Housebreaking

by Dan Pope

  When the man went out to his truck, Audrey confronted her. “Stop flirting with the electrician.”

  “But he’s cute.”

  “He’s not cute. He’s in his midthirties, at least. Men that age are not cute.”

  “That one is.”

  “So was Ted Bundy.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you think it’s wise to prance naked in front of a stranger?”

  “Prance?”

  “You know what I mean. Do you act this way just to annoy me?”

  Emily fiddled with her iPod, her head down. She placed the buds in her ears and looked at Audrey without expression. This was her daughter now, at seventeen, evasive and unfathomable. It was difficult even to see her anymore, the way she wore her hair, a long dark curtain in front of her face.

  “What are you listening to?” said Audrey.

  “You wouldn’t know it.”

  Emily had always been restless and wild. As a child, she’d been a difficult sleeper, getting up at all hours, never allowing the day to end. Audrey had to watch her every minute, or she would wander off in the time it took to glance out the window. Audrey would never forget the summer when the children were in junior high school and the family had vacationed in Nova Scotia, driving from town to town along the coast. They stopped at Peggy’s Cove, renowned for both the beauty of its rocky shoreline and its dangerous tide. Signs everywhere warned about the many who had drowned, swept off the rocks and out to sea by the unpredictable waves. Emily and Daniel went off alone, promising to stay away from the ocean. But they hadn’t been gone for five minutes when Audrey began to feel uneasy. She left the inn and ventured down the path to the sea. Coming around the bend, she noticed Daniel standing on a precipice, alone, nearly obscured by the sun. When she reached him, out of breath, he raised his hand and pointed out to sea. There, twenty feet below, Emily stood on a jutting rock, waves crashing around her, her hands raised triumphantly. She’d somehow climbed down from rock to rock out into the sea, black and slick with the overrunning surf. Come back, yelled Audrey, her voice lost in the roar. Emily turned and waved to them, grinning, her face wet with sea spray. She started back, leaping from one rock to the next—a misstep would have sent her tumbling into the abyss, the sea churning between the rocks—until she finally reached the base of the precipice. Mom, she cried, all aglow, did you see me!

  That was Emily, ready to assume any risk, seek out any thrill for the triumph of having done it. A wonderful but terrifying trait.

  Finally, the electrician announced that he was finished. He stood in the front doorway, preparing his bill with a golf pencil. “I’ll need you to sign this receipt,” he said distracted, looking down the hallway for Emily. When he opened the door to leave, the dog rushed past him into the yard and raced away into the sunny afternoon.

  That was how the dog got out, and how Audrey came to meet the car salesman.

  * * *

  BENJAMIN MANDELBAUM. The name meant nothing to her, but he remembered her from high school. He said he’d had a “serious crush” on her. She studied him more closely. He had a nicely worn face, a dusting of gray in his hair, and smile lines around his eyes. He moved with the bowlegged gait of an ex-athlete, like James Caan. He had a calm, seductive way of meeting her eyes. There were men like her husband, who encouraged you to play by the rules, and others who nudged you outside them. When he bent down by her side, she reached and touched the back of his neck, almost by reflex. He inclined his head, giving her permission to continue. She ran her fingers through his hair. It felt almost natural. The back of his neck was warm under the sun. He smelled slightly of BO and cologne, giving her a pheromone shock, summoning a backlog of sexual energy as sudden and powerful as a punch to the spine. This shocked her, the reaction of her own body. His long-standing crush for her—his blatant adoration—buoyed her, somehow, like filling her lungs with air. She felt almost well in that moment.

  She didn’t know then, and never would have foreseen, the enormity of what he would do for her.

  Andrew Murray

  The first day of work, fall 2007

  A NEW JOB, a new house, a fresh start. It had made perfect sense to Andrew at the time. Later, looking back at those hectic few months, he would marvel at how quickly everything went wrong.

