Judgment

6

The Bostonia Club was one of Boston’s grandest private clubs, located in a large, handsome brownstone on Commonwealth Avenue with a highly polished black-painted front door and brass fittings and a doorknob that gleamed. It was a club for lawyers, primarily, a place where they could socialize, play poker, shoot pool, have dinner. And talk law, if they wanted, without being accused of being boring. There were a few nonlawyer members, and civilians were brought in all the time, usually for dinner and a predinner talk. One Juliana attended recently had been titled “Great Defense Attorneys in Film (Besides Atticus Finch).”

It was funny, she had to admit, that she belonged to this fancy club, given that her mother had worked in one. Her mother, Rosalind, had been the operations manager at another exclusive private club in Boston, the Clarendon Club. She was a staff member — not very well paid — and not a member, of course. But she was a fixture at the club and much-beloved (or so she always said, herself). Yet not one of the members attended her funeral.

Juliana remembered coming up with the idea, in the year after her mother’s death, of a memorial service at the Clarendon Club. She mentioned the idea to her mom’s boss, the gloomy Mrs. Cooper. Mrs. Cooper took young Juliana’s hands in hers and gently disabused her. “Such a sweet thought!” Mrs. Cooper said. “And I know that’s how your mom saw this place sometimes. But I gotta tell you. When Mr. Carducci retired after half a century as caretaker, I could barely get six people to sign a going-away card. I mean, folks were like, ‘We’ll miss him — bet we can hire a replacement for half the cost.’ I mean, that’s just the reality of this place.”

With a sinking in her stomach, Juliana recognized the truth.

“Your mom,” Mrs. Cooper went on, “bless her heart, preferred her own reality.”

Tears had come to Juliana’s eyes. She left in a dazed state, a little sickened. Mrs. Cooper had nailed it: her mother invented, lived in, her own reality. She’d told Juliana how the members would say, What would we ever do without you, Roz? And she would believe it.

She remembered talking to her mother, shortly before her death, about her brother, Calvin, two years younger, who’d died when he was twenty. “You know,” Rosalind had said, “your brother was an extremely talented musician. A poet, really.” Juliana nodded, too weary to point out that Calvin had been a mediocre guitarist at best. “You remember that song he wrote, the one about a lady who’s buying a stairway to heaven? That was so beautiful. So much talent.” She was starting to slur her words. If she was at home, she was inevitably drunk.

Juliana couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom, Calvin... didn’t write that.”

“No?”

“It’s Led Zeppelin.”

“Well. ‘Great artists steal,’ T. S. Eliot said. Calvin put his own touch to it, is my point.”

She lived in her own world.

Linda Zucchetti already had dinner plans at the club but agreed to meet her for an after-dinner drink in the club’s library at eight o’clock. Linda was around her age, in her early forties, and had been a judge on the Superior Court for six years — a good friend and a good person to share a cosmo with. So first Juliana went home at five thirty, arriving at an empty house, and defrosted some lasagna in the microwave for Duncan and Jacob. She herself had some leftover chicken tikka masala from their favorite Indian place, on Boylston Street, while distractedly checking her e-mail.

She washed her face, put on toner, then her eye cream and some tinted moisturizer. Her mind was replaying the image, over and over, of Matías walking into the courtroom. She had recognized the walk even before she’d seen his face. It was definitely him. She brushed on some blush and stared at her reflection in the mirror. What had she done?

“Idiot,” she said aloud. She turned away from the mirror, disgusted, her stomach cramped with anxiety. What a terrible mistake.

She drove her blue Lexus sport-utility vehicle the mile or two into downtown Boston, lucked into a parking spot on Exeter Street, and entered the club at seven thirty.

Linda was standing in the foyer, in the middle of an extended good-bye with another woman who was probably her dinner date. The two of them stood underneath the John Singer Sargent portrait of Lucius Graham, the Boston lawyer who’d founded the Bostonia Club early in the nineteenth century. He had a handlebar mustache and wore his collar up with a black tie and black coat and looked sort of raffish, leaning back on his chair with his hand dangling casually in the air.

