The phone was ringing when she got to her apartment. “Just a minute,” she called out, fiddling unsuccessfully with her new key, twisting it in the lock. “Damnit, come on. Turn, for God’s sake.”
The phone continued to ring, the key still refusing to connect properly. Had Greg Oliver given her the wrong set of keys? she wondered, then asked herself whether such an error would have been deliberate or accidental. Or maybe the fault lay with Don’s secretary. Maybe she’d mixed up Jess’s keys with her own. Or possibly the locksmith had made the mistake. Maybe the keys were defective. Maybe she’d never get inside her apartment. Maybe she’d grow old and die right here in her hallway without ever seeing the inside of her apartment again.
Maybe if she just calmed down and stopped trying so hard.
The key turned in the lock. The door opened. The phone stopped ringing.
“At least you’re inside,” Jess said, acknowledging her canary with a wave of her fingers, uncomfortably bringing Greg Oliver to mind. She set her briefcase down, pulled off her boots and rifled through the mail she’d carried upstairs in her coat pocket. Nothing interesting, she thought gratefully, tossing both the letters and her coat across the sofa.
“So, Fred, I had quite a day today. A woman I hardly know bought me some new panties, and I got new keys, and look here, brand new locks.” She walked back to the door, locking and unlocking it several times until she felt the key turn easily, playing with the dead bolt as if it were a shiny new toy. “And I was positively amazing in court,” she continued. “Let me tell you about how my brilliant hunch paid off.”
She stopped.
“This is pathetic,” she said out loud. “I’m talking to a goddamn canary.” She walked into the kitchen, looked toward the phone. “Ring, damn you.”
The phone was stubbornly silent. This is silly, Jess thought, impatiently grabbing the phone from its receiver. The phone works both ways. Who said she had to wait until someone called her?
Except who would she call? She didn’t really have any friends outside of the office. Judging from the lack of jazz riffs emanating from the apartment below, Walter Fraser wasn’t home. She had no idea where to reach Adam. She was afraid to call her father. Her sister was barely speaking to her.
She could call Don, she thought,
should
call Don, share with him the news of her day, thank him for insisting that she come with him to Union Pier yesterday. If she hadn’t, she would never have seen the sign for the Union Pier Gun Club, would never have thought to seek out archery clubs in the Chicago area, would never have had the chance to shine so brilliantly in court today. Not to mention, she should thank him for everything else he had done for her—the new underwear, new locks, new set of keys.
Which was precisely why she didn’t want to call him, she understood. Like a spoiled child who has received too
much and is in danger of being overwhelmed, she was tired of saying thank-you, weary of being grateful. She couldn’t share the news of her triumph in court today with Don without sharing at least part of the credit, and she wasn’t ready to do that. “‘You’re getting very selfish in your old age,” she admonished herself aloud, then thought she was probably no more selfish now than she’d always been. “What witnesses from the past could we dredge up to testify against you?” she asked, the image of her mother’s tear-streaked face filling her mind before she had a chance to block it.
“The hell with this nonsense,” Jess growled, quickly dialing her sister’s number in Evanston, waiting while it rang six times. “I’m probably taking her away from the babies,” she muttered, debating whether or not to hang up when a strange voice answered the phone.
The voice was somewhere between a croak and a rasp, unidentifiable as to gender. “Hello?” it said painfully.
“Who is this?” Jess asked in return. “Maureen, is that you?”
“It’s Barry,” the voice whispered.
“Barry! What’s the matter?”
“Terrible cold,” Barry said, pulling the words out of his mouth with obvious effort. “Laryngitis.”
“My God. Do you feel as bad as you sound?”
“Worse. The doctor put me on antibiotics. Maureen just went to the drugstore to pick up the prescription.”
“Great. Now she has four children to look after, not three,” Jess said without thinking.
There was a moment’s silence.
“I’m sorry,” Jess apologized quickly. Hadn’t she intended this call as a conciliatory gesture? “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Barry asked hoarsely.
“I said I was sorry.”
