Layover

  III

  Another Michael. So hard not to divine messages from on high, but “how many are there, globally?” as the great adulterous poet Michael so rhymingly inquired. Couple million most like.

  Except, hating the name’s very commonness, he went, sportsmanlike, by his initials. Which happened to be M.D., so his name itself, given a specialty in medical malpractice, was an in-joke. As was the nickname on his nickname—he knew that younger colleagues called him “Empty.”

  Running on. The Hollow Man. The Lawyer.

  Only one body part claimed his real name. His penis, I would later discover, he referred to as Mikey. This beautiful urcock that could belong to Michelangelo’s David, if David were ever erect, he treated like a gap-toothed kid brother from a cereal commercial, or a finger puppet he could make to “talk,” by jiggling the head: “Mikey’ll be right back.”

  But first, he had to be willing to see me, and I couldn’t even get an appointment with him.

  “What can I help you with,” a secretary asked on the phone, then lobbed me, with tones more sympathetically lilting upon learning of a child’s death, to one of the great man’s associates, a woman I suspected was sleeping with or had slept with him. The most lawyerly traces of possessiveness leaked through.

  The pediatrician, I told her, had never taken a blood-gas reading.

  “Which hospital?”

  She dismissed me immediately when the hospital turned out to be in Ohio. They were not (of course) licensed to try cases there. They could probably recommend someone. And why would a pediatrician investigate blood oxygen levels anyhow, in a healthy child? And this was before I’d even brought up the accident, which would nix the deal for any self-respecting lawyer. Too complicated. The doctor, the manufacturer of the pisspoor car seat; the distracted housewife who, according to the police report, probably failed to turn in the direction of the skid, then slammed on her brakes; fate—no sole source could take the rap, pick up the check. Besides, what did we hope to gain? What solace could the cash infusion bring to such a prosperous couple?

  “Truth is,” the pediatrician had said, with inappropriate relish, “he could have died anytime, anywhere. He could have died running into your arms when you got home from work.” Just one of those meaningless coincidences: car crash, heart attack, Elvis and me sharing a birthday. But the image had stuck: my son running into my arms, me replaying the tape slowly, frame by frame, as if it were Zapruder footage, searching for the gunmen in the grassy knoll.

  Actually, I told the associate, Michael had been recommended to me by a friend of my husband’s (don’t worry, hon, I’m taken), and I would really appreciate getting his read on things while I was in town.

  Well, he was at a settlement. Tomorrow he had a deposition. His schedule was very tight. With a little more notice, maybe…

  This was not at all what I’d imagined. Bizarrely, I had not anticipated having to say even this much about the case itself. I’d seen myself appearing in my suit, briefcase in hand and laptop slung over my shoulder, imagined my leg swinging slightly, eye contact made, proceeding directly to the real solace. I assumed he would understand at once what I wanted, given his status as a Philadelphia lawyer and his reputation, gleaned from his ex-wife and son, as a womanizer. In fact the challenge for a woman in top form—the heat I’d been racing in, since meeting Zachary—would be to proceed directly to sex with no conversation at all, communicating in the universal language of Hormone. (Why wouldn’t it work for extraterrestrials as well? I imagined a pornographic version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which I, braless beneath lab-coat, sexually fine-tuned enough to seduce Martians, sent out a Bach-like tone poem of estrogen, progesterone.)

  “Any sense when I might be able to catch him?”

  “He won’t be back here,” she assured me, “until late, if he gets back at all. I could have him call you, though.”

  But I would not be that easily discouraged.

  By now my suit—in whisper-light summer-weight wool, in one of those Armani gray-greens that give ambiguity a good name, but worn now for several consecutive weeks in summer—felt suddenly heavy, malformed, malodorous. I gave the Four Seasons a chance to demonstrate its ability to have suit and silk blouse cleaned while I was at the pool. I swam, napped, had a salad in my room, and then dressed to meet Michael Davidoff of Davidoff, Freed, Spelling and Associates with delicious care. Put my hands through the legs of my stockings slowly, to check for runs. Flossed my teeth. Even wet a piece of toilet paper and wiped away the line of muck that had collected on my shoes.

