"Can't you save it for another day?" he suggested. And then he thought of a way: "I wanted to talk to you about, you know, Earl's job."
He could hear her sigh on the other end and knew it had worked. "All right. How about outside in the plaza, then? At noon. But half an hour is all I can spare."
After what had happened, he should have known she'd pick the least intimate place she could think of. But he'd take it. He could always grab a hot dog from a vendor.
"Okay, noon in the plaza." A half hour would do. A half hour was all he needed to get everything back to normal.
At eleven forty, his phone rang and he just knew it was her calling to cancel.
"Jack Hilliard." His voice rose at the end, as if it was a question, and the question was, Okay, what's the excuse?
"Jack? Gregory Dunne here."
"Hi, Gregory." He instinctively stood up from his chair and tried to recover quickly. Had he given Dunne his direct dial? Maybe Beverly had just put it through. "How are you?"
"Good. Good. I enjoyed our lunch on Monday. All of us did."
"Yes, I did also. Thank you, again." He looked at his watch. Unless he got off quickly, he'd never make it by noon.
"I spoke to Earl this morning. He says you're still undecided."
Jack bit his lip to suppress his amusement. And surprise. He wouldn't have expected that from Earl, given his cold treatment all week. "He said that, huh?"
"He did. He thought we should get together again, talk a little about the process, you know, about what's involved between now and November. He's a little concerned that your uncertainty might stem from a lack of knowledge."
"Really?" Jack tried to decide how to respond. A lack of knowledge of what? How easily the voters would buy a lie? "Well, being more informed might alleviate some of my concerns." Some, not all, Dunne.
"I know November seems a long way off, but you'd be surprised how quickly it sneaks up. We have to name our candidate fairly soon. We'd need to start getting the money lined up by the end of May at the latest. Don't want to be slow out of the starting gate."
Jack dropped to his chair. Until this moment he'd felt like a kid play-acting, pretending that he could be District Attorney. It had all seemed so hypothetical, until now. Until Dunne mentioned money. Money made it real. Money meant someone deciding that he was worth the risk.
"No, I guess not," he said quietly.
"Are you available early next week? Earl said to fit it around your schedule."
Jack stared at the open calendar on the desk, but nothing registered. He'd spent the last eight years at Earl's beck and call, and Earl had said to fit it around Jack's schedule? Was it really only one week ago that Earl announced his resignation? He glanced at his diplomas on the wall, and then rotated his chair to look at a picture of him and Claire resting on the credenza behind him, next to the one of Claire that Earl had picked up last week. It had been taken on the day of their law school graduation. They had their black robes on, and their caps, both adorned with the extra gold tassel that recognized their positions in the top tier of the class. They had their arms around each other's shoulders, and they smiled broadly. God, they had been so young. He remembered thinking, How could they let twenty-five-year-olds be lawyers? He still felt too young, like an imposter. Would they really let a thirty-five-year-old run this office?
"Jack?"
"Yes?"
"Is something wrong?"
He swiveled his chair back around to his desk and sat up erect. "No, no. Actually, everything's great. I'm looking forward to meeting with you again. How's Tuesday?"
By the time they finished their polite chitchat—Dunne was especially talkative—it was almost five minutes after noon. He managed to get down the elevator, out of the courthouse and east seven blocks to the plaza by quarter after. It took another few minutes to find Jenny. She wore navy, not mint green, making it more difficult for him to locate her in the lunch crowd. She sat on the top step at the far end of the plaza, closer to her office than his. She held a half-eaten sandwich in her right hand and a bottle of water in her left. A paper lunch bag rested on the step next to her. She really had brought her own lunch.
She didn't look up when he approached. "You've got ten minutes, Jack."
Before he could apologize, she added, "You could have at least called."
"I couldn't call you; I was on the phone. I got a call as I was leaving from a guy I couldn't blow off."
