The only good Lawyer

would go out with ‘inappropriate’ women as well, including the victim in a case he prosecuted.”
    “I told you the last time, Woodrow and I—”
    “Just the blond wig, Mrs. Spaeth?”
    Her mouth stayed open, but nothing came out.
    I said, “Just that one, or others as well?”
    Nicole Spaeth dropped her eyes to the sculpted carpet, as though scanning the pattern from above for something she’d dropped. “I think you’d better leave.”
    “I have to hear what happened that night.”
    “Well, I don’t want to hear it.” She closed her eyes now. “Out loud, I mean. Bad enough to have what happened inside me without having to... relive it.” Mindful of not pushing her too much, I said, “Can it get any worse?”
    Spaeth rose from the sofa. “I’ll be just a minute.”
    “Mrs.—”
    “I’m not going to run away or anything stupid like that. I just need to check, make sure Terry’s in his room.”
    I nodded.
    She was gone only long enough for me to send my eyes around the room, thinking this might have been a happy home once, in the long, long ago.
    When Nicole Spaeth sat back down, she was stiff and, if possible, even more tired. “I couldn’t hear Terry, you see, so I wanted to be sure he couldn’t hear us. He’s watching TV, with that little earplug attachment so the set doesn’t blare. Terry likes it loud, but he also knows how much that bothers me.”
    I nodded again, not rushing her.
    Spaeth brought both hands to her knees, maybe like the sixth-graders I remembered her saying she taught. “That last year with Alan here was a nightmare, and when I met Uta Radachowski at the Literacy Fund benefit, I was so glad she could recommend a divorce lawyer for me. Even gladder when I actually met Woodrow.”
    “Why?”
    “I realized immediately that Alan couldn’t intimidate him. My husband’s bark has always been worse than his bite, but he can be pretty scary sometimes. Believe me.” Spaeth stared into space. “As a prosecutor, though, Woodrow had seen the worst the world can offer—gang kids, rapists, murderers—and he handled Alan beautifully, just tied him in knots over everything. I began looking to Woodrow on every problem, and he’d solve it. Oh, I took psychology courses in college, and I knew that I was just transferring onto him as kind of a surrogate spouse, to help me through the real-spouse divorce, but... Well, it went further than that.”
    “Sexually?”
    “Yes. Not at first. We’d just go out. But Woodrow said it would be bad to be seen together. Lunch wouldn’t matter; but drinks and dinner? Not exactly within the attorney-client relationship. So he asked if I could kind of...”
    “Disguise yourself.”
    The hazel eyes came back to me, a thumbnail picking at the cuticles on her fingers. “Yes. Frankly, I didn’t mind at first. The kids I teach at school have parents, and if somebody’s mother or father happened to see me ‘stepping out,’ things wouldn’t get better in the classroom.”
    “At first.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You said you didn’t mind the disguise stuff ‘at first.’ What about later?”
    “Woodrow started to get weird about it. He liked me to... stay in costume, so to speak.” Spaeth seemed uncertain now. “You understand what I mean?”
    “In the bedroom.”
    “Yes.” She looked away. “Not just in the... bedroom, either. Woodrow was a very... imaginative man. One of the reasons I continued seeing him. He made me feel desirable again.”
    I didn’t want to say anything to ruin that for Spaeth, but she looked back at me, suddenly energized. “Oh, I know I wasn’t the only one. And I also know I was crazy in these plague-ridden times to be seeing a man who wasn’t monogamous, even if I did insist on a condom. But I didn’t have other options, and frankly, except for the guilt of ‘sneaking around,’ I liked the option he provided me just fine.”
    Now Nicole Spaeth dwindled a little. “At least until that night.”
    Quietly, I said, “Tell me about it.”
    She worried her fingers some more. “We picked evenings when Terry had something to do. That night, he was staying over at a friend’s house to hear what they call ‘Bachelor Pad’ music.” A weak smile. “Ironic, huh?” Even the weak smile faded. “Well, Woodrow and I had been to the Viet Mam restaurant before. The food wasn’t great, but it wasn’t crowded, either and neither of us had ever seen anybody there we knew.”
    I thought about Nguyen Trinh,