  The house cost him his bonus in renovations and still wasn’t finished by the day they moved in. “My shower doesn’t work,” his daughter complained. “Neither does mine,” echoed Audrey from the master bedroom. His contractor, an Albanian who called himself Benny, wouldn’t answer his phone over the weekend, leaving Andrew to contend with the new hot-water heater, which no one had bothered to hook up. By Monday morning he was relieved to get out of the house.

  Carrington Farr was the second-largest law firm in Connecticut, with more than three hundred lawyers and offices in five cities. Andrew had been with the firm for fifteen years at its main office in Stamford. He’d made his reputation in the nineties, defending companies in employment discrimination and sexual harassment cases. Now, with this new promotion, he’d be leading the firm’s employment litigation division, based out of Hartford.

  He came from a family of lawyers. His father and grandfather had practiced out of a white cottage in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, with a weather-beaten shingle on the front door: MURRAY AND MURRAY, GENERAL PRACTICE OF LAW. His father did real estate closings mainly, but every now and then he’d tried a case. In court, he would wear a dark blue suit with a bow tie and yellow suspenders. He had a shock of gray hair and wire-rim bifocals, which he would carefully take out of his jacket pocket, unfold, and place on the end of his nose to read some document. At home, he would fall asleep in the den with a glass of milk in his hand, a gurgling sound coming from his throat.

  That first day in Hartford, Andrew called in his new team members one by one. They’d given him a corner office on the thirtieth floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the northern Connecticut valley. He stood by the window, appreciating the spare modernity of his new surroundings, and watching the faraway cars and trucks inching up I-91 toward Springfield and beyond. Each time he gave his spiel he was pleased by the silence in the room, observing the serious and wary expressions of his employees. In closing each session, he said, “The bottom line is two thousand hours a year. That’s what I bill, and that’s what I expect from you.”

  As he delivered that line in his final meeting of the day, the man across from him yawned extravagantly. Johnny Sampson was a third-year associate out of Georgetown, but he looked like a college kid, with a smattering of freckles on his cheeks and longish blond hair that flopped across his forehead. He said, “Do you know what Rehnquist called associates in a law firm?”

  Andrew eased back in his swivel chair. “No.”

  “Scrap metal.”

  “Is that so?”

  “‘A law firm treats the associate very much as a manufacturer would treat a purchaser of one hundred tons of scrap metal.’”

  Sampson had an air of entitlement about him, with an articulate, almost British manner of speaking. An affectation, Andrew figured. Adding an extra slap of authority in his tone, he said, “Are you suggesting that two thousand hours is excessive?”

  “Not at all. I billed twenty-two hundred last year.”

  “Then why are you quoting Rehnquist?”

  “Because I’ve been here almost three years and haven’t tried a case. I’m starting to think Rehnquist had it right.”

  “Tired of the stacks, are you?”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” Sampson brushed the hair off his forehead. “I understand that you and I have something in common. Is it true you played tennis at Amherst?”

  Andrew nodded, surprised by the kid’s insolent confidence.

  “I was cocaptain at Williams,” said Sampson.

  “We crushed Williams all four years I was there,” sai
d Andrew. He said it automatically, not even bothering to recall if it were true or not.

  “That was before my time,” countered Sampson.

  “Do you still play?”

  “When I can find a decent partner.”

  Andrew sized him up. Sampson was a few inches taller, with long arms, a natural build for tennis. He would have a good serve, an excellent reach. Ten seconds passed, the two men staring at each other. This was something Andrew had learned long ago, in the courtroom, in negotiations: Let the other make the first offer; let him talk himself into a position. Let the silence do your negotiating for you. Sampson’s eyes were pale blue, calm and expressionless. He smelled faintly of cologne.

  Finally, Sampson said, “Would you like to play?”

  Andrew almost smiled. “My backhand is tragic. That’s what my high school coach said at least.”

  “Andover, right?”

  Andrew regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t get points for Googling me.”

