Blinking through tears, she begged him, “Please! Please stop.”
“Say it, bitch!” Again he twisted her arm, until she thought the ligaments would tear loose from the bones.
“I have fear,” she cried, eyes squeezed shut, her shoulder screaming in agony. “I have respect.”
He let her go. Her arm throbbed. Her ear stung. Blood dribbled from her earlobe. She felt faint.
“Good,” Shank said, pocketing the bloody earring like spare change. “I’ve got confidence in you, Lisa. When you’re through with the judge, he’ll vote to revoke the Constitution if you ask him to. You do your job, Lisa, we’ve got no problems.” He flashed a smile as jagged as a cracked eggshell. “You don’t, I’ll take your other earring and the ear, too.”
He said it softly, matter-of-factly, without anger. Max hurried to Lisa’s side and wrapped his arms around her just as her legs buckled.
Still speaking in a hushed voice, Shank said, “Now why don’t you take a little walk so Max can bring you up to speed?”
Silently, Max guided her to the door. She was too shocked, too much in pain, to protest. As she stepped into the corridor, Lisa took one look back inside the apartment. Shank was lighting another cigarette. He took a deep drag, then tossed the match onto her Persian rug.
CHAPTER 6
The Shoe Box
Samuel Adams Truitt may have become a justice of the Supreme Court but at home, he still carried out the trash. And walked the dog, a russet-haired mutt with retriever and shepherd blood named Sopchoppy, Sop for short. And verbally sparred with his wife, Connie, she of the patrician good looks and slashing wit. And on regular cycles, for the past two years, he gave his wife twice daily injections of Pergonal plus a 5 A.M. blood test, all aimed at increasing her egg production so that with the help of a fertility expert, a petri dish, and divine intervention, they could enjoy the benefits of parenthood.
So far, the in vitro fertilization had not worked. All the ultrasounds, all the drugs with their chaotic mood- altering side effects, all the hours in the doctor’s office squeezing her hand while a scope was inserted through her abdomen into the ovaries, all the needles depositing fertilized eggs into the uterus… all for nothing.
For a while, he thought the experience brought them together. It was one of the few remaining areas of common passion or even interest. They laughed over Truitt’s discomfort at walking into the OB-GYN’s waiting room filled with suspicious women, then disappearing into a rest room to masturbate into a plastic cup.
“Was it good for you?” she had asked.
“My hands were too cold,” he replied, “so the nurse helped.”
Connie had shown him endless wallpaper patterns, paint chips, and photos clipped from Architectural Digest as they set about planning the nursery. Sam Truitt didn’t know calico from chintz, and in fact spent several years of bachelorhood with window coverings of old bedsheets, but he took an interest in the mythical nursery for the mythical baby because it made Connie happy.
But lately, after so many misses, after Connie’s headaches and nausea, exuberant hopes followed by deep despair, after more than twenty-thousand dollars in medical bills, there was little talk of babies and bassinets. Connie’s moods had become both extreme and unpredictable. She would burst into tears at the sight of a pregnant woman or laugh hysterically at inopportune times.
Today, Truitt knew, Connie had been to the doctor to see if the latest implant of a fertilized egg or “pre- embryo,” in Dr. Kalstone’s lingo, had taken hold.
God, let her be pregnant.
Sam Truitt wanted to be a father; he wanted Connie to be happy; and he wanted to preserve his marriage. At the moment, all three were in jeopardy.
He had just stuffed a bulging garbage bag into the plastic curbside container. He had walked and pooper- scooped Sop, fed and brushed him, and told him he was sorry there were no game birds to chase in the neighborhood.
Carrying the recycle container to join the garbage at the curb, Truitt opened the gate in the black wrought iron fence to what was laughingly called their front yard. It was a rectangular space of dry brown grass roughly large enough for a single grave. One block away was the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the narrow manmade waterway where tourists now ride in mule-drawn boats and locals hike and jog along a towpath lined with giant sycamores and willows.
The cramped town house was only twenty-seven feet wide-fifteen feet shorter than his snap to the punter- but stood three stories high. It was, Connie told him, a shoe box standing on end.
But it was in Georgetown, which is where she wanted to live. Insisted on it, really. Her family’s second home had been here when she was growing up, when her father was a U.S. senator from Connecticut. That house was three times the size of this one. But property was cheaper then, and her mother’s inheritance fueled not only Daddy’s political career but also a lifestyle far in excess of what an elected official could provide.
Truitt walked up two flights of stairs to the bedroom, eager to hear about Connie’s visit to the doctor but apprehensive at the same time. She sat at her vanity applying makeup, seemingly oblivious to his presence.
If she’s silent, does it mean she’s not pregnant? No, the husband is not permitted to draw an adverse inference from the wife’s failure to testify.
At thirty-eight, Connie was a striking woman whose fine bone structure, manner, and posture spoke of cultured breeding and expensive schooling. Truitt did a fancy sidestep to get around her without banging her elbow. “At home, I had my own sitting room,” she said in greeting, as if reading his mind about the tight confines of the town house.
At home.
Home being Waltham, Massachusetts. Home being where they had spent the bulk of their not entirely happy marriage. Home not being where they now lived.
“It’s the nineties,” he replied. “Downsizing is in. I read it in USA Today.”
“Sam, you don’t read USA Today.”
She kept her eyes on the mirror, where she was smoothing a glistening liquid on her lips. Whatever happened to simple lipstick? He could not keep up with women’s fashions. Sam Truitt could tell you what Thomas Paine had for breakfast the day he wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” but he was oblivious to what his wife wore to the Kennedy Center last Saturday night, coincidentally, to see a revival of 1776. Or, for that matter, the names of the two couples-her friends not his-with whom they shared an apres-theater supper, her expression, not his.
He dodged around the bed and opened the door to what the broker had called the walk-in closet but which would not accommodate anyone with shoulders wider than the average coat hanger. Connie’s clothing took up all of her side and most of his. He stripped down to his underwear, straight-armed a number of her cocktail dresses, and hung up his suit. Feeling claustrophobic and not wanting to jitterbug past Connie like Emmitt Smith squeezing through the off-tackle hole, Truitt sat on the edge of the bed with its duvet of roses and hyacinths and looked at his wife in the vanity mirror.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. “How did it go today?”
“I had lunch with Stephanie,” she said, her eyes meeting his in the glass.
Objection! Not responsive. Your Honor, please admonish the witness to answer the question.
“They’re building a gazebo in their backyard,” Connie continued.
Truitt pondered this tidbit of news. Just what does one say to a wife whose sister is building a gazebo in the backyard of her showy two-million-dollar home? That it will be a nice addition to her Jacuzzi, lap pool, and sauna? That it must be nice being married to a lobbyist whose basic claim to fame is being the son-in-law of a former senator-fame enough to make $850,000 a year, more than five times the salary of a Supreme Court justice.
“Gazebos are nice,” he said, prudently.
“She showed me the plans. It has a gas grill, a microwave, dishwasher, full-size refrigerator, plus an ice- cream fountain and a wet bar with two beer taps.”