She bit into her sandwich, took her time chewing and swallowing. "Couldn't you call him back? In fact, why'd you even pick up the phone if you were on your way out?"
He sat next to her and lowered his voice. "Frankly, I thought it was you, calling to cancel."
She crumpled the plastic sandwich bag and shoved it into the paper bag. She pulled out a banana. He took her silence to mean that maybe she had considered canceling.
"Well, who was so important?" she asked finally.
He looked at her, her eyes on the banana as she peeled it. They still hadn't made eye contact since he'd arrived. It occurred to him that her anger was merely a cover for her nervousness. He softened.
"Gregory Dunne." She shrugged and waited for more. "From the Democratic Party."
She whipped her head up, finally looking him in the eye. "You're serious?" He nodded. "What'd he want?"
"I had lunch with him Monday, him and some other guys."
"You're shittin' me."
"No."
"God, Jack, you've been holding out on me."
He watched an ant crawl on the ground between his feet. "Well, I haven't heard from you."
She grunted. "So pick up the damn phone! What, am I supposed to call you and ask if you've had lunch with the Democrats yet?"
She was right. He had been silly, he realized now. If he'd had something to tell her, he should have just picked up the phone and called her.
"So what happened? How come you had lunch with them? What did they say? Did you tell them about the death penalty thing? Are you going to run? What—"
He held his hand up. "Whoa! Slow down. I can only answer so much in my allotted . . ." He paused, looked at his watch dramatically. "What do I have left? Seven minutes?"
She nudged his leg playfully. "Screw you, Hilliard."
He cast a sideways grin at her. The Jenny he knew was back.
He spent the next twenty minutes telling her everything that had happened in the last week, including the phone call from Dunne moments before.
"Jesus" was all she said when he finished. They both gazed out into the center of the plaza, where a street musician with a guitar butchered Beatles tunes in the hope of a few coins in his guitar case. "Jesus," she said again. "It's yours, Jack." Her voice was low, reverential. "I mean, all you have to do is say the word, and it's yours."
She looked right at him. He studied her face and thought about how, if things were different, it'd be so easy to lean over and kiss her. He mentally chided himself for the thought. She was still talking; she couldn't know what he was thinking.
"I had no idea, when I said what I did Thursday night, that it was this real. I had no idea. I knew you could do it, I meant that, but I had no idea that Earl was thinking the same thing, and that he was already working to make it happen for you. And then when I saw your name being mentioned in the paper . . . It's yours."
"Yeah," he said, admitting it out loud for the first time. "I guess it could be."
"Could be? What do you mean, could be?"
"Jenny, I can't just lie outright. What am I going to say?"
"You'll say whatever you said to those party guys to convince them. Sounds like it did the trick."
"It's not that easy."
"Bullshit it's not. It's only hard if you make it hard." She shook her head in disbelief. "What more do they have to do for you? Dispense with the election altogether?"
When he didn't answer, she said, "You're a fool, Jack Hilliard. I think that's what Earl's been trying to tell you."
"Well, I've
been called worse." As he said it, he spotted Frank Mann and Andy Rinehart walking toward them.
She tracked Jack's eyes; Frank and Andy came closer.
He leaned close to her ear, lowering his voice as they approached. "What I told you is just between you and me." Her familiar scent filled his nostrils.
"Well, if it's not the dancing queen and her escort," quipped Frank when he reached them. Jack wondered what Andy must have told him about Jenny's suggestive performance in the bar. He glanced at Jenny; she glared at Frank.
"Good to see you again, too, Frank." In a more pleasant tone, she said, "Hi, Andy."
"Did you two close down the bars across the river last week?" Andy asked, trying to make up for Frank's rudeness. He sat on the step in front of Jenny.
But Jenny wasn't buying it. "No, having a real job, I had to work the next day."
"Dodson, from what I hear, you weren't in any condition to be doing work, at least not the legal kind." Frank laughed at his own comment. Jenny looked as though she were about to explode.
