“Naturalmente. Of course.”
“Let’s talk for a moment about ‘Cacio e Pepe.’ Mr. Norgaard says he wrote it for Ms. Tee. How does it feel to be dating someone whose most famous work is dedicated to the ex-girlfriend you replaced?”
“Bene. It’s…like you said. Sweet.” Celluci played it cool but I could tell I had struck a nerve.
“It really is. You see, Penelope was his muse, his source of inspiration. I confess, I’ve recently been struck by Cupid’s arrow.”
Shore rolled her eyes. “Objection—relevance?”
Judge McArdle smiled. “I’m a little lost too, but let’s see where this goes.”
“I’m in love with a woman named Emma. She’s sitting in the gallery here today.”
I spared a glance, afraid of what I would see—or not see. But Emma was there, smiling through her blushes.
“She gives me strength. I feel like a better man because of her. If I could dedicate my own legal writing to someone, it would be her. Would you say you make Mr. Norgaard feel that way?”
Celluci smiled broadly. “Of course!”
It was time to lay my trap.
“I call Emma my queen.” This was a small falsehood, but I couldn’t tell six to ten real and imaginary jurors that in my heart my love bore the affectionate name of “Sleeve Lady.” “What’s your nickname for each other?”
“I call him Mio Re, ‘My King.’ He calls me La Bella.”
She had answered so quickly, she hadn’t bothered to look at the plaintiff’s table, where Norgaard was staring a hole through her head. And just like that, I had snared my unsuspecting prey. I signaled to Lois, who tossed me a copy of Norgaard’s book.
“La Bella? That’s so sweet. Say, could you do me a favor? Read the dedication page for Dickin-son. I’m introducing it as Exhibit Three.”
“ ‘To my…bella.’ ”
“That’s funny, I didn’t realize he called Penelope the same thing. Does it bother you to share a nickname?”
Something broke inside Celluci. Her façade instantly melted.
“Che cazzo! I am the muse, his inspiration! This idiot did not know what she had. ‘Cacio e Pepe’ was written for me!”
“Objection!”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, Your Honor!”
“No further questions.”
When I returned to my table, I dared another look at the gallery. Emma’s eyes were shining: an embracing look of pride, love, commitment.
I knew I had Norgaard dead to rights on the affair. But what would the jury make of the copyright infringement? At summation, I went all in on the power of love.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The testimony you heard today proved, conclusively, that my client was the one who was wronged. Viewed through the lens of a discarded muse, the meaning of ‘Cacca e Pipì’ is abundantly clear. It is a statement on how not all love is forever. No, not everyone gets to be that lucky. Penelope Tee has revealed to the world how empty Daniel Norgaard’s platitudes about love and devotion are, and in doing so has transformed the entire meaning of the work. Therefore I urge you all to return a verdict of fair use. Thank you.”
There was silence for a moment; then the courtroom erupted into a furor of chatter. I walked past the defense table and made a direct line to Emma, who had come down from the gallery to meet me. She put her arms around me and touched my lips with hers.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“Making me do what I just did.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I feel the same,” she said.
Even buoyed as I was by her presence, I felt the need for realism. “I may still lose, you know.”
“No, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve already won.”
An amused Judge McArdle—I’d read him correctly as a man who enjoyed a good spectacle—waited a few minutes before restoring order. Then he thanked the jury for paying close attention and told them the moment had come for them to decide the case.
“You have an important responsibility here, and one I urge you not to take lightly. So take as much time as you need, and please go into your deliberations with an open mind. Try to listen to each other and to reach a unanimous verdict. It’s getting close to five p.m. here so we can reconvene tomorrow at nine a.m.”
The jurors dutifully nodded, except for Vaudeville, who honked his nose. As they filed out, I noted that the syndrome fakers were disappearing and not going into the jury room. Both vigorous head-shakers were among the fakes, which seemed to improve my odds.
chapter twenty-four
As I replayed the trial in my head that evening, I knew I had knocked out the defamation claim. The copyright claim was anybody’s ball game—even assholes deserve protection. But essentially, win or lose, I felt good that I had overcome my obeisance to the syndrome fakers. And how had I overcome it? With Emma’s urging. With the insightful care she showed me, just as I cared for her. The smile that greeted me at the end of my summation, her embrace, her involvement. And mine in her life. I felt no small sense of pride that I’d had a role in liberating her from her fear of not being able to free herself from her Ménière’s imprisonment.
The next morning I got to the courthouse in time to snag a coffee and a croissant. I’d fed Bhairav generous helpings of wine and blood and presented a rose to Kishani before leaving the apartment. I felt good—or as good as I ever felt before a judgment.
Judge McArdle summoned the jury.
“Do you have a verdict?”
The foreman answered: “We’re close, Judge. But can you clarify one more time what malice means?”
“Certainly. Don’t think of that word in the common parlance. You can have malice in your heart without it infecting your head. If you feel Ms. Tee was wrong in her assertion that infidelity occurred, then you have to decide whether she was simply mistaken or not.”
