Defense, p.18
Defense, page 18
She shook her head and started to laugh as the water flew in all directions. “I tried to call,” she said, still laughing.
“That was you?” I asked. “Well, what?”
“Here,” she said as she pulled open the trenchcoat she had wrapped around her. She handed me a thick file folder. “It’s the Rothstein file. I put it in my briefcase when we left court. I forgot to give it to you. I thought you might wonder where it was and start looking for it.”
“Thanks, but you didn’t have to,” I started to say as the lights came back on.
“I wanted to,” she said quietly. “Oh, God!” she cried. “Look what I’m doing to your floor!”
She was standing in a pool of water. “Let me get you a towel. You need to get out of those clothes.”
I led her through the hallway, past the staircase, to the guest room at the back. “There are plenty of towels in here,” I said, opening the door to the adjoining bathroom.
I came back a few moments later, carrying a white terry-cloth robe. The bedroom door was open and I could hear the shower running. I laid the robe on top of the four-poster bed and left.
When she found me in the living room I had fixed myself a scotch and water and started Gould again from the beginning. “I love that,” she said, adjusting the towel she had wrapped around her hair. The robe hung down to her ankles. “What is it?”
She had never heard of Glenn Gould, and I felt a twinge of disappointment. But I remembered how much older I was than she was now the first time I had heard the Goldberg Variations.
At first she did not want anything to drink, but then she changed her mind and had a glass of wine. She sat in a wingback chair, her legs tucked underneath her, and looked around. “You don’t spend much time here, do you?” she asked.
Sitting at the end of the sofa closest to her, holding my drink in both hands, I looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Everything is too perfect. You probably paid some decorator a fortune, didn’t you?” she asked with a teasing grin.
I refused to say a word. “You did, didn’t you? And I’ll bet you hate it, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t hate it,” I protested lamely. “Well,” I relented, “I don’t exactly like it.” I glanced around as if I were seeing it for the first time. “I probably should just rope it off, shouldn’t I?”
“You should probably furnish it the way you want, instead of the way someone else thinks you should.”
“I don’t have that kind of eye,” I explained. “I can’t tell what something is going to look like before I actually see it. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
She reached over and touched my wrist. “I’ll help, if you like. It might be fun.”
Alexandra spent the night in the guest room, and while she slept I lay awake upstairs thinking about her and how comfortable she made me feel. Sometime after two o’clock I went downstairs. Her door was not quite closed. The storm had passed and the night sky was clear. She was lying on her side, one arm flung across the pillow, the covers down around her ankles. As quietly as I could, I pulled the blanket back over her shoulders and then closed the door behind me.
The next morning she came into the kitchen just as I was finishing my coffee. “You’re leaving?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d even be up. What time is it?”
“Six fifteen,” I said as I picked up my briefcase. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“Can’t. Have to go home, then I have to go to work.”
I had my hand on the door. “There’s a party this Saturday night. At Leopold Rifkin’s. It’s something he does once a year. I never miss it. Would you like to go?”
She came up to me and touched the side of my face. “I’d love to,” she said softly.
* * *
Alexandra lived less than a mile from the heart of town on the top floor of a weathered Victorian house that sat on the side of a windswept hill above the Columbia River. Down below black freighters with rust-colored hulls waited at anchor for their turn at the loading docks that lined the northern shore.
I stood on the covered front porch and pushed the white button next to her name. A moment later a buzzer sounded. I pushed open the frosted-glass front door and made my way up the heavily carpeted staircase to her apartment. The door was open and I stepped inside. A deep red Kerman rug was spread over the living room floor. An antique armoire occupied the corner closest to the door. There was a marble fireplace in the wall to the left. In front of it, two matching blue- and cream-striped sofas faced each other across a dark, rectangular coffee table. At the far end of the room, an enormous willow rocking chair, large enough to curl up in, sat in a bay window that looked out toward the river that flowed westward to the sea.
“It’s not so nice as your place,” said Alexandra from a doorway off to the side, “but it’s nice enough.” Wearing a silk dressing gown, she was fastening an earring.
“It’s very nice,” I said, “especially what you’ve done with it.”
She came toward me, put her hand on my arm, and laughed softly. “Wait till you see the bedroom.”
“Am I going to see the bedroom?”
“You can see everything, but first you’re going to see the kitchen.”
Everything was white. Built into the wall, the oven and the microwave were white. The stove was white. The refrigerator, the tile countertop, the dishwasher, the sink, the cabinets, all were the same uniform shiny color. Even the hardwood floor had been painted a hard, gleaming white.
“I’m afraid my taste is, shall we say, eclectic? With that dilapidated fireplace in the living room, and the high, beamed ceiling and that wonderful, old bay window, I decided to do everything with my mélange of secondhand furniture and a few refurbished antiques. But in the kitchen,” she explained with the eager excitement of a child showing off a new toy, “I wanted everything modern.”
