Lisa Scottoline - Everywhere That Mary Went

“Why are you looking at me like that, Mary?” she asks, with an amused frown.

I try to swallow the lump in my throat. How can I sayI love you? Her eyes meet mine, and for once she doesn’t bug me to say the unsayable. She knows it anyway. She wasn’t number one for nothing.

“So what do you think?” Judy asks, with a grin. She gestures to the mound of filthy men’s socks in the middle of my costly rustic desk. “I bet they expect you to wash them.”

I clear my throat. “I think it’s a good sign. They’re treating me as shitty as they treat each other.”

She smiles. “So you only lost fifty grand. Not too bad.”

“Play money.”

“Pin money.”

“Mad money.” I laugh. “You know, it was a lot less than Hart asked for. They must not have liked him. Particularly the forewoman, from Ambler. She could tell he was a pig.” I’m smelling defeat, but it doesn’t hurt half as much as I thought it would. I think this is called perspective, but I’m not sure. I never had it before.

“They should have taken notes, then you’d have grounds for appeal.” She giggles.

“Right. We’re zero for two, since we lostMitsuko. We have to be the only lawyers chastised as a team by the Third Circuit and in record time. What did they say again?”

She straightens up and tries to look judicial. “I quote-‘A bald attempt by a duo of overzealous counsel to circumvent the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure by the deliberate inclusion of affidavits not of record.’”

“They can’t take a joke.”

“Bingo.”

We both laugh. “So we lost two, Jude. We’re doin’ good.”

“But we’re partners now. We can screw up with impunity.”

“You know, it doesn’t matter that we lostMitsuko. The Shit from Shinola Brief was a thing of beauty. Martin had to admit it, even though he was too gutless to sign it.” I shift on the needlepointed chair that Martin is lending me; every morning I have to stick my butt into an nest of tiny owlets.

“True. And even though you lost your trial, the case went in well, it really did. You handled Hart on cross, too. Didn’t ask too much, stopped at just the right time.”

“Tell me again how good my closing was. I like it when you say it was good, damn good.”

“Your closing was good, Mary. Damn good!” Judy shakes her wiggy little haircut.

“You don’t say!”

Her blue eyes glitter. “You know, you and I could be two halves of a very tough whole.”

“You want to get married?”

She grins, gap-toothed. “In a way.”

Finally I realize what she’s driving at. “You serious?”

“Yepper. You could do the trial work and I could do the paperwork. We could make a go of it, run a first-class little spinoff. A boutique practice, everyone calls it now.”

“Wait a minute, Judy. We’d get some referral work from Stalling, but I’d worry about where the business would come from.”

“You’d worry anyway. It’s in you and it’s gots to come out. We’ll start out small, for sure, but I don’t need half the money I make here. Do you?”

“Not really. I don’t have time to spend it.”

“Me neither. Even with the catalogs, there’s only so much damage you can do. Except for Victoria’s Secret.”

“Hah! What do you buy from them? You don’t even wear a bra. In our new firm you’d have to wear a bra. I won’t stand for-”

Judy throws a black sock at me, but I duck. “Joke all you want, but it’s a good idea. You could do discrimination work, but plaintiff’s side. Think about it. Do welland do good.”

“Work for the angels, huh?” The thought strikes a chord.

“There you go! You’ve represented defendants for years. You can anticipate every move, right?”

“Maybe.”

“So you want to do it? Let’s do it. Let’s just fuckingdo it!” Judy says, brimming with excitement. The woman can go from zero to sixty in two minutes. “We don’t need Stalling, Mare, we’re just two more mouths to feed here. We apprenticed for eight years, it’s our time now. Let’s go! Onward and upward!”

I look at her. She feels none of the doubt that I do. Judy loves a challenge. She climbs mountains for fun. “You think it’s that easy?”

“Yes.”

I squint at her, and she grins.

Who better to jump across an abyss with than someone who climbs mountains?says the voice.

I smile, reluctantly at first, but then it grows into laughter of its own momentum. It feels like my heart opening up. “Okay. Okay. Okay!”

“Okay!” Judy launches herself into the air, arms stretched up high, and dances around my bookshelves. “She said okay!”

I can’t stop smiling. “What should we call ourselves?”

She shakes her butt in a circle. “DiNunzio and Carrier! If not that, Bert and Ernie!”

“No, it has to be girls! Lucy and Ethel?”

“Thelma and Louise!”

“Forget them, they die in the end. Wait, we forgot one thing. We gotta take Miss P, agreed?”

“Of course. We need someone to wish us nighty-night.”

Suddenly, Miss Pershing appears at the door, interrupting our party. “Speak of the devil,” I say, as Judy boogies by and takes her for a spin.

“Ohh!” she yips. “My, my!”

“Unhand that secretary,” I say, since I’m not sure Miss P’s into the lambada.

“Aw,” Judy says.

Her cheeks flushed, Miss Pershing smooths her hair needlessly into its twist. “Sakes alive. Well, my goodness. That was…exciting.”

Judy curtseys. “Thank you, Miss P.”

Miss Pershing looks slightly confused. “Miss DiNunzio, I thought I heard your voice, but I’m surprised to see you here.”

“You didn’t think I’d come in today, after I smelled defeat at the hands of that mean old jury?”

“No, it’s not that. But didn’t I just see you upstairs?”

“No. I haven’t been upstairs at all.”

Her back to Miss Pershing, Judy makes a face that says: Miss Pershing’s rope has come unclipped.

“That’s strange,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I could swear I just saw you sitting in the reception area.” She hobbles away, befuddled. I have a sharp sense of déjà vu. I see my mother, who would walk away exactly like Miss Pershing just did, when I used to pretend to be Angie. All of a sudden, it clicks. I jump out of my chair and fly out the door.

“Mary?” says Judy, after me.

“Be right back, pardner!”

And I’m gone, leaping up the stairs, two by two, until I reach the reception area. I see her, sitting by herself on a white sofa that has no support. She looks just like me, except that she has a pixie haircut. And a suitcase.

She rises to her feet when she sees me. “Hello, beautiful,” she says.

I think it was Chekhov or Tolstoy, one or the other, who said something about someone being the most extraordinary ordinary person he’d ever met. Such people exist, I know, because I’m friends with them, and I met many others in researching and writing this novel. In fact, I know so many of them by now that I’m quite sure they constitute the world’s sum total, and I worry that you are fresh out of luck.

The first such person is my agent, Linda Hayes of Columbia Literary Associates. It was Kermit the Frog-I’m on firmer ground here-who said something about the wonderful things that can happen when one whole person believes in you. Linda was the first one whole person (not related to me by blood or affection) to believe in me. She nurtured me, and this book, as if she had given birth to both of us. Linda is truly extraordinary. I am forever in her debt.

And she’s a great judge of character. She introduced me to Carolyn Marino, another extraordinary ordinary person, who became my editor at HarperCollins. Carolyn believed too, and I thank her for that. Also, while she appreciated what worked in the novel, she knew how to improve it. That she managed to tell me so, and for me still to find the editorial process so much fun, is a tribute to her grace, intelligence and sensitivity.