"We came over to see if you wanted to get a pizza with us," Andy said. Maybe he believed that, but Jack was certain Frank had torment on his mind.
Jenny held up her empty lunch bag. "How unfortunate. I've already eaten."
"So what did you two do when you left that night?" Frank asked, raising his eyebrows.
"What do you think?" Jack said. "We went home."
"You drove?" Frank said to Jenny, ignoring Jack.
"Oh, you gonna report me to the police, Mr. Mann?"
"I drove," Jack said, figuring it'd be better to admit it than have Frank catch them in a lie.
"Really? Mmm, interesting." Frank turned away and faced the middle of the plaza.
Jack thought of the car in the garage, wondering if it could have been Frank's. But he'd left the festivities much earlier than the rest of them, so Jack decided that Frank just wanted to give them trouble.
"Look, if you guys don't mind, Jenny doesn't have much time today and we were in the middle of a discussion" —he looked at the back of Frank's closely shorn head, hoping he knew the statement was directed at him— "a private discussion."
"Is she helping you plan your campaign strategy?"
Andy stood. "Come on, Mann. You're being a jerk. Can't you tell when you're not wanted?"
"Frank?" Frank turned around at Jack's voice. He was oblivious to the imminent ambush. "I didn't know he had me in mind for the position. I'm not trying to take something from you."
Frank's eyes dropped for a moment and then he looked back up again. "Yeah, I know. I was just needling you. I didn't mean anything by it." He stood. "I'm sorry if it came across wrong." He really did sound repentant, as if he realized for the first time that Jack could be his boss in a few months.
As they walked away, Jack glanced over at Jenny; she pretended to be occupied with the cap of her bottle. It occurred to him that they'd just talked more to Frank and Andy about the night of the dinner than they had with each other. They sat for a while, listening to the music.
"I don't like that guy," she said finally. But Jack didn't want to discuss Frank.
"Jenny?" She looked at him. "Why were you so hostile to me on the phone, and when I first got here?"
She sighed, and he realized his mistake in asking her an open-ended question. "I'm having a really hard time at work right now, Jack. I'm sorry. You know I'm up for partner this fall. I feel like Stan's testing my commitment or something. He's loading me down with work. I'm billing more hours than I did when I first started. You'd think I was still in New York. Sometimes I think he asks me to do something at the drop of a hat just to see if I will."
"Have you talked to him about it?" he asked.
"No. He works long hours himself. I don't think I have a right to complain."
He sensed she wasn't telling him everything. He thought of her outburst after they'd seen Mendelsohn at Newman's offices that night. "Is Mendelsohn giving you trouble?"
She shrugged and was quiet for a moment before she answered, "Just the usual for him. You, of all people, know how he is."
"What happened with me was different." He paused. "Jen, that night" —he looked down— "you said something about Mendelsohn trying to screw up your partnership chances . . . something about Maxine Shepard."
She fiddled some more with the bottle cap and then took a drink. "It's nothing. I guess he just doesn't think I'm doing a good enough job for her. That's all."
Jack waited. She finally met his stare.
"Jack, really. You know how Maxine and I are like water and oil. She gets her jollies from trying to make my life miserable."
"In what way?"
"Mendelsohn says she's been complaining about me." She shrugged, as if to suggest she didn't care. "Really, that's all. Okay?"
"You said something about him being 'into' something."
She pretended not to have heard him. "What really pisses me off is that some of the guys are starting that crap again about how Newman has a reputation for hiring only good-looking women. As if that's the only reason I was hired. As if it doesn't matter that I do a damn good job."
"Oh, come on, Jenny. You've never been one to let stupid talk like that bother you." He accepted that he wasn't going to persuade her to talk about Mendelsohn just then. "Anyway, it's not like you don't use your—how shall I say?—physical attributes to your advantage, when you need to." And then he thought that maybe he shouldn't have said that, given their current precarious situation.
