Dr. Bagdasarian smiled. “I’ve been no help at all.”
She walked through the house to the kitchen. She read the letters at the table. The first, from the neuroscientist, was a letter of introduction. She recognized him, as Dr. Bagdasarian had suggested she might, having read his articles in popular magazines. He explained that part of his goal in life was to give voice to strange cases. In his letter he wrote compassionately and without condescension, and she thought how heartened the letter and its tone would have made Tim even a short time ago. The second letter was from the executive director of something called the Endocrine Disruption Prevention Alliance, a loose affiliation of science groups based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The writer introduced herself and explained that Tim’s condition had come to her attention.
… and I am one-hundred percent certain that the cause is endocrine disruption, a phenomenon that results from the intake of chemicals extremely hostile to the human endocrine system. These chemicals, released in huge quantities into the environment, can fundamentally change how an individual functions, how he or she thinks, even — as in your case — moves. Here is the frightening truth: clinical trials have proven that a chemical agent no bigger than two benzene rings, or one-trillionth of a part of the human body (to put that in perspective, that is one second over the course of three thousand centuries) can take total control over our bodies. I am writing to you today to educate you, but more importantly to persuade you that your condition is caused by—
She stopped reading.
There was a time when receiving a letter like this one, no matter how odd its message, would have restored their faith in a flawed system. He had been forced to seek out the opinion of specialists, who sent him on to other specialists, who made him stand at the mercy of ever-more-refined specialists, who referred him to the specialists they most admired. Now a specialist was coming to him. The executive director of a medical alliance was telling him once and for all what ailed him. “Endocrine disruption.” It would not have mattered that he had never heard of it before. It would not have mattered if the science was debated, if the evidence was still outstanding, if the experts had been debunked. He would have been instantly on the phone. He would have flown anywhere, stayed any length of time. And she would have been there beside him.
Now she walked the two letters over to the sink and disposed of them in the trash.
THE HOUR OF LEAD
1
Tuesday morning he returned to work and read over the motion for summary judgment he’d written for the Keibler case. He’d started it the week before, wary at first. Typically you wait for a partner to assign the motion. But five days ago he found himself clearing through a thicket of case documents and juggling a few arguments in his head, just for the fun of it. When he began the outline, a certain heat flashed across the desk, and it jolted the small office with an iridescent energy, a magnetic field inside of which he moved throughout the day. By the time he began to write the introductory paragraph, his mind was alight with radiance.
Outside the window, bees were trying to get in, a dozen or so sideswiping the pane, for reasons you had to be an expert on bees to understand. He thought they should be long dead, or still hibernating in one of their combs, if hibernate was what they did — anything but dipping and hovering in the wintry light so many floors up. Outside the window, the city stretched north before him with its sleek towers and squat, box-top buildings of different sizes and shadows, all bound by the two rivers whose edges were just in view. He had reconciled himself to no longer having a view of the park, just as he had reconciled himself to the smaller office, the scarred desk, and the downgraded chair. The amenities mattered less now. He had not bothered to bring in the canted standing globe or the Tiffany desk lamp or the degrees and certificates that had adorned his previous office. The bareness of this new approach suited his austerity of purpose. He was there to work, and when work was over, to leave the office and resume life.
He stood up to get a better look at the bees. They were really winding back and slamming themselves against the window. He thought they must be knocking their little bee brains out. They hit and rebounded and fluttered up and returned to hit the glass again. Maybe they were in the very process of dying. Or maybe they were just doing what bees did when they got separated from the hive. Did they travel in a hive? Or was that called a swarm? He knew so little about bees.
He returned to his desk. There were problems with the draft, gaps in his argument, a few structural missteps. He spent the next hour patching things up and the following hour doing a cite check. He thought he’d print out the draft and read it at his desk a final time and then file it away in a drawer before doing the work that had actually been assigned to him. He had not been asked to write a motion for summary judgment. By doing so he was disrespecting the protocol and flouting the conditions of his employment. He wrote it as a kind of hobbyist, with the greatest purity of intent. Millions of motions had been written over the course of the law’s centuries, but they had been written with a court in mind, objects of utility and persuasion, while it was possible that until today, not a single one had been composed for the simple satisfaction of the writing itself. He had spent hours working on it over the weekend, happy to have it as a distraction. The house could be a thundering vacuum of quiet when there was no one there to rifle through a kitchen drawer or to lay out the makings of a sandwich on the counter.
He left the office and walked to the printer. He didn’t want the printout sitting in the tray because he had not been authorized and he did not want Peter to think he was ignoring protocol. No one had even discussed the need for a motion for summary judgment in Keibler, at least not with him. But the time would come when submitting a motion for summary judgment would be the right strategic move. Then Kronish and Peter would get together to decide who to assign it to. Probably that kid Masserly. He was Peter’s favorite. Masserly would probably be asked to write the motion.
On his way back to the office Peter called out to him. Masserly was in there, sitting across the desk from Peter, probably not even thirty yet. Just a second-year associate, Masserly, but already with that air of entitlement that some junior associates acquire when they sense they are favored by one or another partner. His skin was dry and pink and flaked at certain termination points like his receding hairline and the curves of his knuckles. When Tim thought of him abstractly, he was reminded of one of those children who age rapidly and prematurely and die as old men at thirteen. Today he was wearing a pink buttondown with white collar and cuffs, silver cuff links winking from the armrests of the wing chair, and a long paisley tie draped down his shirtfront like a silky tongue. Every layman’s idea of the asshole lawyer. Peter offered another iteration in his blue pinstripes and bow tie. He should have worn knotted ties if he was going to let his gut go like that. As it was, with his belly drooping low and prominent, his neck appeared to have hold of a water balloon. A festive spirit animated the air between the two men. Tim held the printout close to his body. There were bees just outside Peter’s window, too.
“Masserly doesn’t know about the walking,” Peter said to him.
Tim stood in the doorway and said nothing.
“No, seriously. I just asked him and he said he’d never heard.”
“I doubt that,” said Tim.
“Tell him, Masserly.”
Masserly turned. “Never heard.”