“No.”
“She called around eight this morning.” He produces his phone. “You want to try her?”
“No, thanks. Later.”
He opens the door for me and I go in. I’m surprised at how simple the room is. The ceiling is at least twenty feet high, but the space is broken up so as not to dwarf a person with its scale. There are four different levels: The main level contains the bar, poured concrete dyed dark gray. To the right, six steps up, is a raised area that extends to the back, where there are more stairs that lead to another level, about ten feet above the main floor, that spans the width of the room. Under it is more seating. Above the bar in what are like opera boxes are more tables and switchback stairs, which lead up to them. The railing is all brushed stainless steel with cable running through it. The room would look like a cross between a spy weapons lab and a high-tech boutique if not for the sidewalls, which are deep slate blue Venetian plaster.
“Good evening,” says the host, looking only at Marco.
“Four for Andolini.” Marco leans back into me. “I had to ask a couple of associates along. Sorry. Do you mind?”
“No. No, not at all.”
“Right this way.” He extends his arm toward a young woman in a tiny black dress who leads us up over the bar to one of the opera boxes, in which is a large, bright red banquette. In it are two women. One is blonde with shoulder-length hair — a layered hairdo — feathered, I suppose, very sophisticated. The other woman is light brown. Her hair is long, black, and in one braid, which disappears behind her back. I stand behind Marco as he tries to introduce us, as though he can hide me. Maggie and Diana — with a long first a.
We all sit silently. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Marco to begin speaking. I have nothing to say. I try not to drift, but I keep going from the blonde’s hair to the dark girl’s forehead and their juxtaposition to the wall — both hair and skin contrast. I’ve never seen such a good plaster job. Someone troweled a 20×100-foot wall so well that I can’t find a blemish on it.
They start talking, about office things, I suppose. And I suppose that some would consider what Marco has done for me kind — the car, the dinner, the cigars — and I shouldn’t be offended that he’s doing business. I certainly can have a lovely meal in silence. It must be like this for him all the time, blending the private and public, business and pleasure. They, in fact, may not even be as separate as I imagine. They may never have been, but as I hear their conversation wind down, hear their focus begin to shift, I can’t help but think that Marco is trying to teach me a lesson. It’s bad enough for him to try and rub my face in his shit. He doesn’t need to rub it in my own.
“How was your run last night?”
“You run?” asks the blonde.
I nod. Silence again. The ladies start to fidget. Marco has tried and doesn’t seem to want to try again. It seems strange that this is all they can muster, but when they talk in conference rooms, they probably have something to talk about. This silence must be difficult for them. My stomach shoots out another gas blade. I turn directly to the blonde.
“Do you run?”
Everyone’s relieved, but only for a moment. I keep looking her in the eye, paying attention to her — engaged. She starts to answer and then looks away. I should cut her some slack, but then I ask myself why. Her martini is almost finished and I can’t imagine her carrying this moment, which is at worst awkward, too far into the future with her. Marco is grinning stupidly. The dark one squeezes her glass stem. I look away and rephrase my question.
“Do you like to run?”
She’s suspicious. She looks into her glass, then starts to answer slowly.
“Yes. Well, no.” She seems comfortable again. At least I tell myself that.
“Yes and no?” asks Marco. They laugh as though the last three minutes haven’t happened. The waiter comes. He’s tall, dressed in an immaculate black and white uniform — immaculate face and hands.
“Hello, may I get you drinks?” He looks at the women’s glasses, “More martinis?” They shake their heads. Marco waves them off.
“Yes,” he says, pointing to the glasses. “Yes.” He points at me but keeps looking at the waiter. “Sparkling water for the table.” It’s not a question, but the inflection makes it seem as though he’s asking one. “Talisker, neat.”
We all study our menus for a while. I hone in on the simplest things there: green salad. Steak. I leave the menu open to deter questions coming my way. They talk — an occasional “Everything looks so good,” or some approximation thereof. Finally, my ploy backfires.
“See anything?”
“Oh, yes.”
I close it and go back to the hair, the brow, the plaster, and then to Marco, who is trying to mouth something to me from behind his menu. The waiter returns with the drinks.
“So how was your run? You were out for a long time. How far did you go?”
“About eight.”
He takes a sip of his drink. The girls sip theirs. I wonder if that junkie got another beer. I try to imagine what it tastes like. It doesn’t take much to do so — like the mineral water I’m drinking only with a dash of sugar, hay, and cosmic certainty. I don’t remember, but I think people liked me better when I drank a bit. The waiter comes back and takes our order.
Marco leans back in the booth and exhales.
“Today was ridiculous, huh?”
The girls concur, but they keep their good posture. I look out over the dining room. It’s full now, but the clamor is somehow softened — I don’t know how with all the hard surfaces. Marco taps my elbow.
“Ten years ago our client paid this guy twenty million to develop product for them.”
“What product?”
“Software.”
“Who’s your client?”
“Can’t tell you.”
I look at him closely. I wonder who he thinks I might tell — how I could possibly compromise the deal.
“Anyway, he finishes. So now he’s claiming that he owns the product and that they have to buy it from him, even though the original contract, which he signed, says that he doesn’t.”
“So this is an intellectual property issue?”
“Exactly.” He leans forward and takes his glasses off, puts his elbows on the table. I realize that I hardly know Marco. Yes, I know his story, at least some of the highs and lows, the ones, at least, he’s told me, but nothing more than his narrative and what I’ve assumed from it in combination with what I see. In my head I’ve seen him in his office in a tall building downtown. I’ve seen the suits he wears when we’ve walked together to drop our boys off at school and I’ve seen him disappear down the stairs of the 4-train. My mother wanted me to be a lawyer. She gave me a book on Charles Houston, and I remember being awed by him and wanting to be like him. I wonder where that feeling went—why wasn’t I like him? As I got older, the idea of being a lawyer was displaced by the dizzying exactitude of actually becoming one. I suppose I began seeing lawyers, as well — the fathers of my schoolmates. They weren’t grave men in hats and overcoats with leather bags walking up the steps of the Supreme Court armed with purpose.
“So what do you think?”
“What do I think of what?”
“Do you think our client owes him anything?”
“A deal’s a deal, I guess.”
He nods. “So how was your run?”
“Not so great.”
Maggie joins in. “Sometimes I go out and I feel tired. I just slog through it.”
Marco smiles. They check him to see if what she said is acceptable. He’s said that they’re associates, and I don’t know what that means. How had he presented the idea of spending an evening out with us to them? In a hallway, at lunch? “We can close the Johnson and Johnson merger, but it’ll have to be in front of a stiff I’m letting crash at my house.”