Tight Lines (23 page)

So I went directly to bed, vowing to attend strictly to the boring but necessary business of making a living for a while. There’d be no Gone Fishin’ sign hanging on my door tomorrow, even if it was a Friday. Julie would be happy. My various clients would be happy. Assorted lawyers throughout the Greater Boston area would be happy.

So what if I wouldn’t be particularly happy.

And on Friday that’s what I did. I returned all the calls I had accumulated during the week. I read all my letters and jotted notes in the margins. Julie would magically convert those notes into lucid letters of reply. I stoically set aside all the fishing catalogs that arrived in the morning mail without opening them. When Mrs. Arthur Fortin appeared in my office at eleven for her scheduled appointment to complain about Arthur’s obstinacy, I did what I did best: I reminded her that divorce, like everything else in the American legal system, is an adversarial process, which is what keeps lawyers in business, so it’s best to have a competent one.

This was the same sort of reminder I found myself frequently needing. It sounded fairly convincing when I explained it to Amanda Fortin.

At noontime Julie went around the corner to the sub shop and came back with a small tuna for herself and a large ham and cheese for me. We ate at my desk while she ticked off my appointments for the following week.

I thought of returning Jill Costello’s call, but figured she’d be at school. I’d try her in the evening.

After lunch I huddled with several pages of notes and began to draft a revised will for Steven and Holly Morgan. It was a complex and unpleasant task involving trust funds for the three Morgan progeny and seven grand-progeny, a horse farm in Sherborn, a string of polo ponies, a large house on Nantucket, and a collection of priceless old British and Italian shotguns.

The Morgans were typical of my clients. They were rich, boring, and elderly. Unlike most of my clients, however, the Morgans were people I didn’t like very much, and it was hard to summon great enthusiasm for my task of keeping all of their wealth safely in the family.

Hammering out a will for people like the Morgans always made me grouchy.

So when Julie buzzed me in the middle of the afternoon, I jabbed the button on my console and growled, “What?”

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t shoot the messenger. You got a call.”

“I’ve probably had a dozen calls this afternoon, and you haven’t interrupted me so far.”

“You should take this one.”

“I’m not here.”

“Yes you are. It’s Gloria.”

“I don’t care if it’s Brigitte Bardot. I’m busy.”

Julie giggled. “You
would
take it if it was Brigitte Bardot.”

I sighed. “Okay. But only so I could practice my French. Look. I don’t feel like talking to Gloria right now, okay? Tell her I’ll call her back.”

“Brady,” she said, “really. I think you better talk to her.”

“Why?”

“Please?”

“Shit,” I muttered. Then I said, “Okay. All right. For you.”

“Line two.”

I sighed, pressed the button, and said,
“Bonjour,
hon.”

“Brady, you said you’d call me today.”

The usual accusation. But something else in her voice made me hesitate. Something subtle that fuzzed her anger. It sounded like fear. “Right, hon,” I said. “I was going to call you. I hadn’t forgotten.” A lie. “But listen. I’m really busy right now. Can I get back to you?”

“About the house?”

“Yeah. We’ll talk about it. Look—”

“Forget it, Brady.”

“No, I promise. I’ll call you.”

“Forget the house, I mean.”

“Well, actually, I didn’t—”

“Oh, shit,” she mumbled.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you crying?”

“Don’t worry about it, Brady.”

“You
are
crying. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. The house isn’t for sale, that’s all. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

“What happened? The condo deal fall through?”

“Yeah. That’s it. The deal fell through.”

“Well, too bad. But condos aren’t that hard to come by. You should be able to find another one.”

She laughed quickly. “There was no condo, Brady.”

“But you said…”

“I didn’t have the courage to be honest with you. There was no condo. There was a man.”

“Oh, yeah, okay.”

“That’s the deal that fell through.”

“Robert, huh? The lawyer?”

“Richard,” she said quickly. Then she paused. “How did you know?”

“Billy told me.”

“Well, God damn it, you could’ve told me you knew.”

“I figured if you wanted to tell me about it you would have.”

I heard her let out a long breath. “Yeah. I guess I was embarrassed or something. I knew you wouldn’t approve of him.”

“What difference would that have made?”

