A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "Did he give her the money that she wanted?" Hilliard said.

  "I don't know," Evans said. "He took it under advisement. That's another thing James likes to do: keep everybody in suspense a while.

  Never decide a motion the same day it's heard. Always says he'll render his decision in writing in a week. That means: when he gets around to it. James's week's longer than yours and mine are; his runs about ten or twelve days. I think it's so the party he decides against wont be in the courtroom to holler at him when he finds out he got screwed.

  "Point is, your wife's charged you with adultery. From the instant James Hadavas laid his eyes on the libel, which would've been about a minute after it was filed, he's been very uneasy. People will be watching this case, following it very closely. There'll be interest in how it comes out. There would've been some no matter what the grounds were, just because of who you are. But "adultery" gets everybody's interest. Judge Hadavas doesn't like being watched. So we know he's already anxious. The only reason he's got to be pleased at all with Geoff is that apparently he was able to persuade your wife at least not to name a co-respondent. If she had, Judge Hadavas'd then have a genuine circus on his hands. A circus he does not want.

  "So, once you've admitted that you were unfaithful, I think he'll say that that's enough. There's no reason to identify your partner or partners, as the case may be, and declare Hadavas Day in the media. If Geoff tries to make you do that, which I doubt he will, I'm going to advise you not to answer and then if Geoff still insists, he'll have to go before Hadavas and see if he can get an order compelling you to answer. I doubt he'll want to do that, but if he does he'll just compound what I'm sure is already Hadavas's private disapproval of his choice of grounds. I don't think he'll get his order.

  "Now this's important, Dan," Evans said, 'and not just because I assume you feel the same way as I do about publicly naming everyone who for whatever reason agreed to go to bed with you."

  "Well," Hilliard said, "I like to think my natural charm and boyish good looks were at least part of the reason."

  "Yes," Evans said, 'no doubt. All of us have our illusions. But still, if we can present you to Judge Hadavas as an honest penitent who regrets his sins and wicked deeds and the sorrow that he's caused his wife, instead of allowing Geoff to portray you as the unrepentant Casanova and lascivious rascal that we both know you really are…"

  "Hey, take it easy," Hilliard said, "I've got a sense of humor, Sam, but I've never been that bad. All I ever did was take advantage of some situations I got into when my wife wasn't with me; that's all. It wasn't like I was ever on some kind of a campaign or something, see how many women I could go to bed with if I tried."

  "I'm not joking," Evans said. "I'm trying to get you to see how Judge Hadavas will look at you, if we give Geoff half a chance to paint that kind of portrait. Because if Casanova is the portrait Judge Hadavas sees of you, it will cost you dearly, my friend. And by the way here, another thing I should ask you: Your wife's health and well-being were also involved here, along with her pride and dignity. When you were running around on her, did you always use a condom?"

  "Yeah, that much I did do," Hilliard said. "It wasn't like I thought I was the first one that any of my ladies ever took a liking to. I didn't know what they might've gotten from someone they'd been with before. They probably didn't know either, as far as that goes, that AIDS stuff takes as long to develop as they're now saying it does."

  "Every time?" Evans said. "Invariably?"

  "What?" Hilliard said. "Yeah, I just told you that. For sure I didn't wanna bring anything home, give Mercy VD. I always used condoms, religiously. Even though I must say, I still don't like 'em."

  "Yes," Evans said. "That's what prompts my next question. That matter of your religion. Did you actually have a condom available the very first time you found yourself in one of those sexual situations you mentioned? Good Catholic guy like you are? That would have been keen foresight on your part admirable or deplorable depending on your point of view. Either that or else finding yourself in that set of tempting circumstances wasn't entirely accidental. Mind telling me which one it was? Not to mention the practical aspect of where you could have kept your condom supply? Certainly not in your wallet, or at your apartment."

