THE UP AND COMER

by Howard Roughan

  Logistics. When the affair first started we had to pick a place to rendezvous at. We discussed renting a small studio, but the more we talked about it the less it seemed like a good idea. Having to sign a lease, nosy neighbors, and the prospect of one day having to hear, "Honey, what are these keys for?" were way too much to handle. No, a hotel would be the better choice, we decided. But which one? Jessica suggested the Paramount. I suggested that we'd have less chance of being discovered if we confessed on Nightline. The idea, I reminded her, was to not have to worry about bumping into friends and acquaintances. The hotel didn't have to be a dive, it merely had to be a little out of the way.

  We settled on the Doral Court, off Lexington on Thirty-ninth Street. It was one of those places that you'd never know was there unless someone pointed it out to you. It was clean, conveniently located for both of us, and had all the pretensions of being discreet.

  We never walked in together and we never left together. The way it worked was like this. One of us, usually me, would be "the early one." This meant that I would go ahead and get the room (using my corporate Am Ex, of course, with the monthly statement being mailed to me at work). Once in the room, I would call Jessica at her office and let her know the room number. Ten minutes later we'd be between the sheets.

  Two, maybe three times a week this would happen. At Jessica's office she would claim that she was taking lunch. At my office, where eating at your desk was the norm, I claimed to be going off to the gym. I even carried a gym bag around with me.

  To some people, I imagine, this would all seem a little paranoid. Then again, those people have probably never had an affair. The odd thing was, all the precautions had become more than two people making sure they wouldn't get caught. They had become part of the attraction. Simply put, the secrecy was a turn-on. It made the bond between us stronger. And yes, it made the sex better.

  * * *

  I picked up lunch for the two of us and headed over to the hotel. Checking in had become almost comical. The day shift had obviously come to recognize me, and it wasn't too long before they figured out what was going on. Naturally, they pretended not to know, and in doing so had turned somewhat robotic in their actions. They would smile and say all the pleasantries required of them, but their movement was stiff around me, and all of them avoided making unnecessary eye contact. All of them, that is, except for Raymond.

  Raymond, as his name tag read, was a young black guy who stood out not because of his skin color but because he seemed actually to enjoy his job. While his co-workers all wore the faces of opportunities missed, Raymond walked around like he had grabbed the brass ring. He was tall and lanky, with a shaved head and a diamond stud in his left ear. I had little doubt that his supervisor had checked some handbook when he first started to see if male employees were in fact allowed to have an earring.

  Not only did Raymond know what was going on, but he let me know that he knew. It was a look. A slight smile combined with a tilt of his head as he would hand me my room key. It wasn't as if he was trying to embarrass me. If anything, it was more like, Hey, man, does she have a sister?

  Raymond didn't check me in this time, though. It was Brian. He was new to the hotel and had only been working there a couple of weeks. This was the second time he had waited on me. I pictured him at the coffee machine in some backroom being clued in by another employee about me and my nooners. Did he laugh? Did he want to know more? Or did he simply nod, not really giving a shit? Perhaps Jessica and I were just one of many affairs that were going on in the hotel. Maybe there was a whole parade of indiscretions passing back and forth in front of these guys. It was a big city, after all.

  "Here's your room key, Mr. Randall. Enjoy your stay."

  You bet I will, Brian.

  There's a weird sense of anticipation when you walk into a hotel room for the first time. Even when you basically know what it's going to look like. A bed, a bathroom, a television, a desk or table of some kind. Except now it's suddenly your bed, your bathroom, your television, your desk or table. At least for the night Or in my case, just an hour or so in the afternoon.

  First things first, I headed straight for the phone and dialed. One ring.

  "This is Jessica," she said.

  "Room four-oh-six."

  "Okay."

  We both hung up and I leaned back against the headboard. I was a terrible waiter, regardless of whether or not the wait was for something good. My parents (we'll get to them) maintained that it was because I was born nearly a month premature. The pattern was set, they said — it made me a restless child who in turn grew up to be a restless adult. While that's a little too simplistic for my liking, I will concede that from the womb to my marriage, I perhaps wasn't much for the feeling of confinement.

  I checked my watch. Twelve-twenty-seven. I opened my gym bag and took out my toothbrush and a tube of Colgate. Improved oral hygiene: the unintended benefit of having an affair.

  I checked my watch again, this time with better breath. Twelve-thirty-two. I started to pace, something I did a lot, and when that didn't cut it, I sat back down. I grabbed the remote and turned on the television. A soap opera appeared. A very good-looking woman was telling a very good-looking man that she couldn't take it anymore. She didn't say what the "it" was that she could no longer take, but she looked really serious. Time was you couldn't pay me to watch this stuff. Way too ridiculous. Now it didn't seem so far-fetched.

  Finally, a knock on the door. When I opened it, Jessica came bursting in with an angry huff.

  "My boss is such an asshole!"

  "What happened?" I asked her.

  "She's an asshole, that's what happened. I'm the top producer in the entire group, and the bitch reshuffled my accounts around without consulting me first. I can't fucking believe her; it's like she can feel me breathing down her neck!"