“Jesus, Brady,” said my former wife, “I wish I knew. But for some reason it mattered to me.” She laughed quickly. “Isn’t that something?”

“That’s something, all right,” I said quietly.

“Maybe we can have a drink sometime, huh?”

“Sure. I’d like that.”

“I feel like I owe you an apology.”

“You don’t owe me anything, hon.”

“You’re right. So I’ll let you buy. I’ll call you, okay?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t want the house, did you?”

“No.”

“You could’ve told me.”

“I suppose I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s nice, I guess.”

“Naw,” I said. “It’s just cowardice.”

After I hung up with Gloria I swiveled around to look out the window. It’s not much of a scene—mostly concrete and steel and glass. But on a clear day there are treetops off in the distance, and when the sun is low in the afternoon I sometimes can catch a glimmer of the Charles River. Glimpsing the treetops and the water usually comforts me.

On this Friday afternoon heavy clouds hung low over the city and darkness was seeping in early. No comfort there.

With a sigh, I rotated back to the Morgan will.

Julie stayed late to reinforce my good behavior. Before she left, she loaded up my briefcase. “Hey,” I said. “If we don’t watch it, I’ll be all caught up.”

“That’s the idea, buster,” she said.

I watched the Celtics on TV that evening. At halftime I tried Jill Costello’s number. Her machine answered. Her message was curt and cautious—she told me that I had reached the number I had dialed, that I should leave my name and number, and she’d get back to me.

I did as instructed.

The Celtics beat the Hawks in a close one. I was in bed before midnight. Jill did not return my call.

I woke up early. A nor’easter had blown in overnight. Hard pellets of rain clattered against the glass sliders that overlooked the gray angry harbor. A good day for paperwork.

At noon Terri called me. “Still coming?” she said.

“Sure. Looking forward to it.”

“Know how to get here?”

“Boy, am I dumb,” I said. “No. You never told me, and I forgot to ask. I guess I would’ve called you.”

“Well, I’m not at Susan’s, and my number’s unlisted, so you would’ve had a problem.”

She lived in an apartment complex on Route 2A in Acton. It was very close to Ciao, the Italian restaurant where we had dined. I agreed to get there around six-thirty.

I fooled around with my paperwork for the afternoon, and gave myself an hour to get to Terri’s. I stopped at a liquor store on her street and bought two bottles of red wine recommended by the clerk. And I was ringing Terri’s buzzer at precisely six-thirty.

She buzzed me up and greeted me at the door. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt. She gave me a quick, nervous smile and a perfunctory hug and took my hand. “Come on in,” she said. “Let me show you around.” She lived in a cramped two-bedroom apartment. Her living room was decorated with cheap museum posters and worn furniture. Houseplants were clustered at the single window. There was a circular dining room table in the end near the kitchen. A boom box on top of a bookshelf was tuned to a classical music station. It was playing a Mozart piano concerto.

Melissa had the smaller of the two bedrooms. Stuffed animals of every imaginable species slept on her bed and huddled on the floor. Colorful pictures, most of them featuring smiling people and stiff-legged horses and lollipop trees and spectacular rainbows, were tacked on her walls.

Terri’s bedroom featured a king-sized water bed.

Savory aromas wafted from the narrow stand-up kitchen.

We ended up in the living room where we had started. “Pretty nice,” I said.

She shook her head. “It’s not nice. It’s an apartment. I’d like to have a house in a neighborhood. Not for me, but for Melissa. But I had that choice.” She shrugged. “Drink?”

“We can try the wine.” I gave her the bag that I’d been carrying.

She took out the two bottles and looked at the labels. Then she smiled at me. “I don’t know much about wine.”

“Me either. The clerk recommended them. Said they’d go perfectly with gnocchi.”

“We’ve got time for a glass. We can eat in a few minutes.”

We sat side by side on the sofa sipping our wine and listening to the music and not saying much. Terri seemed preoccupied, and I didn’t try to intrude on her thoughts.

Her gnocchi were light and tasty and her sauce rich and spicy. It was delicious, and I told her so repeatedly.

“My grandmother’s secrets,” she told me. “She came over from Calabria when she was about fourteen to marry the man her parents had decided on, a cobbler from the village who’d come over a few years earlier. She brought her recipes with her in her head and gave them to all of us. She never wrote them down, and neither have we. It’s a pinch of this, a handful of that, and keep testing, make sure it feels right and tastes right, and if it doesn’t, you add more of this or that until it does.”

