that I thought Bert was dead.
'How could Bert be dead?' she asked. 'Who has the money?' It required only an instant, I noted, for her to reach the question that had come to me after a week.
'It's an interesting window of opportunity, isn't it?'
She had sat down in the chair again, half-dressed and posed against the fancy brocade. I loved looking at her.
'You mean,' she said, 'if somebody knew Bert was dead, they could blame it on him?'
'That's what I mean.' I was off the bed, stepping into my trousers. 'But they'd have to
'Well, how would they be sure?' I looked at her.
'You mean someone killed him? From the firm? You don't believe that.'
I didn't, in fact. There was logic to it, but little sense. I told her that.
'These are just theories, right? Bert being dead? All of it?' She wanted more than my reassurance. She was being her true self, relentless, beating the idea to death like a snake.
'Those are theories,' I told her, 'but listen to this.' I told her then about my meetings yesterday, first with Jake, then with the Committee. This time I caught her off guard. She sat far forward, her mouth formed in a small perfect
'Never,' she said finally. 'They'll never agree to something like that. That kind of cover-up. They have too much character.'
'Wash?' I asked. 'Pagnucci?'
'Martin?' she responded. Brushy's reverence for Martin was even greater than mine. 'You'll see,' she said. 'They'll do the right thing.'
I shrugged. She could be right, and even if she wasn't, she was improved by thinking the best of her partners. But she could see she hadn't really persuaded me.
'And Jake,' she said, 'my God, how sleazy. What's wrong with him?'
'You just don't know Jake. If you'd grown up with him, you'd see another side.'
'Meaning?'
'I could tell you stories.' I fumbled in her purse for a cigarette. I was tempted to tell her about the bar exam, but realized on second thought that she'd think less of me than Jake.
'You don't trust him, right? That's what you're suggesting. He wasn't brought up to be trustworthy?'
'I know him. That's all.'
In the green chair, she was stilled by disquiet.
'You don't like Jake, do you? I mean, all that palling around with him. That's bull, isn't it?'
'Who wouldn't like Jake? Rich, good-looking, charming. Everyone likes Jake.'
'You've got a chip on your shoulder about Jake. It's obvious.'
'All right. I have a chip on my shoulder about a lot of things.'
'Don't wait for me to say you're wrong.'
'I'm bitter and petty, right?' She could tell what I was thinking: I'd heard the tune before, someone else had sung the words, another chanteuse.
'I would never say petty. Look, Mack, he's lucky. In life, some people are lucky. You can't sit around despising good fortune.'
'Jake is a coward. He's never had the balls to face what he should have. And I let him make me a coward with him. That's the part that frosts me.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Jake.' I looked at her hard. I could feel myself turning mean, Bess Malloy's son, and she saw it too. She stepped into her pumps and fixed the clasp on her purse. She'd been warned off.
'This is attorney-client, right?' she finally asked. 'All of this. About Jake saying not to tell?' She wasn't being humorous. She meant that the communication was privileged. That she was forbidden to repeat it, to TN or anyone else, and thus that BAD could never criticize her for failing to come forward, as, ethically, each of us was obliged to do.
'That's right, Brushy, you're covered. There's no shit on your shoes.'
'That's not what I meant.'
'Yes, it is,' I said, and she did not bother to answer back. A certain familiar melancholy attacked me midline, spreading from the heart. Ain't life grand? Every man for himself. I sank down on the bed, on the heavy embroidered spread which we'd never removed, and couldn't quite look at her.
Eventually she sat beside me.
‘I don't want you to tell me any more about this. It makes me feel weird. And confused. It's too close to home. And I don't know what to do. How to react.' She touched my hand. 'I'm not perfect either, you know.'
'I know.'
She waited.
'I think this thing is frightening and out of control,' she said at last. 'All of it. I'm worried about you.'
'Don't worry. I may bitch a lot, Brush, but in the end I can take care of myself.' I looked at her. 'I'm like you.'
I wasn't sure how that sat and neither was she. She went to the chair and picked up her purse, then on second thought stopped off to kiss me. She had decided to forgive me, that things, everything, could be worked through. I held her hand for a second, then she left me there, sitting on the bed, alone in the hotel room.
XVI
My afternoon with Brushy left me in a state. Longing — real longing — took me as a walloping surprise. I reeled around in an adolescent fit, captured in transported recollections of the impressive qualities of Brushy's person, her pleasant scent of light perfume and body cream, and the pure transmission of some as yet unnamed form of human-emitted electromagnetic sensation which continued to grip my thorax and my loins. From my house that night I called her at home, reaching only her machine. I told myself that she was in the office, a number I did not have the bravery to dial.
I had called her doctor, who'd prescribed a salve, and I went to the John to give myself another treatment. In my sensuous thrall, I soon found myself otherwise engaged. Unspeakable activities. I sweated in my bathroom, imagining wild amours with a woman who'd been naked in my arms a few hours before, and wondered about my life.
I had just reholstered when I noticed the catarrh of an engine idling outside. I was stabbed at once by the kind of probing guilt my mother would have cheered, chilled by the thought that Lyle and his pals might have seen my filmy shape through the wobbled glass blocks of the bathroom window. I would have made quite a sight, backlit, bending and swaying as I squeezed the sound from my own sax. I heard the front door bang and gave some thought to remaining locked up there. But that was not my approach with Lyle. In any circumstance, I felt committed to staring him down.
I encountered him as he galloped up the stairs. In his various rangy parts, he looked a little more organized than usual; I suspected he was with a girl. His spume of hair was combed and he had on a Kindle County Unified Police Force leather jacket, not mine but one he'd purchased from the cop supply house on Murphy Street and which he wore in unspoken comment on the time when I had what he judged a more authentic life. He stomped past me, muttering something I did not catch at first.
'Mom's downstairs,' he repeated.
'Mom?'
'Remember her? Nora? It's boys' night out.' I wondered if it meant anything positive that he was treating his parents' foibles with humor rather than undiluted contempt. We were in the dim interior hallway between the upstairs bedrooms, and after a few steps he turned back to me with a smirk. 'Hey, man, what the hell were you
