William Lashner - Hostile witness

"I don't remember seeing you here before," she said.

"I'm here with City Councilman James Moore."

"Is that so? What do you think of him?"

I shrugged. "He's a politician."

"Yes. So tell me about toupees."

"I'm of the theory," I said, "derived from my misspent college career as an economist, that every choice in life is a calculation. Everything we do is the product of a cost-benefit analysis as to what is best for us."

"Everything?"

"Everything. Now that fellow at the bar has calculated that he looks better with hair, even when that hair lays on his head like a dead rodent. And who's to say he's wrong?"

"Me."

"You've never seen him bald. I'm sure he feels a lot peppier looking fifty with the hairpiece than sixty-five without it."

"But couldn't he get a better looking one?" she asked.

"That's where calculation becomes miscalculation. He thinks it's snazzy."

"Oh, it's snazzy all right. I don't believe everything is calculation, Victor Carl," she said.

"Because you don't want to believe."

"What about love?"

"The biggest calculation of them all. We each have lists of qualities we're looking for and love comes when enough of the boxes are checked, or at least we get as many checks as we think we're going to get."

"How romantic."

"Some fellow won a Nobel Prize for coming up with that."

"He must be a charmer."

"I'm sure his wife appreciates him."

"Well, I'll tell you something, Victor Carl. I don't believe it, and you don't believe it either."

"I don't?"

"I read eyes like some people read palms and I'll tell you what your eyes say."

She brought her face close and put her soft fingers on my cheek and brow, peering into my eyes as if she were reading something writ in tiny letters on my retinae. Her breath smelled sweet and dry from the champagne and as she looked into my eyes I felt as if I were drowning in pale blue waters. Then she pulled back suddenly.

"See, I was right," she said.

"What did you see?"

"I saw enough to know."

"Tell me what you saw," I said, only partly joking now.

I heard the scrape of a chair and Jimmy Moore sat down next to Veronica and all of a sudden I was embarrassed, as if this woman who had just been gazing into my eyes should be kept away from the likes of Jimmy Moore. Even so, I was about to introduce them when Jimmy said, "I thought they'd never leave," and Veronica stretched her long beautiful neck and turned away from me, resting her chin on the back of her hand, facing Jimmy. I looked at the bar and saw the aggressively curved woman there laughing with a man who had his arm around her neck, and with a sickening disappointment I realized that sitting next to me was not a woman mysteriously attracted to my smile and wit but instead was Jimmy Moore's mistress. It was enough to break my heart in two.

EVEN IN THE BEST OF TIMES I am not one of those people who leap out of bed in the morning ready to attack any challenge the day might bring. I wake like I enter a swimming pool, slowly, hesitantly, one step at a time as my body gradually becomes accustomed to the cold. The morning after the night before, with my head swollen from the councilman's champagne and my legs sore from I knew not what, I might have stayed comfortably unconscious until noon except for a shrieking pain in my bladder that demanded, DEMANDED, attention. Good thing, too, since as I was pissing relievedly at 9:05 I realized I had to be in Judge Gimbel's courtroom at 10:00 in United States v. Moore and Concannon.

I didn't remember all of what happened after the fourth bottle of champagne the night before. I remembered Veronica, who grew more beautiful by the drink until I would have sworn I had never seen anyone as perfect before, and Jimmy Moore, growing larger, louder, ever more powerful, ever more passionate, and Chuckie Lamb, his surliness expanding with the hour, and Chester Concannon, easing our transitions as we moved in a group from club to club. There was Henry, the councilman's driver, a handsome, silent Jamaican with purple-black skin and a high forehead, standing just over six feet tall and sporting evil looking sunglasses despite the darkness. And then of course the limousine, that great black cat of a car. It had a boomerang hovering over its trunk and a bar and television in back and it wasn't rented, it was owned by the councilman and cared for by Henry, so it was clean as soap and it shined in the city light and moved as smoothly and as predatorily as a panther through the night. I remembered that car all right. My first limousine ride, looking out the darkened windows at those who could only wonder who we were to deserve such splendor. I had always hated limousines, their ostentation, their imposing bulk, the way they tied up traffic on tight streets, parked in front of restaurants too expensive for me, the way they proclaimed that the people inside were somebodies, names, and that the people outside were nobodies, the nameless. I had always hated limousines, but I had to admit that viewed from inside they were entirely more benign.

"Want a rose, Ronnie?" said Jimmy, lowering his window and snapping his fingers at an Asian girl carrying a basket of cellophane-wrapped flowers in the street. We had walked from DiLullo's to an open Art Deco club with swarms of hunters, where we had shared another bottle, and now we were in the limousine heading to some other of the councilman's haunts.

"I don't need anything," said Veronica.

"Buy a rose for Veronica," said Jimmy to Chuckie Lamb, who immediately fished into his pocket for dollar bills.

"Aren't they Moonies?" asked Veronica.

"Moonies have a right to eat too," said Concannon.

"And we need a pin with it," said Jimmy.

"Two dollar," said the girl into the window. She was far too perky for that time of night.

"Help her on with it, Victor," said Jimmy.

I took the flower and slipped my fingers beneath Veronica's shoulder strap so as not to jab her collarbone, fiddling the stem's pin into the thick cotton of the strap. I felt the softness of her skin on the back of my fingers. She looked down at my hands as I worked and I wished I'd had a manicure at least once in my life. There was something about Veronica that was so delicately beautiful it hurt. Her face had a sad cast about it, and the coltish way she moved was sad, and the way her head hung low was sad. But every now and then, like a gift, was that smile, brilliant, promising. Though she watched closely as I fastened the flower to her strap, and though I was embarrassed at my peeling cuticles and cracked nails, I couldn't help but linger.

I was in an entourage, and the very idea of it was thrilling. At some point in the evening a few others joined up, a state senator, an afternoon disc jockey, a famous jazz musician, and we rode around in that car together, hitting place after place, first the waterfront, then South Philly, then an after-hours place above a storefront off Market. Each club was different in design but all had the same atmosphere of practiced decadence. I was tired, and I knew I had to be in court the next day, but there was something about being in an entourage, even the entourage of a luminary as small-time as Jimmy Moore. Whenever Jimmy Moore arrived, his group trailing behind him, doors opened, greetings were warmly given, corks popped like firecrackers off perfectly cooled bottles. He could have been Eddie Murphy, Leon Spinks, hell, he could have been Elvis. And as I was with him, part of the grandeur splashed off on me. It didn't seem to matter a whit what I actually thought of the man. Throughout the night I had tried to pull out, to get to bed, but always Jimmy would tell me one more place and Veronica would flash that smile and I would duck with the rest of them back into the limousine.