Unreasonable Doubts

by Reyna Marder Gentin

  One Friday, about a week later, Liana’s cell phone rang while she was running in Central Park, her attempt to get some endorphins on board and trim the couple of pounds she had added during her weeks of lethargy and depression. She was happy to see the rabbi’s name on the caller ID. Although she’d been attending Friday night services more regularly, she hadn’t spoken with the rabbi since Deb’s shiva. But she knew it hadn’t escaped his notice that Jakob hadn’t been with her in synagogue for quite some time.

  “I’ve been meaning to call you and talk to you about something,” the rabbi said, after asking how she was doing in a roundabout, nonbadgering sort of way. Liana was brought back momentarily to her discussion with the rabbi about Danny and Jakob after the kiss cam.

  What’s coming next?

  The rabbi continued, “DT has a Bikur Cholim committee, a group of about six or eight people who walk on Saturday afternoon from the West Side across Central Park to New York Hospital. We visit with patients—Jewish and non-Jewish—who are hospitalized and who are alone.” Familiar with Liana’s usual reluctance to commit, the rabbi hedged, adding, “It’s a good deed mostly devoid of religious ritual but high on human compassion. It’d be a very meaningful way to honor Deb’s memory, Liana. And I think it would do you some good too.”

  A year earlier, Liana would have said no before the rabbi even finished asking the question, a result of her own medical phobias. Now, with Deb’s journey having come to an end and Liana no longer able to help ease her way in whatever marginal way she could, she welcomed the opportunity to perform this particular good deed. “Thank you, Rabbi. That sounds like just what the doctor ordered,” she answered.

  In many ways, Liana’s road forward was becoming clearer. But the path back to Jakob was still uncertain.

  CHAPTER 26

  Liana woke on July 4, 2013, with a level of melancholy that she thought she’d successfully banished. As she brooded over what might be significant about this day in particular, she was transported back to that Brooklyn rooftop three years earlier, Danny and Jennifer dancing as fireworks lit the sky.

  What really happened that night?

  Liana believed now that Jennifer had been attracted to the good in Danny—his good heart in addition to his good looks—as she herself had been. Having earned Jennifer’s trust, had he then gone on to do the unspeakable, to force himself on her? If so, had there been something different about Danny’s feelings for Liana? What had given him the strength to change course and leave her, so vulnerable, essentially unharmed? And afterward, why had Danny kept silent about what had happened between them, protecting Liana from the consequences of her behavior rather than exposing her? Liana would never know, and it haunted her still.

  Wallowing in these thoughts, Liana was relieved when her telephone rang.

  “Come meet me and Irv for brunch at the Jewish Museum after the first session of our new book group,” her mother said. Irv had turned out to be a good egg. Although Liana had been wary of anyone trying to fill her father’s shoes, her own loneliness had given her a new understanding of her mother. She was happy that Phyllis had found someone determined to get out there and give things a whirl, who was smart and thoughtful and enjoyed being with her. Liana still did her best to pretend they were “friends without benefits,” and she was enormously thankful that they were too discreet for public displays of affection.

  She found them in a corner of the café, seated at a small table, heatedly discussing whether the character of Bruno in the novel they’d read was supposed to be imaginary or real.

  “I don’t know, Phyllis—I got the feeling that Bruno never existed at all. He was one of those imaginary friends that kids sometimes have—you know, where the mom sits down on the kitchen chair and the kid screams, ‘Don’t sit there! You just squashed Bruno!’” Liana was loath to interrupt the exchange—they were so enjoying it. But she did really need her late morning coffee. Some things didn’t change. She plunked herself down at the table.

