Look Closer

11

Thursday, August 11, 2022

I tried. I swear I did! I showed up at your door today, seeing you for the first time since you got back from Paris, and I was all ready to do the right thing. When you opened the door, tanned and elegant and, well, just gorgeous, I said, Go ahead, Simon, do it. Tell Lauren, say it, do it, and I did, I told you, I told you I couldn’t betray Vicky like that, we had to stop this thing before it started.

And you, Lauren, bless your heart, you said you understood. “The fact that you’d say something like that is why you’re such a great guy,” you said. My stomach twisted in knots and my chest was about to explode, but we stood there a moment and I said to myself, You’re going to be glad later that you did this even though it sucks right now.

Then I hugged you and you hugged me back and we held each other and the feel of you was too much and then your hands started moving and then mine did, too, and it felt like my insides caught fire and then our lips were pressed together and you moaned and, Lauren, I can’t tell you what that did to me, hearing you respond to me, feeling like I had that effect on you. Do you know how long it’s been since I felt a woman respond to me that way?

So all that time over the last several weeks ruminating and deciding that this can’t happen and within ten minutes, it’s happening. We can’t keep our hands off each other, we’re naked on your couch, going at it like animals, raw and sweaty and ravenous.

And there was nothing in the world that has ever felt as satisfying as hearing you climax, Lauren, that tiny hitch in your voice, that harsh gasp in my ear, the spasm of your hips. I felt like the greatest man alive! Is that what love feels like? Feeling like when you’re with the one you love, you’re on top of the world? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.

I feel like I’ve just taken my hands off the wheel, closed my eyes, and floored the accelerator.

12 Simon

In the morning, I start with my Five at Five—a five-mile run at five in the morning. My mother used to do that. Four days a week, at five bells, she’d strap on her shoes and “eat some pavement,” as she put it. She had eighteen marathons to her credit, qualifying for Boston repeatedly. “It’s time all your own,” she used to say. “No stress, no phone calls, no arguments, just you. It’s like a million dollars’ worth of therapy.”

I head east, crossing over Austin into the west side of Chicago. You wouldn’t call the most crime-ridden and violent part of the city scenic, but there is something about its dilapidated humility and gritty determination that moves me.

Everyone thinks about the shootings and carnage, but I see the teenage girl playing violin by her second-story bedroom window near Augusta and Waller every morning at the crack of dawn; the old man in a beige uniform sitting on his stoop, getting ready for a red-eye shift, drinking coffee out of a thermos and calling me “a damn fool!” as I run past Long Avenue; the grandmother doing Bible study with several teens on the front porch, weather permitting, otherwise by the front living-room window; the woman in the apartment on Leclaire, coming home in a green waitress uniform with a backpack full of books after her overnight shift ended.

Running through this neighborhood reminds me that some people have bigger things to worry about than whether they get promoted to a stupid full professorship at their school. Some people are fighting for a decent life.

Everyone thinks I’m crazy for jogging through here, and maybe Vicky’s right that I’m just too stubborn not to run here, like I’m trying to prove something. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been followed by a police cruiser, the officers slowing next to me and asking me what the hell I’m thinking. Maybe I am a damn fool. But hey, I’ve been called worse.

Like “Mini-Me,” for example. That’s what Mitchell Kitchens, a massive senior, an all-state varsity wrestler, used to call me, back when I was a diminutive freshman at Grace Consolidated, barely over five feet tall and maybe a hundred pounds. Mitchell was built like a brick house, with a neck like a tree stump, so thick it was hard to see where it ended and his head began. He had these nasty teeth and bad breath and a nose that had been broken several times. His eyes were narrow and spread wide apart, giving him a prehistoric look.

That Austin Powers sequel had come out that summer. Apparently, Mitchell had seen it over Thanksgiving break my freshman year. I remember, after that break, Mitchell spotting me in the hallway and pointing and shouting, “Hey, it’s Mini-Me!” And it stuck, right? Of course it stuck. Only the nicknames you hate stick.

When I’d get off the bus every day, there he’d be, just outside the fence, calling out to me, “C’mere, Mini-Me!” He’d shout it in the hallways. He’d call it out when I walked into math class (yes, a senior was taking the same math class as a freshman, to give you an idea of his scholastic advancement). Initially, I tried ignoring him, not responding, but that only made him shout it over and over again and that only made things worse, so eventually I started responding the first time.

