‘Why don’t you put your head here?’
His eyes hurt and he couldn’t see her clearly. The only light they’d eaten by was cast by the tiny bulb over the stove. He put his head down on her thigh and felt her lingers smoothing his hair.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid not.’ Then her finger ran along his cheek. She flicked his chin lightly. ‘You’re a bit of a bozo. Anybody ever tell you that?’
‘No. People don’t kid with me.’
‘People are missing out,’ she said. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
There was no avoiding it. He had to know. ‘Why are you doing this? Being nice to me?’
‘Oh, I get four units for it. It’s a class project.’ Now she took his cheek and gave him a hard squeeze. ‘Haven’t you ever had any girl like you?’
‘Sure. Well, not since…’
‘What? Your legs?’
He shrugged. ‘You know. The whole thing.’
‘I don’t know. What whole thing? Your personality get deformed or something?’
‘It’s just a lot to ask somebody to deal with.’
‘It seems like it might just be a good crutch, no pun intended. I mean, nobody’s perfect. You get involved with somebody, you’re going to have to deal with their imperfections.’
‘Yeah, but romance doesn’t exactly bloom when you see them right out front.’
‘Sometimes it does,’ she said. ‘Less gets hidden. It might even be better. It’s definitely better than being fooled and finding out later.’
‘I don’t see too many of yours. Imperfections, I mean.’
‘Well, that’s just a fluke. It so happens I am the one person who doesn’t have imperfections.’ Her fingers were back in his hair, pulling it. ‘Except, I warn you now, I am pretty Type-A. I like a clean house. If you squeeze the toothpaste in the middle I go insane, I need to fill up ice trays immediately. Nothing makes me madder than a half-empty ice tray. Also I’m impatient and outspoken although I have to say I’m not really bitchy. But I’m very organized, too organized.’
‘Those are not exactly major imperfections.’
‘I’m also pushy. And pretty selfish. I think of myself first a lot, what I want.’
‘I haven’t seen any sign of that. Not with me, at least.’
‘Yes you have.’ She dipped her finger into her wineglass and traced his lips with it. ‘If you think about it. For example, I am in a highly selfish mode right now.’
Hardy was back where it started, at the shark tank at the Steinhart Aquarium.
He sat on the gurney, listening to the vague bubblings and vibrations emanating from the walls around him. Although he knew the water in it wasn’t even remotely warm, a thin veil of steam rose from the circular pool in the center of the room. The walls were shiny with distillation, the light dim and somehow green-tinged. He’d let himself in with his own key.
After dinner Frannie had been tired, and he’d felt flabby and soft, so he changed into some sweats and told her he was going for a run. Why didn’t she turn in early?
Now it was close to nine-thirty. He hadn’t done much running, more a forced walk to no destination. In any event, it had taken him here. He’d worked up a light sweat and he sat, his elbows on his knees, his hands intertwined in front of him.
‘Do you know what it is to be completely alone’?‘
He certainly did. He was there now.
His family was at home. Some of his friends, undoubtedly, were a quarter mile away at the Shamrock. He could call Glitsky, or Pico, go out and drink a few brewskis, shoot some darts. But he knew somehow that none of that would make a difference. He was completely alone, knocked out of his orbit, trying to feel the pull of the other bodies, the old familiar gravity. He couldn’t get it, couldn’t get to it.
The thing to do, he thought, was to go into Drysdale’s office tomorrow morning and resign. Just stop. Shut down the rockets. Go back and ask Moses for his old shift at the Shamrock and go back to that earlier life.
He didn’t need the money. He could walk out on the law right now and the world would keep right on turning, May Shinn would still go to trial, Pullios would get another notch in whatever it was she notched.
Stiffly, he pushed himself up off the gurney and walked up to the side of the pool, a concrete ring four feet deep. He had his hands in the front pockets of his sweatshirt, felt his keys on the right side.
There was only one other person in his orbit right now. And she, he believed, was completely alone, too. Yesterday, he’d thought maybe she was crazy. Today he saw it differently. Celine was barely holding herself together. Her father had been her life. Whether or not you liked or admired Owen Nash, whether their relationship was good or bad – control or no control, she was left with a gaping hole. If she’d broken down around Hardy, it had been because she was strung too tightly, holding it all back. That’s why the long workouts – to loosen the coil.
But it wasn’t working. Not yet, anyway. She was trying, and she’d get there. She knew what she needed -she needed some surcease from the emptiness, the loneliness, the pain of the fresh wound. She was trying, she just needed time.
And one other thing, face it, she needed him. For whatever reason, he was the lifeline. Like she’d said, she didn’t care about their professional relationship. He was connected to her…
Which was exactly why he should quit. This wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his concern. It couldn’t be in his life.
But she was. He tried to tell himself it was the level he had to control. He could not allow himself to do anything to threaten Frannie; she too depended on him. And so did Rebecca and the unborn child. If he had any view of himself at all, it was, he hoped, as a man of some honor, and he’d given Frannie his absolute vow. And he loved Frannie. His life satisfied him. His own endless emptiness seemed to have vanished over the last year, thanks to her. She was his rock and he knew he had to get back to her orbit. His own salvation, he knew, lay there, with her.
But he also knew he wasn’t going to quit – either the law or the case – and he knew why. He hoped – normally he didn’t pray but he prayed – he wasn’t going to do anything about the attraction, the connection. He told himself again that he could keep the level under control.
But if Celine had to see him again, he would see her. He would have to see her.
29
‘Beware of what you wish for – you just might get it.’ Judge Leo Chomorro had heard it a thousand times from his father. It had always struck him as misguided advice. The way you got things was to wish for them, focus on them. It had gotten him everything he had today – a judgeship by forty, a beautiful wife, three intelligent children, a home in St. Francis Wood.
But lately he was beginning to think that his father’s advice might have had something to it after all. He had wished and wished that someday he could get out from under the burden of being a good administrator, which was itself something to be proud of. Leo had always been an organizer, a team player, intelligent enough to be a leader, but a subscriber to the theory that a good leader must first know how to be a good follower.
And his talents had gotten him out of Modesto and his father’s auto shop. He always thought it was his study habits more than his brains that had pulled him through San José State and then gotten him into Hastings Law School in San Francisco.
At Hastings he hadn’t made Law Review, hadn’t been in the top ten percent, hadn’t been rushed by the big firms. But he’d gotten through, passed the bar on the second try, got a job as a clerk for the State Attorney General.
He worked hard. No one could say he wasn’t a loyal and diligent staffer, and when the Attorney General finally made it to the State House, Leo was a top aide on budgetary issues. He was the organization man, efficient and objective. Guys weren’t doing their jobs, fire them. They got families, tough – they should have worked harder, seen the ax coming.