Straws nodded and left. "You see," said Chapman, "he didn't contradict me. I could smell his evaluation. I better look to my laurels."
"Don't be silly," I said. "I have no experience."
"You've just had a very successful audition, young lady," said Chapman. "It's a good thing Straws is set to give Lily Audrey the boot. He'll think of you as a replacement for her instead of me."
He has got to be kidding, I thought. "I've only heard her once," I said. "Isn't she the one who comes on like gangbusters?"
"You've got the right one."
George took my arm. Not gently.
"Glad you could come, Miss Widmer," said Colin Chapman.
I could feel George tugging.
We were hardly out of the building when he said, "You really fucked that poor man over, didn't you?"
"What's got into him? "I thought you were enjoying it."
"Sure thing. Love to see a picador jabbing spikes into a bull."
"That poor bull is the second most powerful man in his diminutive country and is likely to be its next head of state. He deserves every opportunity to get talked back to under circumstances where he can't decapitate his adversary."
"You do love the limelight," said George.
"Don't be silly. When I call Straws I probably won't get by his secretary. He'll have forgotten tonight by breakfast tomorrow."
"He won't forget."
"Now look, George, I've never seen you in the courtroom but I did see you give Lefkowitz the works. You like stage center as much as I do, and you've had one helluva lot more experience. I'm just catching up."
He took me by the elbow again.
"Please don't take my arm like that," I said.
"We only have the one car," he said.
"You can drop me at my place."
In the car, he said, "This is ridiculous. We've fucked ourselves silly for nearly a week and now it sounds like we're having an argument over nothing. The only reason I'm reacting to your sudden celebrity is jealousy."
"I'm glad you recognize that," I said. "It's a first step."
"To what?"
"You've probably played the lead every time you've been in a courtroom. You're used to center stage. You don't like cooling your heels in an audience. Or watching anyone else perform. Like me."
"Oh come off it, Francine. I don't think you're about to become a female David Frost. And I'm not about to become a stage door Johnny waiting for you the way I did tonight."
"This could be a break," I said. "Don't you want me to take advantage of it?"
"Sure."
"That sounded like drop dead."
"Well, I didn't mean it to sound that way. Look, Francine, you said you liked working for X."
"That's right. I'd like working for nobody even better. Like you."
"I work for my clients."
"You're fudging, George. When did you ever really think of a client as an employer? They're yours to manipulate, not vice versa. I'm not going to pass up this chance."
"I'll bet you're not."
Just as I'd let loose at Butterball, it came out of me once again in a torrent. "I'm glad this happened. It could have happened a year down the road, with our lives meshed. You just can't stand the idea of my finding something I can do well and enjoy more than my backstage work at united bedlam. You've got your vocation and that's enough for both of us. George, living alone all these years has made you into a self-centered, selfish, self-contained isolationist, and you've been that way too long for me or anyone else to rescue at your age."
I guess it was "at your age" that did it.
He didn't speak until he dropped me off at my parents' house. He didn't get out and open the door for me, the way he'd been doing all week long. He just sat glowering behind the steering wheel and said, "The good news I had for you tonight is that Brady is likely to have Koslak plead guilty to second degree assault. He'll go to jail. There won't be a trial."
"You're talking to me as if I'm a client."
"I am."
"Thank you for the good news."
"Please be sure to tell your father."
I got out and slammed the door. He roared off.
Forty-two
Thomassy
I guess it was in the early years of high school that the key thought clicked: the world's got a lot of shit to hand out in the course of your lifetime, and the idea is to learn how to take as little of it as possible.
Being rich didn't always help. In those days in Oswego being rich meant owning a grocery instead of a shoe store. You could patch up last year's shoes but you couldn't eat yesterday's meal today. Joey was the grocery kid in our class. He used to dispense candy to buy favors the way John D. gave away dimes, but he got beat up more often than most because all the other kids wanted to be sure Joey and his parents got the message: being rich didn't mean being safe. My father used to say that when the Turks came, being a rich Armenian was no advantage over being a poor Armenian, it just made you complacent.
My mother, Marya, was a totally dependent person, an old-world clinging vine who would have had trouble surviving if my father had died. He instructed her, commanded her, praised her, insulted her, loved her, and she lived by his words. I didn't take her as a model. And I couldn't take my father as a model because strong-willed as he was, he couldn't defend himself against the Turks, or the prejudices of Americans toward immigrants, or the depression. The thought that clicked my life together was that I could gain and preserve my independence by fortifying myself against whatever Turks or Americans or anybody had in store. My senses told me it wasn't money or even political power that was indispensable for defense and protection, it was learning the methods. First, you had to cut through all the idealistic bullshit used to control people, you had to see how people were not how they were supposed to be. Then the techniques. A compliment would sometimes work. Other times a stare, a fist, a kick in the ass, or better yet, a way of carrying yourself and walking that made troublemakers pass you by because you didn't look like an easy mark. It got me through school. It got me to the point where I knew that I could count on one person, me. Having allies was okay, as long as privately you didn't trust them. Having friends was okay, too, provided you didn't turn your back on them when they had something to gain by knifing you in the back. I guess you could say I eventually became a lawyer because once you saw how the justice system worked, you didn't want to depend on another lawyer to get you in and around it.
I got on pretty well. People who knew me didn't tangle with me unnecessarily. I learned the rules for getting around other people's rules. I was ready for the Turks, any time. But I wasn't all strength. If I was stronger I could face up to the idea of sorting out the baggage in my head on Dr. Koch's couch, but I wasn't about to show my doctor how I had put myself together. It'd be giving some of my strength to a weaker person. I suppose that might explain why I didn't get married. When I was in my twenties, everybody else did, but the idea seemed a burden I could do without. If the Turks came, I didn't want to protect a wife also. The trouble is you meet a woman like Francine and you wonder who would be protecting whom. She's young and there's a lot she doesn't know yet, but she's learned at a rate that might put her ahead of me in know-how when she's my age. She's self-sufficient. She's willing to share her life, which makes her stronger. Once I had a crazy feeling that if I ever lived with a woman, she'd have to be a Turk to start with so I'd know I was in the enemy camp!
Well, this evening I didn't want to think about any of that, I wanted to drift, do nothing in particular, take my shoes off, read through the junk mail I should have thrown away unopened. Nothing on the television schedule made me want to turn the damn set on. I picked up a novel I'd bought at the airport and never started. In the middle of page one my mind started to wander. There was a girl in the book, not like Francine, but it started me thinking of Francine, and I didn't want to think about Francine, but there I was doing it and the phone rang.