Outside the window, bees were trying to get in, a dozen or so sideswiping the pane, for reasons you had to be an expert on bees to understand. He thought they should be long dead, or still hibernating in one of their combs, if hibernate was what they did—anything but dipping and hovering in the wintry light so many floors up. Outside the window, the city stretched north before him with its sleek towers and squat, box-top buildings of different sizes and shadows, all bound by the two rivers whose edges were just in view. He had reconciled himself to no longer having a view of the park, just as he had reconciled himself to the smaller office, the scarred desk, and the downgraded chair. The amenities mattered less now. He had not bothered to bring in the canted standing globe or the Tiffany desk lamp or the degrees and certificates that had adorned his previous office. The bareness of this new approach suited his austerity of purpose. He was there to work, and when work was over, to leave the office and resume life.
He stood up to get a better look at the bees. They were really winding back and slamming themselves against the window. He thought they must be knocking their little bee brains out. They hit and rebounded and fluttered up and returned to hit the glass again. Maybe they were in the very process of dying. Or maybe they were just doing what bees did when they got separated from the hive. Did they travel in a hive? Or was that called a swarm? He knew so little about bees.
He returned to his desk. There were problems with the draft, gaps in his argument, a few structural missteps. He spent the next hour patching things up and the following hour doing a cite check. He thought he’d print out the draft and read it at his desk a final time and then file it away in a drawer before doing the work that had actually been assigned to him. He had not been asked to write a motion for summary judgment. By doing so he was disrespecting the protocol and flouting the conditions of his employment. He wrote it as a kind of hobbyist, with the greatest purity of intent. Millions of motions had been written over the course of the law’s centuries, but they had been written with a court in mind, objects of utility and persuasion, while it was possible that until today, not a single one had been composed for the simple satisfaction of the writing itself. He had spent hours working on it over the weekend, happy to have it as a distraction. The house could be a thundering vacuum of quiet when there was no one there to rifle through a kitchen drawer or to lay out the makings of a sandwich on the counter.
He left the office and walked to the printer. He didn’t want the printout sitting in the tray because he had not been authorized and he did not want Peter to think he was ignoring protocol. No one had even discussed the need for a motion for summary judgment in Keibler, at least not with him. But the time would come when submitting a motion for summary judgment would be the right strategic move. Then Kronish and Peter would get together to decide who to assign it to. Probably that kid Masserly. He was Peter’s favorite. Masserly would probably be asked to write the motion.
On his way back to the office Peter called out to him. Masserly was in there, sitting across the desk from Peter, probably not even thirty yet. Just a second-year associate, Masserly, but already with that air of entitlement that some junior associates acquire when they sense they are favored by one or another partner. His skin was dry and pink and flaked at certain termination points like his receding hairline and the curves of his knuckles. When Tim thought of him abstractly, he was reminded of one of those children who age rapidly and prematurely and die as old men at thirteen. Today he was wearing a pink buttondown with white collar and cuffs, silver cuff links winking from the armrests of the wing chair, and a long paisley tie draped down his shirtfront like a silky tongue. Every layman’s idea of the asshole lawyer. Peter offered another iteration in his blue pinstripes and bow tie. He should have worn knotted ties if he was going to let his gut go like that. As it was, with his belly drooping low and prominent, his neck appeared to have hold of a water balloon. A festive spirit animated the air between the two men. Tim held the printout close to his body. There were bees just outside Peter’s window, too.
“Masserly doesn’t know about the walking,” Peter said to him.
Tim stood in the doorway and said nothing.
“No, seriously. I just asked him and he said he’d never heard.”
“I doubt that,” said Tim.
“Tell him, Masserly.”
Masserly turned. “Never heard.”
“It’s sort of a private matter.”
“Private matter? You were profiled in the fucking New England Journal of Medicine, for Christ’s sake. He used to carry a copy of it around with him,” Peter said to Masserly, “to prove to people he wasn’t nuts.”
“That’s not why I carried it around.”
“He’d come in here with a bicycle helmet on his head, wearing a backpack.”
“I’m sure he’s heard this from somebody, Peter.”
“And he’d walk around like a schoolkid heading out for the bus. They were doing some kind of experiment. What was the point of that experiment again?”
“What’s the point of bringing it up?”
Peter shrugged. “We’re just talking. He showed up to court like that once. Judge comes in and he won’t take off the bicycle helmet. He’s got the chin strap all buckled in, wearing a suit. Judge asks him what’s with the helmet. You should have seen Kronish.”
“You can read about it in the New England Journal,” Tim said to Masserly.
“I’ve never seen Kronish so pissed. I was just an associate then. I didn’t say a fucking word, did I, Tim? Did I say a word to you about that bicycle helmet? Not one fucking word.”
“You were a saint.”
“Hey, Tim, don’t be angry. We’re just talking here. Uncontrollable bouts of walking. Masserly, you gotta read the thing to believe it. And then you still won’t believe it.”
