6

Lee knew who Andy was the moment she set eyes on him. He looked almost exactly like Valerie, mirroring her black curly hair, rangy build, and blue eyes. Valerie introduced Lee to him. “Meet my star brother, finally back from California, He doesn’t look like a judge with that gold earring and long hair, does he?”

“I do too,” he said, laughing.

“He puts away traffic offenders,” Valerie said, smoothing her brother’s tablecloth. “He condemns countless couples to matrimony every Wednesday and by appointment.”

“It’s a living,” he said to Lee. He was smiling at her, but as soon as Valerie moved away, his manner changed. His head dipped. He began studying the menu. “Just give me another minute here,” he said.

“Take an hour,” Lee said, annoyed at being dismissed. Brusquely she began waiting on another table, explaining to a businessman why the lobster that evening was so expensive, and by the time she was finished Andy was already lazily picking at a salad another waitress had delivered.

She began to watch him, at first because he was really the only constant customer in all her working nights. She could gauge time by him. She knew her shift was half-over just by seeing him sit down, always immersed in a book she could never quite catch the title of. And she knew she had only another half hour left when he stood up, fanning bills onto the table. He was always alone, and although he always talked to Valerie, and sometimes even joked with the other waitresses, she could glide past him with a tray of flaming cakes and he’d never lift his head.

Once, Lee noticed he left his book. She was about to call out to him but suddenly found herself crouching down by the table and picking it up, curious about the title. John Cheever. A collection of short stories she hadn’t read before. Behind her she heard another waitress reciting the theme desserts. It was midwest week, and everyone was dressed like milkmaids, with broad pocketed white aprons and daintily flowered skirts. “Cheddar cheesecake,” the other waitress said. “Apple brown Betty. Chocolate cupcakes.” Lee slid the book into the pocket of her apron.

That night she stayed up until one in the morning reading Cheever. She was careful not to crack the spine of the book, not to stain a single page with a sip of the orange juice she had fisted in one hand. She didn’t know why, but the pleasure of reading his book was much keener than if she had gone to the bookshop and bought her own. It felt secretive; it felt somehow dangerous.

In the morning she wandered into the kitchen where Valerie was. “Well, look what I found,” she said. “Someone’ll claim it,” Valerie said. “Just leave it by the reservation desk.” When Andy ambled in that evening he did, looking pleased and grateful. He leafed through the pages.

She watched him reading other books; she waited for his easy carelessness, It was impossible, but the books he left always seemed to suit her mood somehow. A night when she was sluggish, he left a collection of H. P. Lovecraft that chilled her awake. Once, when she was in need of cheering, he left a dog-eared copy of Catch-22.

She began to like him for his books. She began slowly to imprint herself into them. She couldn’t bear to hurt the books, but she bent back his paper bookmark or stained it with juice; she replaced it with a matchbook from Bally’s Pub down the street. From the kitchen she watched him reclaiming his books, discovering her. He plucked up the matchbook bookmark she had left him and flipped it through his fingers. He frowned at the sudden stains, gazing up into the restaurant, but inevitably he became lost again in the book, reading a few pages until his meal arrived.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” Valerie said.

Lee shrugged. “He’s all right,” she said.

“I keep asking him, so who’re you seeing? But all he says is ‘Oh, someone.’ I think he’s lying. I think he’s too embarrassed to admit no one loves him but his baby sister.”

“Well,” Lee said. “You never know.”

It was a fairly slow night. There was a blizzard, and most people had stayed home. Valerie, queasy with flu, had Roy come and pick her up, leaving the car for Lee, who didn’t once mention that she didn’t have a license.

There was something in the air. It was a night when arguments seemed to erupt in the restaurant. Lee saw one woman hurl her fork at her lover and start to storm from the table before he reached out and grabbed her back. A businessman in a pinstripe gray suit, sitting alone by the window, wept quietly into his napkin.

Even Andy seemed somehow different, Bookless, he hunched over his meal, staring dreamily around the restaurant, and for the first time he seemed to be watching her. When Lee passed by him, he suddenly smiled. “You want something else?” she said.

