Local Rules

by Jay Brandon

  She said wryly, “I try to keep it under wraps so men will be attracted by my simple homely virtues instead of my dazzling looks,” but her eyes glittered at the compliment.

  “Tell me what to watch for in the ballet.”

  “Oh, I’m the expert? Well, if someone falls off the edge of the stage, it’s probably not a good sign.”

  She did tell him a few things, but it was wasted breath, because Jordan couldn’t afterward have related any details of the performance. What he enjoyed was touching Lama protectively as they found their seats, joking with her, seeing the look of anticipation she turned on him when the lights went down. What he watched was her hand dangling from the armrest next to his, her profile in the dimness, her collar­bones that the dress left bare.

  “Drink?” he asked at intermission.

  “Sure. Some wine would be nice.”

  “White?”

  “Only if there’s no alternative.”

  “Two red wines,” Jordan said to the bartender, then stood around holding the two plastic glasses, feeling married again and not disliking the feeling, until she returned from the ladies’ room. They clinked their glasses softly. Laura sipped and made a face.

  “I was wrong about it being nice.”

  “I swear I told him red,” Jordan grimaced. “This tastes more brown. So, did you just drive in tonight?”

  “No, I came with Chris Cavaletti. The teacher? We drove in yesterday. Chris had some friends to visit, and I wanted to go to a real mall.”

  So Laura had been in town last night, Saturday night, while Jordan had sat like a lump at home, watching a crummy rented movie. If he’d gone out, he might have run into her somewhere, they might have spent the evening together.

  But maybe Laura had a friend in town, too. Season tickets, she’d said.

  For the second act Laura suggested they move up from what Jordan had thought were their good seats to the rela­tive emptiness of the balcony to get a different perspective. Up there, unsurrounded, they could comment on the perfor­mance, which made it worthwhile to Jordan. The perspective put him closer to the bewitching ceiling of the Majestic, too, which was decorated with the skyline of a Moroccan village, with a night sky overhead studded with stars and clouds passing faintly behind them. Looking up, he felt alone in the galaxy with the woman beside him.

  “I’ll bet we could find some better wine without much trouble,” Jordan said in the lobby afterward.

  “I’d better be getting back,” Laura said.

  Jordan touched her hand very lightly. “Not yet.”

  Laura hesitated, looking away. Then she looked at Jordan, and he saw rejection. Laura looked as if she felt herself out of place for the first time. But she took an extra few mo­ments to study Jordan’s face, and when she spoke she said, “I’ll have to call Chris.”

  They walked, not far, to the bar of the St. Anthony Hotel, where Jordan liked to think of the picture they presented except when he remembered that they were downtown and their clothes made them look worth robbing. But the bar was well lighted and quiet and Laura looked at home in it. He couldn’t think of what to say to impress her, so instead he asked a question.

  “Oh, it was good,” Laura said. “I hate to criticize dancers, I know how hard they work.”

  “But everyone can’t be Baryshnikov, otherwise we wouldn’t have known how good Baryshnikov was.”

  “Did we?” Laura teased.

  “I saw him once. In New York. My wife dragged me. I was stunned when I was actually impressed with him.”

  “The leaps,” Laura said.

  “I admit it, I’m shallow. The only way a dancer can im­press me is to do something I don’t think Lynn Swann could have done.”

  “But could Baryshnikov have caught a football at the top of his leap?”

  “If only I’d had one with me.”

  The night was giving them some shortchanged version of time, the hour that dissipated in only a few minutes. Jordan had the bad luck to see the clock mounted above the bar and felt the hated pressure of a new week starting soon. “Are you driving back tonight?” he asked.

  Laura nodded. “Unless Chris wants to get up very early in the morning. She doesn’t have to be back tomorrow, but I do.”

  “I’ll take you,” Jordan said impulsively.

  Laura looked at him indulgently. “Remember where we are?”

  “It’s okay, I have to be in your court in the morning anyway,” he lied.

