A Flash of Blue Sky

by Alon Preiss

  She called Susan, who was awake. “What are you doing?”

  Susan paused.

  “Nothing,” Susan said finally.

  “Why do you think Henry just stopped calling?” Rachel asked. They had not broken up; he had simply stopped calling.

  Susan said she didn’t know. What did Rachel think? Rachel said she’d assumed it was some sort of power game. Henry wanted to prove that Rachel needed him, that even if he stopped lavishing attention on her, she would remain devoted to him. She’d called his bluff and waited for him to make the next move. After the game had gone on for a month, breaking the stalemate had seemed out of the question. If his pride were more important than their relationship, so be it. “But still, I sort of wonder why,” she said. “I wonder exactly why he just stopped calling.”

  “Maybe he’s dead,” Susan said, and they both laughed.

  “Not likely,” Rachel said, still laughing. “Men with such beautiful round tibial muscles don’t usually die young, at least not in the real world. Still, if he were dead, it would explain everything. That would make me sad, but it would also make me feel better about myself.”

  “You could call him now,” Susan said. “You could just ask him. Just to clear your mind.”

  Rachel laughed again.

  “Just imagine that,” she said. “Oh Henry, Henry. Thank goodness you’re all right! When you didn’t call, I thought you must be dead!”

  Henry had probably met someone else, she figured. Or he’d been working too hard, hadn’t had the time to keep in touch, and now it wasn’t worth it to him. If she called, he would sound unhappily surprised to hear from her but would insist that he was delighted, although he would add that he couldn’t talk long since he had company and that he would call her tomorrow, and then he wouldn’t. It would be one of those awkward situations that would make her blush with humiliation for years. No, Rachel concluded. There would be no point at all in calling Henry. She could take a hint.

  At three o’clock Wednesday afternoon, several hours before Susan’s confrontation with Joe, Daniel sat in a conference room during a break in the latest deposition for the latest tort suit to hit Edward Bear. Daniel, who’d been awake for fifty-two hours straight, nodded off to sleep, felt Susan touch his shoulder, woke up instantly as he spun around to embrace her. Then he smiled at plaintiff’s counsel. Fell asleep for a moment, he explained. Had a dream. Then, to himself, he wondered what Susan were doing now, this very moment. What she would think if she could see him defending a toxic polluter against an old woman dying of a terrible disease for which the toxic polluter was morally, if not legally, responsible?

  The plaintiff was a sixty-year-old widow named Edna Birrell who was dying of cancer.

  When the break ended, Daniel nodded sympathetically at the sad description of her travails – the death of her husband, the loss of her job, the way the economy in the small town had kept her children, then her grandchildren, uneducated and without prospects – but Daniel never quite forgot that Edna was the enemy. Her attorney was a small-time personal injury lawyer named Art, with a big bald head and a pot-belly that seemed to stretch from his neck to his incongruously skinny knees. He objected to fifty percent of the questions Daniel asked, grandstanding as though he were in court. “Objection!” he exclaimed at one point. “Do you guys think you own the world? My client is dying!” Edna began to cry; her attorney shot an angry glance in Daniel’s direction and shouted, “Now look what you’ve done!”

  “Come on,” Daniel said. “There’s no jury here. Who do you think you’re impressing?” Art reddened, still feigning anger and hatred, anger and hatred so well-feigned that it might have become genuine.

  “Let’s take a little break,” Daniel said gently.

  At the water cooler, Edna’s attorney, now all smiles, approached Daniel. No matter what happened during a deposition, the opposing counsel would always remain essentially colleagues, and civility was important. Daniel smiled back. They talked about the weather, or the latest college football game, or something like that. Art filled up a little white paper cup with water and took a few careful sips. “Any thoughts on settlement?” he asked casually.

  Daniel pretended to consider the remark, then came to his rather simple conclusion: nothing he heard at the deposition had upset him. Edna had cancer, and he was sorry about her troubles. But Art still needed to prove causation, and he was not even close.

