So after she’d refused the money, Fiske bought her paintings. I put two and two together, unfortunately without the aid of my client. “Did he ever commission a painting from you?”
She didn’t answer but reached for her water with a shaky hand. The court reporter remained poised over the stenography machine, its unlabeled black keys a mystery to everyone but her. The room got very quiet, and Julicher looked up from his notes when the silence caught up to him.
“The judge commissioned one painting from me,” Patricia said finally. “A portrait.”
“Of who? Whom?”
“Of you and the man you live with.”
What? My throat caught. “The painting was of me?”
“It was from a photograph taken in Bermuda, I think the judge said. You were standing under a moongate.”
Paul and me. Our first trip together. It was after we had dinner, the first night. A man from Iowa had taken the photo.
“You wore a white dress, like silk,” Patricia said.
Paul had loved that dress. I bet him he couldn’t unzip it with his teeth. Then he did.
“I think the portrait was supposed to be an anniversary surprise.”
I remembered Paul slipping out of his jacket, then unbuttoning his dress shirt. Why are you taking your own clothes off? I had asked him. Because I can do it faster, he’d said, laughing.
There was laughter in the conference room. “Earth to Rita,” Julicher said with a smirk, and I fumbled for my stride.
“Miss Sullivan, where is the painting now?”
Julicher leaned forward. “Now what’s the relevance of that?”
None, but I wanted to know. “Miss Sullivan, where is the painting now?”
Julicher laid a hammy hand on his client’s arm. “Objection! You’re asking her to speculate. It’s absolutely irrelevant to this lawsuit!”
“Did you keep the painting, Miss Sullivan?” I asked, louder. If her own lawyer could bully her, so could I.
“I … don’t know,” Patricia said. Her thin skin was tinged pink, her voice sounded jittery. “Stan?”
“Objection!” Julicher shouted, slamming the table so hard Patricia jumped. “You’re upsetting the witness!”
Time to raise him. “This is only the beginning, Stan. She’s suing my client for a fortune. She had better understand what that means.”
Julicher looked enraged. “It doesn’t mean she has to take this shit!”
“Sorry, pal. That’s exactly what it means!” I shot back, then heard a whimper. It was Patricia. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she was reaching into her jumper pocket for a Kleenex. Christ. The woman was either a perfect angel or a perfect actress. I decided to back off as she dabbed at her eyes. I’d made my point.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I didn’t know—”
“It’s okay, Miss Sullivan. Let’s get back to the complaint,” I said, and took her through her allegations while she recovered. The deposition went on without further incident while everybody calmed down, and my thoughts clicked away.
So Patricia and Fiske had been lovers, although neither would admit the truth in court. My problem was I had a case to win, and the best way to do it would be to prove there was an affair. But Fiske would never permit that. He’d be asked to resign from the bench, and it would kill Kate. I’d been dealt a garbage hand but couldn’t fold.
I wondered if I could convince Fiske to settle. I wondered why I’d taken the damn case in the first place. And later, as I took Patricia through my final questions, I wondered about the silk dress Paul had loved so much.
Gone.
5
I ignored the stack of yellow slips on my desk, a pile of letters waiting to be signed, and the morning mail, still sitting in stiff thirds. Patricia’s deposition had taken the whole day and I had a million things to do, but the first order of business was to call my favorite presidential appointee—the cheating, lying, deceitful judge who had manipulated me into this mess. Everybody hates lawyers, but they don’t realize judges are just lawyers with a promotion. Think about it.
“Rita, how are you?” Fiske said calmly, when he picked up.
Pissed off. “Fine. Listen, we need to talk.”
“Did it go well?”
“For a fistfight.”
“What happened?”
“Her lawyer’s a bastard and she’s a liar. The whole lawsuit is a sham.”
“I told you, she’s fabricated the entire story.”
How to put this respectfully? “Not exactly. You weren’t forthcoming with me either, Fiske.” In other words, you lied through your caps.
“What do you mean?”
