Against the Wind (23 page)

The kind of day you want to bottle and keep forever.

We’re reading
The Yearling
. Her small head, the long light-brown hair still wet from washing, rests on my shoulder. As I read I look at her face, her delicate features. My flesh, my blood. I’ll die before I let her go. I’ll die if I have to let her go. I’m already into the long, slow slide into my dying. Living in this moment, I’m rapturous. If I could only stay here.

I finish the chapter. She cuddles closer, not wanting to go to bed, to be apart from me.

“Can I stay up a little longer?” she pleads. “Just fifteen minutes.”

“It’s late already, angel. It’s been a busy day. All that sun, it pulls the energy out of you and you don’t even know it, I really want you to get enough rest.” Her mother had cautioned me that she was on the verge of a cold, to make sure she got plenty of sleep.

“Please?”

“Sure.”

I tell her a story, a piece of the same story I’ve been telling her for years, about a little girl who discovers a secret gate into another world and the friendly gatekeeper who is her guide. A magical world, where even when it’s dark and scary you know that hope is just around the corner, that it will all turn out right in the end.

She goes to sleep in the second bedroom, her room. She keeps some clothes here, some toys, pictures, books. Not very many; in my former house she had a princess’s room. This is more transitory, I don’t want to be here much longer. But it’ll probably be the last home we have together where it isn’t visits on holidays and summers. She’s clutching her old Teddy, her lips faintly sucking in a vestigial throwback to when she sucked her thumb. When she was little; an eternity ago.

I drink a light scotch, look over some papers. I’m too antsy to work; my circuits are over-loaded, burnt-out, anyway it’ll be at least another week before we present our side. I know who their other witnesses are, I know as much as I can about what they’ll testify to.

Claudia’s dreaming, beyond my reach. I want some action.

There’s a teenage girl across the quad who’s baby-sat for me before. Sad little thing, no figure to speak of, bad complexion, with a hangdog personality. The kind of kid who isn’t out bopping with her friends at the mall on Saturday night.

She’s available as long as I’m home by midnight. No problem, I just need a change of scenery; I promise myself I won’t drink anything stronger than a glass of wine or a beer. Just an hour or two around grown-ups that isn’t business-related, eyeballing grown-up ladies with tits and asses and long legs. Nothing more, pure voyeurism, at this point I couldn’t handle even a casual overnight nameless fuck. I’ll come home alone, masturbate if I can’t sleep; close my eyes and think of Mary Lou. It won’t be the first time. Fuck, am I down on myself. Outside the courtroom and the all-consuming intensity of the trial I’m a bundle of raw, exposed nerve endings. I’m not centered, not remotely; being with myself isn’t the kind of company I want to keep, I have the need to be distracted from my loneliness by casual encounters with acquaintances or (better yet) strangers. Talk about wallowing in self-pity; I’m practically drowning in it. And I’m enjoying it way too much.

THE BAR AT LA FONDA
isn’t far from my office. They know me there, first-name basis. What with the publicity from the trial I’m a celebrity, my money’s no good tonight. I should be taking advantage and knocking back double Chivases, but I stick to my guns and sip the house Chardonnay.

Half the lawyers in town seem to be passing through, they all want to talk, exchange ideas and rumors. I’m a local hero. Stand near me and you might catch lightning in a bottle.

“Hey, bubba.” Andy’s materialized behind me, quiet as an Indian. Harriet, his wife, who he met at Columbia, is with him.

“Will,” she says, offering her cheek. I brush it with my lips. She’s good people, a rock. Andy’s always made the right decisions.

“Hi, Harriet. Looking good.” Tall, aristocratic, good bones. She could be a model out of the Tweeds catalogue.

“Batching it tonight?” Andy asks.

“For an hour. I have Claudia for the weekend.”

Nothing I can do about the wine glass in front of me. Andy sees it, discreetly doesn’t comment. He knocks back the rest of his own Scotch on the rocks, signals the bartender for another, pointing his finger at mine.

“No thanks,” I tell him. “Just one tonight.”

“One’s permissible,” he smiles. “The tension you’re under more than one’s permissible.”

Well, hell. Now the son of a bitch is condescending to me. Poor sad Will, the drunk of the legal profession, he isn’t even strong enough to keep a promise to his partner.

