We finished with a universal “Silent Night,” the crowd breaking up while the last notes echoed off the buildings.
“Maybe a half each left?”
Nancy shook her head as I held the bottle of Petite Sirah poised over her glass. She had traded the sweater and long johns for a puffy print blouse that brought out the color of her eyes. We were sitting at the dining table of the condo I rented from a doctor doing a program in Chicago. Only a couple of blocks north of the Pru, it was a short but cold walk from the tree-lighting ceremony.
Cold in more ways than one.
Nancy said, “I cooked, so you clean.”
I corked the wine and cleared the table of the remains of a pretty good meal of lamb chops with mushroom-and-sausage rice. My praising the food, even its color and arrangement on the plate, hadn’t done much to warm Nancy up.
From the kitchen I said, “We can talk about it, or we can brood about it.”
No reply.
I loaded the dishwasher and sponged down the sink and counter.
Back in the living room, Nancy was sitting stiffly on the burlappy sofa, using her index finger to swipe tears angrily from the sides of her eyes.
“Nancy—”
“Just shut up, okay?”
I stopped dead.
She said, “I hate to cry.”
I believed that. As an assistant district attorney, Nancy had seen an awful lot. A person who cried easily wouldn’t get through one of her typical days, much less the couple of years she’d put in.
I said, “Is it one of your cases?”
Shake of the head.
“Medical? Physical?”
“No, dammit, it’s you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“My face? My breath? My—”
“Goddammit, John. It’s …”
I walked toward her. Not told to stop, I sat next to her.
Nancy turned sideways to me, took a breath. “Look, it’s not easy for me to talk about my emotions. It never has been.”
“Hasn’t affected—”
“Don’t interrupt, okay?”
“Okay.”
She took another breath. “My dad died when I was little, John. Three years old. They didn’t have a tree-lighting ceremony in Southie, but even if they had, I didn’t have him to swing me up onto his shoulders to watch it. I really don’t remember him, not from real life. Just his face in photos, the pictures Mom kept. Holidays, especially Christmas, were hard on her because she did remember him from real life.”
I thought back to my holidays with Beth, then to the period after I’d lost her to cancer.
“Once Mom died, my last year of law school, I didn’t like the holidays anymore. All I’d had of the early ones was Mom, trying her best to be both parents at once. The later ones, I was always kind of propping her up, keeping her in the spirit of the season. When I rented the Lynches’ top floor, they tried to include me in their stuff, but it was awkward, you know? I wasn’t anybody’s niece or girlfriend or anything. I was just the poor tenant with no place else to go.”
“And then?”
“I met you. And for the first time, I thought I had somebody to share the holidays with. Really enjoy them, equal to equal, nobody making up for anything. I’ve been looking forward to the tree-lighting for weeks, then you behave like a freshman on his first trip to the big city.”
I thought she was overreacting, but I said, “I’m sorry, Nance.”
“No. No, you’re not. You don’t even understand what I mean, do you?”
“I understand. I guess what happened in my life just turned me a different direction as far as the holidays go.”
She sniffled.
I said, “Maybe you just got under my skin a little over the marathon.”
A sour face. “You big turd.”
“Finally, a term of endearment.”
She punched me on the arm. A little hard, but now playfully. “That rugby shirt doesn’t even fit anymore.”
Standing, I pulled it over my head, whirling it by a sleeve and letting it fly across the room.
Nancy looked at my pants. “Never cared much for those corduroys, either.”
Leaning forward, I braced my hands on the back of the sofa to either side of her head. “Lady, are you trying to get me into bed?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On how much harder I have to try.”
Afterward, we lay in the dark under just a sheet. The window was open a crack, the wind whistling through. I was on my back, Nancy on her side, cuddled up against me.
“John, you ever think it’s odd, the way we talk about it?”
“Can’t be helped. Catholic upbringing.”
“No. I don’t mean us us. I mean people in general. We call it ‘making love.’”
“As opposed to …?”
“I mean, it just sounds so mechanical, almost like a label for some manufacturing process.”
“It’s worse than that, Nance.”
“Why?”
“We tend to say, ‘I want to make love to you.’”
“Yes?”
“Using ‘to you’ makes it sound like a one-way street. Provider to customer.”
“How does ‘I want to make love with you’ sound?”
“Pretty good, except we’ll have to wait a while.”
She snuggled closer. “Why?”
“Well, a man my age takes two, three weeks to recharge.”
Another punch to the arm. “You’re still sore from the marathon remark.”
“I’m still sore from where you punched me before.”
“Man your age, decides to run the marathon, he’d better get used to pain.”
I shifted my face to Nancy even though I couldn’t see her in the dark. “What makes you think I’m going to run the marathon?”
“The look you gave me after I almost kept from saying you were too old for it.”
“What kind of look was it?”
“A stupid look.”
I shifted again, about to talk to the ceiling, when the telephone rang. That started the rest of it.
