Warren stirred in the high chair and began to move his head, side to side.
“It’s okay,” Cate said in a calm voice. What was bothering him? Maybe too much pointing. Autistic kids don’t point, and he was just learning how to point in school. She set the mirror down gently. Sudden noises wouldn’t help. “We won’t do this anymore, if you don’t want to.”
Warren shook his head, side to side.
“Warren, it’s okay, we’ll stop now, it’s okay,” Cate soothed, but singsong wasn’t working. She wanted to kick herself. “It’s okay, Warren,” she said, but he started shaking his head faster, then swinging his small arms, jostling the high chair. The chair banged against the kitchen table, and Cate’s glass tipped over with a loud
“Ahhh!” Warren burst into screaming, shaking his head back and forth so violently that he rocked the high chair, almost toppling it. Cate leapt up and grabbed him under his arms so he didn’t fall, but he was strapped into the high chair and went ballistic. Cate managed to unlatch him and scoop him shrieking into her arms, kicking his feet, writhing back and forth. Cate tried to remember her training. Kids with autism are calmed by tight squeezing. She hugged him tightly, and he kicked against her stomach with his baby sneakers but she didn’t let go.
“Cate!” Gina rushed into the kitchen in a towel, her expression stricken and her wet hair plastered to her shoulders. “Do you need-”
“No, I got it, it’s okay, Warren, it’s okay, it’s Cate and it’s okay,” Cate said over and over, squeezing him. Gina stood at their side, her hand covering her mouth, her tears silent. The child stopped screaming and his kicking finally lessened, then ceased as his tense body loosened in her arms. “It’s all right, Warren, it’s gone now, I love you, Warren,” Cate kept repeating, and Warren went finally limp in her arms.
Gina signaled in time that he had fallen asleep, but Cate didn’t let him go. He felt so good in her arms, permitting her embrace only in slumber, and Gina understood, because she nodded to Cate to go upstairs to put him down. And when they were finished, Cate picked up her purse, slipped back into her sheepskin, and closed the town house door.
Grateful, and heartbroken, to leave.
Afterwards Cate found herself driving the long way home, knowing she was in some vague state of denial. She piloted the white Mercedes through Roxborough, a working-class neighborhood on the way home, a brick labyrinth of row houses with green plastic awnings, heaped now with crusty snow and trimmed with sooty icicles. She felt oddly comfortable here; it was a lot like her hometown, and she kept seeing her own past.
She drove by an old Catholic grade school, its windows covered with construction-paper snowflakes. She had gone to an elementary school like that, St. Ignatius, and remembered making snowflakes, folding the paper into thick eighths, cutting the corners with useless safety scissors, then unfolding the creation in a schoolgirl’s suspense. She’d been either disappointed to discover cut holes that were bigger than they were supposed to be, or happily surprised when a humongous star burst at the center of the snowflake. She didn’t know why she remembered it, now.
She drove past a small church with an attached rectory, then a large stone funeral home that was, ironically, the nicest building on the block. It was always that way in neighborhoods; it had been in hers, too. She cruised ahead, listening to the thrumming of the Mercedes engine and passing old Fords and minivans whitewashed with road salt and grime. She slowed when she came, inevitably, to a corner bar.
PADDY’S, read the neon sign, a glowing green cliche with a sideways shamrock.
Cate eyed the place as the car idled at the stop sign. Its brick facade needed repair and its one window, in the side of the building, was of old-fashioned block glass, almost stop-time. A broken concrete stoop led to a wooden front door, so close to the street that Cate could hear laughter from within. She felt a familiar tingle of arousal and fear.
HONK! HONK!
Cate started and checked the rearview just as a pickup flashed its high beams. She hit the gas and cruised forward, half-looking for a parking space, half-driving home. She checked the digital clock on the car’s tan dashboard, illuminated with a ghostly white: 11:13. Then the temperature: 18 degrees.
Cate lapped the block once, then twice. Thinking, and not thinking. She flashed on Warren, sleeping spent in her arms. Then Marz, for some reason, which reminded her. She still had work to do tonight. Tomorrow would bring a big decision. The motion she had to rule on would prevent the case from ever going to the jury. They’d never get to decide who was telling the truth, and Marz would be dead in the water.
Cate took a left onto Ridge Avenue, heading home.
CHAPTER 5
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Cate shook hands all around and gestured Temin and Hartford into the mismatched chairs across from her desk in chambers. The lawyers greeted her nervously, undoubtedly taken aback by her surprise request to meet with them, and as they sat down, they stole glances around the office. Cate still hadn’t decorated the place, and for a second, saw it through their eyes.
Her leftover desk-medium-sized, GAO-issue, of brown mahogany-like laminate-would impress no one, and her desk chair was covered with brown pleather. Briefs and pleadings lay stacked on the conference table across the room, but at least the papers hid the water rings. Bookshelves lined the walls, but they remained empty except for unpacked boxes she’d brought from her old firm. There was, however, a floor-to-ceiling window with a spectacular view: gray clouds made a dreamy canopy over the blue Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which spanned the Delaware River and connected the snow-covered row houses of colonial Philadelphia to the renewed waterfront of Camden.
Cate asked, “Great view, huh?”
“Sure is,” Temin answered, falsely cheery. His curly hair looked damp, and white conditioner plugged one ear. He wore his trademark wrinkly brown suit. “You can see forever. Or, at least, Jersey.”
“It’s lovely,” Hartford agreed, tugging up his pants leg. He wore gray pinstripes, newly squeegeed glasses, and a tight smile.
“Thanks for coming, both of you,” Cate said. “I called you in because I’m troubled by this case. As you know, I inherited this matter, so I wasn’t involved in any settlement discussions. The way I see it, this is a garden-variety contract case, if we strip away the Hollywood glamour. Why hasn’t it been settled?”
Temin sighed. “Plaintiff did try to settle, Your Honor, but defendant was unwilling.”
Cate turned to Hartford. “How unwilling?”
“Completely,” he answered firmly, but Cate wasn’t hearing the firmly part. She turned back to Temin.
“What was your demand?”
“Your Honor, our financial expert examined what the
Cate almost laughed. “As I said, what was your demand?”
“We started at twenty million, then went down to fifteen, then ten, then eight, then two.” Temin shifted his girth. “Right now we’re at $925,000.”
“Your Honor, the rub isn’t me, but my client. He refuses to pay a penny. Not a penny. He doesn’t want to set a precedent, and successful producers become major targets if they pay. Besides, it’s a principle with Mr. Simone.”
“He has no number. He believes that his reputation is on the line.”
“His reputation is taking a pounding in the press.” Cate hadn’t been reading the articles, but her clerks memorized them. “
Hartford shook his head. “They just want to bring a successful man down, and Mr. Simone thinks long-term.