  Hilliard sighed. "Look," he said, 'the first time I stepped off the reservation, it was with this woman who's in television news. She was young, still in her twenties, but she'd been around. And I had my eyes open too; the reason she came on to me was only partly because she had hot pants for me it was also partly, maybe even mostly, because she thought if she put out for me I'd tell her things the other reps who knew about them wouldn't tell to the other reporters. We fell in lust.

  It wasn't ever love. It was sex, for both of us, along with ambition, on her part, and it was extremely good sex. And thrills, very good thrills, not cheap ones: this was a fine-looking woman who really liked being in bed with a man and would've found a man to do it with even if it wouldn't help her career. I had a good time with Stacy. I was with her for over three years."

  "So?" Evans said. "Why're you telling me this?"

  "Well," Hilliard said, 'because it seems to me that you've let yourself get a little behind the times about the dating game these days. I didn't have to go against my religion buying condoms before I went against it to have sex with Stacy the first time. Stacy had the condoms. Like I said, she was experienced. She got laid a lot, and she was prepared. She had a supply at her place."

  "And I take it that you don't claim," Evans said, 'that your liaison with this woman, or any of the other women, however many there may have been…"

  "So far, only eighteen," Hilliard said.

  '"Only eighteen," Evans said. "You're quite sure of that."

  "Oh yeah," Hilhard said. "I know most of us always say that there haven't been very many, or "one or two," something like that, so that we don't look like we're bragging. But we all know exactly how many and the women keep track, same as we do. If you count Mercy, I've fucked nineteen women."

  "Really," Evans said drily.

  "I realize that's not much of a total," Hilhard said. "I plan to add to it as soon as possible. Put my best efforts forward, you know? I've always had this tendency to fall in love, where I only have one woman at a time besides my wife, I mean. I know it's held me back. There've been times when I've actually walked away from a chance to go to bed with a woman I was strongly attracted to, because I didn't think it would be fair to my girlfriend if I did. Not because most people'd look at it as being that I would've been cheating on Mercy with both of them, then; because the way I looked at it I'd've been cheating on the woman I was cheating with on Mercy. I've been doing my best to overcome that."

  "I can see where it's been complicated for you," Evans said, laughing.

  "Keeping nineteen women straight. Must be quite a challenge."

  "Well, but not all at once," Hilhard said. "And Mercy was sort of a constant, you know. It was her plus somebody else. So it was eighteen besides her, but usually only one of them at a time." He paused. "I'd have to say also, she was as good as most of them were, better'n several I had."

  "That was what I was getting at," Evans said, 'as delicately as possible; not very. You didn't start compiling a fairly impressive life-list of sexual partners because of deprivation at home, I take it?"

  "Nope," Hilhard said. "Mercy was always willing, God love her. She was a virgin when we got engaged that was a big reason why we got engaged; it was the only way I could get her pants off. But after that she was as ready as I was. Sometimes in fact, she was readier. More'n once I drove home early Friday after having nooners with Stacy, wasn't feeling all that eager, but an hour or so later, there I am, having to get it up again to give Mercy a dash in the bloomers 'fore the kids came home from school."

  He chuckled. "I was younger then. Good thing for me, I guess kind of tough to explain to your wife she'll have to wait 'til bedtime 'cause you're not up to it; just finished banging your
girlfriend in Boston."

  Evans furrowed his brow. "And I can take it all of these eighteen women were unmarried?"

  "Four of them had husbands," Hilhard said. "One of them was separated, in the process of getting divorced, so I'm not sure she really counted as married. But the other three married ones were cheating, same as I was."

  "Oh, wonderful," Evans said. "That means one of the imponderables we'll have to think about here is the possibility that one of their spouses will decide to divorce them, and name you."

  Hilhard shrugged. "I realize it wasn't smart," he said. "But at the time I was not engaged in being smart. I was letting my dick do the thinking. Here I've got this good-looking woman practically throwing herself at me, and I know she's married, and she knows I'm married, and this obviously makes no difference to her, so then why should it to me?

  "Well, it shouldn't," says my cock, and therefore it doesn't, and the next thing I know, we're in bed. I don't know whether you've ever had that happen to you."