But the Jenny he admired, the tough one who consistently proved his first statement right, responded. "Yeah, look who's talking, Mr. Flashes His Dimples on Demand."
"What dimples?" he said and gave her a big grin.
She shook her head and laughed. And then, as if she suddenly remembered something, she eyed her watch. "Now don't get upset; I'm not being hostile. But I do have to scoot." She placed her hand on his knee, using it as leverage to get up. Maybe everything really was back to normal. "Will you call and let me know how your Tuesday meeting goes?"
"I'll even call you before that."
The corner of her lip curled in the start of a smile. She looked pleased, as if she thought everything was okay, too.
Jack's mood dropped like a stone when he returned to his office and found Earl sitting in his chair. Earl held a paperweight in his hand, a large egg-shaped rock that Jamie had painted at preschool and given to Jack as a Father's Day gift. Earl turned it over in his hand, inspecting the boy's work. He wasn't smiling.
Jack stopped in the doorway. "I think you stopped a few doors short of the right office."
Earl set the rock down on the desk and moved Jack's calendar a bit closer, pretending to look it over.
"What are you doing?" Jack asked, his tone more accusatory than he intended.
Earl pushed the chair away from the desk, leaned back, and crossed his arms. "What I am doing? Well, let me see." He spoke slowly. "I'm trying to figure out what it's like to be Jack Hilliard. I'm sitting here, and I'm thinking, Now, what could be going through his mind? What could he be thinking? How does he view the world? He's got this boss who practically wants to hand him his job on a silver platter—a job that, by the way, any of the other attorneys in his office, and some others around town, would kill to have—but Jack doesn't seem to want it." He paused and propped his feet up on the desk. "At the same time, though, he hasn't taken any calls, or returned any calls, from the reporters who keep trying to reach him, so that he can tell them he doesn't want the job. For some reason, he hasn't told them that he's not going to run. And he also schedules meetings with the very people who can help him get the job—you know, the job he doesn't want." He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. "So what is Jack Hilliard thinking?" He shrugged. "I don't know, maybe you can tell me."
Jack closed the door. "I don't know, either."
"Well, if you don't know, I think we're in trouble."
Jack remained standing. From his spot against the door he
could hear voices in the hall, some secretaries back from lunch.
"Tell me, Jack, why'd you go to law school?"
Jack shrugged and let out a short laugh. "I don't know, why does anyone go to law school?"
"Come on, seriously. I know you. I don't think it was for the money."
"I don't know, Earl." His voice was louder now. He knew Earl was leading him down the primrose path, but he also knew he needed to go there. "Like I said, probably for the same reason everyone does. We all have this romanticized idea of what a lawyer does, don't we? You know, like we're all going to become Atticus Finch, fighting the good fight."
"Do you feel like you're fighting the good fight?"
He nodded. "Yeah, most days."
"Give me the name of a politician you admire, one you respect. Past or present."
"Can't think of one."
"You haven't even tried."
"Well, if you're talking about recent memory, I liked Jimmy Carter."
Earl grinned, as Jack knew he would. He knew he hadn't chosen the most effective one he could think of. But that hadn't been the criteria.
"Because of his honesty?"
"Yes."
"He was a good man?"
"Is. Yes."
"Anyone else? From the past, maybe?"
Jack finally sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk.
"Truman, I guess. It's hard to grow up here and not respect Harry Truman."
Earl looked pleased with Jack's choice. "Despite him having dropped the bomb?"
"You're the military man. I shouldn't have to defend that decision."
"But you still admire him?"
"Yes." They looked at each other across Jack's desk. "Look, I know where you're going with this."
Earl removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward. "Where am I going, Jack?"
"You want me to say something like 'the ends justify the means,' right?"
"Do they?"
God, he'd walked right into that one. "You know what? I'm behind on everything. I have a lot of work to catch up on." He stood. "Can I have my desk back?"
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