Other people

by Sol Stein

  I would have had him consider his youth and his mortality. What I said was, "Mr. Lefkowitz, my practice, as you may know, is very different from Mr. Thomassy's. I've never uttered a word inside a courtroom. I would find it exceedingly difficult to present this case."

  "Mr. Widmer," said Lefkowitz, "I've had a good deal of experience these last two years, in criminal matters I mean, and my percentage of convictions, on cases where I presented the cases not just prepared them, is significant and rewarding."

  I could guess that Francine was not entirely happy with Mr. Lefkowitz, but Thomassy, with a glance, kept her from saying something. They had had a previous agreement on the point, I was certain.

  "I think it would be useful in the opening presentation," said Thomassy, "to cover two more points. Murder is a single act. When it's finished, that's the end of it. The victims of rape, when they are allowed to live, or when they give in so that they can live, then have to spend the rest of their existences with the disgust and terror and memory of it. Rape is a continuing crime because long after it is committed it goes on in the head of the victim."

  "A good point," I said.

  "Excellent," said Lefkowitz. I wonder what he wrote down on that pad of his.

  "My last point," said Thomassy, "has to do with the importance of this particular case. From time to time we've had the experience in this county of a rapist who focuses on youngsters, ten- and twelve- and fourteen-year-olds. When he's caught, the mother refuses to let the child testify. She takes the child to a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist discourages public testimony because it could be traumatic for the child. He doesn't worry too much about the private testimony the child is giving him because that's therapy and he's being paid for it. Well, we're all against child rapists, right, and we're furious when the guilty escape the law because the underage victims aren't allowed to testify. But the truth is that many women who are raped feel exactly as the mothers of the children do, they don't want to go through the public experience, the drawing out of their private lives, the humiliation, the obscenity of the details. They fink out. In this case, the jury is going to hear from an extraordinary victim, the rare, brave young woman with the strength to testify, the moral strength to be unwilling to duck her responsibility to the rest of humanity. Don't make her into Joan of Arc. Just make damn sure that in your opening she comes across as someone deserving of respect. That's the word to write down: respect."

  "I already have," said Lefkowitz.

  "It's your meeting," said Thomassy.

  "I think I've got what I need out of this larger meeting," he said. "I'd like to go over the details of the actual event from my notes with Miss Widmer, if that's all right with you gentlemen."

  I said Thomassy and I would wait for her in the anteroom and take her to lunch afterwards.

  Outside, we went to the men's room, the bridegroom and the father of the bride in adjoining urinals, listening to their respective tinkles. It would have been more comfortable to skip a urinal in between, but also obvious.

  "Well," said Thomassy, "I think she's safe with Lefkowitz."

  I had to laugh.

  "I mean in the office," said Thomassy. "He could blow it in the courtroom."

  I had to agree. "What do you think are our chances?"

  Thomassy didn't answer. I didn't know if he was thinking or preoccupied.

  "Realistically," I said.

  We both took extra time to make sure the last drop went, then zipped up, washed up, and strolled down the corridor together before he replied.

  "Lefkowitz is no match for Brady."

  "Our case is good." Why our case? And how did I know it was good? I sounded like a layman.

  "Ned, good cases are of no value if your advocate isn't shrewder than the other guy, or doesn't know where the power lies. We have one chance."

  "What's that?"

  "Work on Brady so he knows he's playing with me and not with the kid Lefkowitz."

  We walked back the way we had come. "George," I said to him, "when you were in school, did you think of justice as the lady with the scales and all that?"

  "In the streets of Oswego, Ned, things aren't much different from Manhattan. They don't let you get away with cock and bull. Clout counted. Not justice." He looked at me. "Were things different at Groton?"

  "No. Of course not. The parents pretended, of course. And the masters. But not the boys. Did you pay the piper?"

  "Piper?"

  "The leader. The bully. Whatever you called him."

  "I worked around him."

  "A mite harder working around Lefkowitz."