Tim wondered who had championed Peter for partnership. Was it Kronish? Personally he had not thought Peter had shown himself to be partnership material. Peter worthy of partnership at Troyer, Barr? He didn’t think so. “I’m going to get back to work,” he said.
“Wait, wait. I mean, it brings up questions. For instance, for instance. What would have happened to you if you had been blindfolded?”
“Hey, Peter. Have you and Kronish talked about a motion for summary judgment yet?”
He preferred to keep a low profile, but suddenly he was unable to hold back. Who had championed that bow-tied twerp to be a Troyer, Barr partner?
Peter cocked his head. “In what case?”
He damn well knew what case.
“Do you guys have any idea who you might assign it to?”
“A motion for summary judgment in what case, Tim?”
“The Keibler case.”
“Keibler?”
“I was just curious if you and Mike had discussed who you might assign it to.”
Peter looked over at Masserly. “Who in their right mind would submit a motion for summary judgment in Keibler?” he asked the kid.
2
He had complained of brain fog. Neither Jane nor Becka understood what brain fog was but neither did they disbelieve he was suffering from it. He had earned the right to say he felt a certain way and to be taken at his word. He said he felt mentally unsticky. The description was unhelpful, but he insisted that he suffered from a lack of mental stickiness. His nerves felt “jangly.” He told Becka to imagine a guitar whose strings had all gone slack. The image was vivid but she had trouble applying jangly to her own nervous system. The physical pain was easier to describe, but this, too, he did in a private way. His muscles felt hyperslogged. His left side was floaty. Some days his breathing was all bunched up. They could only approximate for themselves how those words made him feel when he translated them into metaphor, as with the guitar strings, but he insisted on identifying them in these nonmedical and not very useful ways because to him there was no adequate substitute. They offered the most precise descriptions, the ones that aligned best with his inner experience of bein
g.
“So when you say all bunched up,” Becka had asked him, “you mean to say you can’t catch your breath?”
“No,” he replied. “I mean to say my breath is all bunched up.”
Jangly, hyperslogged, all bunched up—he spoke a language only he understood.
They read to him through the brain fog. He favored history and biography. He was worried that without stimulus he would shed IQ points as if sweating them off into the bedsheets. Not long after his sequestering, Jane had purchased a hospital bed with retractable sides and Velcro restraints at the wrists and ankles, an improvement over the headboard and handcuffs. Together with the bedpan and the bottles of skin ointment and antidepressants and the general stagnant smell of antiseptic and body sweat, the bed transformed the guest room into something out of hospice care. He was in one long nightmare of walking now: walk, sleep, wake up, wait for the next walk. His feet convulsed rhythmically against the restraints. Becka was narrating the Senate exploits of Lyndon B. Johnson when she discovered that he could fall asleep even as his body continued to walk.
“Dad,” she said. She shook him and he came to. “You fell asleep.”
“It’s hard to concentrate through the brain fog.”
“But you never stopped walking,” she said.
She thought that was all the evidence anyone would ever need to prove that what afflicted him was not “all in the head.” His body was not his own if it continued to labor without his conscious input. But he no longer seemed interested in debates. What caused it, mind or body, what it should be labeled, organic disease or mental illness, fell second to his immediate concern.
“You can’t let me fall asleep like that.”
“Why not?”
“Wake me up if I do it again. Keep me up, Becka. Keep reading.”
The next time she came home to relieve her mother, he stopped her before she could even start to read. “This isn’t working,” he said. “Get my things together. Unstrap me.”
“No,” she said.
“This room is death, Becka. Let me out.”
“It will run its course. You have to be patient.”
“It would have done so by now, goddamn it. Let me out of here! It’s death in here!”
How easy it would have been to leave the room and plug his screams with headphones. He was locked away as well as any lunatic on suicide watch. But with her mother gone and she alone to care for him, abandoning him was not an option. Her three or four days with him were always a rigorous and continual effort to keep him focused, somehow keep him connected.
She bought an iPod and filled it with music. “I want you to try something, Dad.”
“Where is your mother?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where does she go when she leaves the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Stop straining your neck. Relax.”
She placed a noise-canceling pair of headphones over his ears, hopeful they would eliminate the rustle of his legs as they struggled against the sheets. Then she introduced him to some of the music that had been her own solace for as long as she could remember.
3
He had sat before the panel trying not to cry. Whatever you do, don’t cry. Just keep talking. His desperation was like a pheromone secreting itself into a room full of wolves. He appealed to them on the basis of over twenty years of impeccable service and the many millions of dollars he’d made the firm. You thankless sons of bitches! he wanted to scream. You ruthless bureaucrats! You’ll all get sick one day, too! This flinty nerve vied in him against total supplication. Oh, please, please take me back! Grant me the full measure of life again. On hand and knee, peering up at formidable and unmoving faces: I will be good, will do as told. No more breakdowns, promise, promise.
“Tim, I think we’ve heard all we need to hear,” said Kronish.