She took hold of my arm, and with her free hand pointed in every direction. “I love all these new appliances with all the strange things they can do. Of course I don’t really know how to make them do half the things they’re supposed to be able to do,” she chattered. “I think the refrigerator can make coffee, or the microwave can call your Aunt Tilly in Dubuque and sing her ‘Happy Birthday,’ or something like that,” she rattled on.
Before I could say anything, she took me by the hand and led me out of the kitchen. The bedroom, like the living room, had a marble fireplace. Just to the side of it was a dark green upholstered chair. A black bearskin rug, glimmering in the lamplight, covered the floor in front. Directly opposite was what she proudly announced was her prize possession, a four-poster bed, so high that you almost had to step up to get onto it. The posts were nearly seven feet tall and as wide as a twelve-inch log. The wood surface was corrugated and stained ebony black. Yards of sheer white gauze were draped over the top and down the sides. A half dozen overstuffed pillows were heaped on top of each other.
Hand on her hip, one foot crossed over the other, Alexandra leaned her elbow against my shoulder and cocked her head. “You know what I like to do in bed?” she asked, her eyes opened wide and laughter edging into her voice. “I like to pretend I’m the one they picked to give to King Kong! You remember the movie? The natives have to give a woman to that big gorilla. Remember?” She looked at me with a devilish grin. “So sometimes at night I get naked and wait for King Kong to come crashing through the wall.”
“You do what!?” I howled. I was shocked. I felt my face turn red, and I tried not to let it show. “Well, the walls seems to be intact. I hope you’re not too disappointed.”
Alexandra fought back a smile. “No,” she said slowly. “But I do wish he would come through the wall—just once—instead of using the door like everyone else. What fun is sex if it’s always so civilized?
“Now,” she ordered, “why don’t you get out of here, so I can get dressed?”
* * *
We were among the last to arrive at Rifkin’s party, and as soon as we walked in it was as if everyone, without knowing it, had been waiting for Alexandra. She stood in the middle of the crowded living room, her face gleaming in the light, burnished by the faces around her which seemed to exist only to supply background and perspective. Other women were attractive, but no one managed to make it seem so completely unimportant. She looked at you with open, eager eyes, and you saw on her soft mouth the beginnings of the laughter that was always waiting. You knew with certainty that she thought you were one of the most interesting people she had ever known, and you felt more at ease with yourself than you had ever felt before. The effect was instinctive, immediate. Women sensed the absence of vanity and, freed of envy, lost themselves in admiration; men understood that she would give you everything except herself, and if they were old enough, found themselves wishing they had a daughter just like her.
“I think you’ve met your match,” Alma Woolner whispered as we were leaving.
“Match, hell,” Horace roared. “Look at him! He’s fallen so hard he may never get up! No wonder you decided not to come with us.”
“It isn’t true,” I protested, trying to suppress a stupid grin that was stretching my face into strange contortions. “We’re just good friends.”
* * *
“Well, you didn’t lie,” Alexandra said later when I told her what Horace had said. “We are good friends. I mean, I hope we’re good friends. We are, aren’t we?”
We were sitting across a table in the corner of a deserted downtown coffee shop. I did not want to take her home. I did not want the night to end. With my back leaning against the wall and one leg draped over the chair next to me, I watched a wistful smile play on her mouth, a mouth that was a little too wide to be perfect and just different enough to be unforgettable.
“Are you thinking about how you stole the show back there?” I asked, nodding in what I could only guess was the general direction of Leopold Rifkin’s home. “They’ll be talking about you for months.” My eyes darted from side to side. “The phones will be ringing off the hook. ‘Who was that woman? Where did that lucky son of a bitch Antonelli find her?’”
“Quit teasing,” she said, dismissing it out of hand. “I wasn’t thinking about the party. I was thinking about that time—not too long after we began to work together on the Rothstein case—when you asked me if I had ever been married. Do you remember?”
“You said you didn’t think you ever would.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “You were surprised. No, not surprised,” she added immediately. “It was something else.” She thought for a moment. “You disapproved.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes,” she interjected. She bent forward and held my wrist down on the table as if she wanted to stop all forms of resistance. “You did. You disapproved. And what I want to know is, why? Why do you think there is something wrong with a woman who doesn’t want to get married? You don’t think there’s anything wrong with a man who doesn’t marry.”
Slipping my wrist out of her fingers, I folded my arms across my chest and dropped my head down.
“What?”
I kept staring, watching her, until she had to ask again.
“What?” she asked, bending even closer. “What is it? Tell me,” she insisted, poking at my shoulder.
“I never said I didn’t want to get married.” I brought my head up until it was resting against the wall behind me. “I’d marry you.”
There, in a brightly lit coffee shop at half past two on a Sunday morning, Alexandra Macaulay did something I had not seen a woman do in years. She blushed.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she cried, as she tried to throw a paper napkin at me. It died in midair, glanced off the corner of the table, and dropped to the ground.
Pulling my leg off the chair I turned until I was looking straight across at her. “I’m not making fun of you,” I grinned. “I’d marry you in a minute.”
“And that’s probably about how long it would last!”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say.” I pretended to feel injured and discovered that the feeling was real.
