"He's a lying bastard, and a thief, and I'm defending him."
Sally put down her glass, rose, and walked to where he was standing. Very gently, she put her hands on his shoulders and lifted her face to be kissed. She thought how odd it was that men could talk about losing partners and losing cases and even losing wives, and never once realize what they had really lost. She kissed him and hoped that when he lost this case as well (because he was defending a guilty man he thought was James Driscoll and not himself) perhaps he would remember he had been to bed with her, the way the English teacher in Schenectady would always remember he had been to bed with her.
She knew suddenly that she would not be seeing much of Jonah Willow once the trial ended.
She knew this with certainty, and with sadness, and relief. There were far too many things he was still trying to forget, far too many ghosts in his life; she had no desire to become yet another one of them. She hoped only that he would remember her.
Once she had asked her mother to make believe she was a person, and her mother had said, No, Sally, that coat isn't right for you, take it off.
The rain stopped at midnight, just as they came out of the movie theater and into the street. They walked up Broadway together, Ebie's arm through his, watching the after-theater crowd, relishing the noise and the clamor of New York City, so unlike what they knew in Vermont. Under the marquee of the Astor, a crowd of people in formal wear stood laughing and chatting, trying to get taxis, boisterous and loud, obviously enjoying themselves. The women wore mink coats over flowing gowns of pale blue and lucid pink, corsages pinned to bodice or waist or — as with one pretty brunette in a lustrous dark fur — pinned to her hair, just above the ear. There was a holiday mood outside the hotel and in the lobby as well, where men in dinner jackets told dirty jokes to each other and women laughed raucously with them, and then remembered to blush. A man dressed as Santa Claus, drunk as a lord, came staggering toward the revolving doors, snapping his fingers in time to the music that came from some hidden ballroom. Ebie's face suddenly broke into a grin.
"Listen," she said.
"What is it?"
"Listen."
He could not place the tune. Violins carried it on the noisy lobby air, evoking a mood, frustratingly elusive.
"Come," she said, and suddenly took his hand.
They went through the lobby, searching out the source of the music, following the strains of the orchestra until at last they stood just outside the Rose Room, and nodded to each other like conspirators. She raised her arms, and Driscoll automatically took her hand and cradled her waist, and they began dancing silently in the corridor outside the ballroom.
He felt again the way he'd felt when they were young together, in love together, possessed of a confidence that was now alien to him. She was light in his arms, her feet skimmed over the polished floor. They danced past two old ladies in gloves and hats, who looked at them in wonder. The old ladies delighted him, their looks of astonishment, the way the one in the purple hat opened her eyes wide to express shock, outrage, surprise, wonder, bemusement, even a little touch of wickedness. He wanted to scoop up both old ladies, catch them both in his arms along with Ebie, and dance them down the corridor and out the side door and onto 44th Street and over to Sardi's and maybe clear to the Hudson River and across to Jersey and points west, all the way back to their homes in Albuquerque or Des Moines, and then on past California and across the Pacific to exotic Oriental places that would cause the lady in the purple hat to open her eyes wide again and drop her jaw in shock, outrage, surprise, wonder, bemusement, and wicked glee. He felt, when things were right, as they were now, the same happiness he had known in those years before he left for the Army.
Their feet no longer touched the ground, they seemed to float on air an inch above the floor of the corridor. One of the old ladies was laughing now, all the world loves a lover, a bellhop carrying a wreath of flowers danced out of their way as though he were part of a consuming ballet, the world would soon be dancing with them, people would come out into the streets dancing and singing and shouting their fool heads off because James Randolph Driscoll and Edna Belle Dearborn were in love.
Had been in love, he thought.
As suddenly as they had begun dancing, they stopped.
October, he thought.
Out of breath, Ebie laughed and squeezed his hand.
1950, he thought.
He looked down at her and tried to remember what it had been like before then, and wondered how it could ever be that way again. They walked to the elevators in silence.
I got a medal in October of 1950, he thought, it was pinned right between my eyes, I've been wearing it ever since.
"Oh, my, that was fun," Ebie said.
They entered the waiting car. The doors closed. The elevator streaked up the shaft, cables whining and groaning.
I got my medal for being a nice guy and a fool, he thought, that's what they gave medals for back in those days.
I wrote all about my medal in a book called The Paper Dragon, perhaps you've read it, madam. It's about the Korean War, yes, and about this nice young man who is victimized by these horrible people who eventually cause his death, a symbolic death, madam, Oh yes, an actual death in the book, but really symbolic — I testified to that effect before the learned and honorable judge today. It is now a matter of record that the death of Lieutenant Alex Cooper, according to his creator (although such status is still in serious doubt), was intended as a symbolic death. If you're ever haggling over that one at a literary tea, just look up the trial record and you'll know the death was supposed to be symbolic. Yes, madam, my medal was delivered in the crisp October, it was a nice medal to receive. I wore it into battle when they came charging across the river, it gave me courage because I didn't give a damn anymore, you see. That's why medals are awarded, to give you courage.
They are all looking for medals in that courtroom, all except me. I got my medal, and I described my medal, and it took every ounce of strength I had, and there's nothing more inside me, nothing left to say or do. I wanted only to die quietly on that farm I bought in Vermont, so why did you have to come along, Mr. Constantine? Why did you have to start this ridiculous suit, opening all the old wounds again, why did you have to do this, Mr. Constantine?
Oh, sure, I can understand. You want a chestful of medals, right? You want all those millions API made on the film, and you want credit for the book as well because you think the book was the medal when it was really only the catalogue description of the medal. The real medal is pinned right here between my eyes, and I'm sure you wouldn't want that, Mr. Constantine, because it has hurt like hell ever since 1950, can't you see the scars, yes, quite painful when it rains. What'll they do if you win this case? Will they have to tell everybody you really wrote The Paper Dragon? Will they pull back all the copies and cross out my name, so sorry, put yours in its place? Is that what they do when someone has made a terrible mistake, oh my goodness, we've credited the wrong man with authorship. We gave the medal to the right man, however, and if The Paper Dragon is a fairly accurate description of the events leading up to that singular decoration, how then is it possible that the chronicle was stolen? Strange, passing strange indeed.
Do you know what I managed to do in court today?
Under oath?
I managed to tell the truth, and yet not tell the truth.
It was quite simple. I could do it with a completely straight face and hardly any increase in my pulse rate. I wouldn't be surprised if I could beat a lie detector test, I'm getting very expert at telling only partial truth. Maybe I'll suggest to his Honorable McIntyre that they give me a lie detector test and ask me if I wrote The Paper Dragon, and I will say, Yes, I wrote it, and then they'll ask me if I stole it from Constantine's play, and I'll say, No, I did not steal it from anybody's play, I stole it from in here, and in here, that's where I stole it. It's a secret I stole from a dying man who has been suffering from a rare incurable malady since October of 1950, that is who I stole it from, whom.