Do This For Me Page 2

  This trip has been too long. Can you tell how much I miss you? I miss our daily life. I miss the girls. I miss making love to you. I can’t wait to see you.

  Poor Aaron. He hated life on the road. He had trouble sleeping, trouble eating. His homesickness was palpable in every e-mail, text and phone call.

  Are you nervous? What a question—of course you’re nervous. I’m not. We’ll be celebrating tonight. I’m so proud of you.

  My phone vibrated twice. High-priority messages. I skipped to the end.

  I can see a sliver of the Golden Gate Bridge from my window. It’s beautiful, all lit up in the darkness. I’m going back to bed. Call me when you hear from the court!

  Love, Aaron

  As we pulled up to my building, Seventh Avenue was coming to life. Swerving taxis, rumbling trucks. Honking horns and the charred reek of nuts from the vendor on the corner. I took a deep breath of city air, then walked inside.

  I read e-mails through the lobby. Past security. Into the elevator. As the doors closed I put my phone away and closed my eyes and did my thing.

  Growing up, I was a nervous kid. Anxious pretty much all the time. One night, when I was nine or ten and couldn’t sleep, I started leafing through one of my grandmother’s goofy magazines. I came across this…relaxation technique, I guess you could call it. It sounds dumb, but I tried it, and it worked. I’ve been doing it ever since.

  At the start of each day, whether I’m in the elevator, walking into court or somewhere else, I close my eyes and think of a box. A treasure chest, actually. (See “sounds dumb,” above.) I take my time visualizing it: the rounded top, the water-darkened wood. A massive lock dangling from the rusty hasp.

  When I’m ready—when the thing is really there in my head—I heave open the lid and fill it with all the bad junk clattering around my brain. My many fears: that I’ve made a mistake, that I’ve lost a case, that I’ll never win one again. That my loved ones will perish. That the end is near.

  I take those worries and insecurities—all that noise—and stuff them inside. Then I slam the lid and lock it and put the imaginary key around my neck, where it stays as long as I’m at work.

  Ridiculous, I know. But effective. When those doors open on the forty-fifth floor and I stride out, my mind is quiet. I am cool and composed. Invincible.

  I am everything everyone believes me to be.

  As I was that morning. I walked toward the suite I shared with two other partners, Wally Fanucci and Jonathan Tate. The wood paneling gleamed and the air smelled of lemons. The hallway displayed tokens of the firm’s illustrious past—sepia photographs of stern, top-hatted men, documents bearing the faded signatures of famous Americans. My firm is the oldest in New York City, and the best in the world. We have brilliant people, important clients, the most high-stakes and complicated cases. I’d been a partner there since I was twenty-nine. The youngest person ever to make partner in the firm’s two centuries of existence.

  (Swaggering. Swaggering on…)

  I walked into my office. Large, clean, spare, bright. Desk, chairs, sofa, bookshelves. The sun was burning mist off the treetops in Central Park. I sat down. Took stock. Woke my computer. Got to work.

  Renfield stumped into the outer office around eight. I heard her drop her handbag and kick it under her desk. Her chair creaked. She sighed, which provoked a coughing fit. She swore at her computer. Her chair creaked again. The muttering increased in volume as she approached.

  She entered my office. “Jesus. You look terrible.”

  I glanced up from my screen. “Why thanks.”

  “That goddamn judge! Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “Loads.” I held out the brief. “Can you leave this in Stephen’s office?”

  She took it. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

  “I don’t want breakfast.”

  “I’ll get you a fruit cup.”

  “I don’t want a fruit cup.”

  “You’ll eat a fruit cup.” She walked out.

  I sent an e-mail to my associates. I skimmed a law review article. The phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. I sent an e-mail to Maisie’s math tutor. I ordered Kate a new pair of soccer cleats. I scanned the headlines in the Wall Street Journal. I read an article in the New York Times.

  I checked Facebook and Twitter. Aaron must not have been able to get back to sleep—he’d sent a series of tweets within the last hour.