Two
“JOHN! GEE, how long’s it been?”
Tommy Kramer forgot to take the napkin off his lap as he rose to greet me. It fell straight and true to the floor. Only heavy cloth for Sunday brunch at Joe’s American Bar & Grill.
“Tommy, good to see you.”
He sat back, crushing a filterless cigarette in an ashtray but not noticing the napkin between his penny loafers. Moving upward, the flannel slacks were gray, the oxford shirt pale blue, the tie a Silk Regent with red background, and the blazer navy blue. Dressing down, for Tommy.
I took in the room’s detailed ceilings and mahogany wainscoting, pausing for a moment on the bay window overlooking Newbury Street. The shoppers below bustled around half an hour before the boutiques would open for Christmas-season high rollers. We had a corner all to ourselves, the yuppies holding off until after twelve, when the booze could start to flow.
Tommy’s rounded face seemed to lift a little, making him look younger. “You know, my old law firm used to own this place.”
“I didn’t know. The Boston one, you mean?”
“Right, right. Firm got started before the turn of the century, one of the first in the city to decide to make a Jew a partner. When word leaked out about that, the downtown eating clubs very politely told the firm’s established partners, ‘Well, you understand, of course, that we can’t serve him here.’ At which point the partners basically looked at each other, said ‘fuck you’ to the clubs, and bought a restaurant downtown for lunch meetings and this one here in Back Bay for dinner.”
“So they could eat where they wanted.”
“With whoever they wanted, including the new Jewish partner.”
“The firm still run the place?”
“No, no. Sometime after I went out on my own in Dedham, they sold it. Back then, though, it was heady stuff for
a young lawyer like me to be able to walk into one of the finest restaurants in Boston and be treated like the king of Siam.”
“Your practice going well?”
“The practice? Oh, yeah, yeah. Couldn’t be better. We’re at eight attorneys now with the associate we brought in last week. Evening grad from New England.”
Nancy’s alma mater. “Kathy and the kids?”
“Terrific. She’s gone and got her real estate ticket. Salesman, not broker yet, but that’ll come in time. She’s showing real estate all over town and having a ball. Slow market, like everywhere, but she knows the neighborhoods and the schools. Jason’s on the wrestling team, Kit’s doing indoor—oh, I get it. If everything’s okay on the practice and home fronts, how come I drag you in here on ten hours notice?”
“Something like that.”
A waitress in a tux came to the table and asked if we’d like to order. Both of us went with orange juice, eggs Benedict, and a basket of muffins.
When she was beyond earshot, Tommy said, “It’s not for me. It’s for somebody I owe.”
Tommy’s oblique way of reminding me that I still owed him for a favor.
“I’m listening.”
He coaxed another cigarette from the Camel soft pack. “Okay if I …?”
“The smoke doesn’t bother me if the surgeon general doesn’t bother you.”
A match from the little box on the table flared, giving Tommy for an instant the look of a combat soldier, the curly hair still full enough to mimic a helmet. “Who would’ve thought, twenty, thirty years ago that someday you’d have to ask permission to light up?”
When I didn’t say anything, he took a deep draw, then put the cigarette down, using the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to tweezer bits of tobacco from his tongue. “The guy approached me because he’s not a lawyer himself, but he wants confidentiality in sounding you out.”
“Tommy, the licensing statute requires me to maintain the confidentiality of whatever the client tells me.”
“Right, right. And this guy knows that. It’s just … well, he wouldn’t exactly be the client.”
“Somebody wants to talk with me—”
“Wants me to talk with you—”
“But this somebody wouldn’t be my actual client?”
“Right.”
Our orange juice arrived. I sipped it. Fresh-squeezed, not from concentrate. Like the difference between chardonnay and Ripple. “Okay, I’m still listening.”
“A friend of this guy is getting threats.”
“Threats. Like over the telephone?”
“Like through the mail. Cut-and-paste jobs using words from magazines.”
“The friend of the guy been to the police?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
“The secretary of the friend of the guy tried—”
“Tommy, this is getting a little out of hand. How about some real names.”
He turned that over, shook his head. “How about some titles to make it easier?”
“Titles.”
“Until you know whether you’re interested or not.”
“Okay. Titles.”
Tommy pulled on the Camel, wisps of smoke wending out of his nostrils. “The guy I owe, let’s call him the Activist. His friend who’s getting the threats, let’s call the friend the Professor. The Professor’s secretary—”
“Tried going to the police.”
“Right.”
“And?”
“And the cops can’t do much. I’m not into criminal law, but I’m assuming they checked the notes for fingerprints or postmarks and all, and came up empty.”
“So you want me to do what?”
“I want you to talk to the Activist and the Secretary as my agent, if you’re willing.”
“As your agent.”
“Right.”
“Talk to them about what, bodyguarding the Professor?”
“No, no. She—they can talk to you more about that.”
“Tommy …”
“Look, John, I know this sucks a little, but like I said, I owe the guy.”