  Arrived at his office with my briefcase and laptop (a less sleek look than I’d imagined, but I felt insecure leaving them at the hotel) at a little after seven at night, the time I’d deemed most likely for him to be at his desk alone, sighing and mopping up, with the less devoted drones having scuttled home.

  Given my free hotel room scam, I was not concerned about gaining admittance to the building, about finessing the security guard. It should not be this easy, really. Women, too, can be disgruntled ex-mates, terrorists. But he wore just the look of indignant boredom of all security guards.

  “I’m here for Mike Davidoff,” I said.

  “Mike,” he retorted, expressionless.

  “Yes indeed, sir.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “Nope.” I leaned with elbows on his curved desk and did not whisper but leaned in, talking only to him, not that anyone else was around except, down a long hall, against a bank of elevators, a janitor propped up against a cleaning cart. “Not at all. I’m a surprise. I’m a present. I’m his dinner. The briefcase”—I held it up at desk-level, so he could see—“is merely a prop.”

  He grinned. “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Ought to be more of that going around,” he said.

  Definitely, I agreed. More surprise.

  He told me I’d better sign in, then, and offered me the bad ballpoint pen attached to the pad.

  “Marie Antoinette?” I asked. “Madonna?”

  “Whatever,” he suggested.

  I went with Hillary Katzenbach. “You have a nice night now,” I said, he told me to do the same, and this felt, I swear, like real human contact.

  The office was as one would expect. Heavy on the mahogany and pilasters. Leather-bound books, gold letters glinting on their spines, lined up behind the cut crystal of apothecary shelves: the high life, courtesy of Ralph Lauren. Lawyers! I tried to imagine an original one with a sense of humor—interior by Andy Warhol, all the bright-green upholstery sporting cartoony dollar signs. Probably people with bum knees from accidents, with ugly divorces or very high bail, are not in the mood to laugh at their problems. Doctors, of course, try to keep their interiors low-key, even dowdy. Patients do not like to feel that their illnesses are supporting interior designers. It’s unclear why lawyers are allowed to flaunt their excess: is anyone cowed into thinking such rooms represent “old money,” that they’ve been here for centuries, stable as the state?

  Maybe just an old-fashioned power play. We’re rich. You’re not. The receptionist was gone for the day, but I had made a miscalculation: why did I think that at a mere seven in the evening the office would be drained of all activity generating billable hours, leaving Michael and me alone?

  On the contrary, most of the lawyers were still here. The door from the lobby of the office was open and you could watch them spurt by like manic-depressive elves, ties tossed behind their backs, rattling sheaves of papers. To ask for him would ruin it, so I proceeded through the open doorway as if I belonged there. Did, almost, since I could evidently divine, with ornithological precision, in which direction I would find the biggest office with the best view. And his door was not closed, only ajar; in fact an elf was scuttling out, so intent on the papers before him that he didn’t even register me. And then I was standing in front of the man himself, smiling.

  “Michael,” I said.

  He did not “look up,” because
he seemed to have already been watching the doorway, expectant. He was very still. He smiled back but the smile was—well, beyond professional. Beyond, even, “false,” because that entails an alternate composition, readable but dishonest. This face revealed, pointedly, absolutely nothing.

  Figure, here, seconds only. Long enough for a “Hi,” or a “You are?” or even a handshake, a raised eyebrow, some gesture of welcome or suspicion. From him, nothing. Nothing. I was even further put off guard because the face was so familiar, from Zachary. I had already slept with this man, is how it felt.

  Claire the Loon.

  What are you doing? I demanded of myself, a bit frantically.

  I’m doing the father, the son, and the holy ghost.

  Three, four seconds of him holding the poker face like a cat, paw raised, tail quivering, while my brain zoomed around having wildly dissociated thoughts like a nut-burying squirrel, squirrels being, of course, too stupid to remember where they buried the nuts, so all they do is bury them and dig up nuts some other poor idiot squirrel buried and now can’t find. Several hundred expressions he might have seen, if he was paying attention, and he did seem to be paying attention.

