Commitment (87 page)

She seemed
to think about it for a moment.
“You read
some of my
paper
s
?”

“Yeah.
”

He’d found several of her articles in
Feminist Theory
, and read
them all, j
ust as he’d read Riley’s stuff.
At the time, he couldn’t have dreamt that
any of
it
would be germane to his own life.

“You’re right,” Lorna said
finally.
“I’ll admit that we sometimes neglect that fact in discussions of rape, academic or otherwise.”

“So have you
thought about what I asked you?
About working on
the
jury selection?”

“
Assuming I can take the time off, I’d be happy to do it.”

“Thank you,”
Shawn said.
He stubbed out his cigarette a
fter taking a couple more puffs
.

They sat in silence for a few moments, but it w
as a comfortable silence.
He could hear Lorna taking occasional drags from her
cigarette and exhaling slowly.
She didn’t seem to need to fill the silence any
more than he did.

In this way, she was not at all like
Riley
.
He smiled, thinking about
his wife’s
tendenc
y to want to constantly engage.
If he was quiet for more than five minutes, she
almost invariably asked him what he was thinking.

“What time is it?” Lorna asked after a few minutes had passed.

“A little after eleven, I think,” Shawn said.

“How d
o
you feel about pool?” she asked.

The
Spotted Pig
an old-fashioned English style pub on
the edge of campus
.
It
s décor was standard pub fare—
dark wood p
aneling and heavy oak furniture with
lamplight
sconces on
the walls.
Almost all of the tables were occupied,
and
most of the booths
that were
in the rear
,
next to the pool room.
College students played at the three tables and so
cialized between sips of beer.

When Shawn walked in with Lorna, heads turned in their direction and he could hear his
name being spoken in whispers.
Several students waved in their direction and
Lorna returned their greeting.
She led Shawn to a booth and opened the menu already on the table.

“They have a great New York strip here, if you can stomach something that heavy at this hour,” she suggested.

“I’ll be up at least long enough to digest it,”
Shawn said, pushing aside his own menu.

The waitress was c
ollege-age, probably a student.
She had red hair with a blue streak down the center
where her hair was parted.
Her clothes were pure Goth;
all
black and buckles and chains.
She had a nose-ring like
Riley
’s though the effect o
n her was completely different.
She greeted Lorna by name and asked whether she wanted her regular order.

“Nope
.
I think I’ll try t
he chili tonight,” Lorna said.
“And a Sam Adams from the tap, please.”

“And you?”
T
he waitress looked at S
hawn and her eyes became hard.

“The New York str
ip, well-done with steak fries.
And I’ll take a Sam as well.”

“Thank you.”
She took their menus and
with a brief approximation of a smile walked away.

“She was in my cl
ass last semester,” Lorna said.
“I gave her an ‘A’.
She
’s a little spitfire, that one.
My guess is she isn’t too crazy about you.”

“You think so, huh?”

Lorna la
ughed.
“I’m sure you
’re not expecting universal adulation.”

“I don’t expect any,” Shawn said.

“Good.
Because the best thing that could be said about you under the
present
circumstances is that
all
you did was cheat
on your wife.”

It was the first time she had directly alluded to
it
and Shawn searched her
tone for some sign of judgment but
could find none.
She was an interesting woman.
He was surprised to realize that he wanted to get to know her better.
And that he liked what he knew so far.

“Let’s ge
t next on one of those tables,”
she
said indicating the pool room.
“I want to see what you’re made of.”

Shawn grinned.
“
Oh you don’t want none of this,” he assured her. “
Prepare to get
spanked
.”

Not surprisingly, Lorna was a fierce competitor and beat Shawn two out of three rounds before their fo
od came.
They reserved a
spot
to
play doubles
against a couple of seniors
after their meal and sat down.
By now the p
ub was crowded and much louder.
No one paid attention to him, though many
noticed him as they walked by.
Everyone seemed to think it natural that he would be out enjoying a late dinner with his mother-in-law, despite his legal troubles.

Lorna was right,
the steak was very good, and Shawn ate with gusto, glad
he’d
accepted her invitation.
Just as he was finishing up, his
cell phone
vibrated, dan
cing on the table between them.
He tensed involuntarily, until he saw
Riley
’s phone number flash across the
display
.

