Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

He wasn’t a cheater, he told it; he didn’t have the stomach for it. He’d had opportunities to cheat, the surreptitious invitations that every married man detects. From bored neighbors with their suburban malaise and come-hither eyes. From his wife’s friends who chased their broods around his pool in revealing bathing suits, flaunting their reclaimed bodies right in front of him. Nothing explicit. Subtle little gestures that indicated a willingness, a restlessness. He’d never pursued any of them.

And he’d spent countless hours on various cases with a fair share of young, fetching female associates — working late hours, traveling together, lots of tension begging for release — and he’d never given them more than a passing thought. Not in that way.

You’re making my case for me.

He loved his wife. Sure, they didn’t have as much sex as they used to, as much as he would like, but he didn’t blame Linds. It was more his fault than hers. Long hours and unreasonable clients left him tired and irritable. The little energy he had left over was sucked clean by the kids. Six nights out of seven, he wanted sleep or the mind-dulling torpor that a few glasses of really good red wine provided. They’d settled into a routine, one that didn’t prioritize sex, and you couldn’t blame them. It was clichéd, but it was clichéd for a reason. He and Lindsay had been dating since their second year of law school. They’d gone through the humping frenzy of early love, the safe experimentations of settled monogamy, the clinical coitus of attempted procreation, the semi-abstinence of two pregnancies, the sleep-deprived sparsity of two infancies, the temporary revitalization afforded by procedural infertility. Sex was an important part of marriage, but it was elusive, inconsistent. They’d had peaks and valleys. Were presently in a valley and had been for some time.

So what? What they had together was more important than sex. A true companionship strengthened by their run together through the daunting fire of parenthood. Whenever anything happened to him, the first person he wanted to tell was Lindsay. She helped him noodle through problems of every sort: with work, with his family, with the kids. He’d even been tempted to tell her about Gina, as bizarre as that sounded, because there was very little he didn’t share with Lindsay. It felt odd to be thinking about something so much and not telling her.

Agreed. Very odd indeed. Like maybe a warning sign.

He loved his children, Amanda, nine, and Henry, six. He didn’t see them as much as he wanted, but when he did, they brought him joy. Amanda was a whirlwind, a precocious, intelligent girl who never ran out of energy or questions. A daughter was a marvelous wonder for a father; she opened a different place in his heart. Henry was quiet and thoughtful; he seemed to be attuned to a different world entirely. He hadn’t yet shown much interest in sports, but that might come with age. Even if it didn’t, who cared? He was a good kid. He reminded Peter of Bobby. A quieter, brighter version of Bobby.

He liked his life. He wasn’t going to throw it away in some predictable midlife crisis, wasn’t going to be one of those guys.

Then don’t. Find another associate for this case, an obeisant, fastidious drone, preferably one who wears ties.

How was that fair? Gina lost out on a good case — one that would have client contact, would involve witness prep and testimony, actual lawyering — because she was attractive? Because he had a temporary case of puppy love?

You suspect that the feelings are mutual. You hope they are.

He was fooling himself. She was twenty-six, beautiful, and engaged. He was forty, gone lumpy, and going gray. Married with two kids. Maybe she wasn’t flirting with him. Maybe she was a flirt, full stop. His ego was probably causing him to misinterpret her gestures.

The waiter dropped a plate in front of Peter and refilled his coffee.

“You need anything else?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Peter lifted his fork, creased opened the egg’s yolk, and watched the yellow run over the plate. He lifted a pepper shaker with his free hand and gently tapped the metallic top with his index finger, ushering tiny black flakes onto the eggs. He lowered the shaker and grabbed a piece of toast. He dabbed the butter-drenched toast into the flecked yellow and bit it. He’d watched Dominic do this a hundred times, savoring the small ritual of preparing his forbidden pleasure the way he liked it. He wondered what Dominic would advise him to do in this situation.

Call him. Call him right now and lay it out for him. All of it. You know what he’ll say.

“You’re wrong,” he said aloud. Two construction workers sitting at a table nearby turned their heads. Peter put a hand up in apology.

“Sorry. Arguing with myself.”

“Who’s winning?” said one of the guys, an enormous black man whose gut was trapped below the table. He laughed at his own joke and his stomach heaved, threatening to overturn the table. The other guy rolled his eyes for Peter’s benefit. They went back to their food. Peter picked up a piece of crisp bacon, snapped it in half, and put the two ends in his mouth.

The voice was wrong. If he’d learned anything from Dominic, if his entire relationship with Dominic carried a lesson, it was this: look out for your own. Dominic had said as much, had said precisely that, in fact, in this very diner.

“Look out for your own. No one else will. They’re too busy looking out for their own.”

He didn’t mean it in an ethnic or racial sense. Dom had recruited another young associate, Michael Morton — a black kid from the Bronx, had gone to Dom’s old Catholic high school — to the firm. He’d ended up on the corporate side so Dom could help only so much, but the guy eventually landed an in-house position at one of Dom’s biggest clients. Dom had written a sterling recommendation for Dave Hwang — an Asian kid from Queens, the son of immigrants — and helped him secure a position as a U.S. A in the Eastern District.

“Your own” meant something different to Dom: people who came from similar circumstances. Kindred spirits. A kid from the outer boroughs or a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh or Chicago or St. Louis. Or Sydney, Australia, for that matter. Someone who’d worked to get to the firm. Someone who hadn’t been handed things.

If Gina didn’t fit that definition, no one did. An Italian girl, the daughter of a firefighter, from Staten Island no less. A little rough around the edges, needed some mentoring, a little guidance. Who was gonna look out for Gina at Lonigan Brown? Him or no one. This was bigger than Peter and his petty lustfulness.

He waited a tick for an objection from the killjoy voice. His temples pulsed with blood, but he heard nothing. He took a sip of his coffee, decided to lay out some guidelines.

He would not cross any lines. He would keep everything professional. He would leave this all where it belonged: in his head.

He finished his meal in haste, paid the bill, and walked back to the firm, satisfied by the thoroughness of his internal debate. Maureen was on her lunch break when he got back to his office, but he closed his door anyway before buzzing Gina and asking her to come see him. He did a quick inventory: teeth were clean, the hair combed, the tie straightened. The gut, well, he couldn’t do anything about that. Maybe show her a picture of him in college, in pads and cleats, two hundred and ten pounds of muscle. He slipped two Altoids into his mouth and waited.

She knocked and he called her in, his open hand indicating where she should sit. He swiveled to the side and looked at the wall as he spoke. He gave her the details quickly and watched as she struggled to take proper notes. Her smile faded as she wrote, her mind struggling to do two things at once: accurately record what he was saying and comprehend what it meant. A skill every lawyer needed to learn.