Juliana caught Linda’s eye, smiled hello, gave a little wave — she didn’t want to interrupt and didn’t feel like being introduced to someone she’d probably never see again — and wandered upstairs to the library. It was lined with books, like a library, but it was also the customary gathering place for club members to have drinks before and after dinner. She found a table as far away as possible from a raucous gathering of members seated in mismatched easy chairs around the unlit fireplace, waved at a few she knew, and told the waitress she’d wait to order until she was joined by her friend.

Linda arrived a few minutes later, apologizing for keeping her waiting, and put a hand on Juliana’s shoulder. She was an attractive woman who looked easily ten years younger than she was. Linda and she had had their issues in the past — for a while, when they were both in the US Attorney’s office, they were competitive — but now they were allies. They’d even done SoulCycle together. Linda was wearing a suit of pale green silk. Her hair was light brown with blond highlights. I work in a sack all day, Linda had once said. When I dress up I want to look nice. And she had the figure to pull it off.

Juliana stood and gave Linda a hug, inhaling her wonderfully sultry perfume.

“You’re still on civil, aren’t you, poor thing,” Linda said with a big smile.

Twice a year they rotated between civil and criminal cases, and Linda made no secret of the fact that she much preferred criminal, where the action was, even though some of the homicide cases they had to hear could be wrenching. The criminal session, Linda had once announced, was heartache; the civil session was headache.

“I like it,” Juliana said. “You know that.”

“Even the endless Wheelz case?”

She shook her head. “Well, except for that,” Juliana admitted.

Linda sat in the chair next to her, rather than across from her. When the waitress approached, Juliana ordered a cosmo and Linda ordered a Grey Goose vodka martini. Juliana was determined to limit her drinking to one cosmo tonight.

“You sounded concerned on the phone, Jules. Is everything okay? The family, the kids?” When Linda crossed her legs you could see the effects of her daily Pilates sessions.

“Everyone’s fine. Ashley’s in Namibia and loving it.” Well, as much as you could “love” taking care of terminally ill people; she couldn’t even imagine what that was like, those poor women infected with AIDS by their husbands.

“Ashley’s still in Namibia? God bless that child.”

“We have to schedule Skype sessions once a week. I miss her.”

“Of course you do. And Jake?”

“I wish he’d go off to college already.”

Linda laughed. She knew that Juliana was kidding, mostly. They both complained, jokingly, about their kids, knowing that they loved and appreciated their children, while agreeing that having teenagers in the house was a special kind of stressful. She didn’t know what she’d do if it weren’t for Duncan, who was like the Teen Whisperer. He and the kids always seemed to be tuned in to the same frequency. But she worried about Jake a lot recently, his apathy, his dropping grades. It was like he was floating through life, blowing with the winds. Whereas Ashley had always been the straight-A student. Maybe girls were just easier to parent.

“I know you worry about him,” Linda said. “That’s not going to change. I get it. After all you’ve been through, my God. But you know you’ve gotta fight that. You can’t have that in your head every day.”

“I know. You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

“You had something you wanted to hash out?”

“Yeah, it’s this weird situation. On the Wheelz case, in fact. So Wheelz just added another lawyer to the defense, and it turns out to be a guy I know.”

“Okay?” Linda blinked a few times: What’s the big deal?

Juliana knew she was treading a difficult path here. She obviously couldn’t tell Linda the full truth, that she’d actually slept with the guy. That was the sort of thing that became hot gossip. Also, she didn’t want to tell her what had happened because it felt like just saying it aloud would make it real.

Instead, she said, “We had a drink, last week in Chicago.”

“At the bar conference?”

Juliana nodded. “I don’t know if I should say something.”

Linda shrugged. “Isn’t Harlan Madden the lead?”

“He is. And Glenda Craft for the plaintiff.”

“You’ve socialized with Craft and Madden both, I assume.”