  “I’ve done more than Google you. I’ve asked half the lawyers in town about you. I’ve read briefs you filed in the appeals court. Your argument in”—he named a case Andrew had tried in 1998—“on the whistle-blower’s statute was particularly ingenious.”

  “You don’t get points for brownnosing either.”

  “I’ll try to remember that. As for tennis, Elizabeth Park has the best courts in the area. I like them better than Wintonbury Country Club, but we could go there if you prefer. You could be my guest.” Sampson scribbled something on his business card and passed it over.

  “I’ll let you know,” said Andrew in a formal tone, by way of dismissal.

  Sampson went to the door. “I used to see Rehnquist around Georgetown. A stooped guy with a bad back, puffing on a cigarette. Did you know he dated Sandra Day O’Connor at Stanford?”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “If you say so.”

  After he left, Andrew did a quick Internet search. It was true; Rehnquist and Sandra Day had been law school sweethearts, just like Bill and Hillary. He took Sampson’s personnel file from the stack on his desk and gave it another look. He was from Washington, D.C., the son of an ambassador. He’d gone to elementary school in London, which explained the accent. Graduated from St. Albans in 1994. Then Williams, summa cum laude. After that, Georgetown, editorial board of the law review. On his résumé he’d included among his hobbies: “the violin.”

  Andrew glanced at the business card: JOHNNY SAMPSON, ESQUIRE. On the back he’d written his cell number.

  Andrew snorted. The pup. Did he think they were pals now?

  * * *

  AROUND 4:00 P.M., Jack Hannahan appeared at his door. Andrew put aside what he was doing and tried to look pleased. Hannahan, one of the senior partners, had been with the firm for forty years. He had a drinker’s nose, fabulously red and pustuled.

  “I come bearing gifts,” he said, winking. He handed over a bottle of scotch, a limited-edition box of Cuban Cohibas, and a swipe key to the firm’s skybox in the Hartford Civic Center. “Twenty-one years old, the Glenfiddich.”

  “You’re going to spoil me, Jack.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Care for a sip?”

  “Not at the moment. But they make a decent steak in the hotel bar downstairs, if you’re free for dinner.”

  “I’ll be finished here in an hour.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  Hannahan had been one of the dealmakers for Carrington Farr in the Stamford office years ago when Andrew was fresh out of law school. He’d been a mentor then. They were both Amherst graduates, which meant a great deal to Hannahan. Every October they would drive up together to watch the homecoming game. The Lord Jeffs have a strong backfield this year, Hannahan liked to say; he’d been a fullback himself back in the first days of the plastic helmet. In Stamford, he’d been a fixture at a restaurant called Grandma Mimi’s, where the local politicos gathered. He knew everyone, Republicans and Democrats, journalists and businessmen. Some said he’d had a hand in getting Ella Grasso elected in 1974. Now in Hartford, the old Irishman came into the office two or three times a week, mostly to make a nuisance of himself with his Dictaphone.

  At 5:00 P.M. Andrew accompanied Hannahan down to the bar in the lobby. Only a few tables were occupied, all by men; they were a dreary-looking lot—insurance industry, judging by the drab brown and gray suits and pasty complexions: Hartford’s standard-bearers. Each table held a glass vase with a long-stemmed rose. Hannahan gripped his arm, before heading off to the bathroom saying, “Never get old—damn prostate’s as tight as a spring.”

  Andrew slid into a booth where he could watch the television mounted above the bar. As an associate, he’d spent many evenings placating the old guard, listening to their stories, fetching drinks. It was one of the many demeaning but obligatory tasks of the young associate, like photocopying. Andrew had paid those dues long ago; now he usually avoided the likes of Hannahan. But tonight he was in no hurry to get home. Audrey would be propped up in bed with her reading glasses on her nose, engrossed in some novel or watching an incomprehensible foreign movie. And Hannahan, for once, could be useful.

  “I met with my new team this morning,” said Andrew, once the food had been served.