Yeah, I didn’t like Mitchell. I don’t obsess over him or anything. But if I’m ever tempted to forget him, I just have to look in the mirror and see the scar on my left cheek, that day he lost his temper.

“A good lawyer knows the answer to every question before she asks it,” my mother used to say. “A good lawyer knows what she wants to say in closing argument before the trial has even begun. You work backward from how you want it to end, and you plan out the trial so that, by the end, you can support everything you wanted to tell them with evidence.”

By quarter after six, I’m shaving after my shower, rubbing a circle out of the steam on the mirror so I can get a fuzzy reflection.

Vicky pushes through the bathroom door with a moan, her eyes all but shut, her hair all over her face. She leans against my back and says, “How do you get up this early?”

“My favorite time of day,” I say.

“That bed . . . is so comfortable.”

“Glad you like it.”

She drops onto the toilet to pee while I finish up shaving and tap my razor in the sink.

“Late night?” I ask.

Her head drops. “We got a call five minutes before midnight.”

“Ugh. Five minutes before your shift ended? You could’ve pawned it off.”

“Well, I didn’t. Her husband was at the ER, too, trying to get her to come home and drop the charges. It was a real scene. Took three cops to restrain the guy. He even swung at me.”

“Yeah? Did he connect?”

“No.”

That’s probably lucky for the guy.

“And the woman?” I ask. “Did she go with you?”

“Yeah, eventually. I didn’t leave until about two in the morning.”

She flushes and drags herself to the sink to wash her hands.

“Go back to sleep,” I say.

“Don’t worry, I will.” She shuffles back to bed, the Bataan Death March, then drops face-first onto the pillow and moans with satisfaction.

I get dressed and put on some coffee. I take a cup for the road. I have a decent drive ahead. I walk back up to the bedroom to say goodbye. “Hey, gorgeous, Daddy’s leaving.”

She opens one eye. “Creepy.”

I watch her for a while. She looks sexy just lying there in that oversize Cubs shirt, this hard, tough woman so innocent and vulnerable in sleep.

I have to protect her. I have to make sure she comes out of this okay.

Before I head up to Wisconsin, I drive by Lauren’s house. I don’t stay long. By now, her husband, Conrad, is long gone, chauffeured downtown for his workout at the swanky East Bank Club before lording over his millions of dollars of investments. Is he checking out all the hard-bodied women in their spandex workout gear? Does he have one eye out for wife number four, should the mood strike him? Is that what he did with Lauren—got bored with his aging second wife and traded her in for a younger model?

Well, you better start looking again, Conrad, old boy. Three years with Lauren wasn’t a bad run. You’re not getting a fourth.

I look across the street at her place. The master bedroom takes up the entire north side of the house, with a terrace behind it where Lauren likes to sunbathe in privacy. Or so she thinks. I’d bet green money the men who live nearby have managed to find their binoculars.

Or maybe she knows that. Do you, Lauren? Do you like to tease other men, make them want you? Do you still need that validation? Have you figured out that none of that matters?

Or will you always want more?

“The pink one,” I say. “No, the hot pink.”

The chubby clerk with the pockmarked face in the “superstore” in Racine, Wisconsin—about eighty miles north of Chicago—lifts the phone case off the rack and runs it over the scanner.

“So this is a thousand minutes?” I confirm.

“Yeah, a thousand minutes. And with our plan, you can get monthly—”

“Nope, no plan.”

“You don’t want a plan?”

“No. Just this phone, a thousand minutes, and that hot-pink case. Don’t worry,” I add with a chuckle, “I’m not a criminal. This is for my daughter. It’s a trial run. I want to see how quickly she burns through these minutes before I decide whether a ten-year-old needs a phone.”

I wish I did have kids. Vicky said no way. She thinks the taint of her rotten childhood would somehow seep into any children she had.

The clerk glances at me briefly before nodding and taking my wad of cash and giving me another look. A no-plan, prepaid phone, paid for in cash.

“The green one,” I tell the elderly saleswoman in the “superstore” in Valparaiso, Indiana, which is 130 miles southwest of Racine, Wisconsin, and about 60 miles from Chicago. Green again, like my green journal, for fresh and new and blossoming and, you know, all that shit.

“And you say you want a thousand minutes?” she asks.