“Where the hell are you?”
she asked without greeting, a
nd then before he could answer.
“Let me
speak
to Lorna.”

Shawn passed the phone across the table and took a sip of his beer, watching as Lorna made a face into the phone. 

“Yes
, of course,” she said wearily.
“Stop being such an old lady.
Fine.
Next time we
’
ll leave a note on your pillow
.
Does
that make you feel better?
And you can tell Vernon he doesn’t have to call in
the
cavalry.”
She hung up and handed the phone back to Shawn.

“Vernon?”

“That’s yo
ur bodyguard’s name,” she said.
“For future reference.”

When the
y finally
got back to the house around three-thirty a.m.,
Riley
was still awake
,
having not gone
back to sleep since her call.
She was
sitting in the kitchen
as they entered,
nursing a mug of coffee and picking at a cinnamon bun.

“Don’t tell me you waited up,” Lorna said, exasperated.

“Well, when you take off like that without telling me, who knows what else to expect?’
Riley
demanded.
“Given what’s going on with Shawn, you never know what people . . .”

“
Riley
, please.
Who’s the parent here?”

“Sometimes, that’s not entirely
clear, Lorna.
That’s my point.
”

“Baby
. .
.” Shawn began.

“Shawn, stay out of it,
”
Riley
snapped
.

“Okay,”
he
winked at Lorna and headed up to bed, only too happy to leave someone else to absorb her wrath.

g

Predictably,
Riley
was not crazy about
the idea of
being left behind when Shawn
suggest
ed it.
But she looked exhausted, and he knew that though she wouldn’t admit it, sitting through the meetings
about his trial
too
k a lot out of her emotionally.
Fortunately,
Lorna’s insistence seemed to hold some sway
and she eventually let them go
to meet with the legal team about jury selection
without her
.

Shawn
drove and Lorna sat next to him with
her bare feet on the dashboard.
If she were anyone else,
this
might
have been annoy
ing
but his mother-in-l
aw was not like other mothers.
For
one thing, she had a toe-ring.
It was sterling silver and designed to look like a snake, curled about her toe.
Between that and the distressed jeans she wore, she seemed about ten years younger than sh
e was, and completely carefree.
Her long braids hung like a curtain, partially obscuring her fac
e as she looked out the window.
Not at all what someone
would
expect
when meeting
a renowned feminist theorist
.
Shawn was looking forward to seeing Brendan’s face when he introduced her
.

“There is one thing I’m curious about,”
she
said
to him just as they got on the parkway. 

Shawn tensed, waiting.

“What’s it like to have more money than you’ll ever possibly need?
I read somewhere that the number one most common fantasy is being able to fly, and number two is being super-wealthy.
”

Shawn
thought for a moment.
This was
a part
of his life that most people were probably curious about, but had never asked him directly.
It didn’t surprise him at all that Lorna would be the one to break new ground.

“It’s,” he thought for a moment, choosing his word
s carefully. “Scary,
sometimes.
But mostl
y it’s a freeing type of thing.
Liberating.”

“Liberating I understand.
Scary, how so?”

“Because if you can buy just about anything, and you’re still not satisfied,
then what does that mean, y’know?”

“What indeed.” Lorna nodded. “So
did
the money satisfy you?”

Shawn shrugged.
“I just know I wasn’t as interested
in it as I thought I would be.
Once I knew I could, there wasn’t much I wanted to buy.”

“
J
ewelry, cars, houses, yachts?”

“
Not so much.”

Lorna laughed.
“Very interesting.
I see.”

“See what?”

“Some of w
hat
Riley
sees
in you
.”

“But now it’s dif
ferent though,” Shawn admitted.
“I can think of lots
of stuff I’d like to get now.
Now t
hat . . .” he stopped himself.

He was about to say ‘now that I
have someone to share it with.’
But it sounded
so much like a corny love song
he couldn’t make himself
finish the sentence
.
Lorna laughed and
looked
out the passenger side window
.
She
seemed to know instinctively what he
’d been about to say
.

“She
is
pretty remarkable.
And believe me, I’d like to take
full
credit for that, but I really think
that’s how
she came out.
All I had to do was stay out of her way.”