Part 22 (1/2)

”I don't want to hear any more of this s.h.i.+t about making mistakes,” he said.

”I'm not saying it's a mistake. I just want to be able to say I actually discharged a professional obligation to consider the prospect.”

”Look, I worked this case. On my own. The whole Force hit the pause b.u.t.ton once the headlines faded. I'm the one who kept pressing. I made this case. And I made it with you. And for you, if you want to know the truth. So don't say it's any frigging mistake.”

”For me.”

Fury throbbed through him. It enlarged his eyes”all of him really.

”Don't pretend like you don't get it, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. It's one thing, Muriel, isn't it? This case. You becoming P.A. You deciding to be great. You deciding to marry Talmadge. You deciding to march down the path of history. You deciding not to take me. So don't tell me it's a f.u.c.king mistake. It's too late for any f.u.c.king mistakes. I've had my p.i.s.s-poor little life, and you've gone ramping up to stardom. Don't pretend like you don't know what the game is, because you made all the f.u.c.king rules.” With that, he hurled his green cloth napkin down on his plate, and stalked off fast enough to bowl someone over had anybody gotten in his way. The small duffel he'd carried from home bounced on his shoulder as if it were as insubstantial as a scarf.

In his wake, she felt her Adam's apple bobbing about. Something huge had happened. At first, she thought she was shocked by the force of his outburst. But after a second she realized the true news was that even a decade later, Larry's wounds remained tender. She thought he was one person very much as he chose to present himself”too self-sufficient to be vulnerable to any lasting injury. That was more or less the way she tried to think of herself.

One of her friends liked to say that in junior high school you learned everything there was to know about the way love starts and ends. The vast region in between, the dark jungle of sustained relations.h.i.+ps, was penetrated only in adulthood. But the nuclear flash when love began and concluded was the same, no matter what stage of life. And what they would have said about Larry's outrage in the junior-high girls' room was probably true: it meant he still cared. a.s.saying all of this, she felt herself in some danger.

He'd left his sport coat slung over the chair. She looked at it a moment, then picked it up and went into the bar, thinking he'd escaped there. There was no sign of him. Upstairs, she knocked lightly on the door to his room.

”Larry, open up. I have your coat.”

He already had his s.h.i.+rt unb.u.t.toned over the mound of his belly, and he held a dwarf bottle of Dewar's from the minibar. Half of it was gone. He took the coat from her and threw it behind him to the bed without ever quite mustering the courage to look her way.

”Larry, how about if we get un-p.i.s.sed off? We have a long way to go on this case.”

”You're not p.i.s.sed off. I'm the one who's p.i.s.sed off.” He glanced down at the little bottle, screwed the cap on, and tossed it several feet into the trash can, which rocked from the impact. ”And now I'm less p.i.s.sed off than embarra.s.sed.”

”Maybe we should talk.”

”For what?”

”Don't make me stand here, Larry.” She had bags in both hands, her swollen briefcase in one and the small overnight pouch in the other. He considered her situation and motioned her in, turning from her. The bald spot on his crown had grown bright pink from the liquor.

”Muriel, I don't even know where that came from.”

”h.e.l.l, Larry.”

”No, I won't say I didn't mean it. But the thing that bothered me was at the end. What I said about myself. I don't think my life is anything to complain about. It's good. Better than good. It's just that I'm like everybody else, you know. n.o.body ever gets what they want when it comes to love.”

The statement”the exactness of it”struck her dumb momentarily, because she knew he had expressed her deepest conviction, one that she seldom had the wherewithal to say to herself. She was drawn back for a second to that howitzer sh.e.l.l he'd lobbed at her on the plane: the notion that she'd chased the same improbable dream in both her marriages. The idea had been with her all day, like a bad meal whose taste kept returning. She'd think it through on Sunday. Because love, most often, was what she was praying for in those precious moments in church, believing and not believing. Now she pondered love's quest, the way it led us to persistent unhappiness and blithe moments when, however chimerically, love seemed to have been found. Everything else in life”professional attainment, art, and ideas”was just the feathers and hide on the foraging animal of love.

”This meant a lot to me,” he said. He circled a finger between them. ”Afterwards, I had Kevorkian on speed-dial for a while. That's all. I just, you know, react.”

Men like Larry, like Talmadge, did everything possible to avoid appearing fragile. But they were all fragile, and the moments when that was revealed were an unending crisis. It was never going away. That's what he was telling her.

”I don't want you to tell Arthur,” he said then. ”About Collins.”

”Larry.”

