Mistress of Justice

’bout Brittany?”
    “Couldn’t make it.”
    The lawyer’s eyes were immeasurably relieved and Taylor remembered something from the club about unreturned phone calls.
    Then Bosk’s eyes danced to Taylor. “ ’Lo. You’re …?”
    “Taylor Lockwood.”
    “Right, you’re the one who won’t marry me.”
    “True, but you’re in good company.” She nodded at Sebastian. “I won’t marry him either. You have a nice place here.”
    “Thanks. I’ll show you around later. Come on inside. We’ve got a fire going.”
    After she’d washed up she joined the crowd in the den. They were mostly in their twenties. Names went past—Rob and Mindy and Gay-Gay and Trevor and Windham and MacKenzie (the latter both female), clusters of contemporary syllables more distinct than the faces of the handsome men and pretty women they identified.
    Taylor smiled and waved and forgot the names instantly. They were friendly but reserved and Taylor wondered what they were thinking of her—a woman with more wop and mick in her than Brit, with a mass of kinky black hair, not a pert ponytail, and wearing a long paisley skirt and a black blouse, not a J. Crew stitch upon her body.
    Suspicion … That was the message from the women.From the men there was something very different. Something between casual flirtation and a knee-jerk invitation to hump. Taylor supposed that soon there’d be a lot of female fingers twining possessively through the belt loops of their men.
    Bosk made martinis for the crowd but Taylor stuck with beer.
    “Are you a lawyer?” one blonde asked.
    “A paralegal.”
    “Oh,” the woman said, blinking. “That’s interesting.”
    “We need you folks,” one handsome young man said as he tinkered nervously with his Rolex. “You save our butts every day.” It seemed he wasn’t being condescending; he was simply embarrassed for her and trying to salvage her pride.
    “Where’re you from? Boston, right? I detect Bostonian.”
    “Born on the North Shore.”
    “Oh, Locust Valley?” a pretty blond woman asked. The residence of the crème de la crème. J. P. Morgan’s home.
    “No, Glen Cove.” A pleasant but strip-malled city. “But we moved to Maryland when I was twelve.”
    “Is your father or mother in the business?”
    “Which business would that be?” Taylor asked innocently.
    “Law, banking?” As if no other businesses existed.
    “He manages a convenience store,” she replied.
    Sebastian, who’d already commented about her father and his renowned law practice, glanced at her with a cryptic look.
    “Well, retail,” one girl finally said, nodding with robust approval. “Good margins in retail lately.”
    “Very good,” somebody else added.
    And to her relief, Taylor Lockwood ceased to be a human being as far as they were concerned and their own conversation—the real and important conversation—resumed.

     
    Dinner was Ada’s jurisdiction.
    She presided with the quiet authority of someonefor whom social propriety is statutory. Somewhere, in a three-decades-old volume of Emily Post, this very layout of Waterford and Wedgwood was represented. Though the clothing was supposed to be casual, Ada’s appearance in a rustling silk dress, black-velvet headband and necklace gripping a lemon-colored stone the size of a fat thumb made it clear that, whatever happened in the frat dining halls or eating clubs these youngsters were accustomed to, dinner in this particular house would be governed by a respectable modicum of formality.
    Taylor tried a vain end run around the seating (“Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to sit there?”); Ada smilingly steered her away from Bosk’s girlfriend (a potential source of information about the “project”), scolding, “Boy, girl, boy, girl …”
    Lobster bisque, a pear-and-Camembert salad, tiny veal chops surrounded by a yin-yang swirl of pureed peas and carrots, a green salad. A real butler served the meal.
    Between polite words with the young man on her right Taylor tried to overhear the conversation between Bosk and Sebastian but Ada’s voice was too loud—she was a lock-jawed caricature of Long Island money. She touched the men’s arms with her dark, bony fingers and flirted fiercely. Yet their hostess knew this game as well as she knew the proper wording for bread-and-butter notes. She had no intention of seducing these boys; the only organ at play here was her ego—though sex was a strong undercurrent of the meal and crude jokes, some of