  “Jordan, you don’t have to—” she said, laying her hand on his.

  “I want to. And Chris will thank you.”

  “That’s true. But it’s a long drive.”

  “I have to make it anyway. Now or in the morning.”

  “Jordan,” she said seriously. “There’s no reason for it.”

  “Except that I want to.”

  She gave him a long unsmiling study, while Jordan tried to look innocent or sincere or whatever she wanted.

  “All right,” Laura finally said.

  He touched her hand.

  “I have to go by and get my things.”

  “Me, too. I’ll get the car.”

  He rose quickly and hurried out without giving her a chance to change her mind, but it was a long walk to the car. He had a strong feeling she’d be gone when he returned. The night felt menacing. The sound of his heels seemed to carry.

  But when he drove up in front of the bar, Laura was waiting just inside the door. They hardly spoke on the drive to the house where Laura had been staying with Chris Cavaletti’s friends. Jordan hoped the silence wasn’t a harbinger of the long drive to Green Hills.

  “This is close to my apartment,” Jordan said when they reached their destination. “I have to pick up a few things, too, I’ll be right back.”

  “Laura—” He got out of the car and caught her hand on the sidewalk. She looked at him as if he’d announced a major intention. “Before we change, before the date’s over,” Jordan added, “could I—”

  He leaned close, hoping he wasn’t surprising her. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger, then their lips met. Hers were soft with a faint taste, sweet breath held behind them. He was still holding her hand. Her lips remained soft and parted only slightly, but her hand clutched his.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said again briskly, down to busi­ness, but in the car he was thoughtful. The taste and feel of her mouth stayed on his.

  Once again back at the unfamiliar house, he said, “All set?” and put her suitcase in the trunk, next to his. He was sorry that she had changed, but the evening dress hadn’t been traveling clothes, and her skirt and short-sleeved blouse made her look even fresher.

  As they left town, they talked more about the dancers, but that topic was exhausted before they reached the city limit. “You’re a dancer,” he said to make it personal.

  Laura laughed ruefully. “I used to dance a little.”

  “But you gave it up.”

  “No, I’m still the finest dancer in Green Hills.”

  It was Green Hills she wouldn’t give up. Jordan didn’t understand her. He’d gotten to know Laura well enough to think she was too smart for her job, too wide-ranging in her thoughts to be happy in the little town. But she’d suffered some failure of nerve in her youth. “Why did you go all the way to Chicago for court reporting school?” he asked.

  “Because I wanted to get far away. You know how rinky-dink you think your hometown is when you’re a teenager. But I found out I was a small-town girl. I hated the big city. I hated waking up in the morning and knowing I wasn’t going to see anybody I knew, all day. And the traffic scared me, of course, and the crime.”

  “But you lasted two years.”

  She nodded. “But then the job opened up in Green Hills for the judge, and it seemed like a sign.”

  “Are you glad you did?”

  “Some things don’t have anything to do with happiness, you just do them because you feel like you have to. Like destiny.” She was staring out the window into t
he night, looking as if the life she hadn’t had had become precious. Laura drew a short breath and seemed to change the subject. “Like you being a lifelong prosecutor.”

  “But that turned out not to be my destiny.”

  “That’s what I mean. That’s what you thought you were, but your life took a different course without you meaning it to.”

  Jordan shook his head. “I made up my own mind. I quit.”

  “But would you have if you hadn’t felt like you had to?” Jordan couldn’t answer. As he sank into his own thoughts, he again felt Laura consciously change beside him, change her tone. She said lightly, “Listen to the master of his fate. Where were you born?”

  “San Antonio.”

  “And where do you live now?”

  “All right. But maybe you should have gone to law school instead. I’ve seen how well you understand the law. Doesn’t it gall you sometimes to listen to some stupid lawyer and think—”

  Laura shrugged. The resignation in her voice was so old it had lost its bitterness. “That would have been three more years of school on top of college that I never had. I didn’t want to take that time. Besides, fifteen years ago... It didn’t seem like an option.”

