Ryan Grady was appreciating the increasing marginal utility of alcohol. He frequently drank a beer when he came home from work, and though this night he had come from a party and been drinking a fair amount already, that seemed no reason to vary from the usual routine. Now he was feeling a little bit splendid. I should get drunk earlier in the day, he thought. Have more time to enjoy it, not waste so much happiness asleep. He cast gleaming eyes over his apartment. A box by the door beckoned. With a knife, Ryan broke its seal. “Yeah,” he said, extracting compact discs. Only the Internet, Ryan had decided, made the modern practice of law possible. Given the amount of time he had to spend in the office, there was really no way to shop. The city was a world only of surfaces, everything closed in the morning when he went to work, and again when he came home at night. On the Internet, everything was always open, and there was no need even to go outdoors. Of course, there were some things you couldn’t do online. And there were some things you could, but not at work. But for the humdrum, the quotidian, the everyday getting and spending, the firm’s TI connection was just fine.
With a smile of satisfaction, he carried the discs to his stereo. There he confronted another cardboard box. It too yielded to the knife, proving to contain more compact discs. Ryan set them next to the first batch and compared the two stacks with a frown. This was the danger of shipping, that the delayed gratification would prompt other attempts to obtain it, all equally successful. “Pfuh,” said Ryan Grady. He dropped the discs in a pile on the floor, then picked up the most eagerly anticipated, slit its
plastic wrap, and inserted it into the stereo. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “That’s the stuff. Good enough to buy it twice.”
Ryan retrieved his beer bottle from the kitchen table and upended it. Trickles; warmish residue for the optimistic probing tongue. He pulled another from the refrigerator and sauntered to an easy chair. A pile of magazines awaited, the night’s homework.
With the amount of time he spent studying, Ryan thought, he could almost have been holding down another job. And with the effort that he put into it, he almost felt he was. To be fair, it was a better-than-average job, one that could be done drunk and in one’s underwear, and in that way it was more like college. But it was still a lot of work. For what reward? His success rate wasn’t improving. Julie Morgan would have been a challenge for anyone, but he had to admit that he hadn’t come close. Even the easier targets were proving elusive. One of the more attractive caterers had slipped away from his entreaties, offering him only a smile and a business card that proved on later inspection to belong not to her but to Peter Morgan.
The output of intellectual energy with nothing to show for it was bringing back some of the less pleasant aspects of the college experience as well. Picking up girls, which Ryan had assumed was an unquantifiable mélange of intuition, inspiration, and intoxication, turned out to be much more complicated. Possibly, if the magazines were to be believed, it was more of a science than an art. Terrifically difficult if you tried to actually work your way through it from the beginning.
Fortunately, as with calculus, smarter people had managed to come up with formulas that eliminated a lot of the unnecessary effort. But even these were proving more elaborate than Ryan had expected. His brash good looks, six-figure salary, and willingness to accept the occasional embarrassment were only the beginning of the story. Nowadays, the magazines told him, you needed much more to succeed. You couldn’t just walk up to a woman and tell her how much you made, what firm you worked for. Well, you could; he had. But what ensued wasn’t an experience anyone would want to repeat. You needed a wingman, a teaser line, a closer, and an exit strategy. Further refinements existed if you were willing to spring for them: advertisements informed him of eleven powerful seduction techniques, eight things women looked for in a man, six mistakes he should never make, and one foolproof secret, all contained in two hundred and seventeen pages that could be his for only $39.95.
Ryan shook his head, chastened. He took another swallow of beer. Whatever happened to getting them drunk and telling them lies?
Gerald Roth paced his apartment in frustration. His beard held toothpaste. “Anson Henry,” he said. “What were you thinking? Doctor Death, fine, that makes sense. But you don’t try to get the confession suppressed. You don’t do your own DNA analysis. You don’t try to track down this informant. You’re not even taking a shot at innocence.”
Gerald sighed. He had seen enough death penalty cases to know how they usually came out. To know too that often there was little to be said in favor of the condemned. But Gerald believed in second chances. We are all better than the worst thing we do. Wayne Harper deserved the best defense, and Mark’s reports were raising doubts. Questions passed through Gerald’s mind, arranging themselves in a troubling pattern. Innocence was always worth a try.
Gerald opened the door to his closet. He looked in on a row of gray suits, a collection of framed certificates piled in a corner. “Something’s wrong,” he said aloud.
Something’s wrong, thought Peter Morgan, lying awake in the cotton swells of his bed. Harold Fineman was an ass, admittedly, and admittedly in questioning Peter’s analysis of the case he had been asking to get slapped down. But all the same he was a productive member of the firm, probably the best litigator they had. In court Harold would never give an inch, and wasn’t it after all the mark of a good litigator to question his positions, to be able to see what the other side would be bringing? Likewise, the vegetarianism was annoying if an affectation, and worse if a manifestation of principle, but hadn’t Harold’s lapse shown only that he put the firm first? Hadn’t he, in short, been showing that he had the flexibility of a good lawyer, and hadn’t Peter essentially rebuked him for not having the rigidity of a good person?
That’s not like me, Peter thought. That’s not like me at all. Bullying had its place, as a show of power, or a way to enforce professional norms. Gerald Roth, for instance, seemed at times to forget that he was an associate, and Peter felt no remorse for reminding him. But partners knew his power well enough without demonstration, and Harold’s professional
discipline was beyond question. That left bullying for its own sake, which Peter would be the first to admit was counterproductive. It was, moreover, a sign of insecurity, of unhappiness, of discontent.
Something’s wrong. Peter Morgan’s mind methodically began chewing away at the possibilities. He skipped past the first two easily. Insecurity was as far from him as Pluto, and he’d sworn off unhappiness when he realized there were better motivators. What could cause him discontent? He had a profitable business, a powerful car, a spacious and elegant home. He ticked off the possessions. A beautiful wife, three admirable daughters.
Children. A twinge of regret flashed within him. Daughters. Had he been cheated by life, betrayed by the machinations of his own haploid cells? Of course he’d wanted a son. Of course he’d harbored dynastic ambitions. Julie, born to them late, had been in part the expression of a hope that after seven years something would have changed in their bodies, become more receptive to the possibility of male offspring. And that after those years something would have changed in the nature of children, or his relation to them, to make the hypothetical son more amenable to following in his footsteps than the first two daughters had seemed. The twins had been nice enough girls, polite, pretty, and respectful. But quite early Peter had seen that that was all they were.
Hence those thoughts of another child, as Peter consolidated his power and Cassandra entered her thirties. Hence those thoughts of a son. But the son had remained hypothetical. Instead there was Julie, crisp and dark-haired. The twins made their debuts and married early, his prophecy proved true. And then they were gone, sucked off to other corners of the country, acquiescing in their husbands’ relocations with a deference and calm that made Peter wonder whether he had raised them to be his children or other men’s wives. Perhaps, in the end, they simply felt no strong ties to their parents or their home, and that too he had to reckon a failure.
But not Julie. Peter had lavished attention on her, and she had not disappointed him. She was bright and headstrong, with a self-reliance that had pleased him more than any obedience could have, for it showed that his will lived within her. She’d demonstrated an aptitude for analytical thinking, an interest in the law. But then she’d gone to Yale, which by the caliber of its students and faculty would likely be the best law
school in the country, were it only a law school. The Yale Theory School, Peter called it in conversations with Julie. The humor had paled for her, but he persisted into her second year. “How’s theory school treating you? Learning to think like a theorist?” Predictably, she’d come out of Yale and headed for a public interest advocacy group. I gave my children the luxury of not having to lead the life I did, Peter thought, and they didn’t. He’d been given the same opportunity, obviously, the same chance to turn away. But he’d chosen what he had, and they had not.
Peter Morgan shrugged and gazed at the ceiling. Through the gloom he could just make out the lazy turning of fan blades. Unneeded with the air-conditioning, but a nice touch in the older houses. The reminder of a sort of gentility, of Archie’s world. But the world moves on. Even if Julie were to come to Morgan Siler, as she still could, what would that profit him? One more generation with a Morgan at the helm, perhaps, but no more. And what were the chances even of that? Julie would not take his path. She bridled even to hear his advice, causing him hurt in proportion to the hurt he hoped advice could spare her. He understood now the pain of rejected support, glimpsed what Archie must have felt, his sins as son visited upon him as father.
I gave my children the luxury of choice, in the hope that they would choose to follow me. I offered them my life and they turned away.
What does it matter? Peter asked himself. He was still at the peak of his powers. His world was in order, the world he had made. He had nothing to complain of. Did he?
He raised himself on one elbow and fondly studied Cassandra’s sleeping profile. It wasn’t even Harold, he realized. It was that young associate with him … it was that she was with him, or seemed to be. That was what had inspired him to belittle Harold, as though the two of them were playground rivals sparring for the affections of a bobby-soxer.
Peter Morgan snorted contemptuously and fell back on the bed. As though he could ever be jealous of Harold. As though the girl would ever be interested in that twit. He caught himself. That was jealousy, or as close as he’d come in a long time. Peter respected Harold, as someone else who’d sweated blood to make it to where he was. He had brought Harold to the firm, treated him as a brother, gone far toward making him what he was today. There was no reason he should be having these thoughts. Now Peter felt a distinct stirring of unease. Something was definitely
amiss. Again he peered at his wife’s face. Of course her skin didn’t have the same elasticity, the same flush and glow as that girl’s. But she was still a fine-looking woman.
Still. It was a word of compromise, of settling, two things he’d done little and enjoyed less. Quietly he got to his feet and walked to the bathroom. Shutting the door, he studied his own face in the glass. He looked good, but he was starting to look good for his age, and that metric was the beginning of the end. Compromise, weakness, the betrayal of the flesh. How quickly time steals your aspirations if you release them for a moment. He could see the signs, the skin sagging below his chin, the carvings of age by his mouth. He looked like a faded copy of himself, the cells renewing themselves toward oblivion, each iteration weaker, as though some anatomical secretary had forgotten to shake the toner cartridge.
Peter switched off the light and stared into the dark. I should have expected this, he told himself. It was bound to happen. Success had never satisfied him, nor was it what he sought. The joy was in the striving, the sense of progress, of victory just around the corner. Success itself was empty; what Peter wanted was to be always succeeding. And that he was no longer. I should have seen it coming, he thought. To fail is terrible, but it allows the possibility of future triumphs. To succeed, to have nothing unachieved … that was death.
Darkness enfolded him, pressing in. Peter heard the quiet hum of the air conditioner, a distant rumble of traffic. The tapestry of his life was complete, and now it was shrinking, like the silk scarves folded tiny to show their quality, so sheer they could be wrapped upon themselves and pulled through the narrowest space. In Santorini he’d seen it done, that summer before college when they’d acted out Archie’s version of the grand tour. The merchant pulled a ring off his finger and Peter watched as the glorious colors and elaborate designs dwindled to a narrow thread, drawn through a circle of gold.
Through a wedding band.
His wife’s sleep-dulled voice rose from the other side of the door, and he made his way across the room, eyes still sightless from the recent glare. “Mmm,” said Cassandra. “Honey.”
“Here I am,” said Peter. She was calling him back to bed. It was a king, the sheets 1,020-thread-count Egyptian cotton, the foot and headboards dark hardwood. They’d bought the house just after he’d made partner, and the bed soon thereafter. He had spent, he thought, close to
six thousand nights in this bed, the heart of the familiar domestic world. But there were worlds beyond this one he’d made, worlds unknown and unconquered. He lifted the coverlet and took his place by Cassandra’s side, and the thought came to his mind, almost surprising. This is not what I want to do. She reached one arm out across his chest; he felt it come down like a safety belt, her hand curling around his shoulder. To lie motionless in bed, to lie here and empty my mind and wait only for sleep to take me. That, thought Peter Morgan, is exactly what I do not want to do.
Harold Fineman did not think anything was wrong. Like Peter Morgan, he lay awake. But that was nothing new, and hardly a cause for soulsearching. Harold was not, by nature, an introspective man. He was good at justification, at rationalization, at explaining why what seemed like a fatal problem was only a minor hitch. When he considered his life with that advocate’s eye, very little seemed awry.
Undeniably, his exercise program had fallen off. The press of business made it hard to find the time; the health club, populated by the impossibly trim, impossibly young, seemed less and less welcoming. He’d let himself go a little; he had to admit it. His ill-fitting suits were fitting worse. The looks that jurors gave him occasionally suggested not trust but sympathy, perhaps even pity. And he found himself out of breath in unaccustomed circumstances. It’s all to the good, he told himself. His courtroom effectiveness wasn’t suffering; if anything, he was better. And if he panted after climbing stairs, that only meant he was getting exercise without having to look at the twenty-somethings.
So why was he staring at the ceiling? Not a hard question. He was angry, and anger made it difficult to sleep. The answer was not yet a solution; not being able to sleep was a problem, since it threatened his ability to be productive the next day. But the problem had been identified. His anger was now only a difficulty to surmount, and surmounting difficulties was what Harold did. This one simply had to be tackled head-on. Harold frequently had trouble sleeping, and he had a reliable remedy. In boxer shorts and an undershirt he padded from the bed to his living room and poured himself a large glass of bourbon, which he drank quickly. Good liquor, another thing his parents had never appreciated. He put the first Rheingold compact disc on his stereo. Forbidden music. The
sound swelled softly from his expensive speakers, filling the bedroom with its world-assembling chords, building form from the formless. The primal element, the beginning, a universe limitless in possibility. Harold returned to bed and gave his mind to the music, feeling already a warm liquefaction overcoming him. Release. The problem was solved.