  “Liana, I’m so glad you came!” Her mother’s delight in seeing her reminded Liana that she had not seen her enough, so wrapped up had she been in her own gloom. For a few minutes, Phyllis chatted about topics that she thought would be neutral—the upcoming US Open at Flushing Meadows, the sprinkler heads she needed to have fixed at the house, the closing of “their” diner on Northern Boulevard. The news of the diner, though, made Liana think of Jakob—they had logged way too many hours there, eating French fries with gravy and playfully ordering the fudge brownie that was always on the menu but never available. Although Liana was undeniably sentimental about those early days of their courtship, she was more determined than ever that her relationship with Jakob would have a future and not just a past.

  Her mother’s voice brought her back, still filled with the excitement of the new intellectual endeavor and the people she and Irv had encountered that morning. “We met the most remarkable woman in the book group, Liana. I thought of you immediately—I think it’s so important for you to meet her.”

  Remembering Marta’s words—“Something will present itself to you, and when it happens, you’ll know”—Liana stifled her reflexive impulse to shut her mother down. “Who is she, Mom?”

  Taken aback by her uncharacteristic receptiveness, Phyllis continued in a rush of words, before Liana could change her mind about hearing her out.

  “Her name is Margot Lattimer. She is about—what would you say, Irv? Forty-five or fifty years old, and she’s fabulously successful. She went to Yale, so you have that in common.” Phyllis thought that Yale was like a secret club—if you’d gone there at any time, you had a lifelong affinity for anyone else who’d ever attended the school. Liana had tried to explain to her numerous times that it didn’t work that way, but her mother’s faith in the power of her alma mater prevailed. “I took her card—you should give her a call.”

  Liana picked up the business card without reading it, put it in the back pocket of her jeans, and patted her mother’s hand. “Thanks, Mom, that’s very sweet,” she said.

  “Don’t be so dismissive of your old mother—I’m not an idiot! I’m telling you, Liana, this woman is a mover and a shaker. Irv—tell her.”

  “She actually was extraordinary, Liana. She’s the CEO of a company called Dragonfly—it’s an up-and-coming player in streaming music. While we were waiting for the book group to start, she was explaining some of the issues she deals with—the conflict between the idea that music is a universal good that should belong to the world versus the need to protect the ability of musicians and everyone involved in the industry to make money. And on top of that, the question of the current situation, in which one company has been so dominant and threatens by its success to shut everyone else out of the market. She was lamenting that the attorneys she has engaged are neither sufficiently intellectually curious nor knowledgeable enough about the arts to grapple with the intricate legal problems that arise.”

  Liana looked at Irv in surprise. It was the most she had ever heard him say. “That was quite a synopsis, Irv!” she said, both impressed by his intelligence and touched by the obvious attention he had paid to Ms. Lattimer, with Liana in mind. “And you’re right—her description of the intersection between intellectual property law and free speech and antitrust concerns is certainly fascinating. But I have no experience in any of those fields—I would be about the last attorney this woman would be interested in meeting.”

  Irv shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you’re probably right. Actually, now that I think more about it, this work sounds like it’d be right up Jakob’s alley.”

  For a second, the world stopped spinning as Irv’s words made their way slowly into Liana’s consciousness. When the idea hit her full force, she gasped. Then she stood up and kissed Irv on the cheek. “Irv, you’re my angel!” Liana turned and practically skipped out of the café, forgetting entirely to say goodbye to her mother.

  Liana spent the rest of the long holiday weekend holed up in her apartment. She did
n’t sleep, and she ate only what came out of a can and could be warmed up in the microwave in under a minute—SpaghettiOs and vegetarian baked beans topping the list.

  Seventy-two hours later, she had compiled a twenty-page dossier on Margot Lattimer and Dragonfly that any Wilcox & Finney associate would have been proud to produce. Liana researched Ms. Lattimer’s educational background (Yale College, Harvard Business School), as well as where she lived (Greenwich, Connecticut), her husband’s profession (cardiologist), and how many children she had and where they were attending school (two, a boy and a girl, Catholic private school). She did a profile of Dragonfly’s earnings, employees, business model, and future prospects, with an entire section devoted to its current litigation docket. Liana prepared a brief overview of the industry, including the role of the major music websites, and collected online articles from the trade papers that discussed government concerns about monopoly. Finally, she profiled the attorneys and law firms that Ms. Lattimer had used in the past, and detailed, based on whatever information was public, why their performance had been deemed deficient.

