I said, No you don’t, just like I don’t have to be talking to you.
He said, Then get the hell out of here, motherfucker.
I have a confession to make. I had a pocket full of quarters. I do not like all my clients, and I did not like Green. He made the same mistake that death-penalty supporters routinely make. He assumed that because I represent guys like him, I must like guys like him. He assumed that because I am against the death penalty and don’t think he should be executed, that I forgive him for what he did. Well, it isn’t my place to forgive people like Green, and if it were, I probably wouldn’t. I’m a judgmental and not-very-forgiving guy. You can ask my wife. I would have left midway through his tirade, except I wanted to know what he knew. It appeared he wasn’t going to tell me, so I didn’t have any more reason to stay. I stood up. I said, Have a nice life, asshole.
ON SEPTEMBER 1, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, Katya and I got married at the Doubletree Hotel near the Houston Galleria. Three months earlier, we sat with the executive chef in his kitchen, sampling wines and tasting tuna, halibut, and loin of lamb. While we were deciding on our celebratory meal, the Quaker family was dying on the other side of town.
Dorris Quaker worked the third shift at Ben Taub General Hospital. That night, she made fried chicken and biscuits for her two children, twelve-year-old Daniel and Charisse, who was eight. Their next-door neighbor, Sandra Blue, sat at the table drinking sweet tea while the Quakers ate. Sandra said that she left at nine, when Dorris started getting the kids ready for bed. A few minutes later, Dorris called Sandra and told her she was going to take a short nap and leave for the hospital in an hour. She’d get home at seven thirty the next morning, just as the kids were waking up. Daniel knew to call Sandra if he needed anything, and Sandra knew to call Dorris. This had been their routine since Dorris and Henry had separated three months before.
At eight the next morning, Sandra went outside to pick up the newspaper. Dorris’s car was in the driveway. The house was quiet. Sandra thought that the kids were watching TV and that Dorris was asleep. It was Labor Day. There wasn’t any school. At eleven, she noticed the quiet again. No one answered when she knocked. The door was unlocked.
As soon as she saw Dorris lying on the sofa she dialed 911, then she walked into the back bedroom and found the children. When police arrived, Sandra was sitting on the floor in the children’s bedroom, hugging her knees to her chest. A detective took her statement and sent her home.
ON THE DRIVE back to Houston from the prison after seeing Green, my cell phone rang. It was Jeremy Winston’s wife, Marie. Her voice was as thin as he was fat. She was calling to thank me for trying to help her husband. That was it, no other agenda. I’ve noticed that if you do the tiniest little thing for someone who has never received even the slightest kindness, you get rewarded with ridiculously effusive gratitude.
Katya handed me a glass of bourbon when I walked in the door. Happy anniversary, she said.
Shouldn’t we be drinking champagne?
Yes, but taste that. It’s a present.
I drank a swallow. Wow, I said. What did you pay for this?
Is it good?
Yes, I said. Amazing.
Then it was a steal. Come on, Lincoln’s already in bed, waiting for his story. I told him we were going to dinner and that Nana was staying with him.
Lincoln was in bed reading Amelia Bedelia. His nanny, Maria, has been with us since Lincoln was six weeks old. He calls her Nana. He said, Hi, Dada. Do you know what a pun is?
I said, Yes, amigo. I love puns.
He said, Me too. Puns are fun, get it? He said, Tell me a real-life story, okay?
I said, Okay. When I was a little boy, just about your age, I read an Amelia Bedelia book. In the book I read, she cooked an egg on top of a car. I asked my dada whether you could really cook an egg on a car, and he said that you might be able to do it if it was hot enough outside. So the next Saturday, after my dada got home from playing tennis, I went outside, and while he was swimming I cracked an egg on the hood of his car.
What happened? Lincoln asked.
I said, It was a big mess. The egg got hard and stuck to the car. I had to clean it off, and my dada made me clean the whole car.
Even the inside?
Yep, even the inside. I didn’t ever do that again.
Lincoln said, That’s a funny story.
I said, Good night, amigo.
WE ASKED FOR A TABLE in the back at Cafe Annie. I told Katya about my day. She said, You have to write him and apologize.
Apologize for what?
You told a man on death row to have a nice life.
The guy’s an asshole. I’m not going to apologize.
The waiter brought our appetizers and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. We ordered a coffee-roasted sirloin and grilled redfish. I lifted my champagne glass to make a toast. Katya’s eyes were wet.
What’s the matter, K?
She said, The guy is totally messed up. He can’t help the way he is. It’s really bad karma for you to say that to him.
Bad karma? Are you serious? Can I tell you what the guy did?
I said, Green beat his pregnant wife to death with his fists. He had his five-year-old son with him watching while he did it. Then he drove with his son to his mother-in-law’s house and strangled her, again with his little boy watching.
Katya started to say something. I said, Wait, I’m not finished. He drove to a motel, and when his boy fell asleep he left him there. Just left him. The next morning the kid woke up alone in the room and wandered outside looking for his dad. A maid found him. Green was arrested watching TV in his trailer at nine in the morning. He was on his sixth beer.
Katya ran her finger around the rim of her champagne glass. She said, I don’t know how he got to be that way. But he was reaching out to you because he respects you. You can’t leave it like that.
I said, I’m not going to apologize to him.
We sat silently. Our food arrived. I cut the steak and the fish in half, put some on each of our plates, and ate a piece of the meat. This is great, I said. Katya smiled. Sad and happy, all at once. I’m either in a good mood or, more often, a bad one. She is more complicated than I am. She can be in both. I said, I’ll write him and thank him for seeing me. I won’t apologize, but I’ll write him. Okay?
Okay, she said. Thank you. And the sadness was gone, just like that.
I said, What was that bourbon, anyway?
Pappy Van Winkle. Twenty years old. I’m glad you liked it.
How many bottles did you buy?
Just one. It wasn’t cheap.
I figured that. I guess I’ll drink it slow.
We had coffee and cognac. I was remembering how Green looked at me as I was leaving. She said, Where did you go?
I told her I was thinking about what it would be like to live the rest of my life in a windowless space the size of my closet. I said, It might be a little easier if it was your closet.
Hah hah.
Katya practiced law for seven years. She was good at it, but she’s too artistic, and too sincere, to be happy as a lawyer. So she went to art school and started teaching high-school photography. If it weren’t for Lincoln, that’s probably what she’d still be doing. But when our son arrived, she devoted herself with an intensity I had not seen before to being a mom and, far more daunting, to making me into a dad.
I was feeling sentimental, and when I’m feeling sentimental I am triter than normal. I had never gotten around to my toast. I lifted my cognac glass. I said, You and our son are the best things in my life. Thank you.
