was to enhance her beauty-as the poetically inclined might say, sprinkling dew on a rose petal.
She wrapped both her arms tightly around my arm and tugged. “Come on.” She giggled. “I swear it’s safe. My father promised to leave us alone.”
“Gee, I don’t know.” I peeked inside. “I don’t trust the old fart.”
Mary giggled some more. “He has a dartboard upstairs with your face on it. He’s probably up there right now.”
This was a joke, right? She led me to the rear of the big house, to a cavernous sunroom built off a living room the size of a football stadium. The house was filled with ancient-looking oriental carpets, and cracked, antique- looking paintings, and leather furniture with brass studs, and all the other ostentatious furnishings meant to remind visitors of the life they can’t afford.
She sat on a flower-patterned couch and I took a place across from her. The moment instantly got landlocked in the past. Twelve years is a long time, and a million questions were swirling in my mind. Unfortunately, the one that kept kicking to the surface was, Hey, why’d you marry that lousy prick when you could’ve had me?
Given the circumstances and all, perhaps it would be best to avoid that one. I finally announced, “I saw him this morning.”
“How is he?”
“Not well. On suicide watch.”
She shook her head. “Poor Bill. They called him into the office on some pretense, then he was in handcuffs being dragged out of the embassy. They deliberately humiliated him. Those bastards even invited CNN to be there.”
I tried to appear sympathetic, but to be honest, I had enjoyed watching the arrest. Of course, this was before he became my client, and now I was deeply ashamed of myself. Right. Anyway, I said, “Well, he signed the request and my boss just approved it.”
She tried to muster a warm smile as she said, “Thank you. I mean it. I know it’s awkward. I just…” And suddenly that smile crumbled, and she was biting her lip.
I put a hand on her leg. “Forget it.”
She laid her hand on top of mine. “We shouldn’t have asked,” she finally said. “What a stupid predicament.”
I chuckled. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sean, I have no right to put you in this position. I’m desperate… I have two young children and a husband accused of treason. Bill insisted on you, but I-”
“Look,” I interrupted, “if you’re concerned about my feelings, don’t be. Lawyers have no emotions.”
“Liar.”
“Liar, huh? At Georgetown Law, they caught a girl crying one day… She’d just learned her mother died. They threw her out on her butt. There was a big ceremony in the auditorium and they said she just couldn’t cut it.”
She was shaking her head and laughing. “Oh, come on.”
“We’re the ones in movie theaters who get dreamy-eyed when the Titanic goes down, counting the corpses and plotting the class-action suit.”
She giggled and said, “God, I’ve missed you,” then instantly looked chagrined, like, Oops, what made those words pop out? “Hey,” she said, a little too awkwardly, “do you want to meet the kids?”
“Oh God, kids?” I groaned.
“It won’t be bad, I promise. They’re just like regular people, only smaller. Just… nothing about Bill, okay?”
I nodded as she left the room and went into the hallway. She called upstairs and a moment later came the thundering sound of little feet bouncing down stairs.
“This is Jamie,” she said, pointing proudly at the boy, “and this is Courtney.” She then paused briefly to fabricate a graceful way to explain me, the guy who would’ve been their father were it not for their mother’s awful judgment. To them, she said, “Guys, this is Major Sean Drummond. We went to college together and, well… we were best of friends. He’s just stopped by to say hello.”
They padded over and shook my hand, a pair of blond-haired, blue-eyed replicas of their mother. This was no bad thing, I must tell you, and I felt perversely gratified to see so little of Morrison’s seed evident in their children. Don’t ask me why; I just did.
I said to her, “Christ, your genes are greedy cannibals.”
She giggled. “Bill always said I mated with myself.”
Then the hard part. There’s a good reason bachelors aren’t supposed to have children and it’s called competency. I try to come down to their level, to engage them in conversations about things I assume they’re interested in, like say, Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls, and they look back at me like I’m a moron.
I regarded them with my most charming smile. “So, hey, what do you guys think of the Redskins’ chances this year?”
Mary rolled her eyes, while Jamie, who looked to be eleven or twelve, pondered this a moment, then finally replied, “They need a new coach.”
“You think so?”
“A new quarterback, too.”
“A new quarterback, huh?”
“And their defensive backfield stinks. So does their offensive line.”
“I take it you don’t think much of them?”
“My grandpa likes them, so I hate them.”
The timing would be off, but I stared at him and wondered if he was my lovechild. I said, “I predict you’re going to grow up and become a very great man.”
Courtney, who looked to be six or seven, had been retreating swiftly toward the protection of her mother’s legs, that way shy kids do. But she was a girl-tiny and inexperienced-and thus, should still be susceptible to my charms. I flashed her my smarmiest smile. “And what about you, Courtney? Don’t you like football, too?”
She looked terrifically confused as her mother reached down and stroked her hair. “Ignore him, darling. He gets awkward around women.”
Courtney giggled. “You mean he’s a dork?”
“Honey, we never use that word in front of the people we’re talking about,” said Mary, wagging her finger. “Wait till he’s gone.”
Courtney giggled some more. “Girls don’t like football,” she instructed me. “I like Playstation, though. Especially the games where you get to shoot people.”
“Do they show the blood?”
“On the better ones. Some of them, the people just die.”
“Yeah, I could see where that would get boring,” I admitted with a knowing nod.
“I like it better when they bleed.”
“I think I love you. Would you happen to be free on Friday night?”
She hugged Mary’s leg tighter. “He’s strange, Mom.”
“I know, honey. He can’t help it. Don’t make fun of him, though. He’s very sensitive.”
I stuck out my tongue at Courtney and she broke into giggles.
“All right, you two,” ordered Mary. “Back upstairs and stay away from your grandfather. He’s slipped into one of his grumpy moods.”
Their obligation to meet their mother’s friend completed, they scampered off with relief on their faces. I was impressed. It only took those few moments to realize that Mary was a great mother. The chemistry between her and the kids was palpable and affecting.
We sat on the couches and faced off again. I asked, “And is Grandpa ever not grumpy?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ignore the stuffy old ass. He thinks we’re idiots for bringing you into this. I told him Bill insisted on you, that he had always said if he got in desperate trouble, he wanted me to call you.”
“Well… that’s interesting.”
She wisely ignored this. “Sean, he followed your legal career very closely. He really admires you, you know.”