  Jordan let the subject drop. They were out on the un-crowded interstate, the car’s headlights piercing the night, but the darkness prevailed on both sides, unbroken to the horizons. They could feel its soft weight. Jordan and Laura talked in the darkness of the long distance night as if they were disembodied spirits. But in fact, he was aware of her legs stretching forward as if the legs were propelling the car. He wanted to touch her again as they’d casually touched hands throughout the evening, but in the close confines of the car, casualness wasn’t possible.

  “Have you given your daughter dancing lessons?” Laura asked.

  “We’ve talked about it. I told Mar—my ex-wife that it’s up to them. When Ashley asks me for something, I don’t know if she really wants it or if she’s just testing me to see if I’ll do it for her.”

  He felt uncomfortable discussing his family, but Laura turned to him with a concerned expression and he soon found himself pouring out his worries about his daughter withdrawing from him, voicing discouragement he’d never told anyone else.

  “Sometimes I think it might be better if I just let her go. A father should be there every day. The way things are —”

  “You keep trying,” Laura said with surprising fierceness. “That girl is your responsibility, Jordan, and you trust me, a girl needs her father, no matter who else she has in her life. Even if she doesn’t think so. She won’t ever forget you.” Jordan remembered what he had learned from his snoop­ing in the files, about Laura’s parents’ divorce when she was young, and he was too embarrassed to pursue the subject. So he almost shifted to business again. “Did Jenny get along with her father?” he asked.

  “I guess.” Laura looked out the window. “They weren’t the kind of people to let everybody know their business. But police never got called to their house if that’s what you mean.”

  “What about Kevin, what did they think about him?”

  “What did anybody think about him? He wasn’t much. He was a long way from the best Jenny could have done, even in Green Hills, and she knew it. She asked me once what I thought of him. She must’ve asked everybody.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I was very careful to say he seemed like a nice enough boy. Let her take that any way she wanted. I wasn’t going to give her advice and then get blamed for it later.”

  Jordan was thinking of the photograph from the hospital file, the one that showed the living, smiling girl. “You know, this case isn’t like any other one I’ve had,” he said quietly. “I feel like I’ve gotten to know this girl. Sometimes I forget why I’m asking people about her, and then it’s a shock to remember I’m never going to meet her.”

  Laura crossed her arms and reverted to the beginning of the conversation. “You know the best thing Ed and Joan did for her?” she said, staring out into the dark. “They called her Jenny. Her name was Jennifer, but now every other girl in the world is named Jennifer. Just by giving her that silly old-fashioned nickname they made her distinctive.” Jordan couldn’t think of anything to add to that. He didn’t want Laura to think he’d offered to drive her home so he could wring more information about the case from her, so he changed subjects. They talked about their childhoods and about high school, the universal equalizer; comparing their experiences, they made the astonishing discovery that they’d both felt alienated as teenagers.

  They’d been in the car an hour, and the night no longer seemed so unpopulated. Her hometown lurked not far ahead. Jordan thought about his suitcase in the trunk, about driving up to her house after midnight.

  “Were you ever serious about being a dancer?”

  Laura’s laugh sounded hollow, as if forced or unpracticed. She stretched. “Oh, yes, I took lessons for years, I even started giving them when I was in high school. I took lessons from Mrs. Jensen, who’d been as far as Dallas, so we thought she knew everything.”

  “She had a studio in Green Hills?”

  “Yes, it was an old laundromat, from when we’d had more than one laundry in town. It had stood empty for so long the bank let her have it for next to nothing. Mrs. Jensen put in some mirrors and a barre and didn’t change anything else. It still had the big plate glass windows, and she didn’t even curtain them. Mrs. Jensen thought it was good advertis­ing to let people see our practices.”

  “I’ll bet you drew some attention.”

