Mark James sounded as if he were talking from the bottom of an oil drum, and I could hear cars passing in the background.
"Where are you?" I managed to ask, and I knew I sounded unnerved.
"On Ninety-five, about fifty miles north of Richmond."
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
"At a phone booth," he went on to explain. "I need directions to your house."
After another gust of traffic, he added, "I want to see you, Kay. I've been in D.C. all week, been trying to get you since late afternoon, finally took a chance and rented a car. Is it all right?"
I didn't know what to say.
"Thought we could have a drink, catch up," said this man who had once broken my heart. "I've got reservations at the Radisson downtown. Tomorrow morning, early, there's a flight out of Richmond back to Chicago. I just thought… Actually, there's something I want to discuss with you."
I couldn't imagine what Mark and I could have to discuss.
"Is it all right?" he asked again.
No, it wasn't all right! What I said was "Of course, Mark. It will be wonderful to see you."
After giving him directions, I went into the bathroom to freshen up, pausing long enough to take inventory. More than fifteen years had come and gone since our days together in law school. My hair was more ash than blond, and it had been long when Mark and I had last seen each other. My eyes were hazier, not as blue as they used to be. The unbiased mirror went on to remind me rather coldly that I would never see thirty-nine again and there was such a thing as face-lifts. In my memory Mark had remained barely twenty-four, when he became an object of passion and dependency that ultimately led to abject despair. After it was over, I did nothing but work.
He still drove fast and liked fine automobiles. Less than forty-five minutes later, I opened the front door and watched him get out of his rental Sterling. He was still the Mark I remembered, the same trim body and long-legged confident walk. Briskly mounting the steps, he smiled a little. After a quick hug, we stood awkwardly in the foyer for a moment and couldn't think of a significant thing to say.
"Still drinking Scotch?" I finally asked.
"That hasn't changed," he said, following me to the kitchen.
Retrieving the Glenfiddich from the bar, I automatically fixed his drink exactly as I had so long ago: two jiggers, ice, and a splash of seltzer water. His eyes followed me as I moved about the kitchen and set our drinks on the table. Taking a sip, he stared into his glass and began slowly swirling ice the way he used to when he was tense. I took a good, long look at him, at his refined features, high cheekbones, and clear gray eyes. His dark hair had begun to turn a little at the temples.
I shifted my attention to the ice slowly spinning inside his glass. "You're with a firm in Chicago, I assume?"
Leaning back in his chair, he looked up and said, "Doing strictly appeals, trial work only now and then. I run into Diesner occasionally. That's how I found out you're here in Richmond."
Diesner was the chief medical examiner in Chicago. I saw him at meetings and we were on several committees together. He had never mentioned he was acquainted with Mark James, and how he even knew I was once acquainted with Mark was a mystery.
"I made the mistake of telling him I'd known you in law school, think he brings you up from time to time to needle me/' Mark explained, reading my thoughts.
That I could believe. Diesner was as gruff as a billy goat, and he was none too fond of defense attorneys. Some of his battles and theatrics in court had become the stuff of legends.
Mark was saying, "Like most forensic pathologists, he's pro prosecution. I represent a convicted murderer and I'm the bad guy. Diesner will make a point of looking for me and as a by-the-way telling me about the latest journal article you published or some gruesome case you worked. Dr. Scarpetta. The famous Chief Scarpetta."
He laughed, but his eyes didn't.
"I don't think it's fair to say we're pro prosecution," I answered. "It seems that way because if the evidence is pro defendant, the case never sees a courtroom."
"Kay, I know how it works," he said in that give-it-a-rest tone of voice I remembered so well. "I know what you see. And if I were you, I'd want all the bastards to fry, too."
"Yes. You know what I see, Mark," I started to say. It was the same old argument. I couldn't believe it. He had been here less than fifteen minutes and we were picking up right where we had left off. Some of our worst fights used to be over this very subject. I was already an M.D. and enrolled in law school at Georgetown when Mark and I met. I had seen the darker side, the cruelty, the random tragedies. I had placed my gloved hands on the bloody spoils of suffering and death. Mark was the splendid Ivy Leaguer whose idea of a felony was for someone to nick the paint on his Jaguar. He was going to be a lawyer because his father and grandfather were lawyers. I was Catholic, Mark was Protestant. I was Italian, he was as Anglo as Prince Charles. I was brought up poor, he was brought up in one of the wealthiest residential districts of Boston. I had once thought ours would be a marriage made in heaven.
"You haven't changed, Kay," he said. "Except maybe you radiate a certain resolve, a hardness. I bet you're a force to be reckoned with in court."
"I wouldn't like to think I'm hard."
"I don't mean it as a criticism. I'm saying you look terrific."
He glanced around the kitchen. "And successful. You happy?"
"I like Virginia," I answered, looking away from him. "My only complaint is the winters, but I suppose you have a bigger complaint in that department. How do you stand Chicago six months out of the year?"
"Never gotten used to it, you want to know the truth. You'd hate it. A Miami hothouse flower like you wouldn't last a month."
He sipped his drink. "You're not married."
"I was."
"Hmmmm."
He frowned as he thought. 'Tony somebody… I recall you started seeing Tony… Benedetti, right? The end of our third year."
Actually, I was surprised Mark would have noticed, much less remembered. "We're divorced, have been for a long time," I said.
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
I reached for my drink.
"Seeing anybody nice?" he asked.
"No one at the moment, nice or otherwise."
Mark didn't laugh as much as he used to. He volunteered matter-of-factly, "I almost got married a couple of years ago but it didn't work out. Or maybe I should be honest enough to say that at the last minute I panicked."
It was hard for me to believe he had never been married. He must have read my mind again.
"This was after Janet died." He hesitated. "I was married."
"Janet?"
He was swirling the ice in his glass again. "Met her in Pittsburgh, after Georgetown. She was a tax lawyer in the firm."
I was watching him closely, perplexed by what I saw. Mark had changed. The intensity that had once drawn me to him was different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was darker.
"A car accident," he was explaining. "A Saturday night. She went out for popcorn. We were going to stay up, watch a late movie. A drunk driver crossed over into her lane. Didn't even have his headlights on."
"God, Mark. I'm sorry," I said. "How awful."
"That was eight years ago."
"No children?"
I asked quietly.
He shook his head.
We fell silent.
"My firm's opening an office in D.C.," he said as our eyes met.
I did not respond.
"It's possible I may be relocated, move to D.C. We've been expanding like crazy, got a hundred-some lawyers and offices in New York, Atlanta, Houston."
"When would you be moving?"
I asked very calmly.
"It could be by the first of the year, actually."
"You're definitely going to do it?"
"I'm sick to death of Chicago, Kay, need a change. I wanted to let you know-that's why I'm here, at least the major reason. I didn't want to move to D.C. and have us run into each other at some point. I'll be living in northern Virginia. You have an office in northern Virginia. Odds are we would run into each other in a restaurant, at the theater one of these days. I didn't want that."