“I have.”

Linda tipped her head to one side and peered at her strangely. “The new defense lawyer is with Batten Schechter?”

“I assume so.”

“A drink?” Linda said. She smiled again, cryptically. “You had a drink with him. Fine, we’ll go with that. A drink. Honey, no reason to be ashamed. You would be shocked at how many married women have affairs. Quiet little affairs on the side.” Linda had been divorced since her late thirties.

Juliana flushed. Was she that transparent? Was there something about the way she’d talked about Matías that gave it away? “Oh, come on,” she said.

“Marriage is dull and grinding and constraining, and you know it.”

Well, that’s why you’re divorced, she thought. “Can be,” she said.

“We idealize marriage, and turns out the actual thing is a crashing disappointment.”

“Not for everybody,” Juliana protested.

“I’ve got a friend, I’m not going to tell you her name, she’s one hundred percent faithful to her husband except when she’s out of town on work each month. You can love your husband and still have unmet needs.”

“Maybe so.”

“Listen: since 1990, the number of women who report they’ve cheated on their husbands has gone up forty percent. Forty percent.”

“What about the number of men who admit they’ve cheated?”

“Stayed flat. See, women are turning to infidelity as a way to stay in their marriages! Because married life is boring and constraining.”

“Okay,” Juliana said. This was not the conversation she wanted to have. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell Linda about Chicago. If she “confided” in Linda, it would be public in a matter of hours.

“Your husband is like your third kid. Another child to pick up after. You’re a judge, you’re a professional woman with a big career, yet you have to get dinner on the table and do the dishes. Right?”

“Actually, no. Duncan helps out a lot,” she said. “He cooks dinner more often than I do. I’ll just get takeout from Whole Foods or something.”

“Okay, so you had drinks with a lawyer in your courtroom. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve also had drinks with the defense and the plaintiff’s side, right? Why is that an issue?”

“The question is, Should I be recusing myself?”

“You know the drill. It’s a two-pronged analysis. You examine your own conscience and ask yourself, Can I be objective? So, can you?”

Juliana nodded. “For sure.” She wasn’t going to let what had happened between her and Matías factor into the court case. That night — it was over. It was one and done, as far as she was concerned. But what the hell was he doing on the defense team? Why had he lied about being in venture capital?

“And is this a situation where your impartiality might reasonably be questioned?”

Questioned by whom? she wondered.

Her stomach tightened.

She knew she wasn’t biased, but would others have reason to wonder? Only if they knew the truth. But if she didn’t say anything, who was going to know? Yet if she told anyone the truth, her life would change forever.

“Sorry, what did you say?” She’d lost her train of thought.

“Is there any reason to question your impartiality?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She looked away, feeling slightly relieved.

And then she noticed a man sitting in a plump leather club chair in a dark corner of the library.

It was him. Matías.

Jesus Christ.

She was overcome by vertigo. It felt as if she were falling through space.

The man was stalking her.

By now Linda was taking note of the shift in her expression, probably the color she could feel spreading across her face.

“I don’t know,” Juliana said at last.

Matías was sitting about twenty feet away.

Why is he here?

“Most people would say you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Linda said softly. She seemed to mean it as a question. She looked at Juliana hard; she seemed to know more than she was saying. “Myra Silver’s death means the federal judgeship is open; you’re aware of that, right?”

She was barely listening. “I suppose.”

Linda smiled. “You suppose? Word on the street is that you’re being seriously considered for the job. I suppose you’re aware of that too?”

Juliana nodded. “You’re not the first to say so,” she admitted.

“You want to be very careful about the decisions you make these days,” Linda said. “You know, you look at some of the recent Supreme Court appointments — I mean, these are people who always put every foot right. They made the right friends and executed every move perfectly. It’s like some giant quadrille, and it never stops.”

“Does that sound like me?”

“You’ve always got to play the long game. The higher you climb, the thinner the air gets, and the ledge you walk on gets narrower and narrower. So be careful.”