George Higgins - A change of gravity

But in this case, if you're telling me it's mutual, as you seem to be, then that shouldn't be that much of a problem.

"The discretion I may have some trouble with. The women I've known've been single like me. What we did was our business. I haven't had a lot of call for that particular specialty."

"Well, you'll want to get to work on it, then," she said. "For the boys' sake, I mean. Rachel I'm not concerned about. Rachel, if I don't do something silly and get her all stirred up, will happily stay right where she is, down there in Washington; contentedly doing just what she does, "working far too many hours" in the office of counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters; "and spending far too little time with her husband and her kids. Not that Terry's liable to notice, since he's as bad as she is and works far too hard himself," in the legal office of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

"The boys're a different matter." They were both still at Mount Hermon then. Phil, nine when his father died, had taken it hard and was still recovering, very slowly. Diane, when she and Merrion had become lovers, was not confident that the boy, 'so much like his father," had yet completely regained his equilibrium, and would not do so until Christmas, 1990, when he came home during his freshman year at Connecticut Wesleyan and announced he had joined the Army, signing up for a four-year program offering training in electronics, and wasn't going back to college, 'probably ever."

"Walter made no secret of it, how he'd hated college," Diane, much relieved, told Merrion then. "Many times he told me how unhappy he'd been when he was away at school, and how wrong his grandfather'd been to've sent him, made him go. "All I ever wanted to do when I grew up and came home from Mount Hermon was stay home from Mount Hermon and go to work in the agency and learn how to run the business, and then spend the rest of my life doing that."

Her second son, Ben, four years younger, had been at Deerfield only a year when Walter died. He was a strange and solemn kid who seemed puzzled by his father's death, as though feeling he had never known his father well enough to miss him too much when he went away. He had already somehow begun to assemble what amounted to a new life for himself, using what Deerfield had given him to work with, spending all but his shortest vacations with a roommate whose family had a cattle ranch in British Columbia, putting so much emotional as well as geographical distance between himself and the house with the yellow door in Canterbury that he had in effect resigned from the family before his father's death.

"But that doesn't mean I think he needs to know that his mother's having sexual relations with the guy from the courthouse his old man used to have too much to drink with. I don't mind if he does know, if either one of them, Phil or Ben, starts to think about it, figures it out, and draws the obvious conclusion. As I'm sure in time they will they're not stupid kids, after all. But I want them to have the option: either of thinking about it, and figuring out that their mother's having sex again, or of not thinking about it, if that suits them, drawing no conclusion at all. So that's why you have to be discreet."

What they had done was work out an arrangement that looked to Merrion as though it might last him, at least, for as many years as he had left 'maybe thirty or so," he said one winter Saturday at Grey Hills when he'd had a game of racquetball with Heck Sanderson and then done ten laps in the indoor pool, 'if I keep this up," as of course he had not.

The substance of it was what Hilliard had been looking to find out when he poked around, and what Merrion would not disclose. They had promised to take care of each other.

"You certainly look like hell this morning," she said affectionately after he had parked in her driveway and come into her house through the back door without knocking.

"Thank you very much," he said, getting a mug from the cupboard and filling it from the coffee pot on the counter next to the sink, 'so nice of you to notice. I suppose I probably do. I've fucking well come by it honest, up 'til all hours with a pack of criminals. What the hell else can you expect?" He drank some of the coffee. "Actually, though, I feel pretty good. And you look perfectly great."

The cat rubbed against her shins and she nudged it away with her foot, hard. "Oh no, you don't, you no-good bastard," she said. "Think you're getting back in my good graces that easy, you miserable son of a bitch."

"Peter been a bad boy?" Merrion said. In order to afflict the man he called his sometimes job-so-solemnly-religious, always-no-help uncle,"

Walter had named the cat Simon and called him Peter.

"Peter shat in the bathtub again last night," she said. "Peter's landlady damned near stepped in Peter's shit barefoot this morning when she went to take her shower, which would've made her good and mad at Peter if she had. Peter would've been lucky if he hadn't ended up in the pound. Not that Peter's landlady enjoyed having to wash the crap down the drain and then scrub the goddamned tub before she could wash her body."

"I told you when you did it," Merrion said. "I warned you when you had him fixed, you and Walter both: "You have that poor cat's nuts cut off, he's not gonna like it. He'll never forgive you, and he'll find some way to get even." And that's what he's been doin', ever since what is it? Fourteen years now? Gettin' even with you. Just like I would've and just like Walter would've, too, if you'd done it to either one of us."

"Finish your coffee," Diane said, picking up the cat and heading for the door. "Let me put this offender out and you can tell me all the way to the two fat sos all about the human desperadoes."

"So you had a long night at the lock-up?" Diane said. They were traveling south on Route 91 toward Holyoke.

"Yeah," Merrion said, moving out to pass a grey Ford Windstar minivan rocking erratically from side to side; the middle and rear seats were occupied by several sturdy children who seemed to be engaged in a tag-team wrestling match. "Fourteen of them I hadda process. Doesn't take that long, each one, maybe ten-twelve minutes. Unless it's a Two-oh-nine-A, guy's been whacking the bride around. Those take a little longer 'cause I don't let them out and they don't like hearing they're staying in. Stand there with the cuffs on and give me a lotta argument, cuts no ice at all. Last night's most popular offense was drivin'-under, Statics're roundin' 'em up left and right, very big night for the troopers. But last night they're not collaring them in bunches, like they usually do, 'round when the bars close down. Last night it was one at a time. Every time I think I'm free, call comes in the radio they're bringin' in another one so I hafta wait around.

"So for quite a while while I am there, I'm listening to Sergeant Whalen's ragtime. Everything that goes into Everett Whalen's ears comes out Ev Whalen's mouth. It's guaranteed. May not come out in the same order, or in the same condition. It may go in on Monday and then not come out 'til next Sunday, after all the stuff that went in Tuesday and Thursday. Everett ain't neat in his mind. But it'll come out; you can bet on it. So Everett's regaling me there, for what seemed like a long weekend. But finally Frankie Thompson big black guy that runs the lock-up, really handsome guy, looks like O.J. Simpson, only bigger an' meaner, started bringing out the guests.

"The first six or eight of them weren't anything you'd really call unusual. The first one was this little black guy. Looked like a jockey, so help me; same size and build. Like a jockey you'd see at the track."

"Or maybe on somebody's lawn," Diane said. "You know, one of those charming little iron lawn jockeys about three feet high that all the most elegant white folks used to have beside their driveways, holding out the hitching rings? They always had shiny black faces. Really, extremely attractive; lent such a festive note to the grounds."