  "You know, if I wanted to hear complaining I've got a wife I can call," I wanted to say but didn't. "That sucks," is what actually came out of my mouth. Not that that did any good. I don't even think she heard me. I'd never been too adept at knowing when to keep talking and when to shut up around a woman, especially an angry one. I was pretty sure, though, that this was a shut-up moment. So that's what I did. I stayed quiet. Turned out I was right. After steaming for a little while longer, Jessica abruptly stopped.

  "Oh, god, I'm sorry," she said with a guilty smile. "It's just that it made me so angry." She started to walk toward me. "I didn't even say hello, did I?" Before I could decide if it was still a shut-up moment, she kneeled down and unzipped my fly. Hello.

  I've been intimate with two Jewish women in my lifetime, neither one of whom had any problem performing oral sex. So much for that theory.

  I returned the favor to Jessica. Then, after concluding with the good old-fashioned missionary position, we broke open the sandwiches and promptly lost track of the time. Before we knew it, it was ten of two. Shit! I had ten minutes to get my ass back to the office and meet with Devine. In thirty minutes, Jessica had to be showing those newly arranged charts of hers to some media slugs at Young & Rubicam. We both dressed in a panic. Were there an Olympic event that involved buttoning a shirt while simultaneously doing a video checkout from a hotel room, I would've surely gotten my face on a Wheaties box.

  Like I said, normally we would stagger our exits as we did our entrances. Then again, normally we weren't scrambling around like extras in a monster movie. One after the other we came flying out of the revolving door to the hotel. It was a minor breach in our security; well worth it, I thought, given the circumstances.

  FIVE

  I came running into the reception area of Campbell & Devine at a minute past two. There was an unmistakable taste of chicken Caesar wrap working its way up my throat. I stopped to catch my breath. As I stood there panting, Josephine, the firm's receptionist, looked up from her magazine. She nodded toward my gym bag, a puzzled expression filling her face.

  "You sure are in lousy shape for a guy who works out so often," she sa
id.

  I laughed, hopefully not too nervously, and headed back to my office.

  "Buzz Donna and have her tell Jack that I'll be by in a minute," I said, passing Gwen.

  Most of the time I returned showered after being with Jessica (hygiene aside, remember I was supposedly at the gym). But on those rare occasions that I couldn't, I would resort to the drawer. The Drawer. Any guy worth his salt has one; any woman for that matter too. A desk drawer filled with the essentials of personal grooming in case you should need a touch-up during the day. Me, I kept it simple: cologne, breath spray, floss, hair gel, a comb. All of which I grabbed and used very quickly while proving once again that the most important item hanging on my wall was not my law degree but the mirror behind my door. With every hair back in place and the smell of sex overpowered by Bulgari for Men, I emerged from my office and made my way toward Devine.

  * * *

  Thomas Methuen Campbell, the Campbell in Campbell & Devine, was a distinguished-looking man with a serene gaze. At least that's what the huge portrait of him in our offices depicted him as. Had I known him, Devine once told me, I would've discovered that his placid exterior was merely a facade. For in fact, beneath it lurked a far darker man.

  According to Devine, Campbell was the last of the great sons of bitches, with a soul that would make even the devil blush. When he died of a heart attack in the fall of 1992, the funeral was mobbed. Ten percent were apparently there to mourn, the rest showed up to make sure he was really dead. There was much to be said about his prowess as a litigator, his ability to make opposing counsel seem weak, and his penchant for getting a jury to eat out of his hand. And through bits and pieces, I heard almost all of it from Devine.

  Originally, the firm was Campbell & Associates, started by Campbell in 1972 after he left the partner track at Silver, Platt, Brown & LePont. He took one client with him, a small outfit called Procter & Gamble. At the time, Monsieur LePont swore that he would get his revenge on Campbell if it was the last thing he did. As it turned out, the last thing LePont did was to fall down in his shower a year later and kill himself. In the greatest of ironies, he slipped on a bar of soap. Ivory, of course: P&G's flagship brand.

  In 1976, Campbell hired Devine fresh out of the University of Vermont Law School. By that point, there were six associates practicing at the firm, all of whom had law degrees from Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. Upon introducing Devine to his colleagues, Campbell announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to meet your control group." A lesser man might have been embarrassed, perhaps even insulted. Devine, on the other hand, told me that he thought it was the funniest fucking thing he'd ever heard.

  After a few apprentice-type years, Devine went on to what could only be labeled as one hell of a winning streak. He possessed the same ruthlessness as Campbell in the courtroom, the difference being that he did it with a smile. As a team, they were good cop-bad cop at its best, and while the sign on the door may have read Campbell & Associates, to everyone on the street they were soon Campbell & Devine. So it was only a matter of time before Devine asked to make it official. He had a good case, and if there was one thing that Campbell always respected, it was a good case.

  With apparently little resistance and even less fanfare, Campbell bestowed the title of managing partner on Devine in 1988. In doing so he asked for only one concession in return. That when Campbell eventually passed on, Devine would agree to face every tough decision with the following question: What would Campbell do?