  “I’m not worried about that,” Art said. “The EPA’s doing that work for me. They’ll have mountains of reports, assessments, and so on, describing your culpability. You’re going to lose your challenge to the EPA, and I expect to be able to use that in court. You’ll be estopped from claiming innocence.”

  Daniel shook his head. “We’re going to win our challenge to the EPA – ”

  “Ha!” Art snorted. “Come on, Daniel. No one challenges the EPA and wins.”

  “Even then, Art, all the EPA would show is that Edward Bear polluted. It doesn’t need to show that the pollution caused specific harm to specific individuals. Even if we illegally disposed of carcinogenic waste – which we didn’t do – that doesn’t prove that we caused Edna’s cancer.”

  “I’ve got the most sympathetic plaintiff in the world. A jury will look at her and promise the moon.”

  “I doubt it,” Daniel said. “I’m about seventy percent sure that I’ll get summary judgment on this. But even if Edna wins, the court will reverse the jury’s verdict. No judge would put up with this sort of bullshit. No offense, but really, man, this case is bullshit.”

  Art blinked, and he looked away from Daniel. “Then how about your court costs?” he said, staring at his little paper cup, now half-filled with water. “Just figure out how much Edward Bear would spend litigating this thing, subtract a little bit, and make an offer. How does that sound? Make this go away tomorrow.”

  Daniel laughed, then he regretted it. He’d never seen confidence dissipate so quickly. When had Art last won a case? Judging from his generally downtrodden appearance, it had been quite some time. “There’s a perverse incentive issue there, you know,” Daniel said. “If we settle every loser of a case to avoid court costs, the floodgates will open. We’ll get more lawsuits and spend more money. I think I can safely tell you that this is a no-go. But I'll pass it along to my client.” He tried to smile, and he slapped the attorney on the back in a comradely fashion. They walked together into the conference room, where Edna sat, tears glistening in her eyes. Edna, the dying woman with a big lawsuit against his client; on seeing her, a thought popped unheralded into Daniel’s head: Bitch, he thought. Stop crying, you bitch.

  Daniel returned home early from work. What was the occasion? Daniel forgot for a moment, then he remembered. It was their wedding anniversary. A necklace in a little case bulged comfortably inside of Daniel’s jacket. Was his marriage now a success? Daniel swore that it was.

  Natalie was at the apartment waiting when he got back. She’d been at her studio all day, painting. He felt jealous, though he insisted, even to himself, that he was proud, very proud. She swore she was glad he was proud. But what was there to be proud of?; his absence had made her an artist. Every time she picked up a paintbrush, she and Daniel could not help but be reminded of her nights in Alec’s arms.

  Undoing his tie in front of the closet mirror. “How was the deposition?” she said. His answer was filled with frustration.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “For all these years, everyone in town seemed healthy as could be. Then the Environmental Protection Agency announces that toxic chemicals have been piling up at the local landfill, and the town’s residents are all over Ed like ants at a picnic. Didn’t they ever bother to smell their drinking water before?” He squinted at himself in the mirror. “Ants at a picnic, Natalie. That’s a metaphor, or a simile, or something. A lawyer trying to be creative. What did you think?” He squinted more closely, his face very near the mirror.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She st
ood next to him in the full-length mirror.

  “I can’t exactly figure it out,” he said. “Who do I look like today?”

  She smiled. “Pictures of your father.”

  He didn’t think that was correct. He didn’t think he looked anything like his father, and he immediately resented Natalie’s jovial tone.

  “My father,” he said stiffly. “Before he and my mother were tragically killed in a massive train wreck. Is that what you mean? My father, during the very final moments of his short life.” He turned to her. “Don’t smile at that.”

  “For goodness sake, Daniel,” she said. “Be happy when you remember them.”

  He nodded, and looked away. Right, he agreed. Right, of course. He would be more happy.

  Uptown, at a quiet, candle-lit restaurant.

  “I’m thinking of that guy who threw a hammer at that partner a few months ago,” Daniel said. “He got fired right away, right out the door, and hardly anyone’s mentioned him since. I think I know what made him do it, but I can’t put it into words.”

