34
LEAH WAS making Duncan dinner. They’d been e-mailing every day or so since dinner at Jean Georges, but it’d taken a while for their schedules to mesh for meeting up again. Duncan hadn’t been in any hurry; whatever was going on here, he needed to proceed slowly and very carefully. But then Leah had complicated that by proposing Friday-night dinner at her apartment.
She lived in a penthouse loft in Tribeca, walking distance from where the Aurora Tower was under construction. While considerably smaller and less ostentatious than her father’s town house, Leah’s loft was far more stylish, with muted colors, exposed brick, and hardwood floors.
Only the bedroom and bathroom were walled off; the rest of the apartment was open space. Like most New Yorkers, Duncan was an old hand at eyeballing the size of an apartment: he put this one at over three thousand square feet, which he guessed in this neighborhood put the price around six million. It was a rich person’s apartment without a doubt, but Stephen Blake’s lavish Westchester mansion was probably worth nearly the same.
“This place is amazing,” Duncan said.
“I feel a little weird living like this. Me without an artistic bone in my body.”
“I’m sure your family has sold plenty of downtown lofts to people who weren’t artists.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not part of the problem. Drink?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got both colors of wine, vodka, gin, scotch, brandy, and port.”
“Cigars?” Duncan said, arching an eyebrow.
Leah smiled. “I know, I’m a sixty-something man trapped in a thirty-something woman’s body.”
“I’ll have what you’re having,” Duncan said. “So long as you’re not having port.”
Leah headed to the kitchen, instructing Duncan to sit, so he went over to the couch. He looked around the room, his attention caught by a large piece of contemporary art, two shadowy figures enveloped in an abstract red landscape, like they were emerging from flames.
Leah returned with two glasses of white wine. She handed one to Duncan and settled onto the couch beside him. She was dressed casually, in a dark skirt and a short-sleeved cream-colored shirt. Her hair was loose, unlike whenever Duncan had seen her in a professional context.
“So there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Duncan said.
“That’s your business voice, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Leah shook her head. “It’s Friday night, Duncan, and I just poured us wine. Are you one of those lawyers without an off switch?”
“I wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t important,” Duncan said, though he was already having second thoughts.
“Is it something that you want me to do something about tonight?”
“It’s not urgent in that sense, no.”
“Well, then, shut up and drink,” Leah said with a smile.
“Will do,” Duncan said, feeling chagrined. He still wasn’t sure where the line was between business and personal stuff between him and Leah, but clearly being in her apartment on a Friday night was not on the business side of it.
“Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes,” Leah said, clearly talking to fill the dead air.
“You really didn’t have to cook, you know.”
“Of course I didn’t have to. But I thought it would be nice. Plus I get to show you that I’m actually capable of doing it, which I thought would impress you.”
“I never had any doubt that you could fend for yourself,” Duncan said. “Though I certainly feel honored that you’d go to such trouble on my account.”
“You didn’t answer my question before,” Leah said. “About whether you have an off switch.”
“From being a lawyer? Not as much as I would like. It becomes harder to turn off with each passing year.”
“That was one of the reasons I never practiced,” Leah said. “I thought law school was useful in terms of learning some methods of thought, but ultimately the lawyer’s view of the world always struck me as a little parched.”
“Parched?”
“Yeah, you know, dry. Desert-like. I worried that it appealed to the side of me that I didn’t want to give myself over to.”
“What side is that?”
“The side that plays my life like a chess game,” Leah said, putting her wineglass down on a coaster on the coffee table before standing up. “I’ve got to step back into the kitchen. Why don’t you put some music on?”
“Sure,” Duncan said. He made his way over to the iPod that was plugged into Leah’s stereo receiver. Duncan shuffled around on it for a couple of minutes, checking out Leah’s taste, before selecting an old Sade album he hadn’t heard in over a dozen years, Leah giving him a bemused look as it came on.
“Is this what you played to seduce girls in college?”
“No,” Duncan said. “But come to think of it, I think maybe a girl played it once when she wanted to seduce me.”
Dinner was broiled swordfish with a rice pilaf, simple but well prepared. Leah dimmed the track lighting over the dining room table, which served to accentuate the extent to which “Smooth Operator” was indeed booty music.
“You’re smiling to yourself,” Leah said.
“Was I?”
“Can I take that as a sign that you’re finally relaxing a little?”
“It’s probably the wine,” Duncan said.
“Then by all means keep drinking if that’s what it’s going to take.”
“Take to do what?”
“For you to forget you’re my lawyer.”
Duncan forced a smile, feeling uncomfortable with the subject. “The swordfish is terrific,” he said after a moment.