  "Can't say as I have," Evans said. "Probably wouldn't let it anyway, even if I had the chance."

  "Well, I have," Hilhard said, 'and I am here to tell you: you missed something. It's exhilarating when that happens to you. When you've just been introduced to someone that you didn't even know an hour ago, and she looks like a movie star, and you can tell right off that she's so hot to trot you could probably fuck her right there on the rug, in front of all the people, if you wanted to. All you have to do is say the word and take her by the elbow, and she'll go anywhere you want, up on the roof, if that's what you want, and help you get her clothes off and then give you the ride of your life.

  "When that happens you don't think about how smart or stupid or risky it is, or how you've got a wife and kids at home, or anything else in the world; all you think about is that all you have to do is ask and you can have her. It'd be a crime not to do it. So the decision's easy: you do it.

  "At least that's the way I saw it. I was never that good an athlete. I wasn't an A student either. I had no talent for music. I wasn't especially funny. My father wasn't a major-league ballplayer. My mother was a housewife. Girls never paid much attention to me. I was who they went to the prom with when they'd begun to think no one was going to ask them. They were not on the cheerleading squad. I wasn't especially attracted to them. They weren't attracted to me. We were both involved in fulfilling a ritual. It was sort of like valet-parking. We both had to Go to The Dance or Be Weird; that was all. We didn't have very much fun.

  "I was astonished when Mercy came on to me, very first time that I saw her. Absolutely knocked off of my feet. Here was this really cute girl who liked me, was all over me; didn't let me feel her up, made me.

  And could not keep her hands off of me. It was truly extraordinary.

  The first night I met her we both came in our pants, rubbing up against each other. I knew then we were going to get married. We had to we had no choice."

  "Mutual hormone storm," Evans said.

  "Uh uh," Hilliard said. "I'd had those before and I've had them since.

  It was a lot more'n that. This was beyond horny, this was mating."

  "Well then," Evans said, 'if that was the way that you felt about her, how could you do what you did? Did the feeling you had for her change?"

  "No, it didn't," Hilliard said. "I still feel about her the same way today that I did back when we got engaged, and finally we could do what a man and woman're supposed to do when they're by themselves with their clothes off. When it was finally okay. Well, not okay, really, but close enough; the Church didn't allow it, but she did. If she called me up tonight and asked me to come over and put it to her, no promises to drop this case, nothing, I would do it. I'd be over there like a shot. She wont, of course, because "What would Diane say," and of course I'm now kind of pissed-off at her so I'd probably try to make her beg for it. But if she did call and ask me, I know I would do it.

  I always liked screwing my own wife. In fact thinking about it, I will go further: she may be the best lay I've ever had."

  "Then why all the others?" Evans said. "The other eighteen: I don't see the logic to it."

  "That's because there isn't any logic to it," Hilliard said. "Or else it's because it's the same. I didn't go into politics because I wanted to be a politician any more than I went to law school because I wanted to be a lawyer. All I knew when I ran for alderman the first time and lost and then the second time and won was that even though I was a pretty good high-school teacher and I kind of liked it, and saw that if I stayed with it I'd do all right, it was not going to be enough, ever.

  There'd never be enough excitement for me. Never enough thrills and chills. I certainly didn't want the life my father had; fingers in other peoples' mouths all the time, smelling their terrible breath, looking over what's still left of what they had for dinner the past couple weeks. That's why I'd gone into teaching. I guess you could say I was restless. The only thing I could see being still left open to me was politics, running for office.

  "It turned out to be the right answer. I really liked politics. I liked running for office a lot. I didn't like getting my brains beaten out, but I liked what I'd seen the first time out well enough to risk having it happen again. And then I got help, from the Carneses and Amby, and the second time I didn't get beat."

  "It wasn't because you had some idea that if you put yourself into that milieu you might be able to pattern your life on what you saw the Kennedys doing," Evans said.