“Andy tells me you’re doing a wonderful job,” Harriet says.

“Too early to tell,” I answer modestly.

“He is,” Andy says. “If anybody can walk those turkeys it’ll be you, pard.” He claps me fraternally on the back. He’s had a few, he’s loose.

“They’re innocent, Andy,” I say.

“So what?” he counters. “You think anyone gives a shit? I know you’re going to dazzle your jury, Will, you’re gonna place those bikers in a convent in Burlington, Vermont, at the time of the murder, is it going to matter? Stick a wet finger up in the air, man, can’t you tell which way the wind’s blowing?”

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“It’s reality talking, son.”

“It’s Saturday night, Andy. Let’s let reality off the hook for a couple hours, okay?”

“Shit yes. Hey listen man, you might do it. I’ve seen you in action. You’re the best.” He holds his fresh drink in toast. We clink. White fucking wine.

“Take care,” he says.

“You too.”

“See you around.”

“Yeh, see you.”

They leave. He’s talking low to her, whispering in her ear. She glances back at me. I smile. It hurts.

One more and I’m out of here. I don’t know what I was looking for but this isn’t it.

And then Mary Lou comes out of the dining-room. She’s with a man. I know him, one of the senior partners in her firm, a married man twice her age. It instinctively bothers me in my gut, even though there’s probably nothing to it. It’s selfishness is what it is; I can’t have her so I don’t want anyone else to. Not even platonically, which I’ve never believed in anyway. If a woman’s attractive to you you want her, she could be your wife’s best friend, her sister, if you want her you want her. Your cock is always more powerful than your ethics.

They must’ve had dinner in the restaurant, stopping in the bar for a nightcap. They sit across the room. She’s dressed up like a woman, not a lawyer. The light is flattering to her; she looks great, succulent.

I don’t want her to see me. I don’t like what I’m seeing. It feels demeaning to her. Fuck; I’m jealous.

Of course, she does see me. She stares for a moment, excuses herself from the table, walks over to me.

“What’re you doing here?” she asks.

“Didn’t know I needed permission.” I’m smiling, low-key, but I’m on edge.

“I don’t mean that. Why are you alone?”

“They don’t serve minors in here.” I explain about Claudia, my short break. “In fact,” I say, checking the time, “I’ve got to leave now.”

“I’m coming with you.” Her hand is on mine; not by accident.

“What?”

“I’ll follow you. I’ve got my car.”

“No.”

“Why not?” she asks, putting her hand back on mine.

“You’re with another man for openers.”

“A lawyer, for Godsakes.” As if lawyers are eunuchs. “A man in my firm.”

“A senior partner. A married senior partner,” I add, unable to resist the dig.

She doesn’t rise to the bait. “Let’s just go, okay? I won’t even make a pass, I promise. We’ll just talk. I need to talk to you, Will, I really do.”

She crosses the room and talks briefly to the man, who glances at me, nods. Business is business. She comes back with her purse and wrap.

“What did you tell him?” I ask.

“That I was going home with you.”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“Joke, Will, joke,” she says, calming me. “I told him I needed to run some stuff by you, it couldn’t wait. He understands, we’ve all been there.” She realizes I’m not buying this. “It was a friendly dinner, Will, nothing more. His wife’s out of town and he’s lonely. He’s not my type, anyway.” She looks me in the eye. “I don’t chase after lost causes.”

She finishes my drink for me, takes my arm. We promenade out. I don’t want this, but I really feel good. Flag that; I want it, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle it.

We talk for hours. We leave the lights off, sit on the couch in the living room. The windows are open: the hot, dry, late-summer winds blow in the scent of night-blooming flowers. She tells me about herself, her life, her family, I do the same back, all the stuff you do when you’re courting someone. The stuff you’ve saved up until you’re with someone you know wants to hear it.

We can’t not talk about the case; it’s what brought us together, it’s all-consuming. She tells me the scuttlebutt that’s going around town, the overwhelming sentiment against the bikers on the street, how the legal community’s looking at it.

It’s all wine and roses for her, a young lawyer, a woman, conducting a major murder defense. My situation’s more complex, more precarious. The whisperings about the firm and me are getting louder, more persistent; apparently Fred isn’t being very discreet. (I make a mental note to brace him the next time I see him, we have an agreement and I’m going to hold the bastard to it.) In a sense I’m walking on a long highwire. If I win, I’m still major stuff, with or without my firm; if I don’t, I could be hurting.

