by Paul Heald
“You proposed here in the office because you needed to put your money where your mouth was, so to speak.”
“That’s it, sir.” Arthur’s feelings were written plainly on his blotchy, perspiration-beaded face. “I need to make her see how much I love her.”
The Judge, lost in his own thoughts, gave no immediate response. Arthur’s tale had summoned vivid memories of his own romantic shortcomings and of his most monumental failure to communicate his own feelings. He shut his eyes, contemplated his own legacy of stupidity, and wondered whether someone as young as Arthur could appreciate his story.
“Maybe I should just give it up, Judge,” Arthur sighed and started to get up. “I don’t want to hurt her anymore than I have already.”
“No.” The answer to the question exploded with unexpected violence from the Judge’s lips.
The old man got up from his chair and circled deliberately around his massive walnut desk. Without a word, he pulled open the shades and let the afternoon sun flood his office. He squinted over a bookshelf filled with copies of the Supreme Court Reports and took out a volume. He flipped it open and studied it briefly before handing Arthur a picture that had been pressed tightly between its pages.
“Do you know who that is?”
Arthur looked first at the Judge, then carefully at the picture, and then back at the Judge again. “It looks a whole lot like the picture of Suzanne’s mother sitting on her mantel.”
“It is.”
The Judge took the photo back and laid it on his desk, looking at it from time to time while he spoke, as if to get approval that his story was fit to be continued. He had never had any reason to tell it before.
“You shouldn’t give up yet.” He sighed and gestured to the picture. “Eleanor and I became very close during the last few months of her husband’s life. Suzanne will have told you that he was my old law partner and friend. He and my wife became ill about the same time, but Mary died quickly, just a few months after she was diagnosed with leukemia. Jim lingered and was eventually institutionalized.”
He stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it in the trash before he continued. “It was the most natural thing in the world for us to get together. We’d known each other since we were in high school. In fact, we might’ve gotten married thirty-five years earlier if Jim hadn’t swept her off her feet their sophomore year in college.”
As he spoke, he pulled out a pint bottle of Jim Beam yellow label and two shot glasses from the bottom drawer of his desk. He poured both of them a small tot and reverenced the photo with a tip of his drink.
“Anyway, we both had very happy marriages and never worried about what might have been, at least until the very end of Jim’s life.” He rocked back in his chair as he contemplated the string of bad luck five years earlier that had cost him a wife, a friend, and a lover. “Once he lost consciousness and was put in the nursing home, I felt no shame about being with her. My mistake was assuming that Ellie could handle it too. But when he died, her guilt lay so heavy that she wouldn’t even look at me at the funeral.”
He took a sip of the sweet rye whiskey from his tumbler and watched the sunlight play on the fluid as it slid back down the side of the glass. “I left her alone for a month or so, not wanting to start any gossip and figuring that she would eventually realize that we hadn’t done anything wrong. I had no idea what she was going through. When I finally paid her a visit early one evening, she was dressed from head to toe in black, cold as a statue, and looking determined to join him as soon as she could. I stayed a couple of minutes and slunk on out.”
The Judge finished his whiskey, and seeing that his clerk’s glass was still full, he hesitated before pouring another. Arthur gulped his drink in response and held out the empty glass.
“Did you ever get through to her?”
“No, but I didn’t push very hard…” He looked at Arthur and hoped he had made the right decision to trust the boy. “I’m not of your generation, so I’ll dispense with a recitation of my feelings, but you’ll have figured out my advice by now: do whatever you have to in order to make Suzanne see how strongly you feel.” He drained his glass again. “I gave up way too easily; don’t make the same mistake.”
Arthur raised the glass to his mouth, drinking in parallel movement to the Judge. As they sat violating federal alcohol regulations and despairing of the complexities of love in a place usually reserved for legal analysis, the gap between generations closed a bit. And if they had thought hard about it, they might have come to the conclusion that it was not just failed love binding them, but also their shared roles in the deaths of two men.
They sat in silence for several minutes. A pigeon’s deep vibrato rumbled from an outside drain pipe and played counterpoint to the Judge’s soft wheezing. Finally, he put out his cigarette, shifted in his chair and, leaned in Arthur’s direction.
“Just out of curiosity, why do you think Suzanne reacted so strongly to your proposal out there?” He stifled a cough. “I mean, it was tacky, but she seemed really upset when she should just have been embarrassed.”
“Or just have agreed,” Arthur added.
“Or just have agreed,” conceded the Judge.
“I don’t have any idea.” He replied, but then sat bolt upright. “Oh SHIT, oh shit, oh shit …” Arthur murmured in descending degrees of audibility and in ascending degrees of agitation.
“What?” The Judge momentarily stemmed the chant of obscenity from Arthur’s mouth.
“Oh shit,” breathed Arthur one last time, “she must know about Melanie.”
“Know what about Melanie?”
“Oh shit.” Arthur squirmed in his chair. “After Suzanne turned me down—the first time—I had a brief, uh, relationship with Melanie. Suzanne must have found out somehow.”
