He pulled her underpants off – quickly now, roughly – afraid that the moment would pass again.
No words. He was pushing her back into the chair, opening her legs. There was a savage set to his jaw, and emptiness in his eyes.
She could do nothing to stop him.
CHAPTER FOURTY FIVE
After the trial, Wes Farrell gave up for a long time.
He decided not to cut his hair again until something – anything – made sense. He stopped cleaning his apartment, not much of his forte anyway. Enrolling in night classes, he started taking history courses because everyone in them was already dead and couldn't hurt him anymore.
As part of his decision to quit the practice of the law entirely, he gave up the lease on his North Beach office. He located and reattached the ten pounds he'd lost for the trial, cut off his fancy mustache and mothballed his fancy clothes.
The world was a sham. People – particularly charming winners – were scum. Any form of idealism was delusion. Since a quick and painless suicide by, say, gunshot wound smacked of commitment, he elected to pursue the more leisurely course of gradual alcohol poisoning.
There had been a short window of opportunity right as the trial was winding down during which he considered calling Sam Duncan. After he'd read Diane Price's diary, he knew he'd been an arrogant fool and was wrong on all counts.
After he'd heard from Flaherty and decided to abandon the character issue, Wes realized he would not have to cross-examine Diane Price. He would not have to take her apart.
And that, in turn, might give Wes the chance to tell Sam that he'd come to believe her. He was a schmuck. He loved her. Could they perhaps try again?
But Wes wasn't Mark Dooher with his good timing and phenomenal luck. He was the punching bag for a hostile universe. The Diane Price fiasco with her rogue firearm took his play with Sam out of the game.
Since he was down anyway, Lydia chose this moment to confide to him the tender tale of her and Dooher's carnal union on the day of Sheila's funeral.
So Wes decided to sink for ever into his quagmire of drink and despair over humanity. Lydia's story strengthened his resolve against women in general. He couldn't let himself forget that any commitment in the love area was bogus and suspect and programmed for failure. And he'd had enough failure.
In what he took to be a sign of his mental health, he forged a firmer bond with Bart, firing the graphic designer in his building who had been taking the dog out for walks. Wes started caring for Bart – albeit haphazardly – on his own.
The dark period lasted seven or eight months, but the race riots that nearly destroyed the city in the summer following the trial got his attention and he wound up being coerced by circumstances into helping a fellow student who was being framed for a racial murder, and making an unlikely ally in Abe Glitsky.
Finally, he'd done some good as a lawyer.
So he cut his long hair and broke out his old suits and started again.
And by then, time had healed some of Sam's wounds as well.
He put the full court press on her with apologies and flowers and apologies and dinners. And apologies. He was an insensitive non-Nineties type of guy but he was going to try and change. And he meant it.
Almost a year to the day after Dooher had been found Not Guilty, they moved together into the upper half of a railroad-style Victorian duplex on Buena Vista, across from the park of the same name, not two blocks from Sam's old place on Ashbury, not much further from the Center.
They were sitting in striped fabric beach chairs on the tiny redwood deck that a previous tenant had built within the enclosure of peaks and gables on the rooftop. They were planning to barbecue large scampi on the Hibachi when the coals turned gray. They were drinking martinis in the traditional stem glasses. The latest CD from the singing group Alabama wafted up through the skylight, the country harmonies sweet in the soft breeze.
Far down below and across the street, they could see the light-green slope of the park, the strollers and frisbee players, the long shadows, a slice of the downtown skyline beyond.
It was the last week of May. The weather had been warm for two entire days in a row – San Francisco's abbreviated springtime. To the west, behind them, a phalanx of fog was preparing for its June assault, and it looked like it was going to be right on time and the long winter that was the city's summer would begin on the next day.
As a favorite topic of conversation, Mark Dooher did not make it to the Top 100 of their personal hit parade, so Sam had been avoiding it for several hours, but now she decided the moment was propitious. 'Guess who I saw this morning?'
Farrell dug out his olive, sucked it, then tossed it over to Bart, who caught it on the fly. 'Elvis? He is alive, you know. It was in the Enquirer at the counter, absolute proof this time, not like all those phony other times.'
'You know what I'm looking forward to?' she asked. 'No, don't answer right away because it kind of relates. I'm looking forward to some day I ask you a question like "Guess who I saw today?" or "You know what I'm looking forward to?" and you say, "Who?" or "What?" – whichever word happens to apply in that given situation. I think that's going to be a great day, when that happens, if it ever does.'
Wes nodded somberly. 'I'd pay you a dollar if you could diagram that sentence – if it was a sentence.'
'That's what I mean,' she said. 'That's a perfect example.'
'It is a problem,' he agreed. 'I must not be a linear thinker.' Then, reaching over and putting a hand over her knee, leaving it there. 'Okay, who?'
'Christina Carrera.'
She saw him try to hide his natural reaction. He took in the information with a slow breath, threw a look off into the distance, took his hand from her knee, sipped at his drink. 'How was she?'
'She was pregnant.'
'You're kidding, yes?'
'I'm kidding, no.'
A glance, still guarded. 'Wow.'
'She came by the Center. No,' sensing the question he was thinking, 'just to visit.'
'Catch up on all those good old times?'
'That's what she said.'
'How long did you believe her?'
'I didn't check my watch, but less than three seconds.'
'Good,' he said. 'That was long enough. Give her story a fair chance. What did she really want?'
'Now, see, here – if I were you I'd give you an answer like, "She wanted me to help her negotiate a new treaty between Hong Kong and China for the new millennium." But I don't say stuff like that. Usually. I try to be responsive.'
'That's because you're a better person than I am. So what did she really want?'
'I don't know for sure. Just to talk with somebody she used to know. Take a reality check. She was scared and didn't know how to admit it.'
'I'd be scared too. Did you tell her she was smart to be scared?'
'No. That wouldn't have helped. We talked. Well, mostly I listened and she talked, pretending she really had dropped in out of the blue to say hi. She was in the neighborhood. And after a while the pretense kind of ran out of gas and she got to it.'
Wes stood up and walked over to the roof's edge, looking out across the park. 'He beating her?'
She was next to him, an arm around his waist. 'No. She says not. It doesn't look like it.'
'How pregnant is she?'
'A lot. It looks like she's getting close. Then after a while, maybe an afterthought to be polite, she got around to asking a little about me, what I was doing, my personal life. I told her about me and you.'
'Not all the good parts, I hope.'
Sam squeezed against him, then lifted herself on to the edge of the roof. 'When I mentioned you, it was like I threw her a rope. She said she'd looked you up, but didn't know what she could say. She didn't believe you'd talk to her.'
Wes was silent. There was more than a little truth to what Sam was saying, he probably wouldn't have talked to Christina if she just walked in on him. During the trial, the teams within the defense team had split up, obviously and cleanly – Wes on one side, Christina and Mark on the other.