by Caleb Crain
“Hey. I just put your number in my phone,” Jeremy replied.
“Felix Penny is sort of famous, isn’t he,” said Diana. She waved to Matthew.
“He had a book about privacy last year,” said Jeremy. “Raleigh’s calling his parents right now to see if they can afford him.”
“And Diana found a lawyer for Leif,” Elspeth told the men.
“His name is Michael Gauden,” said Diana.
Merely to the names Elspeth was already beginning to feel that they had responsibilities. That for the lawyers’ sakes, there were selves that they were going to have to be careful from now on to be. “We’re going to have so many lawyers,” she said.
“I don’t think this would be a good time to cheap out,” Jeremy said.
As if expense were what made her anxious. As if it would be willful of her if it were. “How are they all doing?” she asked Matthew.
“Chris isn’t sitting with them.”
He was blaming himself, Elspeth thought.
“Your friend Chris went upstairs,” Jeremy said. “Even though Raleigh told him not to.”
“Did he have any choice?” Diana asked.
“You can always tell them you want to talk to your lawyer first,” said Jeremy.
“But he doesn’t have a lawyer yet,” said Elspeth. “Is Leif all right?”
“He’s a little . . .” Matthew raised his hands but didn’t know what gesture to make.
“How’s Julia?” Elspeth asked, making an effort to be fair.
Neither Jeremy nor Matthew answered.
“She’ll be by herself, on the women’s side,” Diana suggested.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Elspeth.
“Can we talk about bail?” Jeremy asked. His impatience, she foresaw, was going to be one of the instruments working to conform their irregular selves.
* * *
—
They hadn’t been paying attention to the reporters.
“How many of you have ESP?”
“Can you tell me what color I’m thinking of right now?”
“Were you acting on instructions from the spokes council?”
Elspeth muttered, “We didn’t even go to Occupy that much.”
“Don’t, honey,” Diana cautioned her.
“Could you repeat that? I didn’t catch that.”
A reporter swung a microphone from one friend’s mouth to another’s, tracing in the air a map of his fluctuating hope. The friends were backed up against the pillar that Elspeth had chosen half an hour ago to lean against.
“Go on, shoo,” Diana said, not quite in earnest.
“Shoo yourself,” a reporter in back answered her.
A wider crescent was gathering, drawn by the burnt-match smell of conflict.
In a loud monotone Jeremy declared that they had no comment.
“When are you going to leak the files?”
“What are you going to do to protect the privacy of government officials named in the files?”
“How many networks have you broken into using ESP?”
Under his breath Jeremy asked, “What is this ESP horseshit?”
While alone Elspeth had felt powerless, but in the company of her friends, she no longer quite believed in the reporters’ capacity to pen her in. Now that her side had cell phones, she didn’t need to keep standing where she was. Raleigh and Leif were sure to call Matthew’s new phone in a minute. She was going to ask to talk to Chris, too. She was going to figure it all out.
Across the vestibule she recognized the leonine white hair of Julia’s lawyer.
“Sir! Sir!” she cried.
“Elspeth!” Jeremy shouted, as she darted away.
The reporters, too, pivoted.
The lawyer was even taller than the headshot in Greg’s phone had led Elspeth to expect. “You’re Julia’s lawyer,” she accosted him.
He looked at the parade raggedly trailing her, and his eyes seemed to make a calculation. “I didn’t catch your name, sweetheart.” He extended his hand.
“Elspeth Farrell.”
“Kenneth Montague,” he told her. He took his time shaking her hand, as if no one were closing in on them. As if they were alone. “Pleased to meet you.” He studied her eyes. “Hey,” he then said, looking up, as if he were only just now noticing her pursuers. “Hey, I already talked to you assholes. And that’s not on the record, by the way, my calling you assholes, because you know I love you guys. Officially. Nah, just kidding. Of course I love you guys. But seriously, we’re trying to have a confidential conversation here, so back the fuck off. I don’t mean to use language, but could you give us a little space? I’ll have more for you later. I always do, don’t I? You know I do. Thank you. I love you guys.” He showily winked. And then took Elspeth under one of his wings and turned.
She stopped him. “These are my friends.”
“Which ones, sweetheart?” he asked.
“These three.”
“One, two, three, then,” Montague said, and returned to motion. “It’s rude to count, I know,” he apologized over his shoulder, “but I have to make sure we’re not bringing any fucking journalists with us. Mind if we talk outside? For just a minute. On the steps? They won’t go outside; it’s too cold for them. The dirty so-and-so’s, as my mother used to say. I hope you don’t mind, I happen to be on my way to get a sandwich.”
The police didn’t search you as you left the building, and in a moment they were standing in the midday sun of late November.
