And then you get the sense that it would be easier if you weren’t there, and then you realize that they’ve had the same thought, that they sometimes get together without you, some vague reference to lunch at Alexander’s, and they glance at you and say, with a trace of apology, forced casualness, “It was just a last-minute thing after lacrosse practice.” And so you decide it would be easier to hang out with women just like you, also single, also childless, but then you realize they aren’t your best friends, but—but—maybe they can become your best friends, but then you realize that you’re thirty-five and you don’t feel like inventing new best buds at that age, and you find yourself probing them, examining them, wondering, what is it about them, why can’t they find someone, thinking that maybe you can find something in them, some flaw that you have, too, and that if you can just discover that one thing, just that one thing, then suddenly eligible, successful, decent, and handsome men with large penises, who absolutely adore musicals and pinot noir and cunnilingus, will come crawling out of the woodwork competing for your hand in marriage.

And then it turns out it’s easier to hang out with Jason and Joel while they get drunk and insult each other.

“The reason she won’t come out with us has nothing to do with her dislike for you,” Jason tells Joel. “She has a trial coming up. How far away?”

“Less than a month,” I say, feeling a shot of dread. “And you’re going to start on it next week, right?” Trials are a bitch. They can be fun, but the workup sucks. Jason has a lot more trial experience than I do, and he’s a different personality. He reads a file the day before and goes in there and, damn him, kicks the crap out of witnesses. I don’t even enter the courthouse unless I’ve dissected every single angle of every single question.

My client, Arangold Construction, got into a construction job with the city’s civic auditorium that didn’t end up so well. The project was delayed, there were problems at the site, ultimately the city replaced Arangold, and the new contractor ran up the bill under the guise of time restraints. So now the city is suing Arangold for twenty million dollars. It’s a bet-the-company case. Arangold loses this case and gets hit with a verdict anywhere near the number the city wants, the company goes under. Twenty-two employees lose their jobs.

“Yeah, sure. And I can stay tonight if you need some help,” Jason says. “It’s not a problem.”

I look over the overwhelming stacks of paper on the floor in the corner. “Start fresh on Monday,” I say. “I can divide out a chunk of the case, a discrete part, and hand it off to you.”

“Sure.”

Marie, our receptionist, pokes her head in the door.

“There she is!” says Joel. He’d sleep with her, too. He’d sleep with a hermit crab.

She points to Jason. “Court reporter here to see you,” she says. “Her name’s Alexa?”

9.

Jason

Friday, June 7

That court reporter from the suppression hearing is standing in my office when I walk in. I remember her. Of course I do. Today she is not dressed for court; she is wearing a blue blouse with frilly sleeves and blue jeans that fit her very snugly, thank you very little.

“Personal delivery?” I ask.

“Personal delivery.”

When it happens with me, it always happens instantly. It doesn’t sneak up on me. It doesn’t bud and slowly blossom within me. It zaps me like I stuck a paper clip in a socket. When I first met my wife, Talia, back at State, and she suggested that we could study together for the econ final, that moment I first locked eyes with her, I couldn’t breathe.

This isn’t that. I’ll never have that again, what Talia and I shared. But there is something there, lingering between Alexa Himmel and me, something primitive and daring that I can’t quite place. Lust, if you had to assign it a word, but that feels incomplete. It’s more like a connection, something between us that just seems to fit together. I get you, Jason. I’m like you.

Those penetrating icy-blue eyes, catching and hanging on to mine for just a beat beyond the required eye contact for a professional conversation, tell me I’m not alone. When we first met, I was coming off a tough cross-examination, I was in courtroom mode, I had clients with me—it was more like a bus nearly plastered me, but I narrowly avoided it and moved on with my life, just an after-rush of adrenaline to show for it. But this time it’s just the two of us, and I’m pancaked on the road.

“You seemed like you were in a hurry to get this,” she says, though I’m sure I didn’t.

“I was,” I answer, though I wasn’t.

“Okay,” she says, like the meeting is about to adjourn. She’s taken the first step, after all, a fairly overt one. She came all the way over to my office in person to drop off something that she could have e-mailed. She’s not going to take the next step. This is up to me.

She hikes her bag over her shoulder. “Have a great weekend,” she says.

“Hang on a second,” I say, like I’ve just come up with a great idea. I wish I had a line to go along with it. Now I owe you one—how about dinner? At least let me buy you a drink. A big tough Hungarian lad I am, but I get tongue-tied around the ladies.

“I’m trying to think of a smooth way to ask you on a date,” I say. “Got any ideas?”

10.

Jason

Saturday, June 8

At a quarter to three in the morning, still staring up at the ceiling in my town house, I finally surrender and pull my laptop over and open it. It’s always on. I’m supposed to properly turn it off to allow for upgrades or updates or up-somethings, but I never do.

I check out a couple of fitness sites, a marathoner’s site being my favorite, even though it will be a long time before I run another marathon. Still, I have to acknowledge, even with the occasional flare-up, my knee is getting better.

This is the worst time, the still of night, shadows jumping across the window, the gentle creaks and groans of the town house’s foundation. I’m not so good when I’m left to my own thoughts. A night like this, normally, I’d lace it up and go for a run, no matter the time. I like the city best when I’m alone inside it, when I don’t have to share it, when the streets are naked and peaceful.

There is something wrong with me, but that something is nothing. There is nothing inside me. I watch one foot move in front of the other every day. I hear my voice arguing to a judge or jurors or reassuring a client. But it’s all nothing, isn’t it? The clients will go to prison, and even if I walk them, even if I find some way to win, they’ll be back, and sooner or later they’ll find a prison cell like metal drawn to a magnet. Everyone’s chasing after something, everyone wants something from somebody else, but not me.

There is a tiny earthquake in my stomach. My lips, my mouth, my throat, are dried up, sticky and itchy. I drink from a bottle of water but it doesn’t help. I pop an Altoid and chew it up, then slug some more water. Then I jump to the site for our online newspaper, the Herald, to hear about the latest stupid thing that Mayor Champion has done, when I’m greeted with this breaking-news headline: