as I can what I should never have started. As I cycle through these calculations, Seth watches, his eyes watery with uncertainty. I can't talk to him about this, I realize. Not him or anybody else. That's the only true thing Tuohey said to me. 'Comes with the robes.' It's my problem. Alone.
'I'm going to go, Seth.'
'Wow,' he says. 'Is this the Guinness record for brief visits?'
‘I just needed a second. I appreciate your being the port in the storm.' I stand, taking hold of the ornate brass doorknob. I drain the rest of the wine. 'Really,' I add. 'Thanks.'
'Just a second,' he says, 'I'll kiss you good night.' He makes no move to rise. He's in a wooden armchair, upholstered in satin to match the wallpaper, laughing at me, at both of us actually.
‘I think the last time will hold me for a while.'
'Well, that'll make a fella feel like Prince Charming.'
'Oh, don't do your wounded thing, Seth.'
'No, I'm not wounded.' He turns to the glass table beside him and pours himself more wine. 'By the time I got back here, I actually was pretty encouraged. You wanna know why?'
A person - a woman - who was going to remain aloof or at least unentangled would say goodbye right now. I know that, but I'm curious, of course. He takes a sip to steady himself and I feel myself make a measured nod.
'When I thought about it,' he says, 'really considered everything, I wasn't sure you ever found anybody better. You know, than me.'
In shock, I laugh, a shot of sound that rebounds off the grand old walls. The gall or something! And he means it. 'You don't understand,' he says.
'I don't. I certainly don't. I mean, Seth, really, some of the stuff you come out with.' 'Look,' he says.
'No, you look,' I say, feeling an intense flare of the anger that I suddenly see I've been holding at bay. 'I'm forty-seven years old. And I'm like you. I'm unhappy just like you are, Seth. I don't always enjoy the way my life turned out. I look back and wonder what happened to all the promise, just like you do. I envy people who are young and envision the future as something great. You're not the only one with angst. I'm tired of fucking up. I'm tired of making the same mistakes. At the worst moments, I'm sick of myself. And this, us, this isn't kidding around. And I'm running out of time for stupid things. I thought all weekend about how this would turn out and I can just see it: "Auld lang syne" and "Isn't it thrilling"; then, "Hey, I have a life." '
'Sonny.'
‘it's stupid,' I repeat.
it's not' He puts down his glass and stands to calm me. i mean, I'm glad you're here. But you looked pretty damned happy to see me a minute ago.'
'Yes, I was relieved. I needed - need-a friend. But that doesn't mean it's not dumb to retread a childhood love affair.'
it wasn't childhood,' he answers at once, 'and it's not dumb. One thing I've learned: I will not treat the rest of my life like it's meaningless, just because it's past.' In conviction, he briefly makes a fist, then takes a step forward and grips both of my shoulders. 'Look. I wan
t you to take a deep breath. Okay? You know me. I'm maybe a quarter less crazy than I used to be. But I'm the same sincere dope. I think I know what I'm doing. I think I'm taking stock. Some things have mattered more than others. Some people have mattered more. You can fuck up with me like you can with anybody else. And maybe you will. But you're playing with a bigger bankroll if you get in the game with me. I knew Zora. I saw that whole scene. I saw your collection of black peasant blouses, so you wouldn't have to worry about what to wear, and how scared you'd get when you were afraid your skin was going to break out. And I've seen what you've accomplished off that start, which is a hell of a lot. There are maybe three billion men on this planet. Some are smarter. Some are better-looking. And most of them have more hair. But I've got one advantage over every single one of them: I know how great you are. And I'm not sure you've ever met another man who does.'
He takes the wine glass, which unconsciously I've continued holding, and gazes at me in a fixed way. The Look. All mating primates, I learned once, utilize this dilated, dead-on stare.
'You know what happens now?' he asks.
'You kiss me good night?'
'Not good night,' he says.
When he leans down, a trace of exasperated sound escapes me. But I do not resist. That great creature hunger begins to stir. In the cascades of longing, I will lose track of myself. And who will be here afterwards? I wonder. Who?
So, it happens. Outside, fresh snow clings to the city streets and within the bedroom of the suite the exterior light is softly refracted so the air seems enhanced by the glow, which includes darker, purplish shades from the lee end of the visible spectrum. Between us, it is surprisingly smooth. Memory, knowledge - the past brings its comforts. In the living room, urgently embracing, we shed our clothes. Some wary, calculating portion of me continues to stand guard, but I'm a slave now to sensation. Even that awful moment, the one I have numbed myself to with so many half-conscious mental rehearsals, when my bra slides off and the lopsided work of modern surgery is disclosed, sluices by in the currents of desire. This is one promise Seth has kept: he is not afraid, not of anything about me, or that the present is not the past. God, sex is great! The body made servant to the spirit. His tongue is everywhere. Finally, he bodies me down on the four-poster, my feet still on the floor, and stands before me, erect, pointing north by northwest, as he fiddles with the condom wrapping. Then the slow opening, enveloping, the pressure and pleasure of merger.