I look good, he says. I’ve lost some weight, he notes. Then a raw nerve. “How’s your lovely wife?”
I’d forgotten. Nikki and I dined at Wong’s on one occasion, in celebration, the night I was invited to join Potter’s firm. I’m amazed that, with the procession of traffic through these doors, Wong can remember her. But then that is his special talent.
“Oh she’s fine-fine.” I say it with conviction, omitting the details-that we are no longer living together, and that I have, for several months, and despite my efforts to restore my wrecked marriage, been anticipating the service of divorce papers.
Then I see him moving from a table in the dining room toward the bar. Ben Potter. Tall, well over six feet, though I doubt he’s ever been accurately measured. He has one of those frames, the shoulders rounded and hunched forward a little, the gait just slightly lumbering. He wears his usual dark vested sweater under his suit coat. Together with his bearing, this wrinkled bulk projects the image of some mighty bear aimlessly foraging for meat tied in a tree. He has managed to exploit this awkward posture, coin it as his own, so that a generation of law students who have studied under him in the evenings at the university now mimic this style when addressing juries. It’s an attitude that on Ben is not tired or aging, but stately, deliberative.
He stops at a table to chat with friends like some frumpish pope passing out dispensations. I hear hearty laughter from across the room. Then a quiet retort by Ben. They laugh again.
Wong says something, but I’ve missed it.
“Hmm?’ I look back at him. He’s tracked on my line of sight like radar.
“How about that Ben Potter,” he says. ‘Word is, he’s on his way to Washington, uh?’
From Wong, such rumors take on credence.
I’ve been considering this subject for days, anticipating phone calls from the press. Ben Potter now heads a dwindling list of candidates to fill a vacancy on the nation’s high court, a position to which he has aspired his entire professional life. It’s now within his grasp, the result of careful political alliances he’s cultivated for two decades, and the considerate if sudden death of one of the “brethren.” The FBI’s already hit me for a background check, digging for dirt. For the first couple of minutes with two agents planted in my office, I thought they’d gotten scuttlebutt about Talia and me. I was satisfied by the time they left that they had nothing on that score.
“Can I get you gentlemen a table?’ Wong is back to us.
“Just gonna have a drink at the bar for now.” With Harry I’ve decided it’s best to take it slow. If we’re careful, he can avoid the social bends. He’s a good lawyer, but when it comes to entertainment his comfort zone is limited to wide spots on country roads, where red neon buzzes “Miller” or “Bud.” Like his practice, Harry’s learned to dodge challenges in the afterhours.
We negotiate the maze of small cocktail tables near the bar. I’m followed closely by Harry, like Bwana on safari. I scan the bar for any vacant stools, an open space to park our bodies, to recede from public view until I can find a quiet corner to talk alone with Ben.
The bartender, clad in starched white linen to the cuffs, cruises up and slips a cocktail napkin on the bar before me, all efficiency.
I look to Harry. He orders a beer.
“Scotch over with a twist.”
“Quite a place,” he says. But I can tell he’s uncomfortable.
“Lotta deals cut here,” I say.
“I’ll bet. Looks like they all have fleas.”
I look at him, a question mark.
“Lotsa back-scratchin’ goin’ down.” This is not the kind of commerce Harry’s used to. I can tell from his tone that he prefers the straightforward pitch of honest crime.
The starched bartender returns with Harry’s beer and my scotch. I leave an open tab. To pay by the drink isn’t done; that’s the sign of a tourist out for a look at the high rollers.
The place is peopled with the usual crowd of political hustlers, mostly lobbyists plying their trade. Few lawyers except for the upper-crust corporate set venture here. The freight is too steep.
The heating trays are being readied for hors d’oeuvres-oyster beef. It was one of the inducements for Harry. “Oysters put lead in your pencil,” he says.
I take a sip of scotch, turn my head-and I see her. She is dark, a tawny perpetual tan, lustrous in blue silk with pearl earrings and necklace. Talia is thirty yards away at a table with a group, Ben’s empty chair beside her. Conversation floats about her like an ether. She is oblivious. She sits silent, detached, a serene cameo surrounded by animation at the table.
There’s another, younger man, all dapper in an expensive suit, dark hair slicked down in me style of a Madison Avenue ad, just a hint of five-o’clock shadow gracing sallow cheeks. He sits across from Talia, his cool matching hers. The guy turns his face slightly toward me. I can’t believe it. It’s as if the great giver of all genes had landed one dead-center with a meat cleaver on his chin, the cleft of distinction. Talia’s eyes fall on him. They smile, and for an instant I wonder.
“Water under the bridge,” says Harry.
“Hmm?’
He nods toward the table. Harry knows about Talia; he’s the only person I’ve told.
“More like my career over the falls,” I say.
“What’s that I smell?’ He sniffs the air. ‘Is it the aroma of regret?’
“You bet. Like burnt toast. What can I say? I was stupid.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.” He’s making a careful physical appraisal of Talia, taking it all in-the meets and bounds.
“She is spectacular,” he says.
“I’m so glad she meets with your approval.” Talia Potter’s good looks are undeniable, like the theorems and postulates of geometry. Her beauty is the kind that causes both men and women to stop and stare. Along with this, she exudes a sexual magnetism that can’t be ignored. This she has learned how to use to full advantage.
“Won’t argue with your analysis, though. There is,” he says, ‘a certain degree of dementia involved in shtuppin’ the boss’s wife.” He delivers this in a heavy German accent, a little Freud in his analysis.
That’s Harry. No sugar coating.
“But you’ll be happy to know it’s not terminal.”
“Is that right?”
“Oh yes. Eight out of ten doctors will tell you it’s just a passing condition. Comes and goes with the cycles of the moon. Sure,” he says. “People in the Middle Ages knew it as Unicorn’s Disease.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Today, the scientific literature refers to it as severe distended horniness. But there’s one problem.” He touches the side of his nose with a finger, about to deliver the final prognosis. “I believe it may be contagious.”
As we talk, he’s been eyeing Talia’s table. He gestures with his head in her direction. Harry’s intercepted one of her ‘come hither’ looks wafted across the table like mustard gas.
“The guy with the chipped chin, one of the firm’s associates?’ he asks.
“That’d be my guess.”
“Well, me poor man’s suffering from chronic, dissociative, dysfunctional dangling-dick syndrome. She’ll no doubt cure him shortly. Then he’ll be looking for a new job. I think we’re witnessing the outbreak of an epidemic.”
Harry doesn’t have a high opinion of Talia. To him my fall from the firm was a simple case of seduction. For me it was much more complex. She is, at least from my perspective, not the harlot he supposes.
“Aside from humping your patron’s wife, what did you do at the firm?’ he asks.
“That’s delicate.”
“You want delicate, you talk to your priest. You come to a friend, you get candor. Tell me about the cases.”
“A smorgasbord. Mostly business stuff, some crimes, a little contracts work-sometimes the two were the same.”