Judge Wyatt’s e-mail arrived the following day, when Amalia was already almost sure she’d got away with it. She read the contents for the fifteenth time and shook her head in disbelief. “Not only does he force me to take half a day off, he’s also sending me to a kindergarten now!?” she complained loudly, although she was alone.
That soon changed.
“Did you call me?” asked Michelle as she appeared at the door, efficient as usual.
“Have you heard about Judge Wyatt’s latest crackpot idea?” Amalia asked, profoundly horrified.
The secretary didn’t seem too shocked. “I did, and I think it is obvious what he meant all along. He’s sending you off on a tour of duty amongst all kinds of people: convicts, the poor, the elderly, and now children. I already know where he’s going to send you next.”
“Where?” asked Amalia, desperate to know immediately.
But Michelle absolutely refused to reveal anything.
“What, and let you spend the whole of next week worrying about it? Come on, I’m not that cruel. And anyway, what’s so horrible about a kindergarten?” she added.
Amalia stared at her in astonishment. “How can you ask such a thing? There are children! Children everywhere!”
Michelle laughed at her expression. “They’re just three to six year olds, I’m sure they won’t bite you!”
“Well I’m very sorry to disagree with you, but children do bite all the time – especially when they are three to six years old,” Amalia answered very seriously.
“So what? What’s the big deal? When you realize that they’re about to bite something, you just stick the Assistant D.A.’s leg or arm in their mouths. Just choose one.”
“I didn’t think I would ever have to say this, Michelle, but you are actually even more sadistic than me.”
Her secretary didn’t appear to be particularly shocked by the accusation. “Listen to me: put Mr O’Moore on the front line. That way you’ll be perfectly safe.”
Amalia almost burst out laughing. “Didn’t you say they were just children?”
“Of course not! They disguise them as children, but underneath they are real little humanoid-looking demons.”
Amalia was temporarily lost for words.
“My thoughts indeed. Thanks a lot, you can go back to work now. I’ll call you if I need you.”
*
The Judge had courteously invited them to attend an Upper West Side kindergarten near Eighty-fifth Avenue. That district was up market and residential, so one would at least hope that the well-heeled people who lived there might have well-mannered children. But then she inadvertently remembered some of her classmates, who came from apparently perfect families, and she shuddered before finally summoning up the courage to enter the place. She was about fifteen minutes late, and this was intentional: as Michelle had suggested, she had preferred to send Ryan in first. That way he could get acquainted with the little monsters.
She was led towards an airy corridor, decorated with colorful drawings. How lovely to be the age when you went to kindergarten, she thought.
“Please, Ms Berger, come in, the others are all here,” said the young teacher who had accompanied her. “Jane, this is Amalia Berger,” she said, introducing her to the teacher in charge of the class.
“Great!” Jane exclaimed, attempting enthusiasm. Apparently, working with children can boost your optimism – but Amalia was sure it would take more than that to lift her spirits.
She walked into the room and her eyes immediately alighted on Ryan, who had already hung his jacket and tie up and was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall.
“So you finally decided to show up,” he said.
He didn’t really seem mad about her being late, she thought and, after a closer look didn’t even look particularly surprised.
Amalia took off her coat and jacket too and went to sit by him.
“Are you afraid?” Ryan asked her, laughing.
“Of children? Absolutely,” she said very seriously while observing the class of twenty or so children warily. They looked sweet and calm, but Amalia was sure that beneath those sunny exteriors they were hiding completely different temperaments. So far, none of them had really noticed their presence, but she knew they would soon. Unfortunately…
“I’d imagined you wouldn’t be completely comfortable here,” he confessed to her.
“Well, that was quite an easy guess: this is a kindergarten…” she whispered in a horrified shiver.
“I already told you that I think that you would be good with children. But that is not really the reply you want to hear, so I would ask the Court to please not take into account what I just said.”
“Don’t play the smart-ass with me. I’ve seen that tactic adopted in plenty of courtrooms and have always despised it: a lawyer who says something absolutely bizarre to try and influence the jury, even though he knows the judge is going to accept the other party’s objection. And they do that because they are well aware that once you reveal some information, you cannot delete it from people’s minds. Where do you think we are? In Men in Black 8? And anyway, what do you mean ‘you would be good with children’?” she demanded. He had clearly touched a nerve.