  When Liana finished and was satisfied she had done her best, she put the document onto a flash drive and walked up a few blocks to the Staples on Broadway to have it printed out on nice glossy paper and bound. She was so focused on her mission that she bumped into and practically knocked down an almost ready-to-pop Charlotte, who, not realizing it was Liana, screamed, “Hey, you jerk! Watch where you’re going! Can’t you see I’m hugely pregnant and hormonal? Are you blind?”

  The handful of people that had stopped to watch the spectacle were totally perplexed when the two women locked eyes and then dissolved into peals of laughter, hugging each other and practically collapsing with the euphoria of the chance meeting.

  “Where’re you going with such single-mindedness that you didn’t notice your Mack truck of a best friend in your way?” Charlotte asked.

  “Oh, Charlie—I’m so sorry! I almost made you have those babies right here on the street!” Liana hadn’t laughed this hard since before Deb died. It felt so good she didn’t want it to stop.

  “Are you going to tell me?” Charlotte had been infinitely patient with Liana during her funk—certainly she had a right to know if something was going well for her friend. But Liana was superstitious; she was afraid to tell her what she had planned.

  “Charlie, you’ll have to trust me on this. I’m on a mission. I promise you’ll be the first to know if I succeed.”

  They hugged, and Liana hurried off, leaving Charlotte to watch her go, fingers crossed.

  That night, she lay down in her bed and had the first full night of sleep since she had quit her job. When she woke in the morning, she began making the necessary telephone calls to put her plan into action.

  First, she called the Public Defender’s Office.

  “Tony? It’s Liana.”

  “Liana! I miss you.”

  “Thanks, Tony. I appreciate your saying that. Can you put me through to Piotr in the mailroom? I need to ask him for a favor.”

  When they had worked out the clandestine delivery of the dossier to Wilcox & Finney, she called Jakob’s secretary, Gloria, who picked up the phone with her usual, reassuring, “Jakob Weiss’s line, may I help you?” When she heard Liana’s voice, Gloria said words that were music to Liana’s ears.

  “Jakob hasn’t been the same without you, Liana.”

  “Oh, Gloria, you have no idea. I have some work to do to fix this. And I need your help.” Liana asked Gloria to make a reservation at the Yale Club for one o’clock on Wednesday for three people and to put the appointment down in Jakob’s calendar as a business development lunch. “I don’t care what you tell him to get him there; just please get him there.”

  And then she made the final phone call.

  “Good morning, Ms. Lattimer. My name is Liana Cohen. You met my mother Phyllis Cohen and her friend Irv Mandel in your book group. I believe that you and I both attended Yale. . . .” On Wednesday at 12:50 p.m., Liana stood on the corner of Forty-Fourth Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, under the blue awning with the YC in interlocking white letters, perspiring in her black court suit from the heat and from nerves. She looked north, waiting to spot Jakob. Gloria had texted her when he’d left the office, reporting that he was both chipper and anxious, convinced that Frank had entrusted him with handling an initial meeting with this very important potential client.

  When Jakob came into view, Liana felt a surge of love that threatened to knock her off her feet. She hadn’t seen him in almost two months to the day. He was dressed in his best charcoal grey suit and the red Hermes power tie she had bought him, sparing no expense, when he was sworn into the bar. Jakob looked debonair and professional, but he had also lost weight, and there was something hollow about his face. True to Gloria’s description, he was striding purposefully, walking with a bounce in his step and a confidence that Liana found riveting.

  When he got within thirty feet of where Liana was waiting for him, Jakob saw her. The transformation was both immediate and jarring. In his eyes, she first read joy, which quickly morphed into panic.

  “Li,” he said. “What’re you doing here? I don’t know what to say.”