“The Activist.”
“Right.”
“Can you at least tell me how you owe this guy?”
Tommy took another puff. “When I was with that firm in Boston, they were real civil rights conscious.”
“Good thing to be.”
“Yeah, well, most of us young associates signed up as volunteers, whatever, for different causes through the BBA.”
“Boston Bar Association?”
“Right, right. I drew …”
He stopped, took a puff out of sequence. “I drew this activist, and after I helped him out a couple of times, he started throwing a lot of business my way, business I really needed once I broke off on my own.”
“Activist, Professor, Secretary.”
“Huh?”
“Tommy, these don’t sound like people who need the layers of confidentiality you’re throwing up around them.”
“John, that’s kind of their business, don’t you think?”
“Tommy, you want me to meet with them, it’s kind of my business, don’t you think?”
He put a casual look on his face, checking the room. “This activist, John, he’s … Alec Bacall.”
“Rings a bell somewhere.”
“He’s a gay activist, John.”
Bacall. Majored in housing and employment rights, minored in AIDS issues. “Tommy, the professor here. Maisy Andrus?”
He flinched. “Keep your voice down, okay?”
“The right-to-die fanatic.”
Tommy reddened. “She’s not—” He caught himself speaking too loudly, our waitress thinking he meant her to come over. Tommy shook her off with an apologetic smile.
More quietly, Tommy said to me, “She’s not a fanatic, John. She was a professor of mine, back in law school.”
“At Boston College?”
“Right, right. Before she went over to Mass Bay.”
I waited for Tommy to say something about my year as a student at the Law School of Massachusetts Bay. He didn’t.
I said, “So Andrus was a professor of yours.”
“And she helped me get that first job, at the law firm. Letter of recommendation, couple of phone calls, I found out later.”
“So you owe her too.”
“Yeah.”
“And now she’s being threatened.”
Tommy ground out the cigarette. “Right.”
“And she turns to you to turn to me.”
“No, no, Alec—Bacall—is the one who called me.”
I sat back. Watching him.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Quite a coincidence.”
“Huh?”
“You contacting me to maybe help these people who preach the quick-and-happy ending.”
Tommy looked very uncomfortable. Which was as good an answer as my next question could bring.
“John, look—”
“Tommy. I lost Beth to cancer, slowly. Bacall pushes the right to die for AIDS victims, Andrus casts a wider net. I’m the first one you think of?”
“John, I’m sorry. I should have … Look, I owe these people. From a long time ago, but I owe them. I once mentioned to Alec about Beth. Not directly, just that I could understand his position because I had a good friend who became a private investigator partly because his wife died. I never used your name or Beth’s, it was just …”
“An example.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, but yeah. Then Alec calls me yesterday, and the guy’s got a mind like a steel trap. He remembers me mentioning your situation, John. And he asks me to ask you.”
Picking up my orange juice, I pictured Tommy dropping everything to help me with Empire and with Beth. To Tommy bailing me out when I was filling a hospital bed, a bullet hole in my shoulder and a skeptical D.A. on my neck.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Great, great. Uh, John?
”
“Yes.”
“Today maybe?”
Nancy was at work, catching up on some research. After one more stop in the neighborhood, I’d be free for the afternoon.
“Two o’clock, Tommy. My office on Tremont Street.”
“Alec said he’d be at the professor’s house, so I’ll call them now. I really appreciate this, John.”
Getting up, Tommy got his feet tangled in the napkin and nearly fell into our waitress and eggs Benedict.
Three
“JOHN, YOU WORKING out formal now?”
Gesturing at my coat and tie, Elie put his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on the front desk. His olive skin and blue eyes were twin legacies from the broad gene pool in Lebanon. Maybe twelve people were using the Nautilus machines in the large room behind him, a separate aerobics class thumping in the back studio.
“I was in yesterday, Elie. You got a minute?”
“Sure, sure. How can I help you?”
I waited for a heavyset man in a Shawmut Bank T-shirt to dismount the Lifecycle closest to the desk and head for the showers.
“Not for publication, but I’m thinking about running the marathon.”
A look of concern. “Boston?”
“Right.”
“You still doing what, three to five miles?”
“Three times a week. Most weeks, anyway.”
“John, I’m not a runner, but if I was as big as you, I wouldn’t try it.”
“Why not?”
“Running is awful tough on the joints over the longer distances. Your size and weight, there’s going to be a lot of stress on the knees, hips, even the ankles.”
“Can’t I train for that?”
“I don’t think you can train without that. But like I said, I’m not a runner, and unfortunately, nobody on the staff here is. Biking and rowing, sure. But the marathon? No.”
“How can I find somebody?”
“You mean like to train you? That costs a fortune. Tell you what. I can go through some magazines at the library.”
“Magazines?”
“Yeah, like Runner’s World, that kind of thing. They got to have an article on doing your first marathon.”
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