the winter,” he said.
Atlanta
“Sorry, no time,” said Leonard Martin.
Nina turned to him, disappointed.
“Harvey just called. He wants me there. You know he wouldn’t bother me if he didn’t have a reason.”
Nina’s frown stayed put. He knew what she was thinking and took her unspoken point. “He’s not imagining things. It’s a difficult deal. He spoke with the client last night. The old man’s in a mood.”
She gave him the smirk that never changed, narrowing her left eye-clear and hazel-bright as ever-bunching up the smooth, curved lips that still held their exquisite shape. Through it all, he’d loved her skepticism.
“Did Harvey tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. He hates to admit he can’t handle it. But he said he’d like me there. And I bet that’s what it is. But you make the decision. I can have breakfast with you and the kids, and I’d really love to do it. But if something goes wrong with this big ol’ deal, and something or other falls through the cracks, and it’s all ’cause an old client’s gout is making him act difficult…”
She turned to the bowl of batter she’d been fixing. They’d had a good night, the first in a while. She was feeling happy and too unsure to risk his eyes going distant. “Then get your big ass to wherever you’re going.” She turned her head back for a kiss and said, “I’ll tell the boys you’re making millions to build a basketball court behind their house.”
“I’ll do it, too,” said Leonard Martin, “and don’t you think I won’t.”
His daughter pulled into the drive as he closed the front door behind him. The boys poured out of the van.
“Where you going, Grandpa? Ain’t you having breakfast?” Mark, the eight-year-old, grabbed him around the waist. Mark’s younger brother Scott hung back. Scott was thinner, quiet as an infant, reserved and grave as a child-very much his father’s child, and far more deeply affected when his father moved out. Leonard told his grandson he had to skip breakfast and added, loud enough for Ellie to hear, “Tell your mom not to pay much attention to anything your nana might say about basketball courts.”
“See you later, Daddy. We’re going to go shopping. Why don’t you come home for lunch?” She kissed his cheek and gave his belly a pat. He stood in the driveway, listening as the three of them bustled inside.
It was eight forty-five on a beautiful Thursday morning in June. From the driveway he could see bright sunlight pouring into the high kitchen windows. The still, cool air shifted gently. The doors to the back deck were open and he imagined the air slipping through the house and into the kitchen, bringing with it the sounds around him, the early morning bird calls, the voices of golfers already on the second fairway not thirty yards from the house.
And they had a fine breakfast without him. Nina and Ellie threw apple chunks into the scratch batter in the bowl, and they heaped each plate with Georgia’s Own pork sausage, honey-sweet and dripping with country flavor, grilled on an open skillet, filling the house with the scent of heaven itself. The boys gulped milk and the women sipped cappuccino from the coffee machine Leonard forced his wife to buy on the last day of their last trip to Milan. Harvey Daniels had been right. This client was in a mood. It wasn’t that the deal would go bad. They were all too committed for that. But when any client starts picking at legal language, delay was in the cards. He did it to satisfy some inner need, very likely to make whatever his ailment behave, and nine times out of ten it was mistaken for conscientious representation.
The firm of Stevenson, Daniels, Martin, had long ago learned that client whims meant time lost sprinting in circles. They’d also discovered the remedy: Leonard’s patented, “Fuck with us Jim or John or Joan and it all goes down the crapper” speech, delivered in a corner, in a serious, menacing tone, but always accompanied by a semi- friendly poke or elbow-squeeze.
Harvey had tried it once. The client took offense and nit-picked all the more fiercely. None of them ever considered Nick Stevenson for the role. This time the ploy worked especially well; Jim allowed that Honest to God he had no serious problems. The papers got signed and another developer staked his claim to fifty more acres of doomed Georgia pine.
Leonard Martin, Harvey Daniels, and Nicholas Stevenson partnered in 1973. Lenny and Harvey, novice attorneys, were part of Atlanta’s late sixties population explosion. They’d come for jobs at the same big downtown firm. Every time it snowed in New York or Chicago, two dozen lawyers applied for a job in Atlanta. That was the office joke. There were kernels of truth in the gag and they didn’t try to deny it; Atlanta was warm and wonderful.
