The Little Death (5 page)

We
were getting along pretty well, Gold and I, I thought as I stepped into the bar
from the muggy August afternoon. However, some aspects of my life remained a
problem for him as I discovered again when I brought up the subject of Hugh
Paris.

“You
went to bed with a client?” he asked incredulously as the startled cocktail
waitress brought our drinks.

“He’s
not a client,” I said after she’d gone. “I didn’t take his case.”

“It’s
the appearance of impropriety you should be concerned about.”

“Look,
I haven’t exactly advertised the news. I was just telling you.”

He
set his drink down and asked, “Why?”

“You
asked what was new with me. I told you.”

“Some
things you can omit.”

“Listen,
Aaron, I get to thrill to your accounts of your latest girlfriend, but you treat
me like a eunuch. You confide in me, but I can’t confide in you? Are we
friends, or what?”

He
rubbed his forehead and sighed, dramatically. “Yes, we’re friends. It’s just
that — well, in addition to the fact that you’re gay — this Paris guy sounds
like trouble. You should marry or something.”

“Hugh’s
all right,” I said, defensively, and added, “and as for marriage, you’re nearly
six years older than me and not married.”

“That’s
different. I got into law late and I have to make up for lost time if I want to
make partner before I’m forty. Then I’ll marry. A man can marry at any time.”

“If
it makes you that uncomfortable for me to talk about being gay, I’ll stop
talking about it.”

He
waved his hand as though waving away a fly. “It’s part of your life. It’s just
difficult. Give me time.”

“I
told you ten years ago.”

“What,
in law school? Everyone was something in law school. Marxists, feminists,
homosexuals — I was a socialist. It was all theory, then. It didn’t mean
anything. I never thought you were serious. Let’s have another drink.” He
summoned the waitress.

“Did
we sell out?”

“Sell
out what?” He lifted an eyebrow. “What did we have to sell? Nothing. We had
nothing. It’s now that we all have something to sell, and to lose.” He raised
his glass and touched it against mine in an ironic toast.

*
* * * *

For
the next two days, I reviewed my options. Setting up practice in San Francisco
was out of the question because of the expense and the fact that there were
too many criminal defense lawyers there already, scrambling for a living. When
I’d been transferred out of the Public Defender’s office in San Jose, I had
burned too many bridges to find my way back. So, for the time being, I decided
to stay where I was.

I
rented a suite in an office building within walking distance of the courthouse.
I bought a desk, installed a phone, and had a nameplate nailed to the door. My
business cards were in the process of being printed. All I needed were
clients. Since my practice had centered in San Jose, I had very little local
reputation and knew I would have to rely, initially, on appointments to
criminal cases from which the public defenders disqualified themselves. I had
already decided that I did not want a civil law practice.

Appointments
represented a steady source of income. Lawyers were appointed from a list
maintained by the judges; one applied to be placed on the list. Appointments
were sought after and placement on the lists was dictated by political considerations,
which, in the world of a small town, meant appeasing those in a position to
make life difficult for you. For the judges that meant the D.A. and the public
defenders who not only belonged to the same union, but, between them, handled
virtually all the criminal matters. The judges were unlikely to appoint any lawyer
who had antagonized one or the other office. Therefore, I found it necessary to
go make my peace with my ex-employer. I had set up an appointment to see
Frances Kelly, to ask her pardon and to get her as a reference.

I
climbed the five flights of stairs to the public defender’s office in the
courthouse. By the time I got there I was sweaty from exertion and nervousness.
The reception room was almost empty as I stepped up to the counter and gave my
name. The receptionist was new. It had been a little less than a month since I’d
quit but it seemed like a year, chiefly because nothing had changed. Even the
calendar on the wall was still turned to July. A couple of my ex-colleagues
passed through on their way to court. They saw me but said nothing.
Omertà
,
I thought — apparently, I had become a non-person.

Fifteen
minutes later, Frances’s secretary appeared and led me to her office, never
once acknowledging that she knew me. I wondered if I would get the same
reception from Frances. I knocked at her door and entered on her command.

She
greeted me with friendly curiosity, rising slightly from behind her desk,
extending a braceleted hand. “You look well,” she said.

“Thanks.
So do you.” And, in fact, she looked as sleek and opulent as ever, carrying her
avoirdupois like a summer parasol. We exchanged civilities and a little office
gossip and then, mentally clearing my throat, I shifted subjects. “I have a
favor to ask.” She smiled. “But first I want to apologize for the abruptness
of my departure.’’

“You’re
forgiven,” she said.

“I’m
going to open my own practice.”

“Congratulations,”
she murmured.

“I
don’t have any clients yet. I plan to apply to the appointments’ list.”

“That’s
wise.” I grimaced, mentally. This was like pulling teeth.

“I
know the politics of the courthouse,” I said. “The presiding judge will know my
name immediately, probably remember hearing that I quit, and call you for your
opinion.”

“And
you want to know what I’ll tell him.”

“No,”
I said. “I’d like you to recommend me.”

She
smiled. “I see. Well, your old spirit seems to be returning.” She lit a
cigarette. “Do you need the money?”

“What?”

“Do
you need the money, or do you just want to go back to work?”

