Deadlock

She imagined him blinking in mock disgust behind his shades. “Who are you talking to?”

“Just reassure me.”

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“Done.”

Anne shook her head. “You escorted him where?”

Ambrosi looked at his nails. “Look, babe, I didn’t give you the whole thing. We had to go all the way.”

Anne looked around, as if FBI cameras were homing in on them. “You killed him?”

“Whacked. Remember?” He laughed.

“We didn’t ask you to – ”

“You can’t do anything now,” Ambrosi said. “It’s over. Wanna do the Oak Bar?”

Too late.

“Yeah,” she said to Ambrosi. “Let’s get a drink now.”

6

The park faced the Potomac. Its gentle murmur in the October afternoon was in sharp contrast to the jangling alarms inside Millie. Despite Helen’s presence and soothing voice, she sensed something was very wrong. And she was determined to find out just what that was.

“Over here,” Helen said. She led Millie toward the eastern end of the park. There were a few scattered people around, some lolling in the shade of birch trees, others at picnic tables having lunch. She wondered if any of them had any idea who was here. A United States senator and the chief justice. No one seemed to notice.

Helen stopped at a table where a lone woman sat. The woman looked up at Helen and smiled. It was clear they knew each other.

“Millie… I mean Justice Hollander,” Helen said. “I’d like you to meet Toni Ridge.”

The woman smiled at Millie and extended her hand. She was around thirty-five and wore a conservative business suit. She might have been a lawyer or an accountant. Or an actress playing one. Her hair and eyes were movie star quality.

“I’m very honored to meet you,” Toni Ridge said.

Mystified, Millie said, “Thank you.”

“I thought you should meet her,” Helen said. “She works in one of our NPPG offices in Maryland. Legal counsel.” Helen motioned for everyone to sit.

“You know Senator Levering, I believe,” Helen said to Toni. The look that flashed across Toni’s face suggested to Millie she knew him quite well. But all she said was, “Of course.”

Helen took charge, as if running one of her meetings. “I wanted you to see a human face, Millie. Someone whose life you have touched profoundly.”

Millie looked at the beautiful young woman. She appeared to be the picture of urban success. She even wore a wedding ring, prompting Millie to imagine a square-jawed husband who also had movie star looks.

“Toni, why don’t you tell Millie, I mean, the chief justice, just what this is all about,” Helen said.

“I’d be happy to,” Toni Ridge said. She folded her hands in front of her, like a guest on a talk show. “Madame Chief Justice, when I was in law school, at Georgetown, I fell in love with your opinions. Not simply because I agreed with your opinions, but because of the writing itself. No one on the Court is a stylist like you.”

“Thank you,” Millie said quietly.

“I knew then I wanted to follow in your footsteps,” Toni said. “I wanted to learn the law and hopefully, someday, become a judge. Who knows, maybe I’d end up on the Supreme Court. It’s a wild dream, I know.”

“Everything worth attaining starts as a dream,” Millie said. Despite the odd circumstances, Millie felt an affinity for the woman. Anyone who loved the law…

Smiling shyly, Toni said, “Yeah. I believed that. Anyway, I really took to law school. I made Law Review, everything was going great. And then…”

The trailing off of her voice was like the change in score in a movie. What had once been a light, airy scene was suddenly ominous, with things lurking in shadows.

“Go ahead,” Helen told Toni. “You’re among friends.”

The young woman looked at her hands. They were no longer folded demurely. Now the fingers squeezed against the back of her hands, bunching the skin.

“Well,” Toni said after a long sigh, “it was in my second year, toward the end. Everything had gone along so well. I had a great job lined up for the summer. I was going to be editor-in-chief of the Law Review. There was even a chance” – Toni gave a small laugh – “that I might be number one in my class. I was neck and neck with a guy named Harold Rose, and I was determined, boy. I wanted that.”

She looked down at her hands, still stretching her skin as if trying to pull some comfort from them. Helen put her hand on Toni’s, patted them.

“Anyway,” Toni said, “I was going home one night from a long stint at the library, walking across campus. I guess I was stupid. Why did I have to go around by the athletic field? It was a straight shot to my apartment by way of the student union.”

She paused, took a deep breath, continued. “He was waiting in the doorway of the women’s locker room. I tried to run the other way. But he got me.”

Now Millie started to see. Not only what Toni was going to describe about that night, but also the effects. It was beginning to be very clear why Helen and Levering wanted Millie to hear this. She thought of stopping everything right then, but could not bring herself to interrupt the woman’s story.

“He was strong,” Toni said. “Massively strong. He got tape over my mouth without any problem and carried me like a sack of laundry to the grassy strip between the gym and locker room. And that’s where it happened. That’s where he raped me.”

Millie swallowed hard, caught between empathy and incipient anger.

“Sure enough I got pregnant,” Toni said. “Sure enough they never caught the guy. That didn’t matter. What mattered was now everything I had worked for and hoped for was going to be torn down. There was no way I could carry a baby to term. But I knew I wouldn’t have to.”

Toni looked at Millie with large, watery eyes. “I knew that because of your principles,” Toni said, “that a woman’s right to choose was safe and strong. I found myself going back and reading your opinion in the Messier case, where you so eloquently defended Roe v. Wade, because of how far our country has evolved in morality and ethics since that time. When I went in for my procedure, I was actually happy.”

A creeping sensation wound its way up Millie’s spine, like curling fingers pushing and pulling at her.

“And that’s my story,” Toni said.

“Thank you,” Helen said.