of September, the thermostat hit ninety in Houston today. Jay pictures Rolly plucking a stubby pencil from behind his ear, jotting notes on any little slip of paper he can find, a bar tab or a parking ticket.
Jay gives him all the information he has. His sister’s maiden name, different from his own. The neighborhood in Dallas she called home more than a decade ago. And a loose description. Hair, rust-colored. Her skin, fair, with a mess of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “Tell her I’m having a kid.”
There’s a pause on the line.
Then Rolly’s voice, coated in nicotine. “Man, I’ll do every thing I can.”
Jay spends the rest of the time at his office tying up loose ends, calling several prospective clients to let them know that he won’t be able to take their cases after all, that his dance card is full. For the open files on his desk, he draws up paperwork for some of the smaller civil suits, requesting extensions. The last call he makes is to the hooker, Dana Moreland.
He tells her he can get her $5,000 from J. T. Cummings, can have a check drawn up as early as this afternoon, in fact. But if she wants to take Cummings and Charlie Luckman to court for more, she’s going to have to do it with someone else. He, unfortunately, cannot represent her in this matter any fur ther.
As Mr. Cummings had originally (and accurately) guessed, the girl jumps at the money and wants it in her hot hands as soon as possible. She has, since they last spoke, broken up with the mechanic from Corpus and is no longer interested in real estate or oil. She’s thinking about getting into the cosmetics game now, selling door-to- door, for which she will need a new car. She’s got her eye on a two-toned Pontiac Grand Am at a dealership out by AstroWorld.
One phone call and it’s over and done with.
He’s got at least one satisfied customer.
Sometime after four o’clock, he’s clearing up the scattered
paperwork on his desk when Eddie Mae pokes her head in the office, her eyes as wide as milk saucers. It’s a moment or two before she can get any words out, and Jay sighs, thinking this is Eddie Mae working up her nerve, readying herself to ask him if she can cut out a little early today. He tells her he needs her to stick around until at least five o’clock from now on. He reminds her that’s the deal they made. “Somebody’s here to see you, Mr. Porter,” she says.
When his office door opens all the way, Jay sees Cynthia Mad dox standing on the other side. She’s come alone, in a dark blue suit. She smiles at Jay, then briefly, shyly, looks down at the tips of her black shoes. She’s waiting to be invited past the threshold, into his private space. He, admittedly, feels a flutter in his chest at the sight of her, but whether it’s a longing that may haunt him the rest of his life, or just a lingering rage that flares up from time to time, he can’t tell. And anyway, like almost anything, it starts to fade after a while.
“Can I get you something, Miss Mayor?” Eddie Mae asks. “No,” Jay says, answering for Cynthia. “Just leave us alone.” “Oh, surely, Mr. Porter,” Eddie Mae says.
She raises a single eyebrow before shutting the office door. There’s nowhere for Cynthia to sit. Jay’s papers and files and
two phone books cover the only available chairs. He makes no effort to clear a space for her to sit, and she is maybe too prideful to ask. “This is a surprise,” he says. “There’ve been a lot of surprises today, Jay.”
She looks around the tiny office. For the first time, he sees the place through Cynthia’s blue-gray eyes: a cheap strip-center rental with bad flat carpet, stained in too many places, and yel lowing blinds on all the windows. A long, long way from the mayor’s office. “What do you want, Cynthia?”
“I read the paper this morning,” she says.
“And you came all the way down here to tell me that?” “I came here to see if you really know what you’re doing,
Jay.”
“Cynthia, this doesn’t have a thing to do with you.” “It’s happening in my city, it has everything to do with me.”
Then, taking a step toward him, she asks, “What are you trying to prove here, Jay? I mean, think about who you’re taking on. This thing is much bigger than you.”
He shrugs. “It’s just a little property dispute, that’s all.” “You won’t win.”
“It doesn’t matter, not really. It only matters that I remember to speak up.” He looks at Cynthia, looks her right in the eye. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Oh, Jay,” she says, her voice a near whisper. She seems disap pointed in him, or else exasperated, as if he grossly misunder stood her. “I’m asking you to reconsider,” she says. “Think about your practice, your family, and reconsider.”
He resents the mention of his family. He thinks he knows why she’s really here. “How much did you get from Cole for your campaign last year?”
“Listen to me, Jay,” she says. “These people do not fuck around.”
“How much?”
“Oh, please, Jay,” she says, waving away the thought with her hand.
“No, really, I’m asking,” he says. “How much?”
“My god, Jay,” she says faintly, kind of shrunk down in her clothes, looking as if he had struck her with his hands, as if he’d deliberately set out to hurt her. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be here ’cause I care about you?”
“No.”
The light in her eyes changes them from blue to gray, then back again. “You don’t think much of me anymore, do you?”
It’s a ridiculous question, one they’re long past.
Jay stares at Cynthia, across the room, thinking this is what it must feel like to sit with a loved one in their final hour, the body sometimes twisted and bloated to an unrecognizable degree, when t here is an often childish wish to t urn back t ime, to remem ber the person the way they once were, at their very best.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Cynthia,” Jay says, shaking his head.
“Come on . . . one last time.”
Outside, they make the block around his building in silence, ending up at a small park to the left of a barbecue restaurant and an office-supply store. Somewhere near a rusted swing set, Cyn thia stops, kicking the toe of her high-heeled shoe into the trunk of a nearby tree. She looks softer in the shade.