“You sound surprised.”
“Not at all. I’m sure you succeed at everything you try.”
“Right,” Leah said dryly. “I’ll never know where I would’ve ended up without the running start of my family. That’s the trade-off of being born with money: you never really get to take your own measure.”
After dinner Leah poured them both glasses of port. Duncan took it in the spirit offered. “This is mad tasty, actually,” he said, after sipping.
“Port is underrated,” Leah said. “Even without cigars. So should I give you the tour?”
“The tour?” Duncan said, gesturing out at the room. “Can’t we do that from here?”
“You can’t see everything from here. The bedroom, for example.”
“By all means, then,” Duncan said. “Give me the tour.”
LEAH KEPT her eyes open while making love. Duncan found it disconcerting: it added a different level of intimacy—almost too much, at least for the first time. Leah had a pale, thin body, the arc of her rib cage visible as she lay on her back. Duncan worked his way down her body, tasting her, then slowly back up, kissing her neck as she guided him in. He took his time, moving slowly, catching her gaze, then kissing her small breasts as a way to avoid eye contact. Leah was quiet in bed, hard to read. Duncan lasted as long as he could, unable to detect any approach of an orgasm in her, and finally let himself go. She kissed his neck as he subsided, her hand stroking his hair.
“I have to tell you,” Duncan said, settling in beside her, “you give great tour.”
“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about before?”
Duncan laughed. “We couldn’t talk business before dinner, but we can in bed?”
“I didn’t want our evening to turn into work,” Leah replied. “Now I’m not so much worried about that.”
“It can wait.”
“What was the topic?”
“Honestly, this isn’t the time.”
“Just tell me what it’s about,” Leah said, her voice playful, though Duncan thought that might be a front.
“If I tell you what it’s about, we’re just going to end up talking about it.”
“But now I’m all curious.”
Duncan rubbed his eyes and sat up a little in bed. He could tell Leah wasn’t going to let it go. “I was at Jack Pellettieri’s deposition,” he said. “And something kinda strange happened at lunch. Pellettieri was pissed, and he told me to tell my boss that he’d done like he was supposed to, meaning taking the rap for the accident.”
“Did you tell Blake this?”
“Pellettieri wasn’t talking about Blake,” Duncan said. “I think he was talking about either your brother or your father.”
Duncan could feel Leah stiffen beside him. “What makes you say that?”
“I could be wrong,” Duncan said quickly. “Pellettieri wasn’t exactly a model of clarity. But he was talking about somebody inside your shop, not mine; I’m pretty sure of that.”
“What’re you saying?”
“I don’t know what exactly’s going on, but I know enough to know that I probably don’t want to know. And I have no idea what if anything you know about it. But it’s a dangerous game to be playing, that’s all. Pellettieri didn’t strike me as so in control.”
“We’re not playing any game,” Leah said angrily.
“Look, I’m not—this is me as your lawyer—as your ally. I can’t protect you from things I don’t know anything about. I’m not going to try to figure out what it is, and we can never talk about it again, but I thought I should tell somebody that Pellettieri gave me a message to pass on.”
“I’ve never even met Jack Pellettieri,” Leah said.
“Let’s forget it,” Duncan said.
“Sorry if I was snappish just now,” Leah said after a moment. “It’s a dreary business, is all. The accident, I mean.”
“Can we adjourn the meeting?” Duncan said, putting his hand on Leah’s hip.
“By all means,” Leah said as she turned toward him.
DUNCAN HAD left his BlackBerry at home when he’d come over to Leah’s apartment—a rare indulgence, even on a Friday. He and Leah ended up going out for brunch in the morning, and it was well into the afternoon by the time Duncan got back to his apartment.
The first thing he did upon getting in was pick up his BlackBerry. It was pathetic, Duncan thought, how completely tethered to the f*cking thing he was. Unless he was asleep or in court he rarely went much more than an hour without checking his e-mail, and sure enough he had a dozen new messages since yesterday evening, as well as a voice mail. He skimmed the messages, not seeing anything that couldn’t wait until Monday, then checked the phone message.
He was surprised to hear his father’s voice. Max rarely called him; they hadn’t spoken in a month. His father’s message was from eleven last night, asking Duncan to call back as soon as he could, his voice tight and muted.
Duncan returned the call. “Something wrong?” Duncan said, after his father picked up on the second ring.
“It’s your mother,” Max said.
“Is she okay?” Duncan asked, but he already knew she wasn’t, that it was bad, though just how bad he didn’t know, not until he heard his father say the impossible words, tell him that his mother was dead.