Not surprising then, that after a while, her capacity for being afraid dwindled toward zero—so that by the time she and Nikki were placed with Deck and Marlena, Adrienne’s demeanor had changed from a condition of alert vigilance to a kind of numbed docility. (The famous “automaton” of Mrs. Dunkirk’s pronouncement.) Years later, while a second-year law student, she’d obtained her files under the Freedom of Information Act. There, she’d read a raft of speculation about what was “wrong with her”: attachment disorder, borderline personality, lack of affect. The diagnosis changed from caseworker to caseworker. But the truth was, she was none of those things: what was “wrong” with her was simple. She had combat fatigue.
Turning off M Street, she headed downhill toward the river, and swung left in the direction of Harbor Place. Georgetown had an abandoned, rainy day feeling to it. Cruising slowly along K Street, she studied the parked cars that she passed. But there was nothing unusual about any of them. So she parked on the street, avoiding the underground garage, which charged twelve dollars for the first three hours.
It was only a block to the office but, even so, she was wet when she got there. Stopping in the ladies’ room, she blotted her dripping hair with paper towels. Her dress was more than damp, as well, but there was nothing she could do about it—and, anyway, the color hid the rain.
She passed Bette’s cubicle, and saw that she was hard at work, clacking away at the keyboard, printer humming, talking on the phone. Adrienne tapped the door as she walked by and Bette turned and raised a hand in greeting, eyebrows up and mouthing a silent “Hi!”
Adrienne hung up her jacket, then sat down at the desk, and pressed the space bar on her keyboard. While she waited for the icons to appear on her monitor, she pulled open the top file drawer—where she kept an electric kettle and a jar of instant coffee for emergencies. Going to the water fountain to fill the kettle, she found Bette waiting for her when she got back.
“Where were you, Scout?”
“What do you mean?” Adrienne asked, plugging in the kettle.
“Yesterday! Dream team’s here, poring over the wonders of asphalt curing times and you were—what? You took off for lunch, and… now it’s Sunday? What happened?”
She thought about what to say, and what not to say. It was tricky and awful, all at once, because she couldn’t really tell Bette about Bonilla and Duran—or she’d seem like a lunatic. But she couldn’t lie about it, either, because the truth would eventually come out. It had to. She wanted it to. Until then… “Things are real complicated, right now.”
Bette’s jaw dropped.
“You want some coffee?” Adrienne asked.
Bette blinked, milking the moment. Finally, she said, “Okaaaaay… so, when did Slough get you?”
Adrienne levered two paper cups off the stack, separated them, and spooned out the shiny crystals of coffee. “‘Get me’?”
Bette blanched. “You mean—you haven’t talked to him yet? Oh my God. You haven’t been home?”
Adrienne frowned. “Not exactly.”
“Well, I hope he was worth it,” Bette said, “whoever he was, because… you didn’t even check your messages?”
Adrienne shook her head for the second time.
Bette raised her eyes to the ceiling, and sighed. “Well, he left, we left—a lot of messages for you.”
Shit. Adrienne’s heart stalled for a moment, and she didn’t know quite what to say. Finally, she blurted, “So… what’s going on?”
Bette giggled—nervously—at what she thought was Adrienne’s indifference. “Well, there’s been some kind of meltdown in San Diego. Slough was flaps up hours ago. And, basically—you-the-man!”
“What do you mean, I’m the man.”
“You’re deposing McEligot.”
“What?! When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“But—” Adrienne began, “I’ve never deposed anybody. I’m not prepared. I don’t know—Jesus, Bette!”
“Well, some of us are actually jealous. I mean—”
A quiet, high-pitched moan from Adrienne. The kettle shrilled. She picked it up and poured water into the cups, then stirred each one.
“He said he was sending you his prep work,” Bette told her in a reassuring voice. “So you should check your e-mail. On the other hand, he was really in a hurry, so… who knows?” She sipped her coffee and headed for the door. “Delicious. Anyway… lucky you!”
“Wait a second,” Adrienne asked, groaning inwardly at the prospect of another all-nighter. “Have you seen Bill around?”
“Bill who? You mean Fellowes?”
“Unh-huh.”
“Not for a couple of days. He’s in Detroit. I don’t think he’s back until Tuesday.”
When Bette had gone, Adrienne called Bill Fellowes’s number at home, and left a message on his machine, asking him to call her.
That done, she logged onto the Internet and checked her e-mail. There were eight messages: two jokes, forwarded by friends; a couple of come-ons from AOL and E*Trade; and four bulletins from Slough, which boiled down to: 1) Call me. 2) Where are you? 3) You’re deposing McEligot. And 4) Here’s my prep work. (You’ll have to flesh it out a little.) Go get ‘em!
This last message included an attachment that, once she downloaded it, caused her to put her head in her hands. Flesh it out? With the exception of two or three sentences that she didn’t recognize, what Slough had sent her—his prep work on McEligot—was nothing more than the memo that she’d worked up for him. Which is to say that it included everything she already knew—and nothing more.
She called Slough’s number in San Diego, and left a message, saying that she’d received what he’d sent and that she was at the office if he wanted to talk. Then she put her head down, and got to work.
Time did not fly.
The McEligot deposition was a minefield, with each question posing a different set of problems and opportunities—so that, by the time Adrienne looked at her watch, three hours had passed—and she’d forgotten to call Duran.
“I was worried about you,” he said, when she finally got him on the phone.
“It’s been really busy,” she explained. “And it’s going to be a couple of more hours. I’m not done.”
“I don’t like you being there,” he told her. “I don’t think it’s safe.”
His concern touched her. “I’m not alone!” she replied. “Everyone’s beavering away. As soon as I can, I’ll come back and finish up on the laptop. I’ll bring food.”
“Great, but—”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”
“Good idea,” he said, “but what I was going to ask is, why don’t you get some beer?”
It was ten o’clock when her tiredness finally gave way to hunger, and she decided to return to the motel. By then, she was the only lawyer still at work, though not the only person on the floor. From the corridor came the dull roar of vacuum cleaners, the squeak of polish on brass, the chatter of Spanish.
She could refine her notes at the Comfort Inn, working on Nikki’s laptop. She copied her work to a floppy, slung the laptop over her shoulder and flicked off the light.
Then she rode down in the elevator with a pretty girl in an Orioles sweatshirt who piloted her rolling bucket and mops through the doors when they stopped at the second floor. Alone in the elevator, the world seemed suddenly, eerily silent—until the doors slid open, and a wave of techno pop washed over her from a boombox in the lobby.
The rain had stopped, but a damp wind nipped at her cheeks as she hurried toward the car. If anything’s going to happen, she thought, now’s the time, this is the place. But there was no one that she could see. An old lady, walking a small dog. A young schizophrenic, shuffling down the sidewalk, dressed in what looked like half a dozen overcoats. Some musicians, sitting outside a club under the Whitehurst Freeway, sharing a joint. Parked cars and vans, but—not her own. A sizzle of fear zipped through her chest, then fizzled out when she remembered that she wasn’t looking for her own aging Subaru, but a new Dodge.