“Nope,” he said.

Gradually the restaurant thinned out. Andy was finishing ice cream. Lee wished he had brought a book to forget; she could use something to read. “I’ll close up,” one of the other waitresses said to Lee. “You get going.”

Outside, the snow kept powdering the ground; the streets were nearly deserted, and the same ominous heaviness hung in the air. There were bits of faded yellow light coming from some of the windows she passed. It began to hurt to breathe. She tried tugging up the collar of her sweater and breathing through it; she put one mittened hand in front of her mouth.

She was almost to the car when she heard labored footsteps behind her. Twisting around, she peered into the blur of snow. She couldn’t tell whether the person behind her was a male or female, but it had suddenly stopped. The entire body was swaddled in a long bright blue down coat, the puffy hood cinched tight over a face hidden by a wrapping of black scarf. Uneasy, Lee began walking again, and there behind her was the quickening crunch of boots. Lee ran.

Tensed, she began digging for the keys in her purse. There it was. A red car at the end of the street. She was afraid to turn around again, and now all she could hear was her own terrified pant.

“Hey!” someone called, and she stiffened.

A figure was coming toward her, dots of black and red in a blurred matrix through the white.

Lee found the keys, jamming them into the lock.

“It’s Andy,” he called. Straightening, she turned toward him. The huge down-coated figure was nowhere in sight. Andy swiped snow from his face. “It’s not a night to be out alone,” he said. “I saw that guy following you.”

She studied him. “Thanks,” she said.

“You taking Val’s car?” he said cheerfully.

“She gave me her keys,” Lee said. She gave the door a rough juggle, and it sprang open.

“Well, my car’s just down the road,” he said. “Will you be all right driving in this? You want me to drive you?”

She hesitated.

“Well, you’ll be all right,” he said abruptly. “The main roads still look okay.” He squinted at her. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about wearing a hat when it’s cold?” Her hands fluttered to her snow-soaked hair.

“Well, listen,” he said. “Don’t get any traffic tickets because I won’t fix them for you.” He laughed. There was a frosting of snow on his lashes. “Lee,” he said. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

“You know my name,” she said. “You act like you don’t know me in the restaurant.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said. “Not yet.”

She hesitated. “Dinner’s okay,” she said, getting into the car. She fit the key into the ignition. The car jerked backward. Agitatedly she rolled down her window a little. “Look, I can do this,” she called. “You don’t have to watch.”

He cupped hands toward himself. “Just back up a little bit more,” he said. “You’re doing fine.”

The car eased out into the road. She clicked the automatic into drive and looked back at him through her rearview mirror. He was standing there, waving at her. She was sure he was shouting something, and she rolled down the window, letting in another clip of chilly air. “What?” she shouted, but he was already turning down a street, vanishing into the frozen white landscape.

Andy always thought that love was this season that had somehow passed without his knowing it.

In college he remembered being in love numerous times. There was easy romance, pledges of undying love, all lasting until the moment when another caught his eye, and then his heart unstuck and reattached as easily as Velcro.

As he got older, though, he began to think about marriage, and with this new seriousness, it suddenly became more difficult to fall in love. He had plenty of dates, but he somehow could no longer muster anything stronger than a vague fondness, and it began to terrify him.

Valerie told him he just wasn’t choosing well. “I got myself a great husband, maybe I can help find you a great wife,” she said, She began inviting him over. Sometimes one of her friends would be there, a woman pretty enough, pleasant enough, and sometimes he would get her phone number and go out with her a few times, before he grew distant, before the friend called Valerie in tears or in anger to complain, as if his sister could do one thing about him. Finally he just refused Valerie’s setups, not wanting to disappoint her, the woman, or himself again.

“Don’t you want to be happy?” Valerie demanded. “You’ve got to give things a chance.”

He hadn’t given one thought to chance until he had first seen Lee. She had been walking on the street, bundled in some fake furry coat that was a size too big for her, her thin pale face flushed in the cold, her blond hair flashing, and as soon as he saw her something deep hurt inside of him. He had followed her to Valerie’s restaurant, imagining how he’d casually sit down at whatever table she was sitting at, how he’d start up a conversation, dazzling her with repartee. He rehearsed a few opening lines in his mind, and then she took off the coat and went into the back room and changed and she became a waitress.

