Right to Die

wainscoting, pausing for a moment on the bay window overlooking Newbury Street . The shoppers below bustled around half an hour before the boutiques would open for Christmas-season high rollers. We had a corner all to ourselves, the yuppies holding off until after twelve, when the booze could start to flow.
    Tommy’s rounded face seemed to lift a little, making him look younger. “You know, my old law firm used to own this place.”
    “I didn’t know. The Boston one, you mean?”
    “Right, right. Firm got started before the turn of the century, one of the first in the city to decide to make a Jew a partner. When word leaked out about that, the downtown eating clubs very politely told the firm’s established partners, ‘Well, you understand, of course, that we can’t serve him here.’ At which point the partners basically looked at each other, said ‘fuck you’ to the clubs, and bought a restaurant downtown for lunch meetings and this one here in Back Bay for dinner.”
    “So they could eat where they wanted.”
    “With whoever they wanted, including the new Jewish partner.”
    “The firm still run the place?”
    “No, no. Sometime after I went out on my own in Dedham , they sold it. Back then, though, it was heady stuff for a young lawyer like me to be able to walk into one of the finest restaurants in Boston and be treated like the king of Siam .”
    “Your practice going well?”
    “The practice? Oh, yeah, yeah. Couldn’t be better. We’re at eight attorneys now with the associate we brought in last week. Evening grad from New England .”
    Nancy ’s alma mater. “Kathy and the kids?”
    “Terrific. She’s gone and got her real estate ticket. Salesman, not broker yet, but that’ll come in time. She’s showing real estate all over town and having a ball. Slow market, like everywhere, but she knows the neighborhoods and the schools. Jason’s on the wrestling team, Kit’s doing indoor—oh, I get it. If everything’s okay on the practice and home fronts, how come I drag you in here on ten hours’ notice?”
    “Something like that.”
    A waitress in a tux came to the table and asked if we’d like to order. Both of us went with orange juice, eggs Benedict, and a basket of muffins.
    When she was beyond earshot. Tommy said, “It’s not for me. It’s for somebody I owe.”
    Tommy’s oblique way of reminding me that I still owed him for a favor.
    “I’m listening.”
    He coaxed another cigarette from the Camel soft pack. “Okay if I...?”
    “The smoke doesn’t bother me if the surgeon general doesn’t bother you.”
    A match from the little box on the table flared, giving Tommy for an instant the look of a combat soldier, the curly hair still full enough to mimic a helmet. “Who would’ve thought, twenty, thirty years ago that someday you’d have to ask permission to light up?”
    When I didn’t say anything, he took a deep draw, then put the cigarette down, using the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to tweezer bits of tobacco from his tongue. “The guy approached me because he’s not a lawyer himself, but he wants confidentiality in sounding you out.”
    “Tommy, the licensing statute requires me to maintain the confidentiality of whatever the client tells me.”
    “Right, right. And this guy knows that. It’s just... well, he wouldn’t exactly be the client.”
    “Somebody wants to talk with me—”
    “Wants me to talk with you—”
    “But this somebody wouldn’t be my actual client?”
    “Right.”
    Our orange juice arrived. I sipped it. Fresh-squeezed, not from concentrate. Like the difference between char-donnay and Ripple. “Okay, I’m still listening.”
    “A friend of this guy is getting threats.”
    “Threats. Like over the telephone?”
    “Like through the mail. Cut-and-paste jobs using words from magazines.”
    “The friend of the guy been to the police?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “What exactly?”
    “The secretary of the friend of the guy tried—”
    “Tommy, this is getting a little out of hand. How about some real names.”
    He turned that over, shook his head. “How about some titles to make it easier?”
    “Titles.”
    “Until you know whether you’re interested or not.”
    “Okay. Titles.”
    Tommy pulled on the Camel, wisps of smoke wending out of his nostrils. “The guy I owe, let’s call him the Activist. His friend who’s getting the threats, let’s call the friend the Professor. The Professor’s secretary—”
    “Tried