Ryan laughed. “Don’t get sore about it, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. The thing is, I can just picture you clearly going mad at your son. But you, unlike many parents, would be able to make him behave properly.”
“You’re forgetting about genetics, Ryan: it is highly likely that any son of mine would take after me, and that means we would be continuously fighting. And I can live without that, thanks.”
But he wouldn’t give up the argument. “Well, in that case, you just need to choose a good father,” he suggested, looking at her in a weird way.
“What the hell are you talking about? If I didn’t know you well enough, I would think you were proposing to me,” she mocked him to break the tension.
Ryan immediately went pale.
“And that’s the exact reaction I was expecting…” Amalia mumbled, turning to look at Jane.
“Children,” the teacher began, “two friends have come to visit us today and will be staying with us for the whole morning: Amalia and Ryan. Amalia is a lawyer and Ryan is an Assistant District Attorney.”
“Cool!” said one plump little boy. “My father is a lawyer too!”
“So is mine!” chimed in various other children.
“Is everybody a lawyer in this town?” asked Ryan, looking disturbed.
“So it seems. And it is quite obvious, given the world we live in…” Amalia answered in a low voice.
Jane asked the class to be silent. “Our two friends are here today to help us…”
All the children shouted together to finish the teacher’s sentence: “Paint!”
Amalia turned to look at Ryan. “What? Are we supposed to paint?” she asked with dismay.
“Don’t worry – they only use paint that comes off in the washing machine. If they didn’t, the children’s mothers would kill the teachers. Believe me, I know these things.”
“What washing machine are you talking about? I have all my clothes dry cleaned,” she moaned.
“Relax, I’m confident we can survive this. I mean, at the end of the day, they’re just children, right?”
That was his opinion. Amalia moved closer to Ryan’s ear, giving him goose bumps. “You couldn’t be more wrong, my dear…”
After two hours Amalia had had enough of children and paint, and especially of the combination of the two. She’d got slightly dirty – or, more accurately, the little devils had painted the white t-shirt she was wearing, which was now decorated with blue stripes and fuchsia dots. She could have accepted the blue, but she absolutely hated the fuchsia!
“Well done, children!” said Jane in a satisfied voice. “Now we need to go and wash our hands and start getting ourselves ready for lunch.”
“What time do you think these little pests eat?” Amalia asked Ryan. The Assistant D.A. too had some very nice new patterns on his once plain white shirt, but he had been more fortunate: on his shirt there were no fuchsia dots but only little grey and yellow stains.
“Around noon, I guess. But they’ll have to go and wash their hands first, and go to the toilet, all of them, and so on. So, I don’t expect it’s going to happen any time soon.”
“Please, Lord, deliver us from having to take them to the toilet…” Amalia prayed silently.
“Amalia, Ryan, please follow me, I’ll show you where the toilet is so that you can wash. I am so sorry about your clothes, but you know how kids are… you always get dirty when you’re around them,” the young teacher apologized.
The two of them thanked her and started walking along the corridor until they reached the bathroom that was reserved for adult members of staff.
“Well she wasn’t joking about getting dirty…” Amalia started moaning, once they were alone. “They always get you dirty. And they did it on purpose. It was as if they’d been really looking forward to doing it, in fact,” she complained, as she inspected her clothes more closely.
Ryan started washing his hands with a generous amount of soap. “Of course they did it on purpose! They’re children, aren’t they?”
“My secretary was totally right. All children are actually little demons in disguise,” she snarled.
Ryan pulled her towards him by her shirt, took her filthy hands and held them under the water, since he had left the tap running. The he squeezed some more soap out of the dispenser and started washing them. “All you need to do is wash, you’ll feel much better afterwards.”