“Yes.” I pull out cash and drop it on the counter.

“And . . . would you be interested in one of our monthly plans—”

“No, ma’am, no thank you. Just the phone and the minutes and the green case.”

She looks down at the cash.

“I’m a drug dealer,” I say. “I sell heroin to children.”

She looks up at me.

“Just kidding. It’s for my ten-year-old son. It’s a trial run. I don’t want him getting more minutes each month until I see how fast he burns through these minutes.”

“Oh, I have a granddaughter who’s ten years old,” she says, brightening. “Is your son going into the fifth grade?”

“He sure is!”

“Where does he go?”

Uh, boy. “We homeschool,” I say, and pull my phone out of my pocket as if I’m answering it, before this woman gets any nosier.

This sneaking-around stuff is harder than it looks.

13 Vicky

I get out of bed a few hours after Simon leaves and search through his chest of drawers. Simon is organized enough to keep a backup list of all his important passwords but is far too paranoid to put them on a computer or phone. Electronic surveillance is the bread-and-butter of Simon’s scholarship; he is convinced the government looks at a lot more of our information than it lets on, and the Fourth Amendment is being shredded in the process. He says “old-school,” good old pen and paper, is the smarter way. He writes his passwords on a piece of notebook paper he keeps in his sock drawer, or maybe he said underwear drawer, I don’t remember.

On top of the chest of drawers are photographs of Simon’s mother, Glory. Some are from before she married Ted Dobias, Simon’s father, but most are after. I see a lot of Simon in her, the chestnut hair and warm eyes and radiant smile, which is how I describe Simon’s smile when he chooses to flash it, which isn’t often enough.

The early pictures: a high school yearbook photo of Glory looking over her shoulder in that awkward school-picture pose. A picture of her with her parents at Wrigley Field when she was a toddler, her face smeared with mustard. One of her standing on Navy Pier in her cap and gown, holding her diploma from the University of Chicago Law School.

The later ones, after she married Ted Dobias, do not feature Ted at all, just Glory and Simon. Glory holding her swaddled newborn in the hospital bed, a beaming but exhausted mother. A photo of them laughing at each other, noses almost touching, when Simon was five or six. The two of them outside Orchestra Hall. Eating pizza at Gino’s East, the cheese stretched like rubber. Little Simon in his mother’s arms after she just completed the Chicago Marathon, her hair matted with sweat, a silver runner’s poncho over her shoulders, Simon holding the runner’s medal and staring at it with that inquisitive look he never lost.

That’s the Glory I always hear about, vibrant and active and silly and whimsical, always ready with a corny joke or a smile.

Then there’s Glory the lawyer, the laser-focused attorney. The photo of mother and son on the steps of the United States Supreme Court the day that Glory argued a case before them. The sharpest of legal minds, Simon always says, “and the sharpest of tongues. Fearlessly blunt.”

On the wall in a frame, a page of a transcript from a court hearing when Glory was a new lawyer working at some fancy, highbrow law firm, one of only a handful of women back then:

The Court: The objection is sustained, Mrs. Dobias.

Counsel: Your Honor, we weren’t offering the testimony for the truth of the matter asserted, but merely to show the fact that the statement was made.

The Court: I understand, hon, but when a judge sustains an objection, the attorney moves on to the next question, I don’t care how pretty she is.

Counsel: I think I understand. And—what does the lawyer do when the judge is acting like a horse’s ass?

The Court: I’m sorry? What did you say to me?

Counsel: I was just speaking hypothetically, Your Honor. Please understand, all these rules and formalities are enough to overwhelm a girl.

The Court: Did you just call me a horse’s ass?

Counsel: Did you just call me hon? Did you just call me pretty? Maybe we both misheard.

Apparently, at that point, the judge ordered the lawyers into chambers and shooed away the court reporter. Simon said the judge asked Glory for one reason why he shouldn’t hold her in contempt. She replied that she was concerned about how the Judicial Inquiry Board might feel about a sitting judge making on-the-record demeaning comments toward a female lawyer. The judge announced a recess for the rest of the day.

Word got back to the law firm, and the firm’s executive committee demanded she apologize to the judge. She refused. She left the firm that day and never went back.

But one of the women in the courtroom gallery that day obtained a copy of the transcript, framed this page, and gave it to Glory as a present.