  “Your son Zachary sent me,” is what finally came from my mouth.

  Now his shoulders eked out the smallest Ah, yes?

  “I’m a surprise,” I said helplessly. “A present.”

  He considered this.

  Our first meeting was, I realized, going exactly according to plan. Behind the desk, this attractive middle-aged man who never let anything happen to him, who “lived for his work” as they say and kept his heart squirreled away, studied me, deliberating about how to respond to a woman who announced she was a present but bore no singing telegram, jumped out of no cake wearing pasties; carried, in fact, a briefcase and sleek laptop; stood, now (for I had put the briefcase down, in our half a minute together), with hands clasped before her, the most secure and casual of supplicants. Was I not what all men wait for? Married, even: certainly he could see my diamond flashing against the subtle weave of my suit; after our tryst I would ease into the leather seat of my silver Legend and drive away.

  Except I feared that I was deluded about my ability to control him, and the situation. Because his caution made me feel a twinge of desperation—as if I were already more in love with him than he would ever be with me. I had known him three minutes, and already I was acting like his jealous, needy wife! Hey, I reminded myself, you’re a salesman. I met his stare, just slightly taunting. And in that short exchange I had won, for the nonce: I knew he was thinking, What the hell. Just this once.

  “In fact,” I said, “if you can spare the time, there’s a case I’d like to talk over with you. You come highly recommended, of course.”

  I said this in such a way as to indicate that this was not at all what I wanted, but understood totally that it would be our cover, should anyone question us. The way I said it—firmly but without protesting too much—convinced him that I would be a reliable witness, should it come to that. And meanwhile he could be, to himself, thrillingly out of character.

  He made, then, what must have been his first movement. He had been holding a pen in his hand. Now he tamped it, deftly, against his desk—the gesture of an ex-smoker of unfiltered cigarettes. Then he laughed. Here is the thing about his laugh, and remember, I had heard the ex-wife and son’s grand clattering whoop: the father’s laugh was completely soundless.

  According to plan, his next move should have been to kiss me. The kiss would contain some calculated surprise. Hands not cupping cheeks but going straight for waist. Or no hands at all. Or the mouth would bite first, not lips but earlobe—I suspected this Michael would be rough—or no kiss, kissing dispensed with, stockings ripped down, etc. Why this idea not only didn’t displease but actively excited me, how it was different from the slob in the Wilkes-Barre hotel room with his pink hand like a lobster claw pincering my nipple, I could not have said. Maybe the certainty that whatever move Michael Davidoff made would be studied. That I merely needed to be ready, to avail myself of him.

  But in this regard, as with the initial greeting, he made me wait. He was not going to be so tacky as to inquire how I knew his son, or what I wanted from him. A gaze power-washed of everything but taunting expectation: surprise me. But I couldn’t. I could straddle him, or burst into tears, or serve him papers, or say “You know how I met your son? He collided with me accidentally-on-purpose at a hotel swimming pool and within a quarter of an hour we were in bed; chip off the old block, no?” Whatever I did, I’d get the same Ah, yes. Behind that implacability, I knew, was a sadness so grand it was positively glacial. What did I need the tip of an Iceman for? What treasure did I hope to find buried in him, like dinosaur DNA in amber? Couldn’t I just scale my own emotional mountains?

  With such considerations, I actually managed to outwait him.

  “Have you eaten dinner?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  His hands were folded on the desk, as if he were posing for a corporate photograph, of the type I had read are called Guys in Ties. He rotated his wrist to check the time, subtly. “Shall we?” he asked, and stood. Checked his watch again. An expensive sports-type watch—what a stupid contradiction in terms. The gesture made me remember that Fidel Castro used to wear two watches—one facing the inside of his wrist, one facing the outside, so he never had to turn his arm to know the time. Now he had given me the Achilles’ heel, I could shoot, if I needed to. How you’d melt the mountain: with the emotional equivalent of jet lag. Throw the fucker off his circadian rhythm. His was a timing game, totally.

  With this in mind I could smile at him serenely.