“Oh shit,” the Judge murmured. Arthur started to speak again, but the Judge waved him silent and tried to work out the ramifications of Arthur’s confession. He ran back over the lunch scene in his head.
“Wait a minute,” the Judge sputtered, “Melanie was right in the room when you proposed to Suzanne.” He gestured spastically in the direction of the library. “What kind of an idiot are you?”
“No, Judge,” Arthur protested, “Melanie’s cool.” The Judge looked at him uncomprehendingly, and Arthur told him about his last visit to his beautiful co-clerk.
* * *
When Arthur had gone to Melanie’s apartment after the concert, his goal had not been more sex, but rather a radical reversal of their relationship. The problem was figuring out the right approach. He had never broken up with anyone before, and he doubted whether any guy had ever broken up with Melanie. When she unlocked the door to her apartment with a smile, he frowned and asked her to sit down with him on the worn couch in her living room. He sat on his heel with his knee bent on the sofa cushion, maintaining safe distance between them
“Melanie,” he declared earnestly, “we need to talk about something important.”
Her expression suggested that she expected a romantic pronouncement, but whether she desired intimacy or was worried that he was moving to fast, she was going to be blindsided.
“What’s on your mind, Arthur?” She looked at him with eyes that hinted the best thing to do might be retiring to her bedroom, putting off serious conversation to a later date. She touched his arm. “Are you sure you just want to talk?”
“I’m definitely sure.”
“What is it then?” She settled back in the sofa.
“I don’t really know where to start, but I need your help. I need it really bad.” He took a deep breath and searched for a logical starting point. The main problem was not knowing whether Melanie cared for him or whether he was just a temporary diversion.
“Um … let me ask you a question.” He grimaced with embarrassment. “How would you describe your feelings for me.”
“I think you’re terrific. You’re nice and smart and a good lover … and it would be great to see you when we move to Wash
ington.” She offered him a generous smile.
“Crap.” He shut his eyes and massaged his right temple forcefully with his thumb. “Melanie, you’re wrong. I’m not a nice person. In a second, you’ll be hating me.”
Melanie twisted her hair with her left hand and looked at Arthur warily.
“I’m not sure where to begin, but it doesn’t really matter, because the ending’s the same: I’ve misled and used you and I hope you can forgive me.”
Now, he had her full attention, and he stumbled quickly on.
“After I moved to Clarkeston, it didn’t take very long for me and Suzanne to fall in love. She’s wonderful, and even though I never liked kids, Maria actually makes it better. Anyway, things were going great.” He watched Melanie’s face grow colder and colder. “But a problem came up a couple of weeks ago—”
“So you hopped in bed with me.”
“No,” he pleaded, “I mean, not consciously. I haven’t been doing anything very consciously …”
Melanie got up from the sofa.
“Wait, don’t go,” he cried.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t go’?” She stamped her foot on the floor and looked like she was going to spit at him. “This is my apartment, dumb ass. I’m just moving over here so I don’t get any slime on me!” She planted herself firmly in a wicker rocking chair across the room, arms crossed, eyes burning a hole in the middle of Arthur’s forehead.
“Please hear me out.” He sat on the edge of the sofa and leaned forward, trying to communicate his sincerity. “You are amazing, gorgeous, and incredibly smart, and the thought of taking the job at OLC and seeing you in Washington is unbelievably tempting.” He searched for more convincing words. “Any other guy in America would jump at the chance, but I’ve got to stay here.”
“You’ve got to what?” She was stunned. She shook her head and held her palms up as if to fend off the craziness. “Wait, you’re not going to OLC?”
“No, I’m going to stay here and ask Suzanne to marry me.” He stared down at his feet and tried to convey his regret for treating her so shabbily. “I’m sorry that I hurt you before I realized what I wanted.”
“Don’t assume you can hurt me, Arthur Hughes. I’m a lot tougher than you are.”
It was a hopeful sign that she was more angry than disappointed. He looked up at her when she spoke.
“Do you know what you’re getting into?” she asked. “What are you going to do down here anyway … for a job, I mean?”
“I’m not worried. I’ll find something.”
“Holy shit,” she murmured as she struggled to make some sense out of his decision to ditch his career. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I think I actually was for a while, but not now.” He tried to find the right words to explain what had changed. “During the concert tonight, it just hit me—I’ve done nothing but death all year long, and now I’ve got the chance to do something positive, something wonderful.”
”It just hit you while you were singing?”
“Yeah.”
“You are crazy.” She moved back to the sofa and gave him a hard look. “And I’m still pissed off with you, but are you sure that you know what you’re doing by withdrawing at OLC? A chance like that only comes once in a lifetime. Wait, if you do the math, way, way less than once in a lifetime!”
“I know it does.” He nodded vigorously. “You’re absolutely right, but there are more important chances here that I need to take.” He saw her wince. “I’m sorry. I’ve ended up hurting both of you. Maybe you can forgive me someday and see that I’m just trying to make things right.”
Melanie’s anger appeared to fade in the face of Arthur’s shame and derangement. A tear welled in her eye, and she let it fall before giving here head a violent shake and laughing abruptly. “You know, nobody’s ever dumped me before.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Well, it could be worse,” she added. “You might be leaving me for Phil. I always wondered about you two guys. Don’t you realize that the Wild Boar is a gay bar?” She managed a smile, and a strange calm descended on them both.
