Dead Certain

worked on for two years had finally gone to trial in the ninth circuit downstate in Springfield. In addition to providing testimony about the investigation conducted by his firm, Elliott had also been retained as a consultant by the counsel for the plaintiff. For the last four months he’d been living at the Ramada Inn with the rest of the legal team and trying to run his business on the weekends. Our only contact was made up of the occasional late-night phone call and one or two hurried lunch dates on days when he’d breezed back into town for a few hours.
    “In terms of the trial, things are pretty intense,” he replied. “We’re actually just taking a ten-minute break. The defense gets our guy on cross tomorrow, and we still have a lot to do before we’re ready.”
    “How did it go on direct?”
    “I’ll tell you when we’re done with the cross.“
    “Doesn’t it make you miss it?”
    “Miss what?”
    “Trying cases yourself,” I replied.
    “Oh, I don’t know. Only when I think I’d do it better.“
    “And would you?”
    “Right now, Carlson’s doing a pretty good job for our side. I’ll give you my final verdict after closing arguments on Friday.”
    “So you think you’ll go to the jury on Friday?”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll be there Saturday night. I promise.“
    “I’m not worried,” I assured him. I let a beat pass. “Are you?”
    “To quote my favorite modern existentialist philosopher, ‘What? Me worry?’ I mean, what on earth could possibly concern me about the evening? Just because it’s our very first official date and I’m going to meet your entire family while dressed in a rented tuxedo—”
    “So I guess you’ve definitely decided to go with the rental then?” I asked, unable to help myself.
    “Oh, come on, Kate. You don’t really expect me to drop that kind of money on a suit I’m only going to wear once, do you? Besides, I went to the tux shop down here by the courthouse, and I’ve got to tell you, the polyester ones look pretty good. I even got the guy to throw in a pair of shoes for free.”
    “I’m dying to see you,” I said, pushing all thought of what my mother was going to have to say about rented shoes out of my mind.
    “I know,” replied Elliott, “I can hardly wait.”
     
    I sat on the floor for a long time, cradling the receiver in my hand and thinking about Elliott. Better than almost anyone, I knew that life turns on a dime. Even so, it seemed remarkable to me that it had come to this. In November it would be six years since my husband Russell died of brain cancer, a year for every month that we were married. What would he have thought of the mess I’d made with Stephen and Elliott and all the rest of it?
    In my heart I prayed he’d have understood. Russell, even when he knew he was dying, believed the world was an enormous place, filled with limitless possibilities. The son of a Polish immigrant, a tailor who read philosophy at night and named his son after the philosopher Bertrand Russell, he’d laughed out loud as he’d swept me up the aisle after we’d said “I do.” Later, on the church steps, as the four hundred guests strewed our way with rose petals, I’d asked him what he’d found so funny. He’d stretched his arms wide, taking it all in, the top hats and the limousines, his mother with her fresh perm and prim polyester dress standing beside my mother in her Givenchy, both women quietly sobbing. “If this isn’t Proof that God has a sense of humor,” he’d declared, “then I don’t know what is.”
    I’d spent six years trying not to ask what God was thinking when he’d given my husband brain cancer, six years filled with work and obligation spent trying not to think of how it all might have turned out differently. Russell had been dead two years before I was tempted back into Stephen Azorini’s bed, but from the beginning I viewed it as an accommodation rather than an act of betrayal.
    For a long time it had somehow seemed to work. Stephen was as committed to building his company as I was to my practice. Social obligations were strictly quid pro quo with the difference worked out in bed. On the surface we were the quintessential power couple, accomplished, photogenic (at least in Stephen’s case), and unencumbered by the inconvenience of obligation or emotion.
    I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to move in with him. Certainly as an attorney I should have known better, but I think I was just