  "Yup."

  "Well, never fear," I said. "I'm no authority on tactics, but it seems to me your suggested presentation was rather brilliant. If only we could hire an actor for the role."

  "Why thank you, Ned." He seemed genuinely pleased. "Glad you steered Francine to me?"

  "Not entirely."

  Back in the anteroom, we sat apart. I thumbed through a U.S. News and World Report. When Francine emerged, Thomassy, who was not reading, went to her first. They said something to each other, I couldn't overhear, and he took both of her hands only for a split second. I thought Are we at last mingling our genes with the barbarians', or have we found a way of protecting ourselves?

  We went to lunch. I was the supernumerary.

  Thirty-eight

  Thomassy

  I put my briefcase against the leg of my chair so it would be sure to fall over when I got up. I didn't want to forget it. I couldn't tell you what I ordered or ate or heard as I watched the talk ping-ponging back and forth from Francine to her father, her father to Francine, meaning, really, I watched how Francine's lips moved when she talked, the way she touched them with the edge of the cloth napkin, the way her hair swayed when she tossed her head. All I'd had was a Campari and soda before lunch and I was sailing, floating, except it wasn't a casual high, easygoing or passive. I was being swept along weightlessly in space under the influence of the most potent hallucinogen in the world, the thrall of being in love.

  Every once in a while Widmer would turn to me and say something. I'd nod or shake my head, possessed, not knowing what I was agreeing to! Francine, intuiting that a mad obsession had taken hold, covered for me, keeping the conversation bobbing amidst the noise of the restaurant. I felt as if she and me, me and she were the only ones mattering, stripped of all other things in life except each other. And the tremendous energy that came with it! Sitting still I felt like leaping up, whirling about, dancing like a Nijinsky even though I've never danced solo in my life. It's the omnipotence, the feeling I can do anything, I am in love.

  At last father and daughter were through. We stood for the ceremony of his leaving. He pecked Francine's cheek, a cheek that I wanted to lick with my tongue like a cat. I shook Widmer's hand, hoping mine, its skin prickling with nerve endings, didn't feel as hot to him as it felt to me. My face felt flushed, too. The nerve endings on my arms and elsewhere cried out to be touched by you know who.

  "Goodbye," he said.

  Tra-la, I wanted to say.

  "I suppose you two have things to talk about," he said.

  I suppose, you suppose, he supposes. We suppose, they suppose.

  He vanished into the crowd after a last little wave at his daughter and glance at me, and the two of us were alone in that crowd. I put my hands on the table and she covered them with her own.

  "It's unbearable," I said.

  "I know," she said.

  Could another person feel energy bouncing around for release, the total, total, total overwhelming joy of it all? Perhaps she felt a bit of it, too?

  "More than a bit," she said. Was she reading my thoughts or was I talking out loud and not knowing it?

  "I've got to get back to the city," she said. "The stuff on my desk is crying out for my attention."

  "I am crying out for your attentions," I said, and I knew she could hear me, because I could hear myself now talking out loud instead of inside my head. />
  "Listen," I said, "this is urgent."

  "What?"

  "This." I moved my hands under her hands. "I'd be dangerous in the courtroom," I said. "To my client. To myself." I moved my face across the table and she moved hers to meet it. From four inches away from her lips, I said, "I've gone insane."

  Francine laughed, got up. "Let's walk it off," she said.

  "Terrific," I said, standing, my briefcase falling over to remind me.

  I walked as if my feet were hydrofoils. Like a guardsman on parade, I swung her hand in my hand all the way forward, then all the way back.

  "We must look nuts," I said.

  "Nuts we look," she said.

  "There it is," I pointed. Holiday Inn.

  "This is crazy," she said.

  I swung my briefcase. "Crazy is as crazy does," I said.

  I signed as in as Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Haig, in honor of our respective fathers. Looking over my shoulder, Francine laughed. The man at the reception desk smiled.

