“Relax,” she says, pointing to the chair.
I collapse into the chair and close my eyes. I hear Elizabeth pull the blinds down, lock the door, turn on some music. Tears for Fears is singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” I will never hear this song the same way again.
When she turns the volume up and pulls her chair over to me, I realize the music is to drown out her voice, to counteract any microphones.
“You were hard to find.” She’s whispering. “They wouldn’t tell me where they’d taken you. I started looking around, making phone calls. Finally, I had to file a paper with the judge requesting an injunction. When they kept stalling, I knew it had to be bad, whatever they were doing to you.”
I give her a look to say You have no idea.
“The judge unsealed their brief requesting enhanced techniques. I read what they’d been given permission to do.” She squeezes my hand. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Can I please go home?” My voice sounds like a stranger’s.
“Sorry to say we’re not there yet. They have painted you in a very negative light. Because of some irregularities in their request, however, we may have some openings.”
I’m still trying to figure out Elizabeth Watson. She is dowdy and impossibly thin. Her confidence tells me she has been a real lawyer for a long time.
“Do you work here?” My jaw hurts. My whole body hurts.
She gives me an odd look. “No.”
“Are you a member of The Pact?”
“Yes. Eight years. My partner and I live in San Diego.”
She moves in closer, her mouth only inches from my ear. “We’re not supposed to talk about this. I’m here for a Trust Infraction—because I didn’t have the proper level of trust in my partner.”
“And this was your sentence? Representing me in their kangaroo court?”
“Yes, first offense, I pled out and agreed to do twelve days. Normally, I do trial work for a defense firm in Century City. You’re in very good hands. I’m very, very expensive,” she says; then, smiling, “but free for you.”
Elizabeth Watson smells like hazelnut shampoo. The aroma is comforting. With all my heart, I want to put my head in her lap and sleep.
“My wife is an attorney too,” I say.
I imagine Alice in our home, dressed in her flannel pajamas. She is drinking coffee, reading, sitting at the table, watching the door, waiting for me. I don’t regret marrying her. Even now, even today, even with the buzz bouncing around my body, the pain in my head. For better, for worse. Definitely worse. I don’t regret it.
I close my eyes again. Alice. I dream of Alice.
I dream of our honeymoon. I dream of the wedding. I dream of the trip to sell her father’s house, the ring I carried around in my pocket. When it first arrived, it seemed like just a glorified rock on a metal band, a simple object—pretty, I guess, but insanely overpriced. On the flight, though, and during the days afterward, the ring seemed to take on a kind of magic. I thought about the power it held, the spell I could cast by slipping it on her finger.
I saw the ring as the talisman that would make Alice mine. It seemed so simple. Now I see my plan for what it was: na?ve and somewhat devious.
When I open my eyes, Elizabeth is back at her desk, making notes on her legal pad. She catches me watching her and smiles. “These twelve days were supposed to be easy. And the first ten were. Everyone pled, everything was straightforward. I got them all the best deal I could, and for the most part, they were all very thankful.” She taps the pen on her pad. “And now this.”
“Sorry. Can I call my wife?”
She scribbles something on the legal pad and holds it up for me to read. Bad idea! She crumples the paper, then touches her ears. Someone is listening.
The music is still on. Now it’s Spandau Ballet.
She comes to sit by me again, and leans in to speak quietly. “This judge is a shithead. He’s from the bench of the Second Circuit. I can’t imagine what the fuck he did to wind up here. I’ve read his decisions. He likes compromise, he likes people who are trying to work things out. We really need to plead to something.”
“Anything to get me out of here.”
“In your marriage, Jake,” she says, “what have you done wrong?”
I think for a minute. “Where should I start?”
75
The week before I met Alice, I rented a house at Sea Ranch, a coastal enclave three hours north of San Francisco. It was a gift to myself for finishing my final internship, a grueling year at the clinic. Online, I’d selected a tiny cottage up in the hills—no bedrooms, just a loft with a galley kitchen.
On the drive up, I stopped at the bookstore in Petaluma, the pie shop in Sebastopol, bought groceries in Guerneville, then made my way up the twisting coastal highway, going faster than I should where it hugged the cliffs high over the Pacific. I was supposed to pick up the keys and sign the papers at a rental place next to a biker bar in Gualala. When I arrived at the office, though, it was empty. I sat there, reading real estate magazines, until a pale-skinned young woman finally showed up. It was a Tuesday in winter, and it seemed as if they hadn’t rented a house in months.
As the rain started to come down, she began searching for my keys. After twenty minutes and several apologies, she confessed there had been a mix-up. The cottage I had reserved had been fumigated the day before. She gave me the keys to a place called Two Rock, provided directions, then sent me on my way. As I was walking out the door, she said, “I have a hunch you might like this place.”
Five miles down a highway lit only by the full moon and a crisp array of stars, I turned down a dark road, shadowed by eucalyptus trees. The road turned into a driveway, and the driveway turned into a compound. A grand house right on the ocean was flanked on each side by guesthouses. Just inside the gate, there was a bocce court, and around the side there was a luxurious hot tub and a sauna house that smelled of cedar.
It should have been a glorious celebration of my recent success to have seven thousand square feet all to myself. But it was cold and empty, and it made me feel, for the first time in my life, entirely alone.
The living room, facing the ocean, had a massive wall of windows. A telescope sat in the middle, and a bookshelf held a stack of books on the migration routes of whales. I spent the next morning staring through the lens, waiting to see the telltale sign, a blowhole moving slowly up the coast. I did not.
The hollow sound of that rented house, the huge television echoing down the empty hallways, the endless waves crashing on the rocks, kept rattling around my brain throughout the beginning of my relationship with Alice. The memory of the empty house at Sea Ranch made me want her more. It made me want to have her there when I got home from work. It made me want to have her there to do things with on the weekends. It made me want her in my bed. It made me want her more than I had ever wanted anyone.
76
Elizabeth is shaking my shoulders. “It’s two minutes to six, Jake.”
“Morning or evening?”