'Broomstick?'
'Yes, the fucking old witch wants to come talk to the rude Manhattan lawyer but doesn't have a broomstick. However, the fucking old witch could take the 10 a.m. bus into the city tomorrow, I guess.'
'The rude Manhattan lawyer would be honored.'
'The old witch is fat and unstable on her feet,' Martha continued, 'and will need assistance.'
'Not to worry. Would she like a nice meal as well?'
'Oh, yes.'
'How about lunch in a great old steakhouse?'
'Swell beans, as we used to say when I was young, back in the seventeenth century.'
'I guess witches live a long time.'
'Too long, Mr. Wyeth, that's the problem.' She hung up.
Now I stood outside the Harvard Club, not quite able to step inside. A cold Manhattan rain, the kind that promises you nothing but misery, blew in sheets across the avenue, smattering the building. I saw Dan Tuthill waiting for me in the anteroom near the coat check, rocking on his heels, inspecting the cuffs of his shirt, and impossibly, looking a little fatter than two days before. I stepped inside and he shook my hand. We headed straight to the dining room, where we were shown to a table. After we ordered, I asked, 'How's Mindy?'
'She's fine. I mean, you know how it was with me…' Dan sighed. 'Things are, well, we've got the kids, I always say.'
'How's the lawyerly life then?'
'The usual. Pimps and maggots.'
'Which are you?'
'I go back and forth- as necessary.'
'What about Kirmer, my old pal?'
His smile dropped. 'Kirmer? He's running the place, Bill.'
'What about-?'
'All those guys? Nah, gone. He mowed down every one of them. Tied them up with phone wire and threw them in the river.' He smiled. 'Everything's different, Bill, the secretaries, the ways things are organized. I feel like a dinosaur and I'm forty-four!' He smiled up at the waiter. 'Scotch on the rocks, double.' He looked back at me. 'And I don't like the way the wind is blowing. You have to have a thousand attorneys on staff these days to compete! The business is so global, so complex. All these Indian kids who passed the bar in New York and Bombay and have a master's degree in computer systems or bioengineering. They're actually smarter than you or me, Bill, that's the honest fucking truth. So the firm is going to go in directions that a lot of the old guys can't go.'
'But you're set, right?'
'They have to buy me out if I leave, everything, even buy my shoes.' We sat there, Dan paddling his soup with his spoon to make the steam rise. 'Heard you weren't doing much,' he said softly.
'Me?' I said. 'No.'
'Not even a little work?'
'A little. But very little.'
'You into something else?'
I shook my head.
'What they did to you was fucking criminal, Bill.'
I shrugged. 'They had good lawyers.'
'Yeah.' Dan leaned closer. 'So, listen,' he said, 'I'm going to tell Kirmer to take his hand out of my ass.'
'Leave?'
'Leave? Eject, pal. Let those fuckers rot in their own gravy. I got some bucks set aside, I got my partnership share coming to me, and I've got Mindy's father.'
'I don't get it.'
Dan sat back and rubbed his chest, which meant, I remembered, that he had a story to tell. 'Well, you know I'm a bad guy, I slink around.'
'I always figured,' I said.
'You, however, always kept your whistle clean.'
'I'm a conformist,' I said. 'Dull as dishwater.'
He grunted.
'Anyway, Mindy's dad.'
He was eager to talk about it, I could see. 'It's a crazy thing, Bill. Something you'd never expect. Mindy's dad calls me up three weeks ago, says he wants to play golf. I say okay, and so we go out to the National in East Hampton. Beautiful. He's a pretty distinguished guy, made a mint in the seventies with the airlines. He's got to be worth like two hundred million bucks. Can live off the interest of the interest.'
'Does some of it go to Mindy?'
'Yeah, someday, but this guy's going to live till he's ninety, minimum. His resting pulse is fifty-four, blood pressure ninety-four over seventy.'
'Nice guy?'
'No. Not at all. A bastard. A manipulator. Doesn't have enough to do with himself. Wife died ten years ago, and now he has this beautiful Japanese lady who lives with him. There's Japanese stuff all over the house. Bamboo rugs, jade things. Plus fish and rice every night. He looks great, looks relaxed. She takes care of everything, is my bet. That whole thing about the compliant Asian woman is a bunch of shit. She's the one in control. He's given up control.'
'Well, he still controls two hundred million bucks.'
'So we play a couple of holes. I keep waiting. Nothing. He's playing well, me, nothing. I'm all over the place.'
'Nervous.'
'Totally. So there's a bench near the sixth tee. He says let's have a seat.'
'This was it.'
'Yep.' Dan nodded as the entree arrived. 'We sit down. He takes off his golf glove and puts it on my knee. Says, Listen, I know you're fucking another woman besides my daughter, maybe even more than one.'
'He use that word?'
'Yes, fucking, which is a bad sign, of course. Because it's angry.'
I agreed. 'Visceral.'
'I'm thinking, Oh no, he's angry, he's going to hit me with his seven iron. He says, Don't ask how I know, but I do. The world's a small place.'
'So were you?' I asked.
Dan raised his palm. 'I'm going to plead the Fifth Amendment, senator.'
'Fine.'
'So then he says, I know Mindy is a pain. I raised her. I know what she's like. But you can't leave her. I'm just about crapping in my pants at this point. I say, Okay. He says, No, I really mean it. I know she's gotten overweight. Actually he said fat. He used that word, about his daughter! I sort of waved my hands, you know, it's no big deal. I'm fat, too, of course. But she has gotten fat. Really fat. Purposefully fat, even. I mean, Bill, it creates a copulatory impediment. A sexual handicap. The only thing that works, frankly, is from behind.'
I put my hands up in front of me. 'Hey, I'm not asking you to tell me this- not that it's not incredibly fascinating.'
'Don't worry, this goes somewhere. It connects to your future, in fact.'
'The sexual position you use with your obese wife impinges on my future?'
'Well, in a manner of speaking. Just listen. So, Mindy's father looks at me and says-'
At that moment my phone rang.
'Quick, get it.' Dan was irritated. 'They don't like that here.'
'Martha?' I answered, taking a guess. 'You change your mind?'
'Yo, fuckwango!' came a male voice. 'You got the wrong number!'
'Excuse me?'