It startled him for a moment, but then he told himself she must be something more, Writers were waitresses, Students bussed tables. Awkwardly he settled into a table in the back. All that night he searched for clues to another life she might be burning up with. She seemed to know some of the regulars, but when she talked with them all he overheard was suggestions about the specials or, once, a comment about a movie she had seen. On breaks she leaned dreamy-eyed along the far wall or talked to Valerie. Her seeming contentment bothered him. Why wasn’t she in a rush to get someplace else—an acting class, a graduate course? He pretended disinterest. He thought about asking Valerie, but he was superstitious. Her participation before had been no help; he didn’t want to risk it now, so instead he asked Annie, another waitress he knew. “Oh, that one,” Annie said when he gestured at Lee. “She’s the only full-time one here. She hardly talks.”

Annie didn’t know everything, he told himself. He kept studying Lee when she wasn’t looking and sometimes when she was. He ate at Valerie’s so many nights, even Valerie noticed. “Can’t I give my sister some business?” he said.

He tried to be cautious, but every time she passed he felt a change in the atmosphere, a charge. It was ridiculous. He could come up with a thousand reasons why he didn’t want Lee. He needed someone bright and accomplished—a kind of kindred spirit—and she seemed to be just a waitress. She was beautiful, but there was a roughness to her beauty. He’d still be embarrassed to be seen with her. Her hair was torn. Her eyes were ringed in black. And the way she dressed—Jesus—bowling shirts with names like Madge or Hanna embroidered on the back in orange stitching, odd pastel skirts that looked as if they came from Goodwill. She wore earrings in the shapes of teapots or fish. He watched her sashaying among the tables, following an edge of her hip, frowning anxiously at the tips before she pocketed them. He looked at her, and he couldn’t imagine kissing her, not those chapped, ragged-looking lips. No, he couldn’t imagine it, at least not until he had left the restaurant—and her—not until he was back at home and thinking about her, wanting her so much he felt his will draining from him.

When he discovered she was reading his books, his heart began to buoy. That was a good sign. He had started back one evening to retrieve one and had seen her pick it up, avidly read a few pages, and pocket it. Once, she kept his favorite book, Crime and Punishment, for over two weeks. When he got it back he placed his hands on the page, where he imagined hers had been. Heat shot up through his fingers; two days later, in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, he asked her out.

He didn’t know who was more amazed when they started seeing each other, Lee or himself. He kept himself calm, thinking that any moment he could detach from her, but when he saw that same willingness in Lee, it made him afraid. He was used to women wanting to stretch the nights with him into mornings and afternoons, women who called him every day to remind him they existed, and here was Lee, leaping out of bed so fast that he sometimes woke to find her gone. Lee, who not only never called, but sometimes didn’t even answer her phone when she was home. When they walked she didn’t cling to his arm. When he tried to take her arm, she sometimes simply removed it.

She was secretive. Their first date, to amuse her, he took her bowling. He scribbled down fake names on the scoring sheet. He was Ward. She was June. She wore a really short red skirt and red lace socks, her hair cinched up into a ponytail. “Whoops,” she said as her ball raced toward the gutter. He was an even worse bowler, and in between games he tried to talk to her. He loved the way she listened, her whole body angled toward him, intent. She herself talked only about Madison, about settling in and saving money. She told him she hadn’t finished school, that maybe she would do that. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “The university here’s really good.”

She gave him a funny look. “High school,” she said.

He blinked at her. His smile wavered. High school. “Why’d you drop out?” he said.

She fretted two fingers in the bowling ball. “I just did,” she said flatly. She looked at him. “I’m not stupid,” she said.

“Of course you’re not.” He hated his voice. It sounded oily, as if he were speaking more out of politeness than belief. With a rush of air, he asked her about her family.