Where to begin. “Patricia testified about the flowers you sent. They were spider mums.”
“Oh?”
“So I know the truth.”
He paused. “I see.”
I almost laughed. This was how WASPs reacted to news that would trigger a Portabella mushroom cloud in Italians. “I can’t defend this case without telling the truth.”
“That’s not an alternative.”
“You’re a judge, Fiske. The truth should at least be an alternative.”
There was quiet on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry,” I said, without meaning it.
“Understood. But that defense is untenable, Rita. Any victory won that way would be Pyrrhic. I have a reputation, a judicial career, and a marriage to consider.” His voice sounded tense but more honest than he had been. Finally, he was leveling with me.
“Then my advice is to make a settlement offer. She’d go for it, she doesn’t have the stomach for litigation. She even cried during the dep.”
“She did?”
Give me a break. “Let’s settle it. I bet Julicher will call tomorrow with an offer, and if he doesn’t I’ll call him and feel him out. He can’t be totally sure we won’t prove the affair and if we do, he loses his case. And his contingency fee.”
“No. No settlement. Out of the question. It’s the same as an admission.”
I rubbed my forehead. “No, it isn’t. You wouldn’t be admitting anything. You’d be making the case, and the girl, go away.”
“No.”
“You’re putting me in an impossible position, Fiske. There’s no solution.”
“I don’t agree. I’ll find a solution.”
Bastard. “Look, we need to discuss this later, in person.” So I can smack you upside your head.
“Certainly. Kate and I are going out to dinner tonight at Samuel’s. I think Paul will be joining us, but you won’t, right?”
“Right.” I had something better to do. As cranky as I felt, scratching my ass would be something better to do.
“Fine, then. I’ll be home by ten. You and I can chat upstairs in my study.”
Chat? “Good.”
“See you then,” he said, and hung up.
Paul, who called almost immediately afterward, sounded more concerned about Fiske than Fiske did. He phoned from his car, which he called his virtual office. “They’re crucifying my father in public, did you know that?” he said, angry. “I just heard it on the radio. They’re trying to get the deposition transcripts.”
“Don’t worry, they’re under seal.” Not a hard order to get, one judge protecting another. “They can’t.”
“What did she say? How does she justify what she’s doing?”
I couldn’t talk about this with him. Not yet, maybe not ever. “She doesn’t, really. How’d the job go, with the garage?”
“You want to talk about an underground parking garage on a day like this? Isn’t her deposition important?”
“Yes, but tell me what happened with the garage. We have a life, too, right?” Ha.
“The salt got through the paving asphalt over the garage and damaged the membrane below. That’s why it leaked.”
“So you were right.”
“It happens. Rita, give me the headline. How’d the deposition go?” The connection crackled, which gave
me an idea.
“We can’t talk now, over the car phone. It’s not secure. Anybody can pick it up.”
“Right. Damn. I talked to Mom, she’s pretty upset.”
I bet she is. What do they call it when a woman is cuckolded? Or doesn’t that matter enough to have its own word?
“There were reporters in front of the house,” Paul was saying over the static. “They tore up the garden, so she’s fit to be tied.”
She’s got worse trouble than the begonias. “Where are you anyway?”
“Running errands. I’ll see you at what time? Seven? At the restaurant?” His horn honked. “Pass me already, you jerk!”
“I’m not going to dinner. It’s Tuesday, remember? Poker night.”
“What? You’re playing cards tonight?”
Here we go. “I’ll be at your parents’ by ten.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to play cards! Dad got calls from the newspapers, even somebody from AP. All hell’s breaking loose, Rita!”
There’s no better time to play cards than when all hell’s breaking loose. It clears the head. “I’ll see you at home.”
“Rita, it’s a game! Shit!” he said, but I didn’t know if it was at me or at the traffic. “Are you still upset about last night? Because if you are, we can talk about it. I want to talk about it.”
I don’t.
“This morning you were so quiet.”
“I’m fine. I have to go.”
