Dirt

time for them. They usually spent two or three nights a week together. “You look wonderful today.” He poured her a glass of wine and waved at a waiter, who brought menus.
    “I’ll just have the wine,” she said. “I can’t really stay for lunch.”
    “You came all the way uptown for a glass of wine?”
    She looked him in the eye. “It hasn’t been going well, Stone, you and I.”
    “Funny, I thought it was going extremely well,” he replied.
    “You would think that,” she said. “Fact is, I don’t like sneaking around so the other lawyers I deal with won’t know; I don’t like recusing myself from your cases and not being able to say why; and good sex isn’t enough.” “I thought we had more going than sex,” he said.
    “I thought so, too, for a while, but I was wrong. We meet each other’s needs, to a point, and that point ends right after sex.”
    “You’ve met somebody, haven’t you?”
    She shrugged.
    “Haven’t you?”
    “All right, I have; actually, it’s somebody I’ve known for a long time but am getting to know better.”
    “It’s the real thing?”
    “I don’t know about that yet. It might be, if I can devote some time to it.”
    Stone nodded. “And I’m using up a lot of time.”
    “You’re using up a lot of
me
, Stone, and I’m not getting enough back.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “No need to be sorry; you’ve always been straight with me. I know you don’t have any interest in marriage, and I thought that was okay, but it’s just not. I need something in my life with a future. I’m thirty-four, and I want kids before I’m forty.” “I can understand that,” Stone said into his wine glass.
    “Not really,” she said. “It’s just not something you can empathize with. You’re a sweet man, Stone, in lots of ways, but deep down inside you’re very … contained. I almost said cold, but that would be a bum rap. You’re just not … easy to reach. I’m probably not the first woman to tell you something like that.” Stone shrugged. He didn’t want to confirm it, but she was right. “So, who’s the guy?”
    “Tom Bill.”
    “Judge Thomas Bill?”
    “Right. Don’t worry, I won’t ever tell him about us. He’s the jealous type, and he could make your life miserable in court.”
    “That he could. What about you? Are you going to make my life miserable?”
    “Not in court,” she said, allowing herself a small smile. “You’ll be miserable later, when you figure out what you’ve lost.”
    “I’m already miserable,” he said.
    “Not really, but you will be. That’ll be my little revenge for your not taking me seriously.”
    “I always took you seriously.”
    “Not seriously enough.” She shrugged. “Your loss.”
    “My loss,” he agreed.
    She sighed. “Well, that’s about it, I guess.”
    “Sure you don’t want some lunch?”
    “I’m due back in court at two; I’d better get going.” She stood up.
    He stood up with her, at a loss for words.
    “See you in court,” she said, and left.
    Stone sat quietly, staring at the tablecloth.
    A waiter approached. “The lady won’t be lunching?” he asked.
    “The lady won’t be lunching.”
    “And what would you like, Mr. Barrington?”
    “Sometimes I wonder that myself,” Stone replied.
     
Chapter 14
     
    On Friday evening Amanda stood naked before her dressing room mirror and regarded her body. She had exercised her whole life, and never more regularly than during the past ten years. The effort showed in her trim figure; what few defects had appeared with age she had had adjusted — a little off the tops of the thighs, a slight lifting and augmentation of the breasts, and she was not all that different from the girl she had been at eighteen, during her first year at Barnard.
    She had been born Ida Louise Erenheim in Delano, Georgia, to a father and mother who had both worked their whole lives at Delano Mills, one of a group owned by the prominent Delano family of Atlanta, who had founded her home town and for whom it had been named. The girl’s earliest memories were of her mother picking lint from her hair after a ten-hour day among the looms.
    Ida Louise had discovered early the importance of her beauty, at first to the girls who were her social betters in the town and later to the boys from the better families. She had also been a very bright child, good in school and mature beyond her years. At a time when her girlfriends were giggling about sex at pajama parties, Ida Louise