We talk until there’s nothing left to say except is she going to stay or leave. I’m stuck, frozen in gear, I can’t do anything either way.

It doesn’t matter, it’s her script and she wrote it long before tonight.

We start out kissing each other for a long time with our clothes on, lying on top of the bed. French kisses, high school make-out kisses, the kind you never outgrow. Then she undresses. I watch her as she strips, not at all self-consciously, unhurried, letting me feast on each part of her body as she reveals it: to me, for me, alone. She has a good body, not quite as slender as it looks in clothes. Better, actually; full, womanly. No soft fat anywhere, she must work out. Ample hips, lovely round ass, smaller breasts than I would have thought for a woman of her size, the skin pale, almost translucent. Long nipples and large round areolas. She doesn’t have much bodily hair, curly tendrils around her vagina. She’s smooth everywhere else, waxed.

My disrobing is more prosaic, I’m anxious to catch up. I want it to go slow, to stretch it out as long as possible, kiss every inch of her, from her ears to her toes. That all goes out the window as soon as I touch her, she’s too hot, we both are. We eat each other, cock and pussy, for less than a minute, and I’m inside her.

She’s wet but she’s also tight, she’s never gone through childbirth. I’m on the verge almost immediately, I have to stop pumping, we lie together, trying to be still. Then we go at it again, long, slow thrusts, she’s grabbing me hard by the ass, pulling me deeper into her, kissing me all over my face and neck, digging into my back with her fingers, moaning into my throat.

I smother her mouth with mine; I don’t want Claudia to hear. She comes with a series of jolts that lift me into the air, I release behind her, an explosion, everything inside me flowing up and through my cock into her.

We open our eyes at the same time, kiss, nibbly little kisses. I couldn’t move now if the house was on fire.

“Will?”

“Yes?”

“Were we unprofessional?”

“I thought we gave a very acceptable accounting of ourselves.”

“You mean it’s okay?”

“Yeh, it’s okay.”

“Just okay?”

“No. Better.”

“Are you always so effusive after making love?” she asks. She looks happy.

“I’m not used to my lovers using the word ‘effusive’ after fucking,” I say. “But to answer your question, no.”

“Oh.”

I look at her. She really cares about me.

“I don’t want to sleep with anyone else anymore,” I tell her.

She caresses my cheek with her fingers in reply. “We’ll have to be careful in public,” she says. “I don’t like to be gossiped about.”

“Me neither,” I assure her. Christ, that’s all I need.

“But I want to be with you as much as I can. Is that being too forward too fast?”

I’m scared suddenly; not because it’s too fast, but because I want her.

“I hope not,” I say.

“I’m very open to you, Will. You could hurt me without even knowing it.”

“I’d know. I won’t.” At least not intentionally.

“Okay. I think that’s enough for now.”

She curls into me, ready for sleep, her head resting on my shoulder. It feels like it’s rested there for years.

A light goes on in the hallway, spilling under the door. I’m bolt upright immediately, Mary Lou’s head falling onto the pillow as her eyes pop open.

“Daddy?” Claudia calls. Her voice is shaking.

“Be right there, sweetheart,” I call out. Mary Lou looks at me. Should I …?

I shake my head ‘no,’ my finger to my lips. I slip into my robe and go into the hall, shutting the door tight behind me.

“What is it, angel?” She’s standing in the open doorway of her room, clutching her Teddy.

“I had a bad dream.”

I come over, pick her up, hold her to me for a moment. “What was it about?”

“A monster was chasing me. In a cave.”

“Have you seen any scary movies lately?” I ask. That triggers it more than anything, I’ve had friends take their kids to stuff like
Halloween
or
Friday the 13th
because they couldn’t find a sitter.

“No. Well, I saw kind of a scary one on TV.”

“That was probably it. Anyway it’s over now.” I carry her back into her room. “It’s okay, I’m right here. Go back to sleep.”

“I’m too scared.”

“No you’re not. I’ll stay with you for a minute.”

“I want to sleep with you in your bed.”

“You can’t, angel. Not tonight.”

“I want to.” She starts to cry, half-real tears. “I won’t be able to get back to sleep by myself.”