It sounds like I would’ve liked Simon’s mom.

The last two photos were near the end, when Glory was bound to a wheelchair and had lost a good amount of her functioning. The animation in her face was replaced by a more deadened stare, her beaming smile now a crooked turn of her lip. I don’t know why Simon keeps these around. The last two years of her life were difficult for everyone and not the way to remember her, not the way she’d want to be remembered, if everything I’ve heard about her is true.

I think Simon keeps those photos to remember how everything fell apart.

Here it is, the password list, in his sock drawer. The password to his trust account is Glory010455, his mother’s name and date of birth.

I head downstairs. Simon put on coffee before he left, still hot in the thermos mug. It’s delicious. He uses good beans. And he sprinkled on some pumpkin spice before he brewed it. It’s not quite September, but it reminds me of autumn, my favorite season, which I’m sure is why he did it. He does little things like that for me all the time.

I wish it could be different with Simon and me. I wish he’d come out of that bubble more often. I don’t know if the law became his refuge after everything that happened with his parents or whether he’s just hardwired that way, but teaching and talking and writing about the law is everything to him, his passion, his life. The way he lights up when he breaks down a legal issue into simple parts and then reconstructs it, the way he brings it to life like a breathing organism. Even I, knowing only as much about the law as I’ve seen on television, can get sucked in listening to him.

They say the law is a jealous mistress. But that’s not true. The law has an ironclad grip on Simon’s heart. I’m the jealous mistress.

That’s what I tell myself, at least, the problem I focus on, probably so I can pin the blame on him. The bigger problem, why we will never work, is children. Simon wants them. He wants it all, marriage and kids, a nuclear family. The family I had growing up was nuclear, all right, but not in a good way. I’m not doing it.

Simon says I’m just scared, like any future parent would be. Yes, I’m scared. I’m scared I’ll wreck them. I’m scared they’ll turn out like me. What could I teach them? What kind of role model would I be? What if I had them and realized I couldn’t handle it after it’s too late?

I love my nieces, the M&Ms. I like being the aunt. Isn’t that enough? Not for Simon, it isn’t.

Oh, he’d compromise, I know. He’d live without children. But I don’t want to be the reason he settles.

We just don’t work.

I sit down at the kitchen table and open my laptop. I pull up the website and type in the password to access his trust account.

Simon inherited money from his father after his father died twelve years ago. As far as I know, he hasn’t touched a penny. It was substantial to begin with, but it’s built up with interest and some conservative but decent investment decisions made by the trustee, who is not Simon. Which is good because Simon is terrible with money.

As of today, the balance in Simon’s trust is $21,106,432.

Twenty-one million and change.

Talk about delicious.

I continue the Google search that I started previously, looking for investment advisers. I’ve narrowed it down to four. A guy by the name of Broderick, middle-aged and bald, who talks about his personal relationship with his clients. I’m guessing he has halitosis and high blood pressure.

A man named Lombardi, in high-end “wealth management,” a phrase I see repeatedly. He has a full-wattage smile and kind of a waxy look to him, like he should be selling carpet shampoo on an infomercial.

A guy named Bowers, with tons of initials after his name, offers “full-service wealth management and security,” which I think means he’s going to want to sell me insurance as well as being my investment adviser. Kind of a bookish guy, with small eyes and a pencil neck.

The last one is Christian Newsome, who doesn’t look like any investment adviser that I’ve ever seen. He looks like a Calvin Klein model, at least from the chest up in his photo.

Younger, mid-thirties, two different photos of him on the site with a nice suit but no tie, just an open collar of a crisply starched white shirt. Wide shoulders, thick neck. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t wear the tie, to give his neck room to show off. Athletic, back in his day, I’d venture, but probably nothing too violent; he wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty face of his, the strong, rough-shaven jaw, large blue eyes, the sweep of hair with the bangs falling forward—the carefully practiced messy look. He knows he’s handsome, which is annoying.

But he looks like a winner, I’ll give him that.

I probe further. The bio stuff is impressive: Harvard undergrad and MBA, made a killing in the market before he was out of school.

There’s an article on his website from Fortune magazine from thirteen years ago—March of 2009—about how young Christian Newsome, at the ripe age of twenty-one, was one of the first to invest in “credit default swaps” before the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, correctly predicting what others did not—that the market for “mortgage-backed securities” would crash.

