was still asleep and had the phone unplugged.
“What was the phone call,” Laura asked as they were walking back to her house, Dorene trailing behind.
This, he remembered, was one of the things he hated—the suspicion.
“My agent,” he said, “and I can never get right through to him.”
“Just try to give me these few hours, Jared, will you? You'll be back in the world soon enough.”
“You're right. Okay, I'm sorry.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I'm sorry Rob wasn't at lunch,” she said. “I really wanted you guys to meet.”
“Who?”
“Rob. The ex-drug dealer.”
“Next time, then.”
“Can you come back soon?”
“Real soon. I gotta be in L.A. for a week or so, but I can get back right after that. It's for a part,” he added, seeing her disappointment.
They sat on lawn chairs in front of the house, and Jared feared a serious talk was coming on. But Dorene's presence made that unlikely. Laura reached out to take his hand again, and looked into his eyes as tears welled up in her own.
“Oh, Jared, I feel like I'm just this insignificant speck on this rock that's spinning through cold space. If nobody cares about any of us, why should I keep on living?”
“I care.”
“Not enough. Not more than anything. Not enough to come back.”
“Your hand's trembling,” Jared said.
“It's the lithium.” She withdrew her hand and looked at his arm dangling over the side of the lawn chair. “So's yours,” she said. “I noticed earlier.”
He looked at it skeptically. “Jet lag.”
“Oh, come on, Jared.”
“I'm working too hard to be abusing myself,” he said.
“You always tap your foot when you tell a lie.”
“I'm trying to help with your problems,” he said. “I'm functioning quite well out there, thanks.”
After a sullen silence, they began to talk again, about her doctors and her therapy, and eventually, as the sun dropped in the sky and Jared became used to Dorene's presence and the suburban lawn came to resemble other suburban lawns, they talked about their families and the old friends, the people who'd been at the wedding five years before in her parents' backyard.
For a moment, Jared imagines that he and Laura might make a nice life of it, buying one of these big old white houses with fireplaces everywhere, starting a garden, cruising into the city for the theater and dinner. In a way, to surrender to the gentle yoke of domestic life would be such a relief. He knows Laura wants children—and he does, too, before very long. And she's told him about some decent fly-fishing water somewhere in the vicinity. But even now, another world is calling out to Jared from beyond the stone walls and shaded lanes. From down the railroad tracks, south across a river, he can almost hear the buzz that begins anew every night—the brassy clatter of silverware and female voices busy with praise.…
Laura's asking him a question—repeating a question, in fact—about when he will be back. But just then he sees someone coming across the lawn. And when Laura turns to look at the man, her face lights up. He is tall, and young, although his posture seems weary, his gait heavy. The face is familiar, yet in this unfamiliar context it takes Jared a moment to identify it.
He stands up. “Lonnie?”
“Hello, Jared,” the man says.
“Lonnie? No, this is Rob,” Laura says. “The guy I wanted you to meet.”
“We've met,” Rob says. And it's true. Jared's impulse is to flee across the lawn, but he doesn't feel he can move.
And the man he knows as Lonnie and has met many times, this man says, “Welcome.”
1989
Summary Judgment
Everyone imagines it's all about blow jobs, or esoteric skills practiced in the more exclusive brothels of Europe and Asia. But other arts can be just as important to an ambitious woman who is determined to be the wife of a wealthy and powerful man. No one seems to consider how difficult it is to hold the interest of these demanding, distractable males, particularly after one has passed the first blush of youth.
Alysha de Sante was smitten with Billy Laube long before they met; she had already researched his family and his fortune in the days before Mary Trotter's dinner party, and after sitting beside him all evening she was fairly certain that she'd ignited a flame within his barrel chest. Knowing of his fondness for blood sport, she told him how much she loved shooting, and while she hated to brag, she was considered a very good shot indeed. Everyone said so. She