“The gnocchi I’ve had usually end up feeling like hunks of lead in my stomach,” I said. “This is different.”

“Sure. It’s made from potato, the way it’s supposed to be.”

We sat at the table for a long time after we’d finished eating, sipping wine and exchanging family stories. Terri’s father was Calabrian, her mother Irish. She’d been raised Catholic. Four years at the University of Vermont had cured her of religion. She’d majored in history, minored in math, met Cliff her senior year, worked as a secretary until Melissa was born. Since then she’d done temp work. That’s how she’d got the job with Susan.

“Best job I’ve ever had,” she said. “Susan pays the agency, which pays me. But she also pays me extra, under the table. She says I’m worth more than the agency pays me.”

I smiled. “That’s Susan.”

After a while we cleared the table and did the dishes. When we were done, Terri said, “Do you play cribbage?”

“Sure. I’m the cribbage champion of Fort Smith, Montana. All the fishing guides play.”

We played five games at the dining room table. I pegged out on the fifth game before she had a chance to count her double run. “Well,” said Terri, “I guess you’re the cribbage champion of Acton, Massachusetts.”

“You were a worthy opponent.”

She sat back and propped her feet up on the seat of her chair. She hugged her legs and gazed at me. “Well,” she said.

I smiled at her and nodded.

“I think,” she said quietly, “that we need to talk about something.”

“Okay.”

“I mean,” she said, “we’ve had three dates now, and I invited you to my place, cooked for you, my daughter’s spending the weekend with her father. So…” She shrugged.

“Look,” I said.

“No. Please. Let me try to say it. I’d like to go to bed with you—”

“Terri—”

“Let me finish. I’m attracted to you. I like you a lot. I’ve got—I’m normal, okay? I don’t have hang-ups.” She shifted in her seat and reached for my hand. She held it in both of hers. “I haven’t been with a man since Cliff, Brady. I’m not particularly happy about that, but there just hasn’t been anybody I’ve liked enough. To me, making love is just that. It’s not sex. It’s—well, it’s loving.” She squeezed my hand and peered at me. “Am I making any sense?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Wow,” I said. “What a question.”

She shrugged. “Unfair?”

“No. Fair.” I smiled. “Do I love you? I’m not sure. It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time since I could even say I wasn’t sure.”

She nodded. “Me, too. It feels good. But I’m not sure what it means. So—can we wait?”

“Yes.”

“Can we see each other a lot, do things together?”

“I’d like that.”

She got up, came around the table, and sat in my lap. She kissed me softly on the mouth, then put her arms around my neck and rested her cheek on my shoulder. I stroked her back and kissed her hair. She undid the top few buttons on my shirt and slithered her hand onto my chest.

“Hey, Brady?” she murmured.

“Yes, General?”

“Pretty soon, I think.”

I nuzzled the nape of her neck. “I certainly hope so,” I said.

A
LOUD BUZZ AWAKENED ME.
I slapped at my clock radio, but the buzzing continued. I picked up the telephone and heard a dial tone. The smoke alarm? The timer on the oven?

I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled into the living room. Sunlight was streaming in through the big glass sliders that looked easterly toward the ocean, so bright that it hurt my eyes. The rays came in at a low angle. It was early.

The buzz was coming from the intercom that connected me to the security guy in the lobby. I pressed the “talk” button and said, “What is it, Eddie?”

Then I pressed the “listen” button. “Hey, Mr. Coyne. There’s a guy here wants to see you.”

“Jesus, what time is it?”

“It’s, ah, ten after seven.”

“Today’s Sunday, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, who’s there?”

“Mr. Sylvestro.”

“Jack Sylvestro?”

“Yes, sir. Right.”

Jack Sylvestro was a Boston homicide detective, a rumpled Peter Falk sort of guy who had once investigated a case that I was involved in. We had become friends in the process. “Okay,” I said into the intercom, “send him up.”

I opened the door for him, then went back to my bedroom and slipped on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I was loading the coffeepot when I heard him rap on the door and say, “Hey, Brady.”