  Aaron Moore

  @RealAaronMoore

  New member of Megaloptera family discovered in China—wingspan over 8 in!!! Check out pic: bit.ly/1AK78k #amazinginsects

  7.36 AM - 18 Sept 2017

  77 RETWEETS 149 FAVORITES

  And:

  2 wks till release of Nat’l Climate Survey. So proud of our committee’s work! Lots of surprises in store for you #climatezombies

  7.42 AM - 18 Sept 2017

  102 RETWEETS 319 FAVORITES

  I felt a presence in the doorway and looked up. A skinny, bearded IT-type was hovering there.

  He cleared his throat. “I need to—”

  “I’m a little busy right now. Could you set up a time with my secretary?”

  “She’s not at her—”

  “Renfield!” I shouted. He flinched. She didn’t answer. He tried again.

  “I need to install a patch in your case management software. If I don’t do it now, you’re not going to be able to sync your documents with the server and—”

  IT people. They unsettle me. I don’t like their constant upgrades and routine maintenance. I don’t like their jargon and casual superiority. I don’t like their lightning-quick evolution, as a profession, from nonexistent to indispensable. I don’t like how the first thing they always tell you when you have a problem is to reboot your computer.

  And I hate how it always works.

  “This will take five minutes, tops,” he said.

  I threw my hands up and walked out. Renfield came in from the hallway. I gave her an injured look.

  She snorted. “I can’t go to the ladies’ now?”

  I took the mail back to my office and sorted it on the sofa. The IT-type left. I began drafting my letter to the court. Two paralegals dropped off a stack of documents. I finished drafting my letter. It was 9:12.

  At 9:32, Marty strolled in, carrying a rolled-up sheaf of paper. “Buon giorno!” he cried.

  I deleted an e-mail. “What now?”

  “I’m learning Italian.” He straightened a sofa cushion. “Elliot and I are spending June in Tuscany.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “You think so?”

  I deleted another e-mail. “Not really.”

  (Travel. I don’t get it.)

  Marty laughed. He braced himself against one of my wing chairs and stretched his calves. He walked to the window and gazed out, tapping his roll of paper against the glass. His bald head gleamed in the hazy morning light.

  “Raney Jane, Raney Jane,” he sighed. “Your office is so very…plain.”

  Marty was the first partner I worked for when I joined the firm. He was my mentor and my champion and my friend. We’d had this conversation dozens of times. “It’s just an office, Marty.”

  He turned from the window, eyebrows high. “Just an office? This is where you spend most of your waking life. Where’s your personality? Where are your personal effects?”

  I pointed to the framed photo on my desk—me and Aaron and the girls at the beach, two summers ago.

  “Oh, Raney.” Marty wandered to the bookshelf. He wandered back, draping himself in a chair and rubbing his head. “Raney, Raney.”

  Marty does this. He shambles and roams and circles. Around rooms, around people, around points of contention. He is amiable, avuncular, a ray of sunshine.

 
And in the courtroom, a vicious killer.

  Now he beamed at me. “What are you working on?”

  He’s also the firm’s managing partner, which means he’s in charge of assigning new cases. “I’m all booked up,” I said.

  He contemplated the tip of one highly polished shoe. “It’s a small lawsuit.”

  I deleted another e-mail. “No chance.”

  “It’s tiny,” he said. “It’s gemlike. It’s a gemlike jewel of a case.”

  “I’m swamped, Marty. Honestly.”

  Renfield barreled in and slapped a FedEx on my desk. “She can’t do it! She don’t even have time to eat a fruit cup.” She barreled out again.

  He tossed me the rolled-up document. It was a complaint, of course. “State court,” he said. “Deceptive trade practices and false advertising.”

  I flipped through it. The defendant was Hyperium, the media company. Not one of our regular clients. “Class action?”

  “Barely. Best guess on damages is less than a mil.”

  I looked up. Our firm did multimillion-dollar cases. Billion-dollar cases. Bet-the-company cases. Not piddly little one-offs like this.

  “We’re too expensive. Why are they coming to us?”

  “They aren’t coming to us. They’re coming to you.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t respond, but his eyes were twinkling. Marty loved to be mysterious.

  I glanced at the clock. It was 9:41.

  “They won’t want me after this morning,” I blurted out. “Nobody will.”

  I can lift the lid of the chest with Marty. He already knows most of what’s inside, anyway.

  “Raney Jane,” he said kindly. “Gaia Café has been decided. You simply don’t know the outcome. Why get all worked up over a little informational asymmetry?”

  “Don’t expect me to think rationally right now, Marty.”

  “As you prefer, my dear. But about Hyperium.”

  “Do I have to?”

  He shrugged. “I could always give it to Templeton.”

  Andy Templeton. Another partner. Completely useless. I flipped through the complaint again. Marty watched me.

  “They’re coming in tomorrow,” he said. “Two o’clock. I reserved a conference room.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I knew I could count on you.” He slapped his knees and stood up. “How’s our celebrity?”

  “On his way home.”

  “Elliot loves the new book, did I tell you? He’s up all night reading it.” He rubbed his head and sighed. “Our sex life is over. All he wants is Aaron’s glow worm.”

  I laughed. Marty left. I had nine new e-mails. I answered three and deleted the rest.

  My husband, Aaron, is a famous entomologist. Which is a real accomplishment, because how many of those can you name? It wasn’t always this way. Five years ago he was toiling in obscurity, an adjunct lecturer at SUNY. In his off-hours he wrote a book, The Love Song of the Pine Weevil. It was a kind of biography of insects—their evolution and diversity and importance to the planet. It was beautiful, profound and rejected by every major publisher. A tiny academic one finally accepted it, printing two thousand copies for sheer love of the thing, never expecting it to sell.

  But it did. Slowly at first. It was reviewed in an obscure online journal. Then another, slightly less obscure. Independent bookstores embraced it. The reviews kept coming—now in actual newspapers and magazines. The book was chattered about on blogs, Facebook, Twitter. It was photographed in the hands of celebrities and thumbed through by politicians on their summer vacations. It was hailed as a seminal work on humanity’s impact on the planet. On the possibility of hope despite the devastating effects of climate change. On living a meaningful life.

  At the end of the year, Love Song made every top-ten list. Then it won a Pulitzer.

  That was a really good day.

  Aaron quit his teaching job. He wrote a follow-up, Glow Worms Sing Country Songs. (These titles? Not my idea.) It was an instant bestseller. Suddenly, he was everywhere: lecturing, commentating, sparring with climate change skeptics and antiscience nuts. He turned out to be great on camera: witty, persuasive, charming. Last year, PBS gave him his own nature program. Now he’s the Bug Doctor. (Again, not on me.)

  The accolades kept coming. He was invited to join the National Committee for a Sustainable Climate—the group he mentioned in his tweets that morning. He’d spent much of the summer working on its highly respected climate change report.

  In short, Aaron was America’s favorite science guy. We were all about the cosmos for a while, we were big picture and macro. But when we returned to Earth, to the minuscule but meaningful, Aaron was our man.

  And mine. I stared at my phone. Sarah could tease me, and Marty could reason with me, but only Aaron could soothe me. It was 9:47. Almost seven o’clock in San Francisco.

  I reached for the receiver.

  I stopped myself. Keep it together, woman.

  I pressed the intercom button. Renfield said, “Yerp?”

  “Can you order more of those pens I like?”

  “You got a whole box last month!”

  “I hawk them on the subway during my lunch hour. They’re very popular. Who keeps calling?” The phone had been ringing all morning, but she hadn’t put many calls through.

  “Dunno,” she said. “Some guy.”

  “Careful with the rabid curiosity. We wouldn’t want you scaring off clients.”