Amalia was almost hypnotized, she just couldn’t stop watching their hands, entwined in the stream of water, and she felt her cheeks slowly starting to turn red. Her heart started beating crazily and her mouth went completely dry. What was happening to her was ridiculous: she couldn’t suddenly go all soft and gooey simply because he was touching her hands. She turned her head to look at him at the exact moment he turned his to her, and she found herself staring into his piercing eyes. They were extremely beautiful, she had to admit unwillingly. And so were his lips – perfectly designed.
Ryan was going through the same thought processes: he was observing her, looking at her expressive deep blue eyes and then her mouth, small but with ripe, red lips.
“Is this as embarrassing for you as it is for me?” he asked, in an attempt to relieve the tension that had flared up between them.
She decided to answer by just nodding, as she wasn’t entirely sure what might emerge from her mouth at that particular moment if she risked speech.
“I guess we should let go of each other’s hands,” Ryan said, laughing nervously.
But Amalia didn’t move. She just stood there looking at him.
“Ok, I’m going to let go now,” Ryan warned her, and did nothing. “I guess I might be having some problems in actually letting your hands go – any chance you could help me, please?” he asked, looking at her lips.
“Not if you keep looking at me like that,” she breathed.
“What way am I looking at you?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Are you planning to act or aren’t you?” she asked abruptly. “Because this time I have no intention of being the one to back off.”
“Amalia, you’re not making things easy for me…” he admitted in a hoarse voice.
“I don’t recall that being one of my duties. In fact, I think that I’m supposed to do the exact opposite,” she whispered softly.
Ryan closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he cursed. Finally he took her face in his hands and put his lips on hers.
Contrary to what had happened the first time, neither of them was surprised, and Amalia immediately opened her mouth to welcome that impetuous kiss. After a few moments, Ryan pulled away, but only because he wanted to hold her waist more firmly and continue kissing her even more passionately than before. His were deep, hungry kisses; the kisses of a man who really desired her, she thought, and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect next.
She hadn’t imagined that Ryan would have kissed her so impulsively. She didn’t know why, but she had always thought he was a very calm, composed person, but now he seemed to have totally lost his self-control, and all of this was happening in a kindergarten toilet… not exactly the most appropriate place for making out with such ardour.
Very unwillingly, Amalia tried to pull her lips away from Ryan’s, hoping it would give him the chance to start breathing again and get the oxygen he needed to start thinking straight. “We’re in a kindergarten,” she reminded him, raising a finger to touch her lips, which had gone through quite an ordeal thanks to all those intense kisses.
“What?” he mumbled. His mind was clearly still foggy.
“We’re in a kindergarten, Ryan,” she repeated patiently. “You know, those places full of children who could just pop through the door at any moment, not to mention teachers who would have a panic attack if they saw what we’re doing? It’s a kindergarten!”
He blinked a couple of times and ran his hand through his hair, completely ruining his carefully-styled hairdo. Then he went back to the tap and splashed some cold water on his face.
“Damn it. I really can’t believe it,” he said, talking mainly to himself. “I must have gone out of my mind. I must have just totally lost it…”
He straightened up and turned round to observe Amalia. “Listen, we have got to stop… exciting each other like this. And you have to help me,” he said imperiously.
“How?” she asked, a profoundly dubious expression on her face.
“You have to steer clear of me. You have to keep really far away from me,” he begged her.
Seeing him looking so confused, she almost felt sorry for him.
“Hmm, ok. But can I do a little experiment?” she asked. She didn’t even wait for his answer, but just lifted herself up on tiptoes and put her lips close to his, without touching them. Ryan breathed in deeply, then grabbed the nape of her neck with one hand and pushed their lips together.
“Ryan!” Amalia exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to start you off again!”
“Neither did I…” he said, raising his eyes up to the ceiling.
“I was only curious to see if it would trigger that ‘je ne sais quoi’ or not,” she explained.
He looked at her doubtfully.
“And what the kind of experiment was that supposed to be?”
“A very simple one: if you can be so close to another person without giving in to the temptation of kissing them, you’re totally safe.”
“And what happens if you can’t help kissing them?” Ryan asked anxiously.
“In that case, you’re in serious trouble,” Amalia answered, trying to take the revelation lightly.
“How serious?”
“Ryan, use your imagination. I said ‘serious’ because that’s exactly what I meant: serious.”