  “You should have seen me then,” Laura admitted. “I was in fine shape, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Boys’d come around to make fun, then they’d hang around outside. We’d be inside in our leotards bending to the barre and raising our thighs to our chests. Those boys’ faces were just like newsprint, you could see them thinking about the possibili­ties. Nudging each other. Really crushed my respect for manhood to see how all alike they were.”

  “Did any of them ever make use of the possibilities?”

  Laura stared hostilely at him. “What business is it of yours?”

  “None.”

  That was the only answer that could have placated her. She looked out the windshield again and said lightly, “That’s the sad, pitiful thing. Some of them came after me because— they said— I seemed like something special. I knew what they meant. But the one or two that ever got close, it was just the same old grope and thump, always in or near a pickup truck.”

  Jordan said carefully, “Well, your prospects were a little limited.”

  Lama laughed at him. “Oh, right, you big-city boys had all the technique, right?”

  “Not me. But I heard stories—”

  “We had the same stories, Jordan. Sophistication is overrated.”

  “What about now? Is there someone in your life now?”

  “Yes,” she said, but unconvincingly, he thought.

  “Home,” Jordan said as he took the exit for Green Hills. But they still seemed to be the only people alive in the night as he drove slowly down Main Street, turned past the dark courthouse, and followed Laura’s directions to her street, which he laughed to see was Flowing Springs Boulevard. Jordan turned off the headlights as he swung into the drive­way in front of a pretty white house with a front porch and dark shutters.

  “Tired?” Lama asked.

  Jordan shook his head. “I feel like the road’s still moving.”

  “I guess you deserve a cup of coffee or a drink,” she said.

  Minus the sound of the engine, the night seemed very quiet. He thought he could hear people breathing in the surrounding houses as he carried Laura’s suitcase up the walk. She looked at him speculatively as she opened the door.

  Before she could turn on a light, he took her arm and said, “Could we repeat the—?” and kissed her again.

  Laura seemed suspicious, but after a moment, she put her arms around his neck and gave herself up to the kiss. It was as good as t
he first time, her lips still soft and this time a little more responsive. And he thought he could feel her thoughts.

  “Well,” she said after a minute. “Let’s get out of view of the neighbors. Do you always ask?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m very polite.”

  The living room was small, and the furniture looked as if it had lived there for a long time. Laura dropped her keys on an end table, took the suitcase from him, and disap­peared long enough to let Jordan look around. There were two tall wooden bookcases full of novels and a few serious works of anthropology and history, no popular nonfiction on how to please a man or improve your working relation­ships. There was barely room on the shelf for one picture, of a middle-aged woman not used to smiling, who looked a little like Laura.

  “I keep that there to placate her when she comes over.”

  “She’s still alive?”

  “She’s only sixty, Jordan. Lives a few blocks from here in the same old house. I see her every Sunday and usually three or four other times a week, we can’t help running into each other.” The words were harsh, but Laura said them indulgently, forgiving both herself and her mother for being fond of each other.

  “I sensed you’d prefer a drink to coffee,” she said, hand­ing him a short glass tinkling with ice cubes. The taste of scotch and water erased the feel of her lips from his, and he wanted to restore the feeling. She looked at him over the rim of her own glass as if she knew what he was thinking.

  They resumed their conversation, but when Jordan put down his empty glass some time later, Laura didn’t offer to fill it. She looked at him and said with a flatness he under­stood, “It was nice of you to bring me home.”

  “Thank you for letting me,” he said.

  At the door they kissed again, gently, exploring. He put his hand on her arm and reveled in its roundness and smoothness. Much as they’d told each other about them­selves during the long night, it was as if they hadn’t known each other at all until they touched, and as soon as they did, they recognized each other. When they pulled apart, she stepped back. “I hope you don’t think I’ve led you on,” Laura said, “but I’m not looking for romance.” Her voice sounded as harsh as the first times she’d spoken to him, but Jordan wasn’t sure the anger was directed at him.