Another article featured on his website, from Newsweek, from three years ago, was about how Christian Newsome’s new venture features a small group of investors in a fund worth more than five hundred million dollars. “Newsome, notoriously tight-lipped about his next moves in the market and the investors he represents, would only say his next idea ‘will make credit default swaps look like penny stocks.’”

I sip my coffee. Reread the articles. Look at his photo for a while.

Then I pick up my cell phone and start making appointments.

14

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

I met you at your condo on Michigan Avenue this afternoon. Having that condo makes everything so much easier. I can pop over from the law school, you can use whatever excuse you need to be downtown.

I’m doing this. We. We are doing this! Everything I said about Vicky, I know, but we’re doing this and I can’t stop myself.

And I couldn’t wait to show you the phones! I hadn’t told you about it. I wanted to surprise you.

First things first, when I got inside your condo—we stripped and did it against the window overlooking Michigan Avenue, fourteen stories up, you planted against the windowpane. It’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies, and I thought my back might give out, so we finished up on your bed.

Then we drank some wine, and I was bursting to show you. So I did. The hot-pink phone for you, the green phone for me.

You didn’t speak at first. My heart started doing calisthenics, not the good kind, the burn kind.

“Am I your mistress now?” you said, looking up at me.

“I just . . . I thought it would be good if we could communicate—”

“You want to be able to call me whenever you want to fuck me.”

“No, it’s . . . not like that,” I said.

“I’m your call girl, is that it?” you said. “Like your wife was before you met her. You want me to be like your wife? You want another Vicky?”

“No, listen, it’s not like that at all.” I said something like that, I think. I’m not really sure what stammering protest was coming out of my mouth.

But this part I remember clear as day. You walked over to me. You have a way of sauntering over to me that makes my legs weak. I think the word “saunter” was invented for you, Lauren. There should have been a saxophone playing in the background.

You leaned up and whispered in my ear, “Do you want me to be your whore, Professor Dobias? Tell me. Tell me what you want.”

I don’t want you to be anything but you, Lauren. I don’t need role plays or dirty talk. That’s never been my thing. I just want you, exactly as you are.

But it seemed like the right thing to say at the time, so I went with it.

I gripped your hair and made you look at me. “That’s what I want,” I said.

Your eyes lit up. The corners of your mouth only curved up slightly.

“Then fuck me that way,” you said.

15 Vicky

The lobby register says that Newsome Capital Growth is in suite 1320. I thought most buildings didn’t have a thirteenth floor out of superstition. An omen?

I push through the glass doors, greeted by a young woman seated behind a thin desk, wearing a headset, the sleek professional look of today’s corporate America, I guess. Where I work, at the shelter, we can hardly afford a single landline. We use fans instead of air-conditioning. We use milk past the expiration date, as long as it doesn’t smell.

“Vicky Lanier for Christian Newsome,” I say.

“Yes, Mrs. Lanier, one moment.” She pushes a button on a large phone. “Your four o’clock, Mrs. Lanier, is here? Sure.” She looks at me. “He’ll be just a minute. Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine.”

Voices from one of the offices behind reception. A strong, throaty laugh. A confident man. Or a man trying to project confidence, at least.

“Mrs. Lanier? Christian Newsome.” He sweeps out of his office and takes my hand, a firm shake. He’s the fourth financial adviser to greet me today but the first to really shake my hand. The other men just gave a gentle squeeze, as if my hand would crumble to dust under the strength of their powerful grip.

He looks like he did in his photos. You never know, but he’s true to it. Mid-thirties, the obligatory well-tailored suit but still no tie, because no, he won’t be tied down by convention, he thinks outside the box, and besides, it shows off his thick neck.

Still rough-shaven, just like his beauty pics on the website, which is interesting because it means he takes the time to shave it just so, not too hairy, but sexy stubble. Still that sweep of the hair made to look messy. This one goes to a lot of trouble to look like he didn’t go to a lot of trouble.

His office doesn’t present like the other sedate ones I saw. He has a leather couch on one side with some fancy lamp hanging over it. A bar with premium liquor. An ego wall, framed articles written about him, some photographs of him with famous people. Three flat-screen TVs on another wall—CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg—plus rolling indices from Nasdaq and Nikkei and the Dow Jones. None of it means anything to me. I understand the financial world like I understand nuclear physics.