He was jabbering on, making a case for himself, trying not to cry.
“Tim, Tim—”
He stopped talking.
“We’ve heard enough, thank you. I’m sure we’re all very happy that your health has returned. Now give us some time to discuss the matter and we’ll have an answer for you in a couple of days.”
Enough time had passed that his worst transgressions had faded and his earlier reputation had somewhat revived. They agreed he deserved an audience, and he made a decent case for what he had to offer: expertise, years of loyal service, a good legal mind. Still, they voted not to reinstate his partnership in light of his professional misconduct. They invited him to rejoin as a staff attorney, a non-partner-track position.
In accordance with the bylaws he was still receiving his quarterly share of that business he had brought in for the firm during his partnership days. Financially he could have rejected Kronish’s offer for the insult it was. But he was so grateful to be back in the world again and loved Troyer so fiercely that he immediately accepted. He set the phone down and wept. They were such fine people. They had such capacity for forgiveness. It would be fun to be a staff attorney.
4
One of the first things he did after he returned to Troyer was invite Frank Novovian to dinner. He wanted to express his appreciation for the time long ago when Frank walked down the street with him on a cold winter day and gave him his wool cap.
Frank sat on his stool at the security post as still as a pond frog. He looked up from a bank of security monitors as Tim approached.
“Mr. Farnsworth, how are you, sir?”
His tone was flat and affectless and he did not smile—admirable qualities in a man in charge of building security.
“Frank, we’d like to have you over for dinner, you and your wife.”
The invitation caught Frank off guard.
“I’m afraid I don’t know your wife’s name,” said Tim.
“Linda.”
“Jane and I were thinking Saturday, if you and Linda are free this weekend.”
Frank reached around to scratch at a shoulder blade, stretching his suit coat taut. He had added bulk since Tim’s departure. Tim wondered how the blazer didn’t rip down the back. “We’re pretty free, I think, Mr. Farnsworth. What’s the occasion?”
“You can call me Tim, Frank,” he said. “I’m not a partner anymore.”
“If you work for Troyer, Barr, Mr. Farnsworth, I call you by your last name, partner or no partner. It’s a policy not too many others take seriously around here, but that’s them.”
Tim nodded. “All right. But will you call me Tim if you come to my house for dinner?”
Frank thought about it. “If you let me bring the wine,” he said.
“It’s a deal, then. Saturday?”
“Saturday,” said Frank.
Frank took off his Yankees cap the minute he stepped through the door, placing it inside his winter coat in which Tim could picture him clearing his driveway of snow. A vivid image of Frank’s neighborhood came to mind: many houses set close together, metal siding, small backyards separated by chain-link fencing. There was a dog barking and minivans were squeezed into tiny driveways.
In the doorway, Frank lifted his head and looked around the house, as if standing at the start of a guided tour. Out from his post now, he had loosened up and began to praise Tim’s house. He offered Tim a six-pack of bottled beer and introduced his wife. Linda was smaller than Frank, an Asian woman with dark bangs, thick eyeliner, and a wide and pretty smile. Tim had expected a heavily primped Italian with a Bronx accent. Tim took their coats, and Linda offered him a bottle of wine.
“I really mean it, Mr. Farnsworth. This is one hell of a house.”
Tim considered reminding him that they had a deal—he was Tim tonight, not Mr. Farnsworth—but he thought calling attention to that fact might embarrass Frank. He decided to let the matter resolve itself. He moved them inside and Frank thanked him again for having them over.
“This is one hell of a nice room,” said Frank once he had situated
himself on the sofa. “And I bet that thing gets great reception.”
“Try it out,” said Tim, handing Frank the TV remote. “My wife’s just in the kitchen.”
“Can I help?” asked Linda.
“Whatever it is,” said Frank, “smells delicious.”
“You can help by telling me what you’d like to drink,” said Tim.
Linda looked at Frank.
Frank looked up at Tim and asked, “What are you having?”
“I thought I’d start with one of your beers,” he said.
“Me, too, then,” said Frank.
“I’ll have a beer,” said Linda.
“Three beers, then,” said Tim, “coming up.”
He walked in and found Jane sitting at the kitchen island. She was peering into her wineglass as if in search of fish.
“Jane?”
She turned to him slowly. She looked at him and then lifted the wineglass. She inadvertently clinked her teeth against the glass, making a ringing sound and causing the liquid inside to break like a golden wave and splash her face. “Mmmm,” she said, setting the glass down and reaching precariously over the kitchen island for a napkin. She sat back heavily on the stool and wiped away the wine.
“Banana?” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“How many glasses of wine have you had?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tonight, too? It had to be tonight, too, Janey?”
“Mmmm,” she said, getting off the stool. “The lamb.” She walked to the oven as if through water. With the oven door open she stood again and turned around, peering across the kitchen. “The hot mitt go?”
“Let me do that,” he said, taking the hot mitt from her hand.
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