“So how can I help you?” Montague asked. He looked almost through them when he looked, but his eyes, though hooded, were incapable of hiding. That was why he talked the way he did.
“Why can’t you just represent everybody?” Elspeth asked.
“That’s a tall order,” Montague replied, as if she were joking.
“Wait a minute, Elspeth,” said Jeremy.
“I know you found someone,” she told Jeremy, “but he’s not here yet.”
“Who’d ya find?” Montague asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Felix Penny,” Jeremy said, as if the name itself were a more precious coin.
“Don’t know him,” said Montague affably. “He a trial lawyer?”
“He’s a law professor,” said Jeremy. “He writes about computer ethics.”
“Computers. That’ll be useful. You got somebody on the way, then.”
“Two lawyers on the way, actually,” said Diana.
“Oh yeah? Who else? Out of curiosity.”
“Michael Gauden?” said Diana.
The lawyer nodded.
“Do you know him?” Elspeth asked.
“He’s a young guy, isn’t he?”
Diana defended him: “I think he’s been in practice for several years.”
“He’ll be great. I’m sure both of them will be.”
“But we don’t have a lawyer for Chris,” said Elspeth.
Montague gave her friends an opportunity to respond to her, but they didn’t take it.
“Could you help him?” Elspeth asked.
Montague looked at her almost tenderly. “I can’t, sweetheart. I can’t. I told the Di Matteos that I would represent their daughter, and I can’t do anything to dilute that.”
“What do you mean, ‘dilute’?”
“I can’t represent a person unless I can promise her my first loyalty, and in this case, I’ve already given it to Julia. That’s me. That’s who I am. But even if I wanted to try to split my loyalty—even if I were willing to do that—this judge would never waive the conflict.”
“You know who the judge is going to be?” asked Matthew.
“This one’s sharp, isn’t he. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. I know who the judge usually is when this kind of case h
appens at this time of day on this day of the week, but no, I don’t know for certain who the judge will be. But it doesn’t matter. None of the judges here want to bother with a conflict.”
“Where would the conflict be?” Elspeth asked.
“Conflict of interest,” said Montague. “Between the accused.”
“But they’re all accused of the same thing.”
“Well, as your friend here will probably tell you”—Montague glanced at Matthew—“we won’t know for sure what your friends are accused of until the grand jury issues its indictments, and that may not be for a little while. A lot can happen between now and then.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, sweetheart?”
“Why would they be in conflict? They’re all together.”
“But they might not stay together,” Montague softly said. “They might choose different defense strategies.”
“What difference would that make?” she persisted. But it was beginning to dawn on her.
“The strategies might not be compatible.”
“How could that happen if everyone tells the truth?”
“Elspeth,” Matthew cautioned her.
“It’s better if everyone has his own lawyer,” said Montague. “Trust me. It’s always better.”
He meant, she realized, that one of the accused might decide to testify against the others. “It’s better for criminals, maybe,” she said. She turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Montague said.
She didn’t reply. She needed, at the moment, to be unfair to him.
“How much do you think bail will be?” Matthew asked.
“Hard to say, with all the excitement.”
“You mean it could be high? What if we can’t find the money right away?”
“You know the island the city ships people to? Technically it won’t affect the case, but can I be honest with you? You don’t want your friends to go there. It’s not a nice place. It’s not a happy place. I’m saying this because people like you—no offense—it’s because your lives are blessed, and I mean that—people like you don’t know how bad it is. People like you may think you have an idea, but you don’t have an idea.”
“Thank you,” said Matthew.
“And I shouldn’t say this, either,” Montague continued, “but when you’re looking for someone for your friend, ask for someone with federal trial experience. Don’t get hung up on it, but: if you can.”
“Federal trial experience,” Matthew repeated.
“You didn’t hear it from me, but the word is there are going to be federal charges.”
Matthew nodded.
“Good luck.” He shook all their hands and clasped Elspeth’s.
“What does that mean?” Matthew asked, after he was gone.
“Fuck,” said Jeremy.
Matthew’s phone rang. “It’s jail,” he said, and handed the phone to Elspeth.
* * *
—
“Hello?” Elspeth said.
“Hey.”
“Raleigh? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are Leif and Chris all right?”
“They’re having a little trouble, but they’re all right.”
“What do you mean, trouble?”
“Leif is, one minute he says it’s all his fault, and five minutes later it’s ridiculous that he can’t just walk out of here.”
“It is ridiculous.”
“You know they listen to these calls.”
“He’s so innocent he wouldn’t even know how to do anything wrong, assholes,” she said to the listeners.
“Assholes,” Raleigh echoed admiringly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” he told her. There was a simulation of no more than camaraderie between them, and she couldn’t tell if they were faking the camaraderie for the benefit of eavesdroppers or out of some idea of not, for the moment at least, disappointing each other. Of not reckoning with too many big questions at once.