“Sure. All right,” he said. Unconvinced. Hurt.
Let it be. I hustled him off the phone and didn’t respond to his parting line: “I love you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The five of us—me, my father, Uncle Sal, Herman Meyer, and Cam Lopo—sat around the Formica table in my father’s hot, cramped kitchen, waiting for a quorum. Seven is the optimum number for a poker game, but we never had a full house. The average age of our group was seventy-two, so one player or the other was always in the hospital. Still, the Tuesday night game went on. Prostate would be the only thing that would end us for good.
“So where is he? He’s late again,” Herman said. He was a kosher butcher, compact and healthy even at age sixty-nine, with bushy gray hair. Herman was insane about poker and even collected chips. As usual, he wanted to get started. “What is it with that kid, he can’t be on time?”
Herman meant David Moscow, a young copywriter who was trying to join us. David was gay, but the old men were past the age when such things mattered. They only cared that David was late. “He’ll be here,” I said, shuffling the cards. “Give him time.”
My father, at the head of the small table, was fingering some plastic chips. “What’s the difference if David’s a little late? Mickey’s late, too.”
Herman frowned. “Mickey had a doctor appointment, he told us he’d be late. This kid, he’s always late and he never tells us.”
“Then that’s the same as tellin’ us, ain’t it?” my father said. Water sweated down the sides of his brown beer bottle. “Same difference.”
Herman shook his head. “No. He wants in, he should be here. What does it take? He lives a block away.”
“Relax, Herm,” said Cam, sitting next to him. “It’s rainin’ out. Everybody’s late when it rains. Forget about it.” Cam had lost an arm in a machine-shop accident and always said nothing would ever bother him after that. At seventy, he was tall, gaunt, and his skin was pitted from teenage acne. Still, a ready smile redeemed his otherwise working-class face and he’d tell you proudly that his teeth were all his own.
“I can’t forget about it,” Herman said. “The kid has no responsibility. If he worked for me, I’d fire him.”
Cam sat back in his chair. “Did you go to that show this weekend, for the poker chips?”
Herman nodded. “Yeah, but they’re not all poker chips. Some are casino chips, some are dealers’ chips. Some are markers. It’s all different.”
Cam smiled. “Oh, I see. Very complicated.”
“Yes, it is, and to answer your question, I got some nice chips.” Herman twisted toward the front door, showing the casino chip painted on his yarmulke. It was a gray chip that said club bingo in cheery red letters around the outside. I once asked Herman if this was sacrilegious, he said it depended on what your religion was. “Now where the hell is that goddamn kid?”
“It’s not David’s fault he’s late,” Uncle Sal said. “They work him because he’s young. They take advantage.” Sal was shorter than my father and frailer, with identical bifocals. His forearms were skinny, his elbows protruded from his short-sleeved shirt like chalky knobs, and he had a neck as stringy as a baby bird’s. Sal had never married, he was like a permanent little brother.
“What chips you buy, Herm?” Cam asked.
“I got some nice ones. One mother-of-pearl, a real pretty purple one, and I bought a new ivory. With scrimshaw.”
“Like with a boat on it?”
“Nah, got a fleur-de-lis in the middle.”
“Floor-da-what?” Sal asked.
Herman rolled his eyes. “Like a design, Sal. A French design. It’s from 1870, like you.”
My father laughed. “How much you pay for this French chip, Herman?”
“Like it’s your business?”
My father smiled. “They’re robbin’ you blind, you know that.” The plastic chips he’d been playing with fell to the table with a clatter I recalled from my childhood, when I’d go to sleep in the tiny back bedroom. They didn’t let me join the game officially until I was thirteen and had paid my dues fetching beer and pepperoni.
“They’re an investment,” Herman said. “They’re antique.”
“Hah! They’re used.”
I pitched a card at my father and it sailed like a whirligig across the table. “Dad, play nice. He’s got a hobby. You got a hobby?”