Another long pause. The sound of an almost otherworldly voice. Slow. Deliberate. “Did you get my letter?”
Jess froze. The image of a urine-soaked piece of paper pushed itself in front of her eyes and under her nose. “What letter?” Jess asked, hearing a baby cry in the distance.
“Shit, they’re waking up,” Barry exclaimed, his voice surprisingly close to normal. “I’ve got to go, Jess. We’ll have to talk about this some other time. I’ll tell Maureen you called. Always a pleasure talking to you.”
Silence assaulted her ears. Jess quickly hung up the phone, then didn’t move. It wasn’t possible. Could she really be thinking what she was thinking? Could her brother-in-law,
her sister’s husband
, for God’s sake, father of her nephew and twin nieces, a respected
accountant
, of all things, could he really be the person responsible for that disgusting letter she’d received in the mail?
Certainly he disliked her. They’d been at each other’s throats almost since the wedding. She didn’t like his values; he didn’t like her attitude. He thought she was spoiled and humorless and deliberately provocative; she found him small-minded, controlling, and vengeful. She’d accused him of undermining her sister’s autonomy; he’d accused her of undermining his parental authority.
One of these days, Jess, you’ll go too far
, he’d told her that night at dinner. Had that been threat or simply an acknowledgment of the way things were?
She remembered how Barry had gloated about stealing a client away from his former partner and supposed friend.
I never forget
, he’d boasted.
I get even
.
Was a urine-soaked letter Barry’s way of getting even? Had he sent her clippings of his pubic hair in order to prove some perverse point? Had she alienated him to such a loathsome degree?
How
many
men had she managed to alienate in her young life?
Jess massaged the bridge of her nose. The list of candidates was endless. Even after she eliminated all the men she’d helped send to prison, there were the countless number of other men she’d prosecuted, defense lawyers she’d offended, fellow workers she’d tangled with, potential suitors she’d scorned. Even her relatives weren’t immune to her peculiar charm. Any one of a hundred men could have sent her that letter. She’d made enough enemies to keep the post office busy for weeks.
A buzzer sounded. Jess immediately picked up the phone, realizing as soon as she heard the dial tone that it wasn’t the phone at all but someone at the downstairs door. She approached the intercom by the front door cautiously, wondering who was there, not sure whether she wanted to find out.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Adam,” came the simple response.
She buzzed him up. Seconds later, he was outside her door.
“I tried to phone,” he said as soon as he saw her. “First, no one answered, then the line was busy. Are you going to invite me in?”
He’s the wild card here, Jess. Just who is this man?
she heard Don say.
“You must have been very close by.” Jess stood in the
doorway, blocking his entrance. “I wasn’t on the phone that long.”
“I was around the corner.”
“Delivering shoes?”
“Waiting for you. Are you going to invite me in?” he asked again.
He’s the wild card here, Jess
.
Her mind raced back to when she’d first met Adam Stohn. The vandalization of her car, the urine-soaked letter, the torn underwear, all had taken place since their first meeting. Adam Stohn knew where she worked. He knew where she lived. He’d even spent the night on her sofa.
All right, so he’d had the opportunity to do these things, Jess acknowledged silently, losing herself momentarily in the soft stillness of his brown eyes. But what possible motive could he have for wanting to terrorize her?
Her mind rifled through old mental files. Was it possible she’d prosecuted him once? Sent him to prison? Maybe he was the brother of someone she’d sent to jail. Or the friend. Maybe he was someone’s hired gun.
Or maybe he was the reincarnation of Al Capone, she scoffed. Maybe she could spend the rest of her life questioning the motives of every man who showed her even the most casual interest. He doesn’t want to kill you, for God’s sake, she thought, stepping back and letting Adam inside her apartment. He wants to get you into bed.
“I was curious about what happened yesterday,” he told her, taking off his jacket and throwing it over her coat, as if their coats were lovers.
Jess told him about having to break the news of Connie DeVuono’s death to her mother and son, and about today’s
triumph in court. She left out that in between the two events she’d spent the night with her ex-husband.