“I don’t have any family,” she said. She clenched her fingers about the bowling ball. “How about your first boyfriend?” he said, touching her elbow. “You’re the first,” Lee said, so seriously he felt his heart breaking.

When he took her home that night, he didn’t expect one single thing from her. She sat in his kitchen, warming by the stove, pronging marshmallows onto forks, toasting them on the gas flame. She ate four of them silently, and then, her mouth sticky with sugar, she leaned over and kissed him.

There, in his brightly lighted kitchen, she took everything off except a pair of red lace socks. She leaned against him, weighting him to the floor, bumping his spine against the linoleum. She rolled him toward the braided rug Valerie had made for him. He couldn’t get over her; the way her neck curved into her shoulder, the way her skin was so pale and seamless, as if she were all cut from one piece. She kept moving from him, pulling him along the floor with her. She knocked over a chair; she broke a small vase. She kept making these sounds that made him lean nearer to her. “What?” he whispered. “What?” but she only rolled from him. She arched her back. Her closed lids fluttered, and when he kissed them, she gave a small cry.

When they were finished he lay prone on his kitchen floor, perfectly content, but when he turned to her he caught her near tears. “What is it?” he said, trying to smooth her hair from her face so he could see her eyes. “Would you like more?” he said anxiously, but she just shook her head. “I don’t feel well,” she said, leveraging up onto his thigh. “I have to go home.” Her body was shaking, but he didn’t touch her. She didn’t move. He stretched out alongside her, an inch distance from her. In the corner of the kitchen he saw a jagged bit of cracker he must have missed in his careless mopping. It took him a few minutes to realize she was sleeping, and then he slept, too, and when he woke in the morning, she was still there.

They began to have a routine. He picked her up every other night from Valerie’s. He took her ice-skating on the frozen part of the lake and discovered she was as good a skater as she was a poor bowler. He took her to triple features at the Duplex Cinema downtown, and he found he was turning to look at her more than he was looking at the movie. “So, you still like me?” he asked her. “No,” she said, taking his hand. “Not at all.”

He hadn’t counted on feeling so strongly. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He saw her everywhere, In his courtroom. On the streets, And, more telling, when he performed his weekly weddings inside his chambers.

He tried to convince her to come to a wedding. “How can you not like weddings?” he said, aghast. “They’re all about hope.”

“Sometimes,” said Lee.

“Always,” Andy said. “Even if they don’t turn out. And I can tell who’s going to make it just by how they act in the wedding,” he insisted. Lee gave him a slow, steady gaze, “Come on,” he said. “Please. It’ll be a blast.”

He took her to his chambers first, showing off the office he himself had painted a soft, reassuring green, his collection of what he called “honeymoon histories.” He had postcards from Bermuda or Virginia Beach, and one from Japan. HAVING A WONDERFUL TIME, the cards said. LOVE BEING MARRIED. He had photos that couples had sent him of their first children, none of them, to his great disappointment, ever named Andy.

He had her wait outside while he got ready. “It adds a little drama,” he told her. She sat on the bench with the other couples, waiting for him, the only single person there. Most of the brides just wore street clothes, but the girl next to Lee was in a full-length white satin gown, a long white veil drooping over her face. “Would you mind being our witness?” the girl said to Lee. Her breath smelled like Juicy Fruit gum. Lee glanced at the groom, a boy so young he suddenly reminded her of Jim. “Oh, you don’t want me,” Lee said. The girl shrugged. She turned to another person, a woman in jeans and cowboy boots, and asked her.

Andy called in the first couple, both probably in their seventies, both in suits and polished shoes. Lee followed them in, standing by the wall, silent. He couldn’t understand it, why she looked so tense and uncomfortable, why during the whole ceremony he felt Lee watching only him, ignoring the bride in her pink bow blouse, the groom in his red silk bow tie. As soon as the couple left, he turned to her. “Why weren’t you watching the bride and groom?”

“You looked happier than they did,” she finally said.