  "I'll show you the way," he said, taking my briefcase.

  Oh the absurdity of the man carrying my lone briefcase ahead of us, switching on the room lights, showing us the bath, the closet (for what?), the TV set, everything except the bed. I thanked him two dollars' worth, ridiculous, and double-locked the door. My arms went around her, clasping her close enough to meld us cheekbone to hip, deliciously hurting. She pushed us asunder, and then woosh, no two people in the history of the universe ever flung their clothes off as fast as we did, and there I stood, my heart pounding, my rod pointing, and she touched it, just barely touched it around the head, then dropped to her knees, taking it into her mouth in a way it had never been taken by anyone before, as if it were hers.

  "No, no," I said, motioning her over to the bed, but she shook her head, fiercely in charge of my organ, which I was now moving to the rhythm of her mouth. Of course dozens of times in the past with others I had felt the mechanics of it. Jane used to hold it apprehensively just below the head as if afraid I'd suddenly lunge too far, but now Francine was alternately licking and kissing and enveloping it in a way that electrified its entire surface, and I moaned — first time in my life I ever did that — moaned with the excruciating pleasure of it, as the throb started, and she somehow cupped her hand around my balls without breaking the rhythm, and her eyes glanced up at me for a second, and then like a great pulse of energy, I started to come and come and come, and finally slipped, exhausted to the floor beside her, our arms around each other, rocking.

  I remember the fantastic look of accomplishment in her eyes. She knew how good she had been for me.

  "What hath the mouth that the vagina hath not?" I whispered in the curlicues of her ear.

  "A tongue," she answered, laughing, and I remember we kissed in a kiss that seemed to last for all time until we broke to breathe again.

  "Turning you on turns me on," she said in my ear.

  "I don't believe."

  "Proof," she said, holding her breasts. Her nipples were obtruding and hard. I licked one with the tip of my tongue. She turned slightly so that I could lick at the other.

  I remember her taking my head in her hands and moving me down to the triangle of her once-blond hair and below, where her lips seemed to part in slow motion to reveal a pinkness where I busied my tongue, and in an instant her hips were moving to a savage rhythm on the carpeted floor. Suddenly she stopped, pulled my head up to her. I didn't know I was erect again, but somehow she knew and took it with her fingers and placed it where my mouth had been, and then we rocked in that same impatient insistent demanding rhythm of hers until she was saying now now now and we were both senselessly kissing and coming and kissing and coming.

  We must have dozed. When we awoke, I felt drained, rag doll limp, euphoric. I kissed the end of her nose. We untangled, stretched, somehow got to our feet. I felt as if I would stumble. We held each other for support.

  We dressed. I know we dressed but I don't remember it. I only remember our looking around the motel room making sure we had everything including my briefcase, and then noticing that at the center of the scene of our lust stood the fully made, unrumpled bed we had not needed.

  We laughed like kids, then closed the door behind us.

  Thirty-nine

  Francine

  At the office I received the funniest sort of phone call from my father. He asked me if I was still seeing George. The way he pronounced "seeing" had a private connotation. With the case still pending, I told him, of course I'd been seeing George. He sounded as if he were pleading a case that had gone askew. Weird!

  I certainly wasn't going to pick up on whatever he was hinting about. In fact, I felt in an unstoppable rush to see George every possible minute. The day after the Holiday Inn episode, George and I met for lunch halfway between his office and my office and would you guess where that halfway turned out to be? The same Holiday Inn, same desk clerk, same expressions, only this time when my clothes were off I skewed my hand around to my back and showed George the Band-Aid right above my butt.

  "No carpet," I said.

  "Hop onto the bed," George said, but one step ahead of him, I plunked myself into the overstuffed chair near the window. Straight ahead was the mirrored bathroom door, and I have to admit I looked pretty good in it. I moved my right arm snakelike as if in a dance, watching my reflection. Then my left.

  "Narcissus," said George. "Will you have a room service lunch before or after?"