  “I ask his name he hangs up, okay? You want me to reach through the line and twist his nuts till he identifies himself?”

  Interesting idea. I revised my letter and e-mailed it to the client for comments. I skimmed Marty’s new complaint. It was 10:02. I went online and bought a travel guide to San Francisco. It was 10:10. I spoke with a client. It was 10:15. Two paralegals dropped off a box of files. The phone rang—that number again. Renfield brought me a fax. It was 10:20. Jisun, one of my associates, came in with a case for me to read. It was 10:24. I answered an e-mail. And another. And another.

  At 10:30, Stephen, my senior associate, ushered a woman through my door. I wanted to be alone, to watch the clock and stew in my own anxiety. But I couldn’t show it, so I stood and shook hands with my new employee, Amanda Hewes. Stephen left to jump on a conference call. I promised to e-mail him when I heard from the court. It was 10:32.

  Amanda and I sat down. I explained my current caseload and the kinds of things she’d be doing. I invited her to sit in on my noon meeting with the ACLU. It was 10:48.

  I was dying inside.

  I forced myself to focus. Amanda was poised and pretty, with long dark hair and a quick smile. She seemed bright, eager, interested.

  “How was orientation?” I asked.

  “Good!” she said.

  I waited.

  “Boring,” she admitted.

  “Let’s get you started on something more interesting.” I passed her Marty’s new complaint. It was 10:50. “It’s a consumer fraud case. Something about cable television. Why don’t you draft me a memo? Review the relevant statutes and do a preliminary analysis of the plaintiff’s strengths and weaknesses.” She smiled, pleased to be given the responsibility.

  “Did Stephen tell you we have a decision coming down in,” I checked the clock, “nine minutes?”

  Amanda was nodding, saying she’d read up on Gaia Café, the issues were fascinating, so timely, et cetera.

  The case has been decided, I told myself. You simply don’t know the outcome.

  Our conversation was reaching a natural conclusion. She was ready to leave and dive into the work I’d assigned her, but now I wanted her to stay. I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone. I began asking random questions. Where did she grow up? What did her parents do? It was 10:54.

  I knew f
rom her résumé that she was older than the typical first-year associate—twenty-nine. She’d spent time at a nonprofit between college and law school.

  “You used to work at the Hogarth Foundation,” I said. “Are you a rabid liberal?”

  She laughed. “Only in my off-hours.”

  I liked her more and more. “What terrible things have people told you about me?” I asked.

  That threw her, but she recovered quickly. “Oh, you know. The standard insanely demanding-partner stuff. You work too hard, you make other people work too hard, you’re a perfectionist. You probably knew all that.”

  “I know everything.” She laughed again. It was 10:57.

  Then she said, “How did you figure out how to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She frowned—at herself, not me. “Poor phrasing. There aren’t many women partners here, or at any of the big firms. It must have been challenging to navigate this place, and to do it so well. I guess I’m wondering what that was like. How did you know how to present yourself? How to…be?”

  “I didn’t think about it like that,” I said. “I was just myself.”

  It wasn’t that simple, of course—as the imaginary key dangling around my neck might suggest. But I tended to deflect this sort of question. I didn’t find the subject all that interesting.

  Amanda was more persistent than most. “Really? You never felt like you had to—”

  The phone rang.

  My stomach lurched.

  Don’t think, I told myself. Don’t think, just answer.

  “Here we go!” I reached for the phone.

  Let me stop, right here.

  Let me pause, hand extended toward the telephone.

  This was the critical moment. I didn’t know it, of course. But of all the moments in that ordinary-extraordinary morning, this was the one I would return to again and again.

  What if I hadn’t picked up the phone? That question would haunt me in the months that followed. It would come to me unbidden at work, or during sleepless nights in Brooklyn. While I interrogated Sarah, or sparred with Doctor Bogard. As I relaxed in the most luxurious hotel room in the city. As I huddled in Holding Cell J-21 of the Manhattan Detention Complex.