“He’s still in love with you, you know,” Adam said, twisting the dials on her stereo until he found a country music station. Garth Brooks was singing cheerfully about his father killing his mother in a jealous rage.
“Who?” Jess asked, knowing full well whom he meant.
“The bagel man,” Adam told her, pacing restlessly about her apartment, lifting the bag of bagels from the dining room table and holding them up. “You forgot to put these in the freezer.”
“Oh damn. They’ll be hard as rocks.”
Adam redeposited the bag on the table, walked slowly back toward her. “How do you feel?”
“Me? A little tired, I guess.”
“How do you feel about your ex-husband?” he qualified.
“I told you, we’re friends.” Jess ached to sit down, was afraid to.
“I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
“I called you last night, Jess,” he told her, very close now. “I called you till quite late. I think it was three in the morning when I finally gave up and went to sleep.”
“I wasn’t aware I had to answer to you.”
Adam stopped, took two steps back, hands in the air. “You’re right. I have no business asking you these questions.”
“Why are you?”
“I’m not sure.” He looked as puzzled as she felt. “I guess I just want to know where I stand. If you’re still involved with your ex-husband, just say the word and I’m out of here.”
“I’m not involved,” Jess said quickly.
“And the bagel man?”
“He understands how I feel.”
“But he’s hoping to change your mind.”
“He’s involved with someone else.”
“Unless you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
They stared at each other for several seconds without speaking.
He’s the wild card here, Jess
.
In the next second, they were in each other’s arms, his hands in her hair, her lips on his.
Just who is this man?
His hands reached down, drew her hips toward his, his lips moving down her neck.
Who is this Adam Stohn anyway, Jess?
she heard Don ask again, feeling her ex-husband still inside her. How could she have let last night happen? How could she allow one man to make love to her one night, and another the next? Wasn’t this the nineties? The age of AIDS? Wasn’t promiscuity an outdated relic of more innocent times?
She almost laughed at the correlation of promiscuity with innocence. She was a lawyer all right, she thought. She could put a spin on anything.
“I can’t do this,” she said quickly, pulling out of the embrace.
“Can’t do what?” His voice sounded almost as hoarse as Barry’s.
“I’m just not ready for this yet,” she told him, searching the room for invisible, disapproving eyes. “I don’t even know where you live.”
“You want to know where I live? I live on Sheffield,” he said quickly. “A one-bedroom apartment. A five-minute walk from Wrigley Field.”
And suddenly they were laughing, great wondrous whoops of laughter straight from the gut. Jess felt the tension of the last few days break up and dissolve. She laughed for the sheer joy of it, for the miraculous release it provided. She laughed so hard her stomach ached and tears spilled from her eyes. Adam quickly kissed the tears away.
“No,” she said, pulling just out of his reach. “I really can’t. I need time to think.”
“How much time?”
“I could think over dinner,” she heard herself say.
He was already at the door. “Where would you like to go?”
Again they were laughing, this time so hard Jess could barely stand up. “How about I just make us something here?”
“I didn’t think you cooked.”
“Follow me,” she told him, laughing her way toward the dining area, where she picked up the bag of bagels and carried it into the kitchen. “One or two?” she asked, popping open the door of the microwave oven.
He held up two fingers. “I’ll open the wine.”
“I don’t think there is any,” she said sheepishly.
“No wine?”
She opened the fridge. “And no pop either.”
“No wine?” he said again. “We can have water.”
“Bread and water,” he mused. “Where’d you learn your culinary skills? The federal penitentiary?”
Jess stopped laughing. “Have you ever been to prison?” she asked.
He looked startled, then amused. “What kind of question is that?”
“Just trying to make conversation.”
“This is your idea of small talk?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I’m not,” Jess said quickly, putting four bagels on a plate and sticking them in the microwave.
“I’ve never been to prison, Jess,” Adam told her.
She shrugged, as if the matter were of absolutely no consequence. “Not even to visit a friend?” The forced note of casualness sounded jarring even to her own ears.
“You think I consort with convicted felons? Jess, what am I doing here?”