”You said yourself it's not legal that you have to tell him. I don't want to be charitable just so he has these bulls.h.i.+t opportunities to throw up smoke.”

Even after all of this, she was disinclined to actually say yes. She took a seat in a desk chair near the doorway while she deliberated. He grew frustrated watching her.

”Christ,” he said. ”Just do me a f.u.c.king favor, will you? Will you?” He'd reignited, heard himself, and flared out in a matter of seconds. He fell to the bed several feet from her, exhausted by himself. Next door, the ice machine thumped a full load of cubes into its belly.

Sooner or later, she'd inform Arthur, but that could wait until Larry settled down. He felt too defeated at her hands to absorb another blow now.

”Well, this is a moment of auld lang syne, isn't it?” she said, at last. ”You and me and a hotel room and an argument?”

”The arguments never meant anything, Muriel.”

”Really? You mean I was just wasting my breath?”

”It was all foreplay.”

She lacked the daring to answer that.

”You just liked s.e.x to be a form of rivalry,” he said.

”Thank you, Dr. Ruth.”

”It worked, Muriel. It always worked. Don't tell me you don't remember.” He'd found the stamina to look at her one more time. For him, she realized, the story of what had happened between them was inscribed like law on tablets, often revisited, fully pa.r.s.ed and understood. Denial of any element was an affront.

”My Alzheimer's is only early stage, Larry. I remember.”

With that acknowledgment, the past, its pa.s.sion and pleasure, lay before them, like a corpse at a wake. Only this body was not quite dead. The longing that had always consumed them was suddenly present. She could feel Larry, intent as he measured her response. With his persistent directness about Talmadge, she knew what he wanted to ask, but even Larry recognized that boundary as unapproachable. Nor was there any point in comparisons”a marriage wasn't a fling, the world knew that. She was person one zillion who enjoyed s.e.x more before marriage than after, although she honestly would never have guessed. Going to bed with someone had never seemed challenging. Important. Fun. But not difficult. She had always a.s.sumed Talmadge and she would find a rhythm. But they hadn't. She never thought she was someone who could live without it, but whether it was exhaustion or age, it was less and less a preoccupation. When she woke to yearning, as she did a few times each month, it came as a surprise.

And she was surprised now.

”I remember, Larry,” she said again softly. She glanced up, thinking only to acknowledge him, but her desire was insistent enough that she could feel it beaconed from her. It was less than an invitation. Yet he had to sense that if he moved toward her, she'd find it hard to say no. But she could not go first. She'd made so many choices that Larry regarded as against him. There would be something vaguely imperial were she the one. Instead, she was left feeling like some breathless coquette, shy and powerless, as he pondered, a sensation she'd lived her life to avoid. She listened for movement, so she could rise to him. But his bitterness probably constrained him. The moment prolonged itself. And then the possibility of some rash grasping after all that former glory slipped beyond them, departing with the same slyness with which it had arrived.

”I'm beat,” he said.

”Yeah, sure,” she answered. From the threshold, she said she'd see him in the lobby at 6:30. Then she walked along the hall, an endless arcade of closed doors and low light, where she would eventually find the solitary room that was hers for the night. She carried her bags with her, wondering as she peered at every number, how hard it would be to go forward from here with the rest of her life.

Chapter 24.

June 25-28, 2001 The Deposition of Genevieve Carriere IN THE MAIL, which always seemed to contain bad news on Monday mornings, Arthur found a form notice from Muriel Wynn. Three days from now, on Thursday, the state proposed to take the deposition of a woman named Genevieve Carriere at the offices of the lawyers she had hired, Sandy and Marta Stern.

”So who's the mystery guest?” asked Arthur when he succeeded after several attempts to get Muriel on the line. On the few occasions over the years when Arthur had dealt with Muriel, they had engaged in the good-natured badinage appropriate to former colleagues. But the adversity of the current proceedings had left Muriel's manner with him no better than crisp. Arthur, who suffered from the loss of anyone's affections, had prepared himself for more of the same, but he found Muriel in good cheer. He suspected immediately she felt she'd renewed some advantage.

”Arthur,” she answered, ”let me say two words to you: Erno Erdai.” Muriel, like many prosecutors in Arthur's experience, lived by a simple watchword in dealing with defense lawyers: don't get angry, get even.

”I had to do that, Muriel.”

”Because you didn't want to give us a fair chance to investigate.”

”Because I didn't want you guys to blackjack Erno down at Rudyard. Or string things out until he was dead or incompetent. He's telling the truth and you know it, Muriel.”