“How’s Chris?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about him.”
“He’s okay?”
“I don’t think he’s worrying about us.”
“Jeremy said he’s not sitting with you.”
“He went upstairs after I told him not to, and when he came back and I asked what he told them, he said, ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ And I said, ‘That’s what you told them?’ And he said, ‘No, that’s what I’m telling you.’”
“He’s mad.”
“But why’s he mad at me?”
It was a boy thing of some kind. “Can I talk to Leif?”
“Sure. Yeah. Let me get Leif.”
She pictured the handset of the jail telephone left to hang alone upside down from its cable, swaying. She remembered Leif sitting on a windowsill in her dining room at a party in the spring, wearing what he called a peasant frock, of blue-and-white gingham, and kicking his crossed legs while he smoked.
Raleigh returned. “Do you know how Julia’s doing?” he asked.
“We talked to her lawyer.”
“Did he say how she’s doing?”
“No.” It embarrassed her that it hadn’t occurred to her to ask.
“She’s by herself,” he said.
“I know. It must be awful.”
“Did you get my messages, by the way?”
“I still don’t have a phone.”
“You can call your messages even if you don’t have your phone.”
“You can?”
“Forget it,” he said. “It would have saved some time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” He was holding his breath; he was keeping even that back from her. “I miss you,” he unexpectedly said.
Did he want her back? It startled her to realize that she already thought of him as gone. Or of herself as gone.
“Are you going to say anything?” he asked.
“I miss you, too,” she said clumsily.
“I’m in jail, Elspeth.”
“I know.”
He passed the phone to Leif.
“Elspeth?” Leif’s voice seemed very bright, after Raleigh’s caution. “I’m going to have to become a celebrity.”
“That’s great.”
“No it isn’t.” He laughed as if he had meant for her to misunderstand. “I mean become a celebrity the way John Clare became Byron.” She and Leif had decided, one afternoon, that the impoverished poet of birds’ nests and unfenced meadows must have been one of their kind and that it must have been partly under the strain of failing to understand his gift that he had begun to confuse himself with his more famous, more wealthy, and more libertine rival. His greedier rival.
“No, don’t do that,” she said. “Stay yourself.”
Greed for life being a sign of sturdiness.
“I’d only do it consciously,” he said.
“You’ll be out soon.”
“FYI, I won’t come back, once I get out. I just won’t.”
“You won’t have to. It’s just till they set bail. They’ll set it tomorrow at the latest but probably by the end of the day today.”
“I’m having these thoughts. I’m going to have to write a poem, I’m having so many of them.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“Thoughts about thoughts. I was thinking that everything a person says is really a synecdoche, for one thing. There! ‘For one thing,’ for one thing. A part for the whole. And often an atypical, misrepresentative part.”
“You mean sometimes people don’t tell the truth.”
“I mean they can’t tell it. If only because you can’t say everything. If only because you can onl
y say one thing at a time.”
“That’s interesting.”
“No. It’s just a way for me not to think about this. This place that I’m in. I’m gesturing toward it, but you can’t see.”
“Do you have something to focus on? Can you focus on Raleigh?”
“No.” He laughed, but it was a forced-sounding laugh, and it irritated her instead of stirring her pity. He wasn’t taking care of himself. “What’s funny,” he continued, “is there are all these not-stories down here, in addition to the stories. These sort of snowclones that aren’t anybody’s experience but that we all feel they want us to fit ourselves into. They’re so ludicrous. How bad we are, for example. How weak we are. How good the king is to be willing to pardon us if we confess our sins. The not-stories are all so weepy. They’re not dangerous because we hold them at bay. We spangle them with little particles of hate. With little pearlescent antibodies of hate.”
“Up here there’s this pretty marble on the walls, and I’ve been focusing on it sometimes.”
“We just have cinder blocks.”
“It won’t be too much longer,” she assured him.
“I don’t think I can be a cinder block right now.”
He had looked very pretty, when he had showed up for her party in his peasant frock. He hadn’t looked like a man passing but like a girl too young to need makeup.
“I’m so sorry, Elspeth,” he said.
“You haven’t done anything.”
“I don’t think I have, but then sometimes I think maybe I have.”
“Don’t say that. I mean, don’t say that, but also I mean this phone is bugged.”
“I don’t care. I’m so sorry. I’m so ridiculously sorry. I’m sorry even for the versions of the story that aren’t true. I’m synoptically sorry.”
It was too much, and she felt another twinge of irritation. As well as another twinge of self-reproach at the injustice of her irritation.
“Talk about something else. Talk about your idea for a poem again.”
“I am talking about it.”