Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

Neither Juliana nor Duncan especially liked black-tie affairs, but Duncan particularly disliked them. She wondered if it was because most of the time, they were invited because she was Judge Brody, and maybe he didn’t enjoy being Mr. Judge Brody instead of Duncan Esposito. But he’d never admit it.

And who could blame him for feeling that way? In his world, at the law school, he was the great Professor Esposito. Funky Dunc. The editor of a widely used anthology on critical legal studies. He had groupies.

She remembered one in particular.

Three years ago he started leaving carbs on his plate, working out regularly, paring his mini-paunch. He took the stairs two at a time. He started wearing cologne. He was looking especially good, and she told him so.

Then one day his phone made a text-message alert sound when he was out of the room, having left his phone on the hall table next to hers. She wasn’t sure whose phone had just pinged. She picked up her own, saw nothing, picked up Duncan’s, and saw a message from a “Jenna” that contained an emoticon of a blushing smiley face.

She called Duncan’s name and handed him his phone. Her facial expression told him she’d seen something.

He noticed and glanced at his phone, and his face went red.

“Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked.

To Duncan’s credit, he said, “Yeah.”

His voice sounded faraway. She became hyperaware of her surroundings, of the dust motes floating in the sunbeam that transected the hallway, the ticking of the house settling, the distant throaty snarl of a snowblower. She thought, This moment is the divider between before and after .

“Look,” he said, “I guess this girl has a crush on me. One of those ‘hot for teacher’ things, God help us. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can’t kick her out of class.” He sounded casual yet at the same time slightly... rehearsed .

And there was something evasive about the way he was acting. He folded his legs in a way he rarely did, and he kept avoiding her eyes.

So that was his story — a law student named Jenna had fallen in love with him, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Part of her wanted to be content with that. Because she knew that sometimes foraging around for the marital truth was sort of like thrusting your hand down a jammed garbage disposal to retrieve a paring knife. Maybe you grasp it by the handle. Maybe by the blade. And maybe the damned thing starts grinding again.

But she couldn’t leave it alone.

She ferreted out the girl’s name, went through her Facebook and Instagram feeds. She asked Duncan to show her the text-message thread before the one with the blushing-smiley-face emoticon. She knew that couldn’t have been the first time they’d exchanged texts.

He took out his phone and found the one from Jenna and handed the phone to her. She looked, saw that there were no texts before blushing smiley face, and she suddenly felt cold. He’d deleted all the earlier ones.

Which meant that he had a reason to do so.

A few days later she brought it up again. He admitted that maybe he hadn’t totally discouraged Jenna.

“So what are we talking?” she said. “Anthony Weiner — style crotch shots?”

“No, God no, nothing like that.”

“Just friendly flirtation, then?”

He closed his eyes momentarily, looked down for a long time, then looked up. “I’m so sorry. But nothing happened . That’s the truth. Nothing happened .”

Nothing happened .

Maybe.

Yet she knew that Duncan had been transforming himself for a reason. He was thinking about this girl, about the possibility of an affair, all the time. Nothing happened. That was one truth. Another was: everything happened .

Soon the conversation turned to trust. Duncan said, “If you can’t trust me, our marriage has problems a lot more serious than a student with a crush on me. I’m telling you that nothing happened, and that’s the goddamned truth, and if you think I’m lying to your face right now, I’d like to know. Because I’d like to know how things really are between us.”

He was aiming the big guns at her now, and she backed down. “Okay,” she said.

He came close and stroked her hair. He was close enough that his beard tickled her face. “You know I love you, right?” he said. “You know you’re the most important thing in my life, right?”

“I know,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

That had been three years ago.

At the gala, Juliana knew she looked good. She was wearing her Michael Kors suit. She’d just gotten a manicure. She wore her hair up in a chignon. She and Duncan entered the ballroom arm in arm, and she searched the crowd for a familiar face.

There were plenty of familiar faces. The owner of the New England Patriots was talking to the CEO of Fidelity Investments. The CEO of Liberty Mutual Insurance was picking shrimp from a large ice sculpture. A guy she’d worked with years ago at the US Attorney’s office was chatting up someone she didn’t recognize. At a distance she spied Martha Connolly, talking with the governor.

She found herself next to Noah Miller, a senior partner at a big Boston law firm she knew only casually. A real power lawyer. Miller was a portly, rumpled man in his mid-fifties with curly black hair ringing a large bald spot and penetrating brown eyes behind rimless glasses. He was holding a rocks glass of bourbon, most of it gone.

“How’s it going, Noah?”

“Can’t complain, and no one listens anyway. So what’s on your docket these days?”

She sighed theatrically. “About a thousand cases.”

“I heard you have a sex-harassment suit against the CEO of that start-up Wheelz.”

“Yup.”

“You haven’t granted summary judgment already?” A standard motion, made regularly but seldom granted. She had the power, theoretically, to dismiss the case. Shut it down. Wheelz’s lawyers had filed a motion asking for summary judgment at the start, and she’d denied it quickly. Rachel Meyers had a real case and had the right to a trial.

“Nope,” she said.

“Huh.” Like he found that puzzling.

She gave him a sharp look. How much did he know about this? Had he been following the case for some reason? “Well, we’ll see where it goes.”

“Because, you know, it’s a Porta-Potty. Nobody comes out smelling good.”

She nodded, alert. Why did he care?

“How’s Chandra?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Chandra’s spending the week at Canyon Ranch. Something about a purge?”

“You sure you don’t mean a cleanse?”

“Either way, you want to get that steaming pile of whatever off your docket ASAP. Purge it. Or cleanse it. Colonically irrigate it. You’ll feel so much better.” He grinned. “Just my avuncular two cents, huh?”

She smiled tightly. “Got it, thanks.”

She wondered why Noah Miller was so emphatic about flushing the Wheelz case. Did he have some connection to Wheelz, or to the CEO? Maybe she was just making too much out of nothing.

A guy from the US Attorney’s office waved her over and introduced her to the new US Attorney. They chatted for a few minutes, and then a text came in on her phone.

It was from Hersh, and it read, Found him. Meet me in the Dunkin’ Donuts on Stuart Street in 15.

She knew where that Dunkin’ Donuts was, just a block away from the hotel. She needed to escape from the fundraiser and meet Hersh, find out what he knew about Matías. Which meant temporarily abandoning Duncan.

Someone suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, startling her. As she spun around, she realized she was facing the governor of Massachusetts, a blandly handsome sixty-year-old man. He was with Martha Connolly, looking elegant and austere in a black satin sheath, and the senior senator of Massachusetts, looking very blow-dried.