James Adcox - Does Not Love

“We should drive him home,” Viola says to the FBI agent, a little while later. “He’s in no condition.”

“I’m staying at a hotel,” the judge says.

“Which hotel?” He tells them.

Viola and the judge follow the FBI agent out to the FBI agent’s car. The judge walks with Viola’s arm in his. He pats her arm. He keeps saying what a wonderful night he is having and how lovely it has been to meet her. “Put him in the front,” the FBI agent says.

“That’s not very gentlemanly,” the judge says, but allows Viola to help him into the front seat anyhow.

At the hotel the FBI agent parks and they stand before the sliding glass doors to the hotel lobby while the judge says goodnight.

“Do you mind seeing an older gentleman up to his room?” the judge says. Viola looks at the FBI agent.

“Sure, see him up,” the FBI agent says. “Do whatever the hell you’re going to.”

In the hotel room, which is much nicer than the room that the FBI agent is staying in, the judge respectfully embraces Viola. Viola nuzzles into the judge’s neck. He’s in very good shape. She can feel how good of shape he’s in, in the muscles in the arms with which the judge is respectfully and gently embracing her. She asks the judge how often he takes young women up to hotel rooms with him.

“I enjoy the occasional guest,” the judge says. “I try to be appropriate, you know.”

“Very appropriate,” Viola says. “I’d imagine.”

The judge can’t get a hardon. It’s only half-there. He’s very pleasant about it. “Other men I’ve been with aren’t so, you know, accepting when that happens.”

“I’m seventy-six years old,” the judge says, “and I’m in a hotel room with a beautiful young woman. I’m having a wonderful time in any case. My only concern is that you not think it’s any commentary on you.”

“Oh, no,” Viola says. “But I appreciate your concern.”

They sit on the hotel-room bed, the judge in his boxers, Viola readjusting her skirt. “You can spend the night,” the judge says. “I never kick my guests out. Never. It’s out of the question.”

“I can get a taxi,” Viola says. “Really, it’s fine. You’ve been quite the gentleman.”

The FBI agent is still waiting outside the hotel doors when Viola comes back down. Viola realizes, as soon as she sees him, that she’s actually not at all surprised that he waited.

“You’re jealous,” she says.

“Why shouldn’t I be jealous?” he says.

“Look, this is an affair,” Viola says, getting in the car. “I have a husband.”

“You don’t love him.”

The FBI agent drives through the city towards the motel, where Viola’s car is parked. Viola asks for a cigarette, mostly to break the silence.

“I have proof that you don’t love him,” the FBI agent says. “Photographs, video and audio recordings.”

“Jesus.”

“And that he doesn’t love you .”

Viola stares out the window at a series of abandoned factories passing by. “He loves me,” she says.

“He doesn’t deserve you.”

“He loves me,” Viola says. “I don’t want to hear you say that he doesn’t love me again. Because it’s not true.”

Viola brushesher teeth in the empty house feeling very alone. She tries to think about her situation with the FBI agent and with Robert and about what effect going up to his hotel room with the judge might have had on the situation, but none of her thoughts come in words. She pictures herself asleep under a snow drift, curled up. It doesn’t seem sad or self-pitying to her. It’s just a very comfortable picture. But of course it’s too late in the year for snow. As she’s brushing her teeth she lists places in her head where it would still be snowing this time of year. Alaska. Some place in Canada. Michigan, Upper Peninsula. Certain mountaintops in Chile or Argentina. She makes a big production out of smoothing out the bed sheets and turning back the covers. Robert isn’t home yet. Robert doesn’t come back all night. She lies under the covers, staring at the ceiling, until early in the morning, thinking.

Viola meetsthe retired judge for brunch at a restaurant near the river walk downtown. After brunch they take a walk along the river. As they walk the judge holds Viola’s arm and asks about her upbringing in the South.

“You don’t have an accent,” he says.

“People always tell me that, but it’s not true. I have a Raleigh accent. This is what people from Raleigh sound like.”

“Perhaps you’ve been in the Midwest too long,” the judge says. “We don’t have accents either.”

The judge has brought along a couple of paper cups and a thermos of rosé and chipped ice. They find a bench facing the water and he pours a cup for Viola and one for himself. “This is lovely,” he says. “Soon the weather will get too hot for this to be so comfortable.”

They talk about the river walk, and the recently announced plans for its expansion. Viola thinks, I’m glad that we didn’t have sex that night. There was a moment, of course… And he is in remarkably good shape… But he’s kind of a father figure. I like that, that he’s just a father figure. It’s much less complicated between us if he’s a father figure and we didn’t have sex. Viola had a friend in her MLS program who had a thing for father figures. This friend was very proud of it, or proud enough to tell Viola and some other people, anyway. She only dated men who were older, and who looked more or less like her dad. Viola wonders what happened to her. Then she remembers: she married someone at Robert’s firm. That’s funny that I would have forgotten about that, she thinks.

The judge pours them each another cupful of rosé. “What should we toast to?”

“We forgot to toast last time,” Viola says.

“That’s why it’s so important that we toast this time.”

“I don’t want to toast to anything important,” Viola says. “Let’s toast to chipped ice.”

“Chipped ice is very important,” the judge says, but they toast to chipped ice anyhow.

A little while later Viola says, “Are you drunk?”

“I’m slightly inebriated. ‘Tipsy.’” He says it in a way that makes “tipsy” sound like it’s something only other people say.

“‘Tipsy,’” Viola says, saying it the same way, smiling. “‘Tipsy.’ Isn’t this illegal, drinking out in the open? Aren’t you supposed to uphold the law?”

“I’m only sworn to uphold the secret law. And I’m retired.”

“Am I breaking any secret laws?”

“If you were I couldn’t tell you.”

“I feel like that’s all I ever hear, recently. For once in my life, I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong.”

“ If you’re doing anything wrong,” the judge says. Viola glowers at him. “You seem to have gotten very serious all of a sudden,” he says, dividing the last of the thermos between their cups.

“I’m not sad,” Viola says.

“No one accused you of being sad.”

“Oh. I thought maybe you did.”

Viola and the judge observe couples paddling by in paddle-boats. They drink the last of the rosé. Viola sits fiddling with her cup.

“Here,” the judge says. “Let me show you something.” He peels back a place in his skin, an area perhaps an inch square on his forearm. Viola peers into the area that he has peeled away.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing,” she says.

“After so many years, I have started to become the law myself,” he says. “A kind of structured emptiness.”

“Am I allowed to see that?” Viola asks.

“Anyone is,” he says. “There’s nothing there to see. That is how the law remains secret: it isn’t there.” The judge replaces the flap of skin that he had peeled and pats it down.