  “You could start by telling me you are happy to see me, but you look kind of freaked out,” Liana ventured. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea at all. She felt something crushing creep toward her heart.

  “No!” Jakob said. “I’ve wanted nothing more than to see you. It’s just that I have this really important business lunch now, and I have to focus—I can’t be distracted by you.” When Liana didn’t say anything in response, Jakob’s demeanor shifted to resignation. His shoulders slumped, and he looked past Liana toward Grand Central Station, as though he might be contemplating an escape.

  “Wait. There’s no meeting, right? I’m a fool.” Jakob almost laughed, but the sound got caught in his throat. “This CEO I thought I was having lunch with and this company were just so exactly the kind of project I’d love to work on, and stupidly I bought that Frank believed I was the right attorney to try to bring the business in. But you didn’t need to arrange this whole ruse, Liana,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I guess Gloria must’ve been in on it—you could have just called me.”

  If he had been Max’s age, Jakob would have cried. As it was, he dug his hands into his pants pockets and looked down at his newly polished shoes.

  Liana grinned from ear to ear.

  “Come on, slugger—I have someone I’d like you to meet.” She hooked her arm through his as he looked at her, astonished, and led him into the Yale Club.

  “Let’s not keep Ms. Lattimer waiting.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Liana was putting together a care package of peanut-free junk food to bring to Max at the JCC when Jakob arrived at her door, a dozen roses and a bottle of chilled champagne in hand.

  She put the flowers into a vase and Jakob popped the cork.

  “Did you win the account?” Liana squealed as he hugged her close.

  “I don’t know yet, but it couldn’t have gone better. If she chooses someone else, it certainly won’t be because I wasn’t prepared, thanks to you, or didn’t make a good impression.” Liana had made the introduction and sat down with Margot and Jakob for a bit, then gracefully excused herself so that they could get to know each other. Phyllis and Irv had been right—Margot was a dynamo, with a huge personality and a book of business to match. If Jakob brought her in as a client for Wilcox & Finney, his future there was assured.

  As Jakob held her tight, he surreptitiously hit a button on his phone, and the room was suddenly filled with their song.

  “Dance with me?” he asked.

  “Did you download this legally?” Liana quipped, poking him in the ribs.

  “Of course,” he said, “iTunes!”

  They stayed close, swaying in each other’s arms long after the song had finished playing.

  “Li,” Jakob said, “you didn’t have to do what you
did for me today for us to be together. You know that I never in a million years expected you to help me directly with my work, right?”

  “I know,” she said, “and I don’t plan on doing it again! Do you have any idea how much effort that took?”

  “You did a masterful job on that dossier. Much better than I would have done. Come work at Wilcox. We could see each other all the time that way,” Jakob said.

  “And we’d have absolutely no other life outside of work, and we would probably kill each other. No thanks. But that project did remind me that when I put my mind to something, with a real purpose, I can accomplish a lot. I just have to figure out what kind of client deserves my time and passion.”

  Liana smiled at him, and then she got very serious.

  “I just wanted you to know that I respect you and your career and the life you are setting up. I’m all in now, Jakob, a hundred percent, and I know that you were all along. I’m thankful that you waited for me.”

  When she finished speaking, Jakob took a Tiffany’s box from his shirt pocket.

  “Oh, no, Jay—I’m still not—” Liana stammered. “Don’t you think that will look like some sort of quid pro quo? Won’t people think I bought you back by handing you the Dragonfly account if you give me that on the very same day?”

  He pulled her closer and kissed her, silencing her chatter.

  “You hardly handed me that account,” Jakob said, laughing and only slightly offended. “Relax, Liana, it’s not what you think it is. Just open it.”

  Liana unwrapped the haint-blue box, untying the white ribbon carefully and taking out the pouch. Inside was a beautiful gold chain, attached on either side to a charm of two interlocking gold bands. Eternity in a necklace.