It’s
not the money,” I said. I knew I could live for a year on my savings. “I want
the work. I’m good at it.”

“Yes,
of course, but I’m confused. A month ago you left the office saying you needed
time to think over your life.”

“I’ve
thought about it.”

“And
all that led to is concluding that you want to go back to doing the same thing
you just left? Has anything really changed?” The question was rhetorical. She
went on, “I would tell the presiding judge that you’re a brilliant lawyer but a
troubled man. I would tell him that if I was a defendant I would gladly entrust
you with my case but if I was a judge I would be concerned about saddling a
client with a potentially sick lawyer.”

‘‘Those
are hard words, Frances,” I said.

“You
could try a case with no preparation and do a better job than another lawyer
with unlimited time to prepare, but that’s not the point. Frankly, I think you
would be tempted to wing it because your heart’s not in it anymore.”

“You’re
wrong,” I said. “I have never walked into a courtroom unprepared.”

She
pointed to a stack of files sitting on top of a bookcase. “Your last cases,”
she said. “Nothing had been done on them.”

“I
carried them in my head.”

“That’s
the problem, Henry. You’re carrying too much in your head.”

I
stood up. “I can’t change your mind?”

“Take
all the time you need,” she said, and then come back to me. Not only would I
recommend you to the list, I’d help you come back to the office if you wanted.”

How
am I supposed to know how much time is enough?”

“You’ll
know,” she said, as though making a promise to a child.

*
* * * *

I
sat at my desk watching the sun set from my new office. The air was dense with
a buttery light; the golden hour we used to call it at school. I could see the
ubiquitous red tile roofs of the university. The undergrads would not be
arriving for another month, but the law school would start up again in a week
or two. When I had graduated from there, ten years earlier, it seemed my life
was a settled thing. I would rise in the public defender’s office, do important
political work, and there would be a judgeship at the end, perhaps. I started
out with all the right credentials, but somewhere along the line the
ambiguities of my profession bogged me down. Truth and falsehood, guilt and
innocence, law and equity — this was the stuff of my daily bread. Just as I
came to see that there were few clear answers in the law, I also saw there were
even fewer such answers in my life.

Frances
was right. I wasn’t ready to step back into the swamp. I wasn’t, but I couldn’t
think of anything else to do with my life. I opened the side drawer and pulled
out a bottle of bourbon and a glass. I kept the sunset company a little longer.

* * * * *

It
was late when I stumbled in and the red light on my phone machine blinked a
welcome. I navigated my way to it and played the messages. There were two of
them, both from Hugh, a couple of hours apart. The first was brief, tentative,
a greeting. The second asked me to meet him in the city the next day, at a bar
in the Castro. I erased the messages, took off my shoes, stretched out on the
couch and fell into a sodden sleep.

When
I awoke it was light out but the room was shadowy. I inhaled the fumes of last
night’s liquor and sat myself up. My body ached and my head felt as if someone
was tightening a wire around my temples. I got myself into the bathroom and
swallowed some aspirin. I went into the bedroom and changed into my running
clothes. Outside, I forced myself to stretch and set off toward the university.

The
first mile was torture. I passed beneath the massive stone arch at the entrance
to the school, pulled off the road and threw up. I felt better and ran down the
long palm-lined drive to the Old Quad. Lost somewhere in the thicket to my left
was the mausoleum containing the remains of the family by whom the university
had been founded. Directly ahead of me loomed a cluster of stone buildings, the
Old Quad.

I
stumbled up the steps and beneath an archway into a dusty courtyard which, with
its clumps of spindly bushes and cacti, resembled the garden of a desert monastery.
All around me the turrets and dingy stone walls radiated an ominous silence, as
if behind each window there stood a soldier with a musket waiting to repel any
invader. I looked up at the glittering facade of the chapel across which there
was a mosaic depicting a blond Jesus and four angels representing Hope, Faith,
Charity, and, for architectural rather than scriptural symmetry, Love. In its
gloomy magnificence, the Old Quad never failed to remind me of the presidential
palace of a banana republic.

Passing
out of the quad I cut in front of the engineering school and headed for a back
road that led up to the foothills. There was a radar installation at the summit
of one of the hills called by the students the Dish. It sat among herds of
cattle and the ruins of stables. It, too, was a ruin, shut down for many years,
but when the wind whistled through it, the radar produced a strange trilling
that could well be music from another planet.

The
radar was silent as I slowed to a stop at the top of the Dish and caught my
breath from the upward climb. I was soaked with sweat, and my headache was
gone, replaced by giddy disorientation. It was a clear, hot morning. Looking
north and west I saw the white buildings, bridges and spires of the city of San
Francisco beneath a crayoned blue sky.

The
city from this aspect appeared guileless and serene. Yet, when I walked in its
streets what I noticed most was how the light seldom fell directly, but from
angles, darkening the comers of things. You would look up at the eaves of a
house expecting to see a gargoyle rather than the intricate but innocent
woodwork. The city had this shadowy presence as if it was a living thing with
secrets and memories. Its temperament was too much like my own for me to feel
safe or comfortable there.

I
looked briefly to the south where San Jose sprawled beneath a polluted sky,
ugly and raw but without secrets or deceit. Then I stretched and began the slow
descent back into town.