“Yeah, I read the obits, that’s my hobby. I drink coffee, that’s my hobby, too. Did you hear about Lou, Miss Fresh?”
“Lou who?”
“Terazzi, from Daly Street. Had a heart attack in the middle of dinner. Dead before his face hit the spaghetti.”
“You’re a poet, Dad.”
Cam shook his head.
“No kiddin’,” Herman said, surprised. “Lou, huh?”
Uncle Sal patted his bony forehead with a paper napkin. “It’s hot in here. The cards are gonna be sticky. I hate that, when the cards are sticky.”
“Everybody’s complainin’ tonight,” my father said.
Cam rose and got a box of Reynolds Wrap from the drawer. Not that he wanted to wrap anything, he used the box to hold his cards, in the slit behind the metal strip. “Stop your complainin’, everybody. You’re upsettin’ Vito.”
Sal looked down, examining his arthritic fingers. “I’m not complainin’, I’m just sayin’. We should get air condition.”
Herman rubbed his tummy through his T-shirt. “Vito Morrone, an air conditioner? You have to spend money.”
“Hah! I spend money, I spend plenty of money. I just don’t like air condition. I got enough time to be cold after I’m dead.”
“It’s the humidity,” Uncle Sal said quietly. “The humidity, it makes the cards sticky.”
My father frowned at him. “It’s ’cause the windows are closed, we don’t have the cross-ventilation. Every other time, we have the cross-ventilation. So stop your complainin’, Sallie.”
“I was just sayin’. It’s humid, to me, is all.”
Cam took his seat. “Stop fightin’, both of you. We’re okay without air condition. It’s not that hot, just stop talkin’ about it. So how’s the meat business, Herm?”
“Lousy. Couldn’t be worse. There used to be four hundred kosher butchers in this city. Now there’s only a handful. A handful.”
“Gotta make more Jews,” Cam said.
Herman laughed. “Don’t look at me, I did my part.” He had three daughters he loved to the marrow. It was the middle one, Mindy, who’d painted the casino chip on his yarm
ulke. I’d met her at her son’s bris, then later at a custody trial for the same child. She was a smart brunette, clever, and feisty enough to take on her lawyer husband, and win.
“How’s Mindy and the baby?” I asked him.
“Real good, real good. And she’s makin’ good money with the court reporting. Good money, Rita.”
“Terrific. Tell her to send me more of her business cards. Now, what are we gonna play? Seven-card? No high-low?”
Herman and Cam nodded, but my father said, “That’s all you ever want to play.”
“Sue me. Mindy will do the transcripts.”
“Seven-card it is,” Cam said. He was the best player at the table, he liked to say he beat us with one hand tied behind his back. “If my Rita wants seven-card, it’s seven-card.”
“Thanks, handsome,” I said, and he grinned.
Seven-card stud was my game. Four of the cards are showing, three are dealt facedown. It was harder than knowing none of the cards at all. Imagination, speculation, and fear rushed in to fill the gaps; the trick was to keep your illusions and reality straight. If I’d been losing my touch away from the table, I felt at home here, with Cam’s stump and Herman’s chips and Sal’s complaints. I was glad I came.
There was a buzz from the door downstairs. “That’s David,” Uncle Sal said.
“No, I thought it was Santa Claus,” my father said, getting up and shuffling downstairs.
Herman snorted. “Let him wait in the rain. I’m not going through this every week.”
“They take advantage,” Sal said again.
In a minute I could hear my father climbing the creaky stairs with David, then a clang as David dropped his umbrella into the metal can by the apartment door. I knew my father would like taking David in from the rain, I remembered him doing the same for me as a child. Unbuttoning my red boots, popping the loop of elastic around the button, then tugging off my damp socks. Laying them out on the radiator in the living room, where they dried into cottony arched backs, with a ridge down the middle like a spine.
“Sorry, I’m late,” David said as he came into the room in a damp polo shirt and unstructured sport jacket. He looked at me in surprise. “What are you doing here, Rita?”