  The old Irishman looked up from his steak, fork in hand. “And?”

  “One of them’s a bit of a peacock.”

  “That would be Mr. Sampson.”

  Andrew nodded. “He yawned twice during a ten-minute meeting, didn’t bother to cover his mouth. And get this, he offered to take me to the country club as his guest.”

  Hannahan cackled. “He’s done impressive work. Bright. Ambitious. Brings in business too. His father had a summerhouse in Old Saybrook around the bend from Katie Hepburn, may she rest in peace. That’s what brought him to Connecticut.”

  “Had?”

  “A messy divorce. It was something of a D.C. scandal. The father and an eighteen-year-old girl, a runaway from Albuquerque if I recall correctly.”

  “The son tends the other way, was my impression.”

  “Ah.” Hannahan swallowed a piece of steak and wiped his lips with the napkin. He leaned forward and said in a lowered voice, “The lad has certain proclivities. The firm had to have a word with him about looking elsewhere for his entertainment.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he screwed half the secretarial pool. Male and female both.”

  “Did anyone sue?”

  “No formal complaints, no. A fine softball player, they say, when he deigns to join.”

  “Tennis too, apparently.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You say male and female?”

  “That’s the scuttlebutt, yes.”

  After the waitress cleared their plates Hannahan said, “Care for another?”

  Andrew nodded, forcing himself not to glance at his watch. One more drink, then, before he could escape.

  Again, Hannahan excused himself to the men’s room. He was gone for five minutes, maybe longer. When the waitress delivered the scotches, Andrew poured half his glass into the rose vase, turning the water tan. One of the ice cubes plopped in.

  At last Hannahan returned, his gray hair slicked back grotesquely, his face crimson. He cupped his glass. “Tell me about the home front. How’s Emma?”

  “Emily. She’s up in arms. She hates the new house. Hates Wintonbury. Hates everything.”

  “A beauty, that one. How old is she now?”

  “The worst age yet. Seventeen. Audrey’s not adapting much better. Half our stuff is still in boxes. Even the dog’s moping. She misses her old haunts, I suppose.”

  “You’ll come through. You’ve been through worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has it been?”

  Andrew kept his ey
es on the TV. “A year and a half.”

  Hannahan nodded. “A terrible day. I’ll never forget it. Broke my heart.”

  In the silence that followed Hannahan picked up his scotch and took a slow sip. Andrew thought he saw the old man’s eyes watering. The Irish and death: It was their great love; they never grew tired of mourning. Who else could have invented the wake? Sitting around the corpse, drinking and playing cards, dealing a hand for the dead man? Hannahan seemed to get more Irish as he aged, particularly when he drank. Pretty soon he’d be speaking in Gaelic.

  At last Hannahan finished his drink and stood. “You’re tired, Andy. Let’s get going before the rose begins to wilt.”

  Andrew smiled. You couldn’t count Hannahan out, no matter how many drinks, no matter how doddering he seemed. He didn’t miss a thing.

  “I can’t keep up with you, Jack.”

  Hannahan winked. “Don’t be daft. You’re kind to keep an old bore company.”

  On the way out, Hannahan got his credit card back from the waitress. He’d already taken care of the bill.

  * * *

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, on a Saturday morning in October, Johnny Sampson rang the landline at his house, offering a match. “Well, sure, since you took the trouble to call information for my number. Where?”

  Andrew followed his directions to Elizabeth Park. The sun shone directly overhead, a perfect day in New England. The wind barely rippled the tall pines behind the courts. A few men were watching one of the matches from the benches in front of the fence. Andrew went through the gates with his tennis bag and chose a free court on the far side. He got down on his back next to the net and raised his leg against the post, stretching his hamstrings, his weak spot; he’d tweaked both legs over the past decade, reaching for volleys or racing back to return lobs. After ten minutes of stretching, he did a few sets of crunches. If he didn’t, his abs would cramp up during the match.