“Closest thing in life to a contact sport,” he says to me. “Everyone out there competing. I like to keep an eye on the playing field at all times.”

He sits behind a steel desk and looks me over. He checks me out without trying to be too obvious about it, but men are usually obvious. I have a pretty good idea of what he’s seeing. He wouldn’t mind going a round or two with me, but not marriage material.

My sister, Monica, she was marriage material. Monica was the prom queen, the cheerleader, the A-student, the girl with the radiant smile and infectious laugh every boy chased. Me, I was the trashy younger sister, not nearly as pretty but with bigger boobs and a come-hither smile, who smoked cigarettes off campus with the burnouts and got kicked out of school for having sex in a library carrel.

When I couldn’t be my sister, I was determined to be everything she wasn’t. And at that, I wildly succeeded.

“The great thing is, it’s not a zero-sum game,” he says. “Everyone can win. You just have to play it right.” He drops his hand down on his thin steel desk, which contains nothing but an autographed baseball and two fancy computers. “So, Mrs. Vicky Lanier, how can I help you?”

“I’m interviewing financial advisers. People you probably know.” I lay out the business cards of the other three advisers I met today. “I’m about to come into some money.”

He glances at the cards. “I’ve just relocated to Chicago,” he says. “So I don’t know them personally. But I know them, if you know what I mean. I know thousands of them. And I’m sure any of them could adequately ‘manage’ your money. But that’s not what you want.”

“It’s not?”

“No, you want to grow it. You don’t want to fly first-class. You want to own your own jet.”

I sit back in my chair, cross my legs. Definitely a more aggressive approach. Those other men, with their smooth small talk, their bullshit about forging relationships and getting to know the individual needs and wants of each investor, risk-mitigation, and asset-preservation strategies. Trying to make me feel secure and safe. This one, he’s saying, buckle up and prepare for blastoff.

“You said you’re about to come into some money,” he says. “An inheritance? Not a death in the family, I hope?”

“No. My husband Simon’s money, actually.”

“Ah, Mr. Lanier.”

“Dobias,” I say. “Simon Dobias. I kept my maiden name.”

“Very good.”

“But I’ll be making the decisions about money,” I say. “In twelve weeks, at least, I will. I want to be ready when that happens.”

He pauses on that. He doesn’t understand. “What happens in twelve weeks?”

“We celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. November the third. Then I get the money.”

“Ah,” he says. “Sounds like there’s a trust involved.”

Very good, Christian Newsome. Indeed, there is.

“Simon’s father left money in a trust for him, yes,” I say. “You’ve dealt with trusts before?”

He waves a hand. “All the time. You’d be amazed at what people do with their money. That’s their business, not mine.”

“Right now, the money is held in Simon’s name only. According to the trust, once we’re married for ten years, it becomes joint property.”

“Those were his father’s terms? You had to be married for ten years before you could access the money?”

“Before I could access it . . . or before Simon could even spend it on me.”

Christian sits back in his chair. “Really.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, an edge to my voice. “There’s a trustee who has to approve every expenditure from the trust. Simon could buy a car, but it has to be in the trust’s name only, meaning Simon’s name only. He could buy a second house in Florida or something, but in the trust’s name only—Simon’s name only. Simon tried to buy me a diamond necklace for our fifth anniversary and the trustee said no, not with trust money, he couldn’t.”

“That is restrictive.”

I smile. “Simon’s father didn’t trust me.”

That seems to spark Christian’s interest, his eyes lighting up. Am I a naughty girl?

I don’t know, am I?

“He figured that if I really loved Simon, I wouldn’t mind waiting ten years for the money. And if I was in it for the money, as he suspected, I wouldn’t be willing to wait ten years.”

He doesn’t answer, but he sees the logic. And he’s thinking there must be a healthy amount of money in that trust. But he hasn’t asked. Not yet. His website, the small print, says that the minimum investment for his services is ten million dollars. On the phone, the receptionist said the same thing but added that Christian was sometimes willing to make exceptions. I told her that ten million wouldn’t be a problem.

“And you haven’t grown on Simon’s father over the years?” he asks me, smiling.

“Oh, Simon’s father passed away before we were even married.”

“Ah, sorry to hear that. And now you’ve been married ten years,” he says. “Or you will be, come November third.”