  He was taller than I’d known, from seeing him seated. Taller than his son, and less densely muscled, with some auburn glinting in his coloration. The face chiseled and intelligent-looking. Of course all lawyers look smarter than they are, and know it—the other Achilles’ heel. But because of the long legs, the lean and hungry look, Michael’s face seemed intelligent the way a praying mantis’s does. No matter how thoughtfully the head swivels, it is, after all, an insect.

  When he reached me, he put one hand in his pocket, rattled change in a spasm. Then put that same hand lightly on my back, to steer me out. Standard old-fashioned “This way, lady” but the pressure felt thrillingly good.

  Wordless in the elevator.

  In the lobby, the security guard shared with me a leering eyebrow, a “toodle-oo” with lowered fingers. If it had been a romantic comedy, I could have winked as he tipped his cap. The cinematic dissociation under which I’d been functioning: as the lawyer again touched my back, positioning me in the revolving door, followed behind, caught up with me to steer me left, and loped alongside me, his hand just resting in the hollow where, a couple of inches lower, he’d be teasing my bladder, I saw us in a tracking shot from the kind of movie in which wary urban couples wend their way toward union against mirrored skyscrapers in a Toronto posing as Manhattan.

  We were on Walnut Street, heading, I realized, toward the very restaurant that had made me puke, but going to another place, across the street. “You been here?” he asked.

  “Don’t live in the city,” I said. “Just visiting.”

  “Ah,” he said. “From?”

  “Cleveland.”

  “You’ll like it.”

  We got through the march to table, drink orders, drink arrival, the delivery of enormous menus, the ritual lascivious recital of specials, without exchanging any further information. If he had any curiosity or uneasiness about my identity—high-class hooker prepaid by son, as thanks for tuition? Divorced mom of one of his son’s school chums?—he did not so indicate. His restraint was impressive, as was the room in which we had been seated.

  The restaurant was a converted bank from the turn of the century, and we’d been shown to a halogen-lit banquette in the basement, in what had been the security-deposit vaults. Marble walls, marble floors, and vaults of Air Force seriousness. The brus
hed-steel walls of the vaults were over a foot thick, the doors operated by hinges more appropriate for fighter planes. A temple for the worship of Cash. Despite the cigarette smoke, it smelled good down here—the steely, oiled smell of manhood itself, and thus of history. Pistons, screws, joints. Hard to imagine a world in which this kind of hardware, so quaint-seeming and decorative now, would delude someone into feeling inviolable, but a wealthy fellow who visited his assets as one would visit a loved one in a mausoleum instead of putting it in the stock market would have been happy indeed, when all was said and done. If only it were still possible to feel safety in things, in the stolidity of the tangible world.

  When I turned to Michael he was smiling, pleased with me. As if he knew exactly what thoughts I was having, and agreed. His restaurant choice an ironic commentary on our relationship’s very evanescence—we would not amass anything together, but would merely alight in each other’s accounts and move on, an electronic transfer.

  I took my hand off the stem of the wineglass and gave it to him. “Claire Newbold.”

  He raised my hand, kissed it. The pressure, like the pressure of his hand on my back, exactly right. “Delighted.”

  Then just kept holding the hand, his thumb languidly stroking my thumb.

  “Claire,” he said, savoring.

  Well, this could not go any better. Could not possibly. I let him work on my thumb. After a while of tracing my nail with his finger, his other hand appeared and he cupped my hand in both of his in a way that made me think of someone trying very carefully to light a match in high wind. In both of his hands, my hand felt candlelit, its pleasure private. He drew in my other hand, too, and held both of the hands at once, stroking first the prong that held my diamond in its setting and then the web or whatever it is called between my fingers, trying to make of that dumb, dispensable piece of flesh something trembling, tympanic. I felt this rather than saw it, because my eyes were closed. When they fluttered open he was watching me, and while the smile was the same set, suspicious one that was his lawyer’s false face, his eyes were ignited, flickering. His eyes said, Yes, we are very impressive concentrating like this in the theme-park restaurant, among the clink of cutlery and chatter from the bar, but let us try to do this right.