  Hilliard snorted. "Back then almost nobody knew how much ass those guys were getting. No, I didn't run for office because I thought if I won, I'd get laid a lot. I ran for office because I Wl thought I could be better as a politician, make better use of my intelligence and my skills doing that than I'd ever be able to if I stayed a teacher. I looked at the people I saw ten or twenty years older than I was who were running for office and having a high old time for themselves, showing off and making lots of noise and so forth, and then I looked at the future that I'd probably have if I kept on doing the same thing that I'd been doing. By the time I was forty-five or so I'd have a pretty good chance of being a superintendent, or else fairly high up either in the Mass. Teachers' Association or the NEA. Not a bad life at all.

  "But if I was going to do what amounted to getting out of teaching in order to boss teachers, or get them to elect me to help run their union for them, then why not make a run in honest politics? See if I was any good at that, and then if it turned out I was, then get out of teaching and go at that full-bore. So that was what I did.

  "I didn't find out about the pussy until later."

  To preserve what meagre strength Evans saw in Hilliard's case, he had 'strongly recommended' that his client suspend his efforts to add to the number of women he'd bedded and 'avoid being seen in public unofficially with any attractive woman, pendente lite." "Meaning," as Hilliard ruefully translated it to Merrion, 'that I'm not to get laid, except very discreetly, until the divorce case is over. This's all Diane Fox's fault, I have to go through this at my age, beating my meat by myself. Once I get this divorce shit out of the way I may have a law passed against her. Have her declared a toxic-waste dump and appropriate funds to dispose of her.

  "It's surprising how hard it is to do that, get laid without anyone seeing. I never would've guessed. I'm not really sure I can do it.

  You say to a grown-up woman, would she like to have some dinner, maybe relax, have a few drinks, listen to some music. She's in the mood, agreeable, she's liable to say Yes, and come along with you, good time to be had by all. Of course anyone who sees you and knows you, knows that you're not married to each other, so they also now know what it is you're leading up to. The two of you're planning to get laid. So for me, for now, that's out. I've always been discreet, which's why Mercy hasn't really got any concrete evidence she can use to bean me, but now I've got to be discreetly discreet.

  "I don't know how to do that. What do I do, I see a lady I might like to jump? Slip her a note
that says that I'm in room two-ten, and would she like to join me there and have some food sent up, maybe have a glass of wine and watch the ballgame on TV? Oh, very smooth. She's not gonna go for that. She's gonna laugh in my face. The best you can hope for, you pull that stunt, you don't get a kick in the balls.

  "Sam says the way to look at it is that I'm being punished. The punishment for getting laid with too many women is not getting laid with any women at all for a while. He's got that part right. This getting' separated and divorced is no day at the beach. Makes it lots harder to get laid'n it is when you're still all safely married, got the wife at home and all, like all the other guys I know are who're always getting' laid all around me, left and right. I don't recommend it at all."

  Merrion suspected that Hilliard had eased his loneliness by making it his business to become somewhat better acquainted with Mary Pat Sweeney, but never made any effort to find out if he was right. He did make it a point to hang around for what Hilliard had come to call the apres-golf dinners at Grey Hills on Sunday evenings; as far as Merrion could tell, they were about the only interludes of peace and relaxation 'fun," Danny called it that his best friend had all week.

  But Merrion would not have chosen that word. Hilliard gave the meals an air of almost frantic desperation, trying to wring more happiness out of the hours than Merrion believed they actually contained, extending the evening with booze and then talking too loudly, too much.

  "Those new buildings going up in Canterbury there? I'm the guy that built those, got the money for them. Almost seven million dollars. And what thanks I get for that? "That was two, three years ago. Whatchou doin' now?" I tell you, you get no thanks in this business."

  The chief of police in Canterbury in those days was Salvatore Paradisio, the formidable uncle of self-effacing Samuel Paradisio, the federal probation officer who had come to mistrust Lowell Chappelle's intentions toward Janet LeClerc. For Salvatore Paradisio life was a serious business, always to be soberly conducted.