  Daniel stared across the dinner table at his beautiful wife. She really was beautiful and poised, at this moment, in this light, wasn’t she? She stared back.

  “Do you remember,” Daniel said suddenly, “when I told you all that mumbo jumbo about how it’s really important that the Environmental Protection Agency be held to a strict standard of accuracy, that they can’t go around slapping fines on companies whenever they feel like it, that the world will be a safer and cleaner place if industry resists, that business will thrive, that ... oh, I forget. It was a well-thought-out position. Try to remember.”

  “I think I remember all that,” Natalie said. “You were rationalizing, right?”

  “Yeah,” Daniel said. “Of course. I was rationalizing this big case I’m on, tying up cleanup efforts in Jersey and California. I had this good reason for what I was doing.”

  “I remember that. This long, roundabout excuse for these delay tactics.” She said this without any apparent disapproval. Throughout her life and career, Natalie would inevitably find herself compromising, again and again. If this were a movie, Natalie would be a community activist, an idealistic crusader for Earth’s ecological future. She would turn up outside Johnson & Tierney’s offices with a crowd of angry protestors; over this very candle-lit dinner, she would ask Daniel how he could bear to look at himself in the mirror.

  But this was not a movie, and everyone Daniel knew was amoral, deep down. Given the choice and the right price, would anyone turn down work for a company that happened to have contributed its share to the vast sewer that America was inevitably becoming? Would Natalie refuse to sell a painting to decorate the lobby of such a company? Daniel didn’t even need to ask the question.

  Daniel looked down at his dinner, a small, lightly seasoned portion of duck, surrounded on a beautiful china plate by an artistically arrayed selection of vegetables. It was almost too lovely to touch.

  This was his predicament, Daniel explained, his real predicament. He had regretfully come to the conclusion that he just didn’t care who would clean it up, or whether it would really ever get cleaned up. Or whether business in America would collapse, or if everyone would go back to living in tiny communities without telephones, or in caves, or whatever. Maybe that had been a better time, after all. Live in a tiny community – a cave, even! – die with the people you’d known your whole life, and tell blissfully ignorant stories about a heaven that lay over those distant mountains, or up in the sky, beyond the stars.

  “Can’t go back to caves,” Natalie said. “Need my television.”

  He didn’t care, he repeated, if the entire world imploded. He did not even care about all the cancer from the drinking water in New Jersey.

  Natalie said that she didn’t care about New Jersey either. “Work hard,” his wife said, “save a ton of money, and we’ll buy a mansion in Connecticut.”

  Daniel heard the teasing tone in her voice.

  “New Jersey can sink into the ocean and kill all the fish,” Natalie said. “I won’t mind. Trust me.”

  “I should work hard,” Daniel said. “Buy a place in Connecticut. Away from all the toxic waste.”

  His wife shook her head, and lightly touched his hand.

  “Daniel, I was just kidding,” she said. “I don’t care about all that money.” She laughed, then added, almost under her breath, “I want you to quit.”

  He nodded, and stared down at his plate.

  “I’ve never told you,” she said gently, “but you know that, right?”

  Yes, he said. He knew that.

  “You don’t want to be with a lawyer anymore.”

  “No. I never wanted to be with a lawyer. There is no anymore about it.”

  “Alec wasn’t a lawyer. Do you miss Alec?”

  She stared back at him. After a lengthy pause: “No.” Solemnly.

  Why? She had once claimed to love him.

  “I thought I loved him,” she said, “but I realized that it was only because he seemed just like you. That was silly, because there’s no one in the world who’s just like you.”

  Anymore, she might have added.

  She asked him if he missed Susan, and he said a little. He wondered to himself where she was right now, with whom she was sharing her nights. He felt a sudden yearning, a desire to leave this restaurant, to hail a cab and speed to the Upper West Side. But he told his wife that Susan was probably with some other guy now, and probably happier, so that made him feel OK. She was not really the right girl for him, he added.

