It’s awkward, I conclude, being patronized by someone I admire.
The waiter comes in with my drink, and Potter tells him to put it on his tab.
There’s a glaze of light off the flat horn-rim lenses Ben is wearing. These are new. I can’t see his eyes clearly. The familiar half-frame cheaters for reading are in his sweater pocket. I can see them sticking out.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking during the past several months,” he says.
“That’s two of us. What can I …”
He holds up a hand, cuts me off. Ben’s not looking for confessions.
“What’s done is done,” he says. ‘We can’t change it. We can only diminish ourselves by wallowing in past mistakes. I think I know you well enough,” he says. “I think I know how you feel.”
He leaves no opening for me to respond but rises from the sofa and walks toward the desk.
“In the end the ancients-the Greeks-always said it best. There really is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as the conscience that dwells in each of us.”
He’s speaking now almost to himself, his back to me as he puts distance between us, as if absolution is to be my own private, solitary affair.
I sit silent on the couch, my gaze cast down at the ice floating in my drink.
“What’s said here, tonight, between us, is an end of it,” he says. “We have an understanding?”
“Sure,” I say. An easy concession. I have no desire to stoke these coals. What is happening here is necessary if I am ever to be able to look Ben in the eye again.
“We will never speak of this thing again, then.”
I nod. He’s not looking at me.
Then, as he turns slowly in my direction, graceful in his gestures, I notice anew mat Ben Potter is an imposing presence-a counterpoint to Buddha.
“I can’t begin to describe the pain,” he says, “the hurt that the two of you have caused me.” His voice is not raised in anger. It is as if he’s reasoning, striving to spread the understanding of this thing that has come between us, that has caused his anguish.
He doesn’t understand this faithlessness, from Talia or from me. He begins to move away from the desk, back toward me. He speaks of his contentment during the first years of marriage, the gratification bred of illusions that youth is a state of mind, that love and fidelity are not rooted in passion. This is the Ben Potter I know. The words tripping off his tongue. The consummate advocate making a case for damages. “I stand here tonight,”’ he says, “stripped of such fantasies.” He is suddenly silent, a pause for effect. “This thing has taught me mat much. Maybe I should be grateful.”
He’s silent again. Absorbed in thought.
I sit clinking the ice in my glass and take a drink.
“I want to ask you one question,” he says, ‘and I’d like a truthful answer. Tell me. Who made the first move? You or her?”
I’m nonplussed by the sudden frontal assault. I nearly soil Wong’s couch with scotch.
I flood my face with sincerity. “No,” I say. ‘Something like this-what happened between us wasn’t planned, Ben. This wasn’t some conspiracy. We didn’t sit down and plot who would initiate the first act. It just happened. We found ourselves together. One thing led to another and it happened.” I begin to sound like an echo, but it’s all I can say. “To our-to my everlasting discredit-it just happened.”
He smiles and nods, a gesture of concession.
“The diplomat,” he says. “A gentleman’s response. It’s what I would expect.” He says it like he’s already formed an opinion on the subject, that my response has confirmed some previously held suspicion on the question of who was most at fault. It’s a disease mat afflicts us from law school, the lawyer’s penchant to fix blame, like confession and absolution.
“I tell you, Ben, honestly, as truthfully as I can, it happened-it just happened.” I prime my tone with sincerity. For me at least, a valued relationship hangs in the balance.
“If I could, you must believe, I would go back and undo it, remove the hurt, remove myself from the temptation.” For a moment I weigh whether to reveal that it was his own deed, Ben’s own assignment of my services to the legal spadework on Talia’s real estate ventures that provided the opportunity. Motive was, in the final analysis, a matter of carnal chemistry. But I keep this thought to myself.
“I know you would,” he says, “go back and change it if you could.” He smiles. It is, at last, a measure of forgiveness.
He’s weary and showing it. “Enough,” he says. “There isn’t any sense beating it. We won’t speak of it again.”
He lifts the telephone receiver and orders a drink.
It’s over as quickly as that. My sigh is almost palpable, like the perspiration on my forehead. As Ben looks away, I use my cocktail napkin to wipe it. I cannot believe that it is over, that in the brief time in this room with him, with the few words that have passed between us, I am now back on speaking terms with this man who had been my mentor. Perhaps Ben is in a better mood than I had guessed.
He sets the receiver in the cradle and drops one cheek of his buttocks on the corner of the desk, stretching his arms over his head he sucks his lungs full of air. “Life’s a juggernaut,” he says. “No time to think. Lately, it’s like I’m caught in a time warp.”
He wants to talk, it seems, of happier thoughts.
“The nomination?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.” He furrows his forehead and smiles. It’s clearly pleasant to be fatigued in pursuit of such a cause.
He winks at me, a little secret. “I took the ‘red eye’ to Washington two nights ago,” he says. “The final cut.” He’s talking about the last round of contenders for the high court. From their ranks will come the next Supreme Court justice of the United States. He leaves me hanging, waiting for the final word, and instead regales me with descriptions of the White House, the Lincoln Study, “intimate-impressive,” he says. His gaze turns crystalline, distant. He’s using his hands to gesture now. “I found myself standing next to the desk where Lincoln freed a million slaves.” He shakes his head. “I swear,” he says, “you could feel his presence in that place, his spirit move.”
In this vignette I find that there is something that truly moves Ben Potter-the sense of occupying space once held by the Emancipator. To gravitate perceptibly closer to the circle of history, the thought that he himself may one day belong, at least in some measure, to the ages. These are notions too lofty, dream-inspired like so much pixie dust, they have never entered my own mind.
“I take it it went well?”
He makes a face, like “Read my mind.”
For me, knowing Ben as I do, it’s not hard. I know in that instant, in the twinkle of his eye, that this city is about to lose one lawyer. “Congratulations, Ben.” I raise my glass.
Struggle as he does, Potter can’t contain his smile. “Thank you.” His tone is hushed, almost reverent. “Of course, you’ll keep it to yourself.”
“Absolutely.”
‘It wouldn’t do to have it splashed all over the wires before the President can make the announcement. They didn’t want me to return home-wanted to make the announcement from Washington while I was there. I knew what would happen,” he says. ‘I’d never leave the trail of reporters behind. Senate investigators looking for dirt in the confirmation hearings, the press.” He shakes his head vigorously. “Told them I had some business to complete before telling the world. A few personal tilings. Getting out of there was like pulling teeth.”
I wonder whether this business, these “personal things,” involve Talia.
“The price of fame.” I commiserate with him.
“The world has a penchant for leaks,” he says. “They gave me forty-eight hours and swore me to a blood oath of silence. I take the “red eye’ back tomorrow night.”
As the waiter comes in with his drink, my mind is lost in thought. It’s a measure of Ben’s tolerance, his liberal spirit, that in this my hour of forgiveness he has seen fit to share the security of his future with me. The waiter leaves.