“Like gonorrhea?”
“Right, like gonorrhea, from the good old days when STDs didn’t kill you. So there’s only one outstanding question, as I see it. Where did we get a sexually transmitted disease when I have never been unfaithful to you?”
He set the empty glass down and his face fell, collapsing into deep lines around the mouth and eyes. Lines formed by forty-odd years of laughter and sorrow, both fraudulent and authentic. “What are you saying?” he asked, his tone quiet.
Watch the cards, not the player. “I’m asking you if you’re having an affair. I want you to tell me the truth.”
His mouth fell open and he was speechless. It reminded me of myself standing in front of Judge Kroungold. Suddenly I realized what had pissed my father off about my fake mourning in court. I had cheated. It wasn’t a bluff, it was a cheat. A fine line, and I hadn’t seen it. Had Paul cheated? Had he crossed the line, too?
“How can you ask me this?” he was saying.
“Tell me the truth, Paul. It’s not like we’ve been getting along so well, I know that.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m fooling around!”
“You work late a lot.”
He stood up. “So do you and I’m not accusing you of anything.”
Which is when it occurred to me. He wasn’t accusing me. It didn’t even occur to him to accuse me. Maybe because he already knew how we got it.
“Rita, I am not having an affair. I’m not, I swear it.”
I didn’t look at him. I was too busy looking at the cards.
“You must have contracted it before we met. You just said it could lie dormant for years, even ten years. You didn’t cheat on me and I didn’t cheat on you, so that’s how you got it. From before. Didn’t he say that was possible?”
“He said the odds were low.”
“But it’s possible. That’s what happened, babe.”
I nodded. I know a lot about odds. So much I still couldn’t look at him. My mind was reeling.
“Rita,” he said, touching my hand, “I love you, I swear it.”
I looked up then. His eyes were stone blue and desperate. His forehead seemed damp, but his grasp was dry and certain.
“I did not cheat on you. I would never cheat on you. You have to believe me. Do you believe me?” he asked, squeezing my hand.
I didn’t answer him. Couldn’t force out a yes, but couldn’t quite say no. A feeling of exhaustion swept over me, telling me to fold. Making me toss even a terrific hand into the muck pile. Hoping he wouldn’t turn them over like Uncle Sal.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Rita. Nothing.” Paul gave my hand a final squeeze, and oddly, I drew some comfort from it.
I needed the comfort. I had sustained a loss. I was in mourning, complete with black suit, black pumps, and black ribbon. It had been a long day. I had won and lost. And dressed right for both occasions.
Mother would have been proud.
4
I looked out the smoked-glass window of the conference room at the glitzy geometry of my hometown’s skyline, glinting darkly in the hazy sunshine. The twin ziggurats of Liberty Place spiked into the sky next to the pyramid atop Mellon Center. The glass tent of the Blue Cross building reflected the squares balanced like bogus diamonds on top of Commerce Square. Philly was starting to look more like Vegas every day, and now there was talk of riverboat gambling on the Delaware River. Even I didn’t think that was such a hot idea, everybody turning out like me.
I had arranged the seating at this deposition as carefully as any card game, giving myself the view of the casinos, with the court reporter at my left. I’d seated Patricia Sullivan and her lawyer on the opposite side, so they could stare at the wall behind me. I did not offer them coffee, nor did I show them a bathroom. You sue my client, you hold your water.
Patricia was reading Plaintiff’s Exhibit 7 on her side of the table. She was an impossibly pretty young woman, with fair, curly hair, delicate cheekbones, and thin, creamy skin. Her perfume smelled like tea roses and her flowery jumper couldn’t hide a chest in full bloom. The jury would think Michelle Pfeiffer, on Gregg shorthand. I wondered if I could pick an all-girl panel.
“Okay,” Patricia said. She handed me the exhibit, which she had brought with her to the deposition. “I’m finished.”
The exhibit was a Boynton greeting card that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY! YOU’RE ONE IN A MILLION! I glanced at it with a sinking sensation. Judge Hamilton had claimed their relationship was strictly business, and that was the only defense he wanted in court. Cards like this wouldn’t help.
“Miss Sullivan,” I asked, “on which birthday did Judge Hamilton give this card to you?”
“My last. November 12. I turned twenty-three.”
She didn’t look a day over sixteen. “How long had you been working for the judge at the time he gave you this card?”
“About two and a half months. I started the job in September.”
“You were his secretary?”
“I was one of his secretaries, there were two. I’m not really a secretary, though. I’m a painter, but I couldn’t make a living with only my painting.”
“She used to paint all the time,” said her lawyer, Stan Julicher. He was tall and brawny, with round brown eyes and a virulent sunburn he got from fishing weekends on his motor-boat. I hadn’t litigated against him before and didn’t want to again. His papers were sloppy and intentionally delivered by messenger at the end of the business day, to give me less time to reply. A trick so dirty even I hadn’t used it. “Her paintings were beautiful, flowers and all,” Julicher continued. “And vases, with fruit and books. In one there’s like a bowl with some fruit in it, and the apples look so real you could reach out and take a bite.”
“Mostly I paint still lifes,” Patricia said, by way of explanation. “Flowers, landscapes.”
“Real pretty paintings,” Julicher said, nodding. “But she doesn’t paint anymore, since what happened with Judge Hamilton. Her career was just taking off. More and more people were discovering her art. She was like a rising star. Who knows where her career could have gone if this hadn’t of happened? The sky was the limit.”
“Thank you,” Patricia said modestly, mistaking the damages lecture for praise.
I decided to take the opportunity to explore her damages, even though I’d usually go through the complaint’s allegations first. “Have you sold many paintings, Miss Sullivan?”
“Over the years, yes.”
“How many per year, would you say?”
“Oh, a lot.”
“How much income did you generate from these sales, per year?”
“We’ll give you the tax returns as soon as they’re ready,” Julicher interrupted.
Right. “What’s to get ready, Stan? They’re past returns.”
“They’ve been in storage, with my office being moved. I’m getting bigger offices on Walnut Street.”
“You were supposed to have brought them today. I originally requested them in my interrogatories, and you said you’d provide them with your answers. Let the record reflect that my first request was made two months ago and plaintiff’s counsel still hasn’t supplied the tax returns.”
“I’ll supply them as soon as they’re ready,” he said with finality.
“And I’ll reopen the dep when they’re supplied, in order to examine the witness about them.”
Julicher frowned and made a note on his legal pad with a gold Cross pen. At the pen’s top was a little Cadillac emblem that wiggled when he wrote.
“Miss Sullivan, just to get some idea of your income from your painting, how many paintings did you sell last year?”
“Three. I sell at sidewalk shows, out on the Main Line and Chestnut Hill.” She sipped water from a Styrofoam cup. She’d be needing that bathroom any time now.