“Did that case ever come to trial, by the way?” Fred asks.
“I have no idea,” David says.
“Ever hear anything more about it?”
“Well, I had to go identify him.”
“You mean they got him?” Margaret says.
“Well, yes.”
“I didn’t know that,” Helen says, surprised.
“I guess I forgot to tell you,” he says.
“When was this?”
“I don’t remember. Shortly after the Fourth of July weekend. When I got back to the city.”
“Well, what happened?” Danielle asks.
As hostess, she is sitting at the opposite end of the table, facing her husband at this end. Helen, on her left in this not-quite-boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement, is leaning forward now, her head turned to the left, looking across the table, waiting for David’s response. In fact, all attention seems to have turned from the defense to the prosecution, so to speak, everyone suddenly curious about what happened when David went to identify the young bicycle thief, an event he somehow neglected to mention to Helen in the press of further developments, small wonder. She is still staring at him, waiting.
“The police called and asked if I’d come over after work,” he says. “So I did,” he says, and shrugs.
“How’d they know who you were?” Fred asks.
“I guess the girl told them.”
“Was it the guy?” Danielle asks.
“Oh, yes.”
“So they got him,” Margaret says, almost to herself, nodding. “Good.”
“You didn’t tell me this,” Helen says, still looking surprised.
“I meant to,” he says.
“Annie keeps asking me every day did they catch him.”
“I’m sorry, I guess it just slipped my...”
“But it hasn’t come to trial yet,” Fred says.
“That’s the last I heard of it.”
Helen is still looking at him.
“Will you have to testify?” Margaret asks.
“I really...”
“If it comes to trial?”
“I don’t...”
“How old is he?” Grace asks.
“Sixteen, seventeen.”
“First offense?”
“I don’t know.”
“The case may even be dismissed,” she says. “You know what a class-A mis is?”
“No, what?” her dinner companion asks. This is the first time he’s opened his mouth all night long. He has flaxen hair and dark brown eyes and he is wearing a heavy gold chain over a purple Tommy Hilfiger sweater. David wonders if he’s gay.
“Writing graffiti is a class-A mis. Unauthorized use of a computer is a class-A mis. Hazing is a class-A mis. Are you beginning to catch the drift?”
“She means it’s a bullshit crime,” Harry says.
“Well, he also hit her,” David says, and thinks Shut up. End it. Let it die. “Kicked her. Knocked her down.”
“That’s assault,” Grace says.
“That’s a horse of another color,” Harry says.
“Which is why he’ll walk,” Grace says knowingly.
Coming out of the bathroom, Helen says, “I can’t believe Danielle can be so blind.” She is slipping a nightgown over her head as she walks, the blue nylon cascading over her tanned body, blond hair surfacing as her head clears the laced bodice. She shakes her disheveled hair loose, a habit he loves, and then goes to the dresser. Sitting before the mirror, she begins brushing her hair. He does not know how she can brush and count and talk at the same time, but it is a feat she performs effortlessly every night. Fifty strokes before bedtime every night. Meanwhile talking a mile a minute.
“He invites her to every party, seats her on his right at every party, feels her up at every...”
“He was patting her hand,” David says.
“Why do men feel compelled to defend other men who they know are fucking around?” Helen asks incredulously. “He was patting her hand on the table. Under the table he was feeling her up.”
“How do you know what he was doing under the table?”
“I know when a man has his hand on a woman’s thigh. Or closer to home. Something comes over her face.”
“I didn’t see anything coming over her face.”
“Her eyes glazed over.”
“I didn’t notice that. I was sitting directly across from her, and I didn’t...”
“Right, defend him.”
“I just don’t think anything’s going on between Harry and Grace whatever her name is.”
“Humphrey. Which I feel is appropriate.”
David thinks about that for a moment.
“Oh,” he says.
“Oh,” Helen says, and winks at him in the mirror.
He is stretched out on the bed, his elbow bent, his head propped on his open hand, watching her. He loves to watch her perform simple female tasks. Putting on lipstick. Polishing her nails. Clasping a bra behind her back. Slipping on a high-heeled shoe. Brushing her hair.
“How does he know her, anyway?” he asks.
“Biblically,” Helen says.
“I mean...”
“They work in the same office.”
“And she’s up here for the summer?”
“No, she’s a houseguest. Every weekend,” Helen says, and raises her eyebrows. “Hmm?”
“Well...”
“Mmm,” Helen says.
“Do you think Danielle invites her?”
“I have no idea. Maybe Danielle has a boyfriend of her own. Maybe Danielle doesn’t care what Harry does under the table or behind the barn. Danielle is French, my dear.”
“Oh, come on, Hel. She’s been in America for twenty years. In fact, they’ve been married that long.”
“So have we,” Helen says. “I can’t believe you forgot to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“About going to identify that boy.”
“Well, it was a busy week. Everybody just back from the long weekend...”
“I’ll bet they were rattling their cages.”
“Anxiety levels were high, let’s put it that way.”
“Was this a lineup?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The precinct. They have a room.”
“Was the girl there, too? The one he hit?”
“Yes.”
“What was her name again?”
“I forget.”
“She identified him, too, huh?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So they’ve really got him then.”
“Oh yes.”
“Kate,” she says. “It was Kate.”
“Right. Kate.”
“Done,” she says, and puts down the brush.
“How do you do that?”
“I’m a fucking phenomenon,” she says. “Speaking of which,” she adds, and swivels toward him on the bench.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.
Making love to her tonight, he remembers the way she looked that autumn day when first he laid eyes on her, sitting on a riverbank bench, head bent, totally absorbed in the book she was reading. On the Charles, a sculling team from Harvard was tirelessly rowing, he can still hear the megaphoned voice of the coxswain calling the stroke, still recall everything that happened that day as if it is playing back now in wide screen and stereophonic sound.
Leaves are falling like golden coins everywhere around her. Her straight blond hair cascades down her back, well past her shoulders, she wears it longer back then, she is still a college undergraduate, though he only suspects that as he stands rooted to the river path, staring. Woolen skirt and moss-green sweater, string of tiny pearls. A shower of leaves twists in the gentle breeze, silently floating, drifting, seeming to fall out of sunlight as golden as her hair. He has never seen anyone quite so beautiful in his life. And to think he’s here only to pick up a book at the Coop.