“What do we do now?” Arthur asked.
“Well, we could try just being friends. We never really gave that much of a chance.”
“Maybe even have dinner together?”
“Well, guess what,” she said, “I do have some leftovers in the fridge.”
For the first time since they met in the fall, they sat down as friends, talking and eating, sharing a secret that they swore Suzanne would never learn.
* * *
The Judge opened his mouth to comment on the fantastic tale, but no comprehensible sound emerged. He finally got up and moved behind his desk, a bulwark against the mess of Arthur’s life that threatened to spill all over the floor of his chambers. “Son, you don’t need a wife. You need a janitor.”
Arthur nodded his agreement. His frankness provoked a smile from the Judge and a glimmer of understanding as to how Melanie was converted from a potentially deadly enemy into a sympathetic supporter.
He offered one last bit of advice to conclude the interview. “Arthur, just pray that Suzanne doesn’t know, and if she doesn’t, don’t you ever tell her.” He sent Arthur toward the door with a wave. “There are no clear guidelines here, but I do think you’re trying to do the right thing. The universe will be a bit more balanced if you succeed.”
“Get her back,” he said as Arthur slipped from the room. And redeem an old fool, he added to himself. He stared for a while out at the balmy spring afternoon. Then, he opened the window and pitched his pack of Luckies out into the air.
XXXI.
CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE
Melanie watched Phil brush the last crumbs from the conference table into a green metal garbage can and then plop down with a groan into the chair across from her. She offered a smile in response to the dazed expression on his face.
“That was hard to watch, wasn’t it?”
Phil nodded. He was genuinely distressed by the scene they had just witnessed. “I didn’t see that coming at all.”
“I don’t think Suzanne did either.”
Neither had Melanie—life had gotten wildly unpredictable in Clarkeston lately. Even her own plans about the future were starting unravel a little. After meditating on her trip to New York, white shoe law firms were looking less interesting to her. Commercial lawyers would never send her out to track down a murderer like Jennifer Huffman. On the other hand, the Justice Department and the US Attorney’s office were desperate for people who had a nose for uncovering dirt.
“Nope,” Phil replied. “She looked totally stunned.” He pushed the trash container away with his left foot and spun the chair parallel to the table, sticking his legs out and slumping down even farther. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.” He shook his head and rested an elbow on the table. “I thought we were closer friends than that.”
She studied him for a moment. He seemed hurt by Arthur’s failure to confide in him. Or maybe by something else. Phil didn’t seem the jealous type, but you never knew. “You are his best friend, Phil. This looked really impulsive.”
“Come on,” he protested with a wave of his hand, “you don’t just suddenly decide to junk your career, stay in Clarkeston, and marry your landlady.”
“You do if you’re Arthur Hughes,” she replied with a sigh.
Phil looked at her sharply. “What do you know anyway? You haven’t been snooping around his office, have you?”
“I wouldn’t snoop around …”
His expression dared her to complete the sentence and get a lecture on her ethical shortcomings.
“Okay, so I’m a little nosy,” she sniffed, “but I haven’t been snooping around the corners of Arthur’s love life.” She almost didn’t go any further, but this seemed to be a day when all bets were off. “I kind of got myself in the middle of his love life.”
“You did what?” He turned and leaned against the table.
/> “You heard me.” She sighed as she gathered her thoughts. “Arthur and I had a little fling, and he came over last night to talk to me.” She got a perverse kick out of the look of horror on his face. “I didn’t expect him to ask Suzanne to marry him today, but I knew it was coming sometime.”
“What?” he sputtered, and then asked sarcastically, “What did he do, come over to ask your permission?”
“Well,” she said with a scrunch of the face and sideways look to escape his eyes, “yeah, sort of.”
“Unbelievable.” He shook his head slowly and swore. “Un-fucking-believable … I thought I knew him ….” He looked up at her. “Shit, I thought I knew you too.”
“Well, don’t be pissed at us! It just happened once, and then Arthur felt like he needed to warn me that he was actually in love with Suzanne and was going to stay in Clarkeston.”
“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, the fact that he slept with you doesn’t say much about his real feelings for her.” Was he jealous or just blindsided? Either way, she set him straight.
“Look, I think the Jefferson case really fucked him up. He never showed any interest in me until after the execution, and when he did, it was pretty … uh … mostly feverish, if you know what I mean.” Phil looked like he didn’t. “I really think something in him just snapped, and I just happened to be in the way.”
Phil got up and walked over to the window. He stared out for a while, resting the knuckles of his hands lightly on the sill. When he turned around the churlishness was gone, replaced with worry and concern. “I told him this would happen.”
“You told him he would sleep with me if he worked on habeas cases?”
“No,” he snorted, “I told him that the law can’t insulate you—you can’t be a tool of retribution and not get tainted.”
She started to protest. She didn’t like the idea that Arthur’s running to her was an allergic reaction to his job, but it was hard to characterize their night of passion as anything but frenzied.