It was not a great sign that the jury was talking about malice, because that tended to indicate that the truth defense had failed. But I knew better than to make assumptions.
For me, waiting for a jury decision is the most tedious and exasperating aspect of being a lawyer. And so it was that morning. I had brought one of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves books, with its wonderfully amusing account of life in the twenties narrated by that bumbling upper-class British twit Bertie Wooster, but not even that, try as I did, could distract me from the impending verdict.
At eleven a.m. the judge brought in the jury and inquired once again whether they were close to a verdict. The foreman answered, “Not yet, Your Honor, we’re real close though.”
“Try to wrap it up before lunch if you can.”
Charlie phoned me and so did Emma, but both calls were brief because the courtroom frowned upon the use of cell phones, so I had to take the calls outside. Lois came by with checks for me to sign, but other than that the afternoon droned on with nary a peep from the jury room. At the plaintiff’s table there was only one junior lawyer keeping vigil. I made a couple of attempts to involve myself with Jeeves and Bertie, but not even the great Wodehouse could distract me.
At one o’clock, as I was returning from the men’s room, the red light outside the jury room came to life and the bailiff went into the judge’s chambers to inform him that the jury wished to return. They filed into the jury box as he returned to the bench. The bailiff announced that the court was in session and Judge McArdle rapped his gavel.
“Okay, let’s try this again, hopefully for the last time. Have you reached a verdict?”
The foreman stood up. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“What is your verdict?”
He handed the signed verdict paper to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge, who unfolded it and read: “ ‘We
were not able to reach unanimity but five of us find the defendant not liable on both counts.’ ” The college frat boy looked down at his shoes and the others side-eyed him. All this trouble just to try to get him to join a unanimous verdict?
The judge thanked the jury and discharged them. I stood frozen in my tracks. I couldn’t believe it: I had done it.
Everyone on our side was demonstratively elated with the verdict. Emma exuded delight, Penelope vowed to dedicate her next book to me (no thank you), and when Charlie called Flakfizer to tell her Norgaard would be on the hook for much of Dodecahedron’s legal fees, she was positively giddy.
Charlie insisted on a celebration in Connecticut over the weekend, including Emma. But Emma was not so sure. I told her that there was a nice guest room with good art on the walls, but she said, “That’s fine, but how far from the city is your place?”
“About an hour, bit more on weekends. But you’ve got pills and the stick-on to put behind your ear, haven’t you?”
“That’s for air travel, to deal with the cabin pressure as it vacillates during flight. But, listen, we both have to take chances. You took the chance that you could manage this trial. I think it’s my turn. Yes, I’d adore going to Connecticut and taking my chances that I can survive the turbulence and celebrate your victory.”
“Our victory. You goaded me into it.”
My blind eye forbidding me to drive, my occasional driver and helper since the invasion of the syndrome, Ronnie, picked me up in my Subaru and, in deference to Emma, drove at a steady pace in the heavy Friday traffic. I called ahead to have a pickup dinner waiting for us at Tarry Lodge restaurant. I was excited at the prospect of having Emma for the weekend, on top of my excitement over the verdict in the courtroom.
Emma was effusively delighted with my cottage: its hominess, its deep fireplace, its quaint country kitchen, the koi-inhabited pool, and especially the sweeping view, with its deep-green surroundings. Of course, the syndrome still had its high rickety fence covering my experience of the view, but Emma saw none of that. She loved the guest room with its emphasis on art I had collected. No Mirós or Matisses, just new paintings I had discovered, prowling the little art shops in Greenwich Village. I found having Emma with me in this favorite empowering place of mine exhilarating, somehow mysteriously illuminating some of my dark unfilled niches.
I have a flagstone terrace that runs across the entire breadth of the cottage, and that’s where we had dinner, lighted by two hurricane lamps. I uncorked a bottle of Sancerre to have with the gorgonzola salad, and a Chianti for the Bolognese that I warmed up in the microwave.
After dinner we adjourned to the double chairs on the terrace, where we sipped more Chianti and chatted—about what, I can’t recall, but we laughed and teased one another and had a fine time.
When it became quite late, I reluctantly walked her to her bedroom, where I made sure she had everything she needed. She had suffered a full attack of vertigo that had lasted a couple of hours when she got out of the car at the end of the drive from New York, but for the most part she was pleased with her reaction to the journey, and so was I.
We hugged each other as we said good night, her body pressed close to mine. We exchanged a long smiling look.