  “Of course not,” Natalie said, smiling. “I’m the right girl for you. There can’t be two true loves, can there?”

  Daniel said that she was right, although he knew he didn’t believe it, the wisdom of The Symposium notwithstanding. Still, he grabbed the lie in his teeth, and he tried not to choke when he said it. One man, he replied, could absolutely not have two absolutely perfect true loves.

  He added that the person he really missed the most now was the little girl who’d frozen to death one recent night on Third Avenue. Whom might she have become? he asked his wife. Now they would never know.

  “Listen, darling,” Natalie said. “You thought it was so terrible when you met that man who lost his toes because of Edward Bear. But what have you lost, Daniel? Edward Bear’s taken more than your toes, hasn’t it? I mean, I’m very proud of you, of all your hard work,” she went on, “but if you quit, then everyone will be happy. I’ll give you your own wall at my studio.” He could paint pictures, she added, of cities being rebuilt from rubble.

  In bed they made love because it was their anniversary, and couples make love on their anniversary, they just do. They lay side-by-side, then remembered to hug. And slept, either exhausted or peaceful.

  She woke up and looked over at him, and she could see in the moonlight that filtered into the room through the smog and the Venetian blinds that his brown eyes were wide open. Since their reconciliation, she’d been determined to make it work, no matter what. She would see him a few minutes at the end of each evening, and slowly, gradually each night, like a plant wilting in the sunlight, they would grow backwards in time, until they were once again the people they’d been when they first met, back when she was 21 and he wasn’t yet ... the man he’d since become ... and they both would recapture the feeling that had once made them want to go through with all of this. It didn’t even matter what went on in her mind, not really, or what went on when they weren’t together. What mattered most of all, somehow, was the marriage, although she wasn’t really sure anymore what that meant. The marriage should endure, and everything would be fine.

  The night after her confrontation with Joe, Susan sat at a table in a little bar, staring through the smoke at a sax player on the opposite end of the room. He swung his body slowly back and forth with each waning note. Sweat shone on his brow. She wondered what he was thinking. Probably something inane, something that, if more readily apparent, would have spoiled the
poetry of the moment.

  They were surrounded by other friends: women from Rachel’s PhD program, mostly, one woman’s lesbian lover, a couple of Rachel’s friends from college, and one movie star, a young woman who had starred in a hit film some years earlier and whose career was now in a certain amount of trouble. No one seemed to know what the film star was doing there, sitting at the table with all of them, but Susan thought she was probably a friend of one of Rachel’s friends, who just hadn’t really been introduced properly. By the bar, a psychology student stood around for an hour or so with a drink in her hand discussing bi-polar personalities. The film actress looked uncomfortable. There were twelve of them sitting around in the bar, but Susan was talking only to Rachel, and wished that the others would disappear. She couldn’t hear what they were all saying. The film star was beautiful, one lesbian was loud and mannish, the other passive and shy – just as one might have imagined! – and Rachel’s friends from college were giggling together at the other end of the table. Susan couldn’t hear what any of them were saying, and she wasn’t even trying. She was becoming drunk.

  “You look so unhappy,” Rachel said.

  “I’m not,” Susan insisted. “I’m just listening.”

  “He was an asshole,” she said. “I never told you that, but I always thought so, from the first moment I met him.”

  “Then it wasn’t very objective,” she replied. “It’s a well-known law of psychology, which I shouldn’t have to lecture you about. He reminded you of someone else. Some asshole from your past, and you didn’t give him a chance.”

  Rachel responded that Daniel had turned out to be an asshole, so perhaps some sort of psychic phenomenon had cued her in.

  Susan told her to screw off. The band took a break, and sat down a few tables away.

  Rachel pointed to the sax player. He was smiling now, drinking a beer. Rachel thought he was beautiful.

  “All available men are crap,” she said. “That is why they are available. Who wants to be with a man no other woman will take? If that’s what I wanted,” she added, “there’s no shortage of sad sacks. I could be a visit from Heaven for any one of them, a blessed memory any poor schnook would never forget, if finding a man with no woman was what I wanted.”