  It was a very clever man's stab at immortality.

  * * *

  "How is the Devine Gatekeeper doing today?" I asked Donna, smiling straight back to my molars.

  She barely looked up from her computer and waved me in like a third base coach on Xanax.

  In an article in the Wall Street Journal a few years back, a reporter had described Jack Devine as "Patton with a legal pad." Despite the fact that Devine had no military background and didn't conduct himself in a manner that suggested he did, the description was dead-on. The most obvious reason was the physical similarities between the two men. (Though I've always maintained that Devine actually resembled George C. Scott in the role of Patton more than he did Patton himself.) What really made the moniker stick, however, was more intangible. It was twofold, really. First, Devine, like the famous general, possessed the kind of leadership qualities that demanded greatness from others. Be it out of fear or respect, you never wanted to let Devine down if you reported to him. Never. Second, and a logical extension of the first, was that when it came time to do battle in the courtroom — or any room, for that matter — there were few other men if any that you'd want leading the way.*

  *A revealing footnote to all this: when he read the aforementioned article, Devine's only reaction was to point out that given the infamous slapping incident that tainted Patton's career, the reporter had left himself dangerously open to being sued for libel.

  Devine was on the phone when I entered his office and he motioned for me to take a seat. It was the same seat in front of the same leather-inlaid desk I had sat in when he first interviewed me five years ago. What wasn't the same, or more appropriately, what had developed, was our relationship. Although he had no children of his own, I'll spare you any father-and-the-son-he-never-had analogies. Let's just say the guy must have seen something in me that reminded him of himself. From the get-go it was clear that my doing well was very much a reflection on him.

  Fortunately, I didn't disappoint. With Devine as my mentor I rather quickly established myself as a real up-and-comer. Small firms rarely made title distinctions among associates, but Devine did. You came in as an associate. If you did well, you would eventually become a senior associate. From there you either became partner or of counsel, the common equivalent of "close, but no cigar."

  After three years, I was made a senior associate, the fastest that had ever happened in the history of the firm. Said Devine to me on the day of that promotion, "Philip, I've always believed that the title catches up with the man. In your case, that the title had to stop and puke its brains out a few times along the way from exhaustion should only make you feel that much prouder."

  I smiled, apparently a little too broadly. Devine let me have it.

  "That said, if you let this go to your head, you'll be one young, sorry-assed, out-of-work senior associate."

  Back in his office, Devine was now raising his voice into the phone. "Listen, Bob, I don't give a shit what some damn jury consultant is telling us. Dumbing down the twelve is not the way to go." He rolled his eyes while apparently listening to Bob's response. Then it was his turn again. "What would I do if I were you? I'll tell you what. The first thing I would do is start trying to be a lot more like me!"

  He hung up the phone and gave it the finger. Looking over my way he muttered, "Good weekend?"

  "Yeah, you?"

  "Don't ask."

  "Why, what happened?"

  Devine snarled. "The bitch got caught DUI."

  I knew he was talking about Mrs. Devine, though I wasn't about to appear so quick on the uptake. Bitch or no bitch, she was still my boss's wife. I gave him an "I'm not exactly sure who you're talking about" look.

  "Nice try, Philip," was his response. Nobody could see through bullshit better than Devine.

  "Had she actually been drinking?" I asked.

  "Shit, yeah! Broad daylight too. She was at some champagne brunch for the wives at the club, a little too much champagne. On the way home she dialed direct into a telephone pole."

  "Is she okay?"

  "She's fine," he said. "Though the same can't be said for the car."

  "Totaled?"

  "Practically." Devine began to shuffle some papers on his desk. It was his way of getting down to business. "So guess what you get to do?"

  And to think I thought we'd simply been making small talk.

  He continued: "You get to represent her."

  "I do?"

  One of his thick eyebrows went up. "Why, you don'
t want to?"

  "No, I do. It's just that I thought—"

  "You thought that I would do the honors."

  "Yeah."

  "Philip, I've represented cousins, uncles, a brother-in-law, you name it. Every fucking twig on the family tree. There's one exception, though. I'll never represent someone that I'm sleeping with… wife or otherwise. Do you know why? Because it would jeopardize my objectivity. You follow?"

  I followed.

  Devine leaned in. "You're not banging my wife, by any chance, are you?"

  I loved this guy. "Ah, no, I don't think so."

  "Good. That means you'll be able to keep your objectivity. The only thing I'll ask is that you make it, and I stress, as quick and painless for her as possible. Any questions?"

  I folded my legs. (It had become my way of getting down to business, though I wasn't sure anyone had noticed yet.) "Just a few," I said, knowing full well that Devine hated questions.

  I asked, "Did she call you from the station?"

  "Right in the middle of the Yankees game."

  "So what happened?"

  "I made sure she declined the Breathalyzer in favor of a blood test," he explained. "The more time for the alcohol to metabolize the better."

  I nodded. "That must have made the cops happy."

  "Tickled," he said with a short laugh. "Nothing like having to waste two hours at a hospital, not that the extra time ended up helping. She still came in at point one six."