The Endless Knot

“The man you love,” she repeated. “I am impressed. Is the man you love still into threesomes?”

“He doesn’t need a threesome,” I said. “He has me.”

As exit lines went, it wasn’t bad, but my heart was pounding, and the walk back to the ballroom seemed agonizingly long. I slid into my place at the table just as Zack was about to speak. When he saw that I was seated, he gave me a conspiratorial grin and began. He opened with Mel Brooks’s trenchant observation about retirement: “ ‘Never retire! Do what you do and keep doing it. But don’t do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, do fishing, do sexual activities, watch Fred Astaire movies … My point is: Live fully and don’t retreat.’ ” It was a good opening and it got a laugh. When Zack moved to a more measured assessment of the accomplishments of the retiring dean, his comments were gracious and touching.

When my life had centred on politics, I’d written more than my share of speeches, and I knew Zack’s speech had been effective, yet the applause when he was through was oddly grudging. I glanced around the room and I noticed that the faces of the guests were closed. They had enjoyed the speech, but they didn’t like the speaker. For the first time it occurred to me that Marnie Dowhanuik’s assessment of her son might also be true of Zack – that like Charlie, Zack was a man who had fans, not friends. Both were men who needed to win and that meant they would always be surrounded by people they’d beaten. Remembering the blonde’s cutting appraisal of Zack, I felt a chill.

We were silent as the elevator took us to our suite. Once we were inside, Zack turned to me. “So what happened?” he said. “You were happy again, and now you’re not.”

“Let’s get some sleep,” I said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Uh-uh,” Zack said. “Not if it means you sleep on one side of the bed and I sleep on the other. Why don’t I make us some tea and we’ll talk about what’s bugging you?”

There was a table and chairs in front of the window that overlooked the hotel’s formal gardens. In gentle weather, brides and grooms would exchange vows in those gardens and sip champagne under the cherry trees. Now, in mid-October, the lawns were leaf-strewn and the trees were spectral. Symbols everywhere.

Zack wheeled over, picked up the basket of teas the hotel supplied, and brought it to me. “A cornucopia of possibilities,” he said. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Camomile,” I said.

Zack started the tea and came back to me. “Your turn for a good deed now. Can you untie this damn tie?” I untied it and handed it to him. “Thanks. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.”

“When I went to the powder room tonight, I had an unpleasant encounter with an old girlfriend of yours.”

“Who was it?”

“I didn’t catch her name. She’s blonde. She was wearing a very short green dress, and she has amazing legs.”

“Margot Wright,” Zack said. “She’s with Ireland Leontowich.”

“Another lawyer.”

“They’re everywhere,” Zack said. “And I like your legs. Anyway, Margot and I saw each other for a while and then we broke it off. End of story.”

“It wasn’t the end of the story for Margot. She’s still steaming.”

“So what did she say?”

“She said you were a son of a bitch. I let that slide. Then she said that one way or another, you’d fucked 90 per cent of the people who were at the dinner tonight. And I let that slide. Then she asked if you were still into threesomes.”

“And you didn’t let that slide.”

“No, I said you didn’t need threesomes because you had me.”

“Sounds like you handled the situation.” He stroked my cheek. “But you’re not happy, so what Margot said must have got to you.”

“Yes, I guess it did.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“You want people to like me.”

“It sounds stupid when you say it, but yes, I do.”

“Jo, with a couple of exceptions, the people in that room weren’t my friends, they were competitors or adversaries. It doesn’t matter if they like me. What does matter is that they respect me because that means that, a lot of the time, they’ll settle rather than face me in court. And, believe it or not, that’s good news for everybody.”

“I understand that. What I don’t understand is why you have to play so hard to win.”

“Because that’s the way I am. I’m like that guy in Candide. ‘I’m neither pure nor wise nor good, but I do the best I can’ – for my clients, for my friends, and, if you’ll let me, for you. I’ve never lied to you, Jo, and I’m not going to lie about what Margot said. There were threesomes. You may have noticed that the mechanics of sex don’t always work for me. Three-ways with interesting partners helped for a while. But what you told Margot was true. As long as I have you, I don’t need anybody else. I’ve loved you since the night we had dinner at The Stone House. You reached over and took my hand, and for me, that was it. If what Margot said has screwed us up, I won’t know what to do next.”

“It’s not just Margot, it’s everything. I just wonder if we’re moving too fast.”

“You think that hasn’t occurred to me. Jo, ask anybody – ask Margot, for crissake – I’ve never been known to rush into commitments. There was never any reason. I had everything I needed: my job and my law partners, and