He kissed my knee before I could object. “You wanted me on the first date, remember? I made you a salad for dinner and you were smitten, you said, and you wanted to make love. The first date, the very first date. A fast Italian girl, I thought.”
I laughed, the memory was so unexpected. It dawned bright as daybreak, and as undeniable.
“Do you remember what I told you when you asked me, flat-out?”
I closed my eyes and remembered. His kiss traveled to the inside of my knee, slower this time, slightly wet.
“Miss Morrone, are you going to answer the question or do I have to ask My Honor to put you in jail?” His mouth moved along the inside of my leg, kissing me like he had that night in his apartment. The lights had been off. I’d turned them off, the way I liked it.
“No,” I said. “Paul-”
“I told you you had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen, and as much as I wanted to know more about them, I liked you altogether too much to do that on the first date.”
I kept my eyes closed, remembering. His kisses passed my knee and made a trail on the inside of my thigh. I felt myself easing back into the pillow while he kissed me, this first date that had so much promise. He had thrilled me. An architect with a pedigree and an open heart.
“I told you I thought I was falling in love with you, do you remember? That I was in it for the long run.” I felt his kiss move up my thigh, under my robe. The notepad slipped from my lap and the sound it made as it fell to the carpet came from some other time and place. “I had to put you out that night, like a cat.”
He always said that, Like a cat. I used to laugh. I felt myself warming.
“I love you,” he said, and I let myself hear it. Let myself believe it for just a moment. It pushed my problems away, swept aside Fiske and Patricia, my managing partner, and my new HPV virus. I wanted to forget it all, get lost for a while. Slip away. No one had to know, no one had to see. Not even me. I reached up and switched off the light.
“Do you remember what else I told you that night?” he asked, his voice soft in the darkness. Familiar. Like his sigh, and the throatier sound that would come later. “That it wasn’t one night, it was forever.” His mouth reached the top of my thighs, and he kissed them until my legs parted.
I remembered. It was the first date, then the first time we made love. Then the time after that and the time after that, too. All the times, all of the same piece, seamless. When the loving was still there and so palpable you could feel it like the bones on his back when he was on you. You could hear it in the sounds you made, and in his, too, deeper. You could feel it in the slickness between you, belly-level, in summer, and the way it warmed your feet in winter, no matter how cold it was.
That’s what I remembered, all of it came flooding back, and in a minute it was inside me, filling me up, suffusing me with good feeling.
He was right about one thing. I loved him still.
If I could think back.
And the lights were off.
9
The office wall was crowded with diplomas and certificates and the slick desktop reflected the squat and omnipotent silhouette of a unique breed of high roller: the managing partner of a law firm. I’d first met Ed “Mack” Macklin when I was a young associate and he had kissed off the last firm that wouldn’t ante up every time he sneezed. Mack became my mentor, although I never realized before this moment how much he resembled Edward G. Robinson. But maybe that was because I was feeling like the Cincinnati Kid.
“Why are you getting out of the Sullivan case?” Mack said, relaxed in his cushy leather chair. His office was the largest in the firm, and well-appointed. An expensive leather couch and chairs clustered around a glass coffee table; a wall-length English credenza held some neat files and an expensive, albeit untouched, laptop computer. The virgin laptop was the hottest power prop, signifying that Mack had the juice to make the firm buy him a toy and also that he was too important to play with it. You had no power if you actually used your PowerBook.
“The Sullivan case is over. The plaintiff is dead.”
“The judge called me last night, Rita. He was very disappointed. Said he expects us to stand behind him if he’s charged with murder.”
“Judge Hamilton called you at home?” Fiske was making all the right moves, and I was the sacrificial pawn. “What time did he call?”
“What’s the difference? He’s a friend.”
“Of yours? Since when?”
“Since last night.” Mack laughed abruptly. “Judge Hamilton is one of the most prominent members of the federal bench. He wasn’t happy that our firm would leave him in the lurch.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“I’m not happy when he’s not happy. I’m not happy when any federal judge is unhappy, especially in our district. Don’t you want to make me happy?” He spoke in the subdued tone of someone who expected an affirmative answer.
“No.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll get over it, too.”
Mack gazed past me through one of three large, smoked-glass windows, which overlooked the offices of the law firm he had just left. He’d demanded this view because he wanted his old firm to see him making money for someone else. “So,” he said, “I told the judge that he could rest assured that Averback, Shore amp; Macklin was his counsel at the beginning and we were going to remain his counsel to the end. Got it?”
“What’s this? Muscle?”
He smiled, not unpleasantly. “I’m flexing. You like?”
“Be still my heart.”
“Good. Then it’s settled.” He grinned like he wasn’t kidding. I felt my temper rise.
“Not exactly, Mack. It’s my practice. I’ll run it the way I want.”
“The judge is a client of this firm.”
“No, the judge is a client of mine. He didn’t hire the firm, he hired me. I was his lawyer, now I’m not. As of today.”
He eased back into his desk chair. The gesture looked like resignation, but I knew better. Mack always recoiled before he struck, like a cobra. “You’re right, Rita. It’s your practice. You can run it any way you like. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you know the Committee was delighted when the Hamilton matter came to you.”
“I remember.” A collective rubbing of soft, pasty hands.
“I don’t have to tell you how disappointed they’d be if I had to report on your withdrawal.”
I was breaking hearts everywhere. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“You know, the Committee has been discussing the possibility of a midcourse correction in the partnership contracts. Were you aware of that?”
Firm politics was not my strong suit. The courtroom was where the action was, not the conference room. “Midcourse correction?”
“A couple of us have noted that the current distributions aren’t adequately reflecting our contributions.”
“You mean you’re not making enough money, Mack?”
“In a word? Absofuckinglutely.”
We both laughed, without mirth.
“It would affect all of our contracts,” he said. “But your name was the only one from your class that came up for an increase. I could make it happen, Rita. You stand to skip two classes. Serious money.”
A lawyer’s trick; whenever possible, wave a check. Since I grew up without money, I was almost impervious to this temptation. Almost. “You mean if I drop Judge Hamilton, I can kiss my raise good-bye?”
“In a word?”
Prick. “Very funny.”
“Look, Rita, this whole situation is in your control. As I said, I can’t make you do anything.”