  "Instead," I said, as he dropped to his knees in front of the chair. It was odd, watching in the mirror, then oddly exciting, then very nearly unbearable.

  We didn't muss the bed this time either. We did order a couple of sandwiches afterwards because all that appetite gave me an appetite.

  That evening we went to the movies. How do I know what was playing, it was a movie, we weren't watching the movie, we were too busy with each other. That night we slept at George's, the jigsaw pieces of our limbs learning to find the perfect fit with each other. The next morning, I had my driver's license at risk as I zoomed to work, getting there late, and was greeted by X saying, "Can you make lunch?" and me answering, "You mean cook?" and he saying, "In a restaurant, idiot," and me saying, "I took a very long lunch yesterday, I should eat in," and him saying, "I'm the boss, it's okay."

  Over lunch I kept thinking of yesterday's nonlunch lunch with George, and I guess I wasn't paying too much attention because X finally said, "Are you in love?"

  "Yes."

  "Who's the lucky man?"

  "A man."

  "As distinguished from a boy?"

  "Yes."

  X professed mock jealousy — I hope to Christ it was mock jealousy — and then invited me to sub for him on a radio panel because he had a conflicting appointment.

  "I know all about your conflicting appointment," I said. "You don't want to do it."

  "Right."

  "Why?"

  "Fair enough," said X. "Butterball is the other guest. I'd be tempted to let him have it. If I do, it's serious."

  "And if I go on in your place, it's not serious because I'm just a young woman of low station and it doesn't count."

  "Oh it'll count all right. Just sending an underling like you will be received by His Highness as an insult. It's beautiful."

  "Thanks a lot." I wasn't really angry. Butterball, or His Highness as we sometimes called him, was the crown princeling of a new West African country with a population smaller than Harlem's, but who saw his Harvard-educated self as the most glamorous of the spokesmen for the new bureaucracies that had dumped all their white colonial riffraff and were learning to master postage meters and typewriters.

  "The subject," said X, "is the shrinking world."

  "Lovely."

  "You could have a good time at it. It'd be good experience."

  "When?"

  "Next Tuesday evening."

  "Will you listen?"

  "Wouldn't miss it."

  "If I'm terrific do I get a raise?"
/>   "You know the system."

  "I do indeed."

  In the meantime, there was the weekend. Friday night George took me on the longest drive through Brooklyn to some terrific Italian restaurant in Coney Island and it was two in the morning before we got back to his place. When I came out of the shower he was in bed asleep, the son of a bitch, but I crawled in alongside of him, kissed the back of his neck, and the back of his back, and he muttered sounds in his sleep. I slept too, till sometime toward morning when I felt the scepter stiffen. We made languorous middle-of-the-night love till daylight, then slept till noon. Still in our nightdress, we ate a marvelous breakfast of grits and bacon and eggs and English muffins and orange juice and back to bed.

  "Not bad for an old man," I said, flaked out from postcoital exhaustion, absolute, terminal, and slept again. I woke, refreshed, glanced at the clock. Impossible! It was after three in the afternoon! Where had the day gone?

  "Get up," I said to George.

  "After you," he answered.

  "Simultaneously," I compromised, and we pulled each other up, and then, like kids, made a game of dressing each other.

  "This is a very erotic exercise," said George.

  "Oh no," I said. "If you're not worn out, I'm worn out, let's go for a walk," and we did, until the daylight faded. Having missed lunch, we stopped for dinner early at a small Italian place. We finished half the chianti before the spaghetti arrived. We laughed at each other mixing the meat sauce, forks twirling the pasta in dinner spoons, shoveling it into waiting mouths. Halfway through, George made a thing of taking a single strand in his lips and sucking it in.

  "People are looking," I whispered.

  "Voyeurs," said George, "may they enjoy it."

  "Crazy," I said.

  "Crazy," he echoed.

  Suddenly George said, "Let's go!" He motioned for the waiter, who came scurrying over.