The Book of Air and Shadows

the weather a little chilly, so that you knew the summer was over for sure, and there was a threat of rain in the air. People were in raincoats, as was I. I can see my raincoat, a tan Aquascutum, hanging on a coat-stand in the corner of my office, which is smallish for a partner’s office, but comfortable enough. Our building is on Madison in the low Fifties, and through my window I can see one of the monitory spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, this view being nearly my sole connection to the religion of my youth. My office is furnished in an unpretentious, vaguely modern manner reminiscent of Jean-Luc Picard’s ready room on the starship
Enterprise
. I have my diplomas and licenses up on the wall, together with three chrome-framed photographs: one is a professional portrait of my two kids as they looked a few years ago, and another is of me and my son Niko in which I am running alongside him as he learns how to ride a two-wheeler, a quite good shot taken by his mother. The only object in the room that one might consider unusual is the third photograph, which shows a large, crop-haired young man in red-white-and-blue weight-lifting togs holding high a heavy barbell. The barbell is so heavy that it bends slightly at each end, for this athlete is in the 192½ lb+ class, the heaviest, and he is lifting over five hundred pounds. Five hundred thirty-two, to be precise. This person is me, and the photo was shot at the Mexico City games in 1968, where I was part of the U.S. Olympic team. This was more weight than I had ever lifted in the clean-and-jerk and would have got me the bronze medal, but I messed up on the snatch, and Joe Dube took it. I have kept up training since then, at a lower level, of course, but I can still yank somewhat more than a quarter of a ton over my head.
    A perfectly useless skill, which is why I like it, why I took it up. I started at ten with a set of homemade weights and lifted all through high school and college. At present I’m a hair over six feet two and I weigh two-fifty, more or less, eighteen-inch neck, fifty-two chest, and the rest to match. Many people take me for a fat person, which I certainly am not. Since the coming of Arnold, people tend to confuse the use of weights to sculpt the body with competitive weight lifting. They are completely different enterprises. Weight lifters almost never have cut or pretty bodies, which are in any case more to do with the absence of subcutaneous fat than with strength. Any serious heavy-class weight lifter could break Mr. Universe over his knee. Only potentially, of course: I have found it to be the case that large, strong people are mild of temperament unless they are into steroids, which is more and more common nowadays, I fear. I remain nonsteroidally mild, however.
    I see I have drifted yet again. I was just trying to set myself in my office on the relevant day, which was quite an ordinary one, the morning spent at a meeting about Chinese T-shirt piracy of a rock album image, an increasing part of the normal practice of IP law. Quiet meetings, billable hours, the marshaling of expertise, and the delicate suggestion that lawsuits in this business are largely a waste of time, for Chinese piracy of rock album cover images is an unavoidable cost of doing business in our fallen world. I returned to my own office after this meeting-it was about twenty minutes to twelve and I was already looking forward to lunch-but as I passed my secretary’s desk she hailed me. My secretary is Ms. Olivia Maldonado, a young woman both decorative and competent. Many in the office lust after her, as do I, but it is an iron rule here at Geller Linz Grossbart & Mishkin that we don’t screw around with the staff, a rule I entirely support. It was nearly the sole instance of my forbearance in that department, and I was stupidly proud of it.
    I recall she was wearing an outfit I particularly liked, a gray skirt, somewhat clingy, and a dusky rose cardigan sweater with the top two buttons open. Pearl buttons. Her shiny dark hair was wound up on her head and clasped with an amber comb, exposing a small brown beauty mark on the base of her neck, and she had the scent of iris faintly about her.
    There was a man waiting to see me, I learned; he had no appointment, could I squeeze him in? A Mr. Bulstrode. Walk-ins are rare in our business-it’s not as if we’re upstairs from the bail bondsman-and I was intrigued.
    I went into my office and sat behind my desk and shortly