For a long time she looked at me without saying anything. Then she stood up and grabbed my hand in both of hers. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
I threw a few dollars on the table as she dragged me outside. We walked slowly, awkwardly, bumping into each other, dragging our feet. The soft silence of the darkness was broken only by our own inexplicable laughter. Eventually we found ourselves down at the edge of the river, three blocks from where we had started. We leaned against the railing that bordered the walkway and watched the shadows dance on the water as the clouds slid under the moon.
“Cold?” I asked, as I put my arm around her shoulder.
“A little,” she replied. Holding onto the railing with both hands, she threw her head back, took a deep breath, and stretched as high as she could. She let go of the railing with one hand and swung all the way around until she was facing the skyline of the city. With her elbows resting on the railing behind her, she glanced at me and asked, “What would you do if I took you up on it? Said yes? What would you really do?”
I was not sure I knew, but I was willing, almost eager, to find out. “Try me,” I dared her.
“You’re bluffing,” she laughed.
She turned toward me and slid her arm around mine. “Listen, Antonelli. It’s three o’clock in the morning. And whatever seems to you like a great idea at this moment, won’t an hour after the sun comes up. Now, take me home before we freeze to death.”
As soon as she said it, I started to shiver. I wrapped my arm around her and we stumbled back up the dimly lit street, laughing at the way our teeth chattered every time we opened our mouths to speak. We reached the car and I fumbled with the key.
“I don’t want to get married, not yet anyway,” she said as I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “I have two more years of law school. I’ve wanted to be a lawyer for a long time, and I’m going to do it.”
“And you think being a lawyer is enough?”
She was holding onto my arm while I drove, gently rubbing her face against my shoulder, trying to get warm. “It’s been enough for you, hasn’t it?”
“It was,” I admitted.
“Not anymore?”
“No, not anymore.”
She raised her face and looked at me. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t. It’s too early for me. Give it time.”
The porch light was turned off when we got to her place. She took my hand and led me up the steps. “It’s too early for breakfast, but I can make us a cup of coffee, if you like.”
Quietly, we went inside and climbed the stairs. She unlocked the door to the apartment and I shut the door behind us before she switched on a light.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she said as she disappeared into the bedroom.
I tossed my suit coat over the back of the sofa, loosened my tie, and slipped off my shoes. I sat down on the sofa, but I was wide awake, restless. A small framed photograph on the mantel over the fireplace caught my eye. I went over to get a closer look. Alexandra was standing next to a thin middle-aged man with an awkward smile. They were in a clearing on a hilltop, a range of snow-covered peaks in the background. I wondered when it had been taken and whether her father had known that he was going to die soon.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked from somewhere behind me.
“I think you take a great picture,” I said turning around. “And I think—” I never finished. She was standing right in front of me, wearing nothing at all.
“Well,” she insisted, “what do you think?”
I knew exactly what I thought and I knew exactly what I wanted. I lifted her into my arms and carried her back to the bed she loved so much.
xvi
We fell asleep as the eastern light rose to search among the gray, cloud-covered skies and we did not get up again until the only light left came from the farthest reaches of the western horizon. At dinner we discussed nothing and decided everything. A candle flickered on top of a wax-encrusted Chianti bottle in the middle of the white-and-red-checkered tablecloth. With languid turns, I curled spaghetti around my fork and watched her laugh as I failed to get it all inside my mouth. We spoke in disconnected fragments and we finished each other’s thoughts. The distinction between one person and another dissolved. I looked at her and saw myself.
We held hands while we walked from the small Italian restaurant, through the streets of the neighborhood with their shuttered shop windows, back to her apartment.
Early Monday morning I woke her and said good-bye. With the Rothstein case finished she was going back to the civil litigation division. It was understood we would not go out of our way to see each other during the day, and four nights a week she was in law school. We had a dinner date Friday night.
Stopping at my house just long enough to change clothes, I made it to the office by seven. My next trial was starting on Wednesday and I was not even close to being ready. The bulging case file sat open on my desk, just as I had left it early Saturday afternoon. I started reading, and then I started again. I stared at it, trying to make sense of what I saw. There were hundreds of pages to review, and I could not fight my way through the first paragraph. I kept at it for what seemed like hours, but when I looked at my watch it was not yet seven-thirty. I shoved the file to the side and began to tap my fingers. I picked up the phone and waited impatiently while it rang. Finally, she answered.
“Lunch?” I asked.
She laughed quietly. “Yes.”
Lunch was an allowable exception, but dinner was impossible. She had class and I still had to get ready for trial. The day passed with all the speed of the Hundred Years War. At four-thirty I called her office.
“We’ll grab something quick to eat and then I’ll take you to school.”
“You have work,” she reminded me.
I was smiling to myself. “I’ll do it in the law library.”
Every day that week, even during the trial, we had lunch, and every evening I worked in the law library while she was down the hall doing what I had done more than twenty years before. When class was over, she would find me in the library, pull up a chair across the table, and study for the next hour and a half. We never got to bed before midnight, and we never fell asleep much before dawn.