Lenny and Harvey bought pricey new homes in the growing northern suburbs. They were among the first to join an exclusive North Fulton golf club. A partner joked that the club was so far north that they should have done it right, found one in Tennessee. They were also among the first to see the riches that real estate law had to offer down the road. Atlanta was growing so fast, so many people were moving in, so many homes were being built-and so few lawyers were even half awake-that they took one good look and made the leap. They approached Nicholas Stevenson, a laid-back Southern gent with a one-man real estate practice out in Dunwoody. Stevenson was a few years older and the butt of collegial humor concerning his ethics. He was considered obsessively honest. He agreed that the boom was only beginning. They formed Stevenson, Daniels, Martin, Attorneys at Law, and set their sights on closing more real estate deals than any firm in Atlanta.
Five years later they were in six locations. By 1983 they had eleven-in Fulton, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. The next ten years took them farther north-into Cherokee county, Forsyth, and Hall. Now they had sixteen offices, all doing upscale residential work-from sleek, modern condos in Buckhead, to million dollar retreats up on Lake Lanier, to old-boy mansions down in the wool hat country around West Paces Ferry. But their focus remained on Atlanta’s astounding northern sprawl. They soon got into commercial transactions, helping to turn north metro into a land of office towers, convention hotels, and mall developments everywhere. When they celebrated their twentieth year, each of the three was earning eight hundred thousand dollars plus.
Leonard and Nina vacationed in Europe and week-ended at their beachfront condo on Hilton Head Island off South Carolina. They educated Ellie in Atlanta’s top private schools, then sent her off to Duke, the school everyone in their circle called the Princeton of the South. When Ellie came home she married a systems analyst, Carter Lawrence. Leonard and Nina helped them buy a house in nearby Roswell. When, after Scotty was born, Ellie lost interest in her marriage, they tried to turn her around. But she’d done nothing very exciting at Duke and wildness took hold of her ten years late. While they could not keep Ellie and Carter together, they did keep Carter close. Now that she was quieting down, Leonard hoped they might try again, but Nina had her doubts. Carter never found anyone else, and the boys were his only real interest, and he’d set himself up as some kind of consultant, and seemed to be making a go of it… and Leonard had his hopes.
Leonard had two hobbies. He played golf, badly. Unlike most men, however, he really enjoyed it. He cared nothing about the score. “You’re the only one I ever play with,” Harvey told him, “who doesn’t cheat.” Why should he? Four, five, six, whatever-it didn’t matter. Leonard liked getting up early and going out to the course while the grass was still wet and you could see the steam and haze all the way down the fairway. He liked riding in those silly golf carts, racing up hills, taking the turns too fast, always scaring Harvey, who seemed in constant fear that they were about to crash. Most of all he liked hitting the ball. Where it went was secondary. He was thrilled by the feel of the metal clubhead against the cover of the ball. The tension in his arms and legs. The sound-the hoped-for sharp click. The divot. The flight of the ball even when it went into the woods. Leonard had a wonderful time playing golf. Aside from his family, his business, and golf, Leonard’s great passion was reserved for acting. He joined the North Georgia Community Players soon after he and Nina moved to Alpharetta. “Go on,” she’d urged him when he mentioned it one day. He did some acting in college. He was in a few plays and Nina knew he loved it. In his thirties he often played the male lead, the romantic lead if lucky, or the featured male role, the best friend, partner, sidekick, even villain. In his forties his frame got heavier and his parts got smaller, but his years of experience seemed to bring a deeper understanding to all his roles than they usually received in community theater productions. His biggest success was as Lenny in Of Mice and Men. The play was such a hit that the company brought it back, by popular demand, every two or three years. No matter who played the other roles, Leonard Martin was always the slow-witted, vulnerable Lenny. His friends kidded him about it, pretending to be a little retarded themselves, and Leonard’s real name didn’t hurt his association with the role. “You really are Lenny,” was something he heard many times. He considered it a compliment.
Barbara Coffino joined the company when Leonard was at the height of his Mice and Men popularity. She was