I closed the door and returned to the terrace, wanting to think about the events of this extraordinary day. I thought about the cottage and how Emma’s presence had emphasized its full appeal. I had bought it soon after I started to practice law. An elderly real estate broker named Mabel Frost had shown me around the area, where I wanted to buy a place to be near Charlie, but I soon realized that this cottage, then completely run-down and in need of extensive inside and outside restoration, was the only thing I could afford. As my practice grew, so grew the cottage. And so did the koi I got FedExed from Tricker’s Water Lilies and Fishes in Independence, Ohio, which I raised in the little rectangular reflecting pool I installed in the middle of my lawn. In the beginning a few guests and girlfriends visited, but for a long time now I had preferred being alone to enjoy music, work on office problems, and occasionally make slow progress writing the next book in my mystery series. There had been one woman I was serious about, a lovely girl who wrote content for a greeting card company, but she was spirited away by the Hollywood lure of a competitive company. And now all these years later, including the abysmal time with Violet, there was Emma. I unwrapped one of my Cuban cigars and thought about Emma. Thought deeply about Emma.
I awoke with the first vestiges of dawn. The wine bottle was empty. My half-smoked cigar was on the flagstone beside my chaise. I pulled myself up and stretched my stiff neck. I pitched the bottle and cigar into the waste receptacle in the kitchen, and on my way to my bedroom I glanced at Emma’s closed door. It was an uplifting feeling, having her there, so close.
chapter twenty-five
After retiring to my room, I awoke again at a more civilized hour to the welcome aroma of coffee. I donned my terry-cloth robe and found Emma on the terrace with a mug and The New York Times.
“There was a bag with croissants and bagels from the Main Street Bakery next to the Times. They’re warming in the oven.”
I laughed. “Looks like I’m the guest, not you.”
“Yep, I am not a guest. I don’t know what I am, but, well, it’s something else.”
I went to the kitchen and put the warm croissants and bagels on plates, along with butter, blackberry jelly, and cream cheese. Emma had followed me and took care of the coffee. We set up everything on the terrace and spent a leisurely morning slathering croissants and bagels and sharing dismal news from the Times.
“Why must everything be so awful?” she asked.
“You mean they should just write about happy people who are enjoying life?”
“Why not? Or at least lay off the crummy politicians.”
“Nobody would read it. Readers like hearing about the comeuppance of foul people and destructive events.”
I took Emma for a walk along the narrow road that ran by the cottage and led to a white-steepled Colonial church and cemetery. We walked among the old tombstones with names and inscriptions dating back to Revolutionary times.
For brunch I fired up the griddle while Emma brewed a pot of tea and set a lovely table for us, enhanced with flowers from the garden. She sang snatches of a lovely Shakespearean song while she cut the flowers and arranged them delicately on the terrace table.
“The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair…”
I filled our plates with spatula’d pancakes pregnant with blueberries. We sat facing each other while I asked Alexa to play Alfred Brendel at the piano. We passed the maple syrup back and forth and I had the illusion I had somehow stumbled my way through the heavenly gate with the angel Emma waiting for me, accompanied by Brendel’s ethereal piano.
* * *
—
Charlie and Lydia had invited us for an afternoon at their pool followed by dinner. Their spacious house was on a rise over the sound with a section of beach beneath, but they preferred their commodious pool, which had been built to their liking, along with a small bathhouse, all of it a testament to Charlie’s rise to junior partner at his high-decibel law firm.
Naturally young Alfred was the star attraction, but Emma captured Lydia as well as Charlie. There was a baby nurse, Miss Vivika (“only for the first month,” Charlie said), which freed up Lydia. Late in the afternoon, there was an
incident at the swimming pool that shook us up. Charlie and I were engaged in some very competitive gin rummy, Lydia had gone into the house to breastfeed the baby, and Emma was sitting on a floating chair reading one of my detective books. While Charlie studied his hand I glanced over at Emma, but her chair had turned on its side; my book was floating and she was not. I jumped up, spilling the cards all over, and dived into the pool, Charlie following me. I spotted Emma struggling near the bottom and, putting my arm around her, brought her to the surface. She was coughing and trying to inhale.
Charlie spread a beach towel on the ground. I put her on her stomach and started to push down on her back.
“I’m all right,” she managed to say between coughs that brought up pool water. “Tried to come out…chair turned over and…I went wobbly…my head spinning…swallowed some water…”
“No charge,” Charlie said, a slightly hysterical edge to his laugh. I realized I was shaking all over, trembling worse than Emma.
She was now sitting up as the cough cured itself. Charlie offered her a Coke. She took it gladly, and though I knew she wouldn’t want me hovering or treating her like glass, I went with her to occupy a commodious deck chair. Lydia joined us with Alfred in her arms.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“I did my world-famous water performance.”
“Her swim song,” I said, deciding to follow her lead in the attitude we were displaying toward all of this. She squeezed my hand in appreciation.
“Pity,” an oblivious Lydia said.
Alfred made no comment but he swung my silver rattle in his chubby little fist.
In not too long, we shook off the scare and our appetites returned. We had a lovely dinner of gazpacho, goat cheese salad with Bibb lettuce, and lobster thermidor accompanied by Baron de L, an elite in the hierarchy of white wine.
Charlie held up his glass for a toast. “Here’s to you, Chet. It took real courage to face that jury and risk failure. Here’s to you, my great, great friend, my brother.”
Kissing the Wind Page 12