He didn’t understand some things about her. Why she was so stingy with her past, BW, Before Wisconsin, he began to call the time she wouldn’t talk about. He didn’t understand why he’d sometimes see her brooding and unhappy, and when he asked her why, wanting only to get her smiling again, she told him only that it would pass. She was a secret, and he dealt with secrets all day. All of law had to do with secrets. Defendants lied. Police lied. Even evidence sometimes lied. But he had always thought that part of the mystery and beauty of the law was unraveling it all, finding the truth and trying to set things right. He loved the law, and to his absolute amazement, he was beginning to love Lee.

Lee knew Andy wasn’t Bobby, but sometimes she thought he was even more dangerous simply because of how much she liked him. Setting up roots, creating a new life didn’t scare her half as much as a relationship. In a relationship people wanted things. They couldn’t help but lay claim to your present, and your future, and then, inevitably, the past you had tried to bury.

What would you do if you knew about me? she kept thinking. What kind of price would he think she should pay for a crime like hers? “Everyone lies in the courtroom,” he had once told her angrily, and it had made her uneasy.

She didn’t want to feel anything for him. It made her confused, on edge. Every time he brought her flowers, every time he told her calmly that it was perfectly fine that she wanted an evening to herself and didn’t call or disturb her or make her feel one bit guilty, it made her angry. She snapped at him as if it were his fault that she cared for him. “You think you know me,” she said contemptuously.

“So tell me what I don’t know,” Andy said. They were sitting on her couch, watching an old Bette Davis movie.

Lee was silent. “I want you to go home,” she said.

“What, are we breaking up again?” he said, amused. He didn’t start to get angry until Lee brought him his leather jacket, his thick red woolen gloves.

“Just go,” she said. She watched him from her window. He got into his car and drove, and fifteen minutes later she missed him so much, she called him.

Oh, God. Maybe if he wasn’t a judge. If he wasn’t so in love with the law. Sometimes she would wake at night to find him reading a casebook for the pure pleasure of it. Every time someone on the street said “Good morning, Judge” or “How are you doing, Judge?”—every time a cop or another lawyer stopped to shake Andy’s hand, he seemed lit from within.

She came to his courtroom only once, out of a perverse, demanding curiosity. He was draped in a black robe. She could see the top of the bright red tie she had bought him. She sat in the back of his courtroom. She heard only one case. A ten-year-old boy claimed a man had butchered his basketball with a carving knife because his play was so noisy. He carried the ball as evidence, and when he brought it up for Andy to examine, the entire courtroom was tittering except for Andy, who studied the ball seriously.

The law followed him on the street; it came home with him, and it entered the night. She jolted awake once. Andy’s side of the bed was empty. The other room was dimly lit. She heard voices. And then she saw a patch of blue, a glint of silver, and a cop came into view, suddenly peering into the dark room at Lee. Lee jumped up and the cop disappeared, but from the other room she could hear him speaking, his voice blurring. She heard Andy. “I don’t like to do this,” he said. The footsteps amplified. A door opened and closed. She was fully clothed in sneakers and jeans and her red sweater when Andy came into the room, his face terrible, and as soon as she saw him, she wanted to fling herself against him.

“Cops were here,” he said simply. He blinked at her. “Something wrong?” he said.

“What did they want?” she said. Her heart traveled inside of her, banging against her ribs.

“Commitment papers. I told them to go to a higher court. I’m not signing away a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“Oh,” she said. She felt suddenly weak, boneless beneath her skin. She rested her head against his shoulder. “You know something?” she said. “You have a good heart.” He lifted one hand and stroked her head. “Sometimes I really like second chances,” he said.

“Sometimes I really like you,” said Lee.

“All the times,” he said. He cupped her head in his hands, just long enough for her to feel the warmth, and then he drew his hands back down and left her alone.

She began dreaming about him nights, and in her dreams she told him everything. But sometimes, too, she would dream about Jim, about the nights when he had been sweet to her, about the nights when she had thought she might almost want to be with him.

She’d wake, surprised, shivering. She’d have to get up and walk around her apartment, reminding herself that these were her rooms, this was her life now. A whole year had passed, a whole new life had finally started, and in its context, her old one with Jim had never even existed.