“Come November third,” I say, “I can spend that money however I want, whenever I want, on whatever I want. And I want to get it as far away from that stupid bank and that condescending trustee with his bullshit about asset protection and conservative—”

I catch myself getting carried away.

“Sorry,” I say. “I might be . . . a little bitter.”

“I don’t blame you,” he says. “You’ve been a second-class citizen in your own marriage.”

I nod. “Not that Simon wants it that way. He doesn’t have a choice. He can’t change the terms of the trust. But yeah, a second-class citizen, that’s a really good way of putting it.”

He raises a hand. “I should keep my opinions to myself.”

“No, really, that sums up how I’ve felt.”

I lean forward. It’s probably time to cut to the chase.

“Let me ask you something, Mr. Newsome. When that trust becomes community property on November third, does that mean I can spend the money without Simon’s approval? Or even without his knowledge?”

I asked that question three times previously today and got the same answer each time. First, they’d have to see the language of the trust. Second, generally, if someone is listed on an account, they can spend that money without the approval of the other account holder. But third, it’s probably best to include the other account holder in the conversation to avoid disputes on the back end, including potential litigation—litigation that could include the investment adviser.

Christian Newsome doesn’t immediately answer. He presumably has the same response, more or less, at the ready. But he’s not thinking about the legal niceties. He’s thinking about what kind of person I am to be asking that question. And he doesn’t seem particularly bothered. A tiny smirk plays on his face for one beat.

“There are ways to make that happen, yes,” he says. “And call me Christian.”

I look around the office, the rolling indices from the various stock exchanges, the diplomas from Harvard, the certifications from the state agencies. All these guys are alike in so many ways.

But not in every way.

“Christian, that’s the best answer I’ve heard all day.”

I take the three business cards I put on his desk and make a show of ripping each of them in half.

“And you should probably call me Vicky,” I say.

16 Simon

I walk a mile and a half from the law school down to the Chicago Title & Trust Building on Clark and Randolph in the Loop. I take a longer route so I can travel along one of my favorite spots, the concrete promenade on the lakefront, the turbulent water to my left, the cars flying past me on Lake Shore Drive to my right. Poisonous clouds cover the sky, but that hasn’t stopped the cyclists and Rollerbladers and joggers shooting past each other north and south just below me. I do love this city.

The building has a different name now, but a lot of people still call it the Chicago Title & Trust Building. That’s what it was called when my father had a law firm here in the nineties. It was the firm he opened on his own, after splitting off from his partners over some dispute. Back then, a bunch of law firms had offices in this building. Maybe they still do.

I remember coming here with him on a Saturday once. We took the Green Line downtown—itself an adventure, especially on weekends—and rode the elevator up to the seventeenth floor. He had a suite in the middle of that floor. I remember the frosted glass door and how cool it seemed with law offices of theodore dobias stenciled in a fancy font.

That was back when Dad was “scrapping,” as he’d call it. Personal injury and workers comp, mostly. Car crashes and slip-and-falls and stuff like that. He even did some criminal, mostly DUIs and possession cases. He had to bone up on the Fourth Amendment, but fortunately he had my mother for that. Mostly he was an ambulance chaser.

Were you injured at work? Then you need someone on your side!

Luckily, he never ran any schlocky commercials. I never saw his face on the side of a bus.

Then he hit the motherlode, a massive electrical-injury case that made him millions. He changed office space. He changed a lot of things.

Inside the Chicago Title & Trust Building, I grab a Starbucks in the lobby and plop down on one of their leather couches.

I pull out the green phone I just bought in Indiana and slide in the SIM card. For the first time ever, I turn on the green phone, waiting for it to pop to life, the first few seconds of my thousand minutes. I take a deep breath and type:

I hit “send” and let out my breath.

She’s expecting my text—our first text—at ten this morning. At least I hope she is. I hope she’s sitting there with that hot-pink phone just waiting to hear from me.

My green phone vibrates with her reply. I almost spill my coffee.

Well, hello, stranger

Her replies are in a different font than my texts. Mine are boxy and plain, hers have curves, daintier and more sensual. That seems appropriate. I respond:

Not the sexiest of responses. Not at all. But Lauren has an old house with thick walls, like a lot of houses in Grace Village. Some people I’ve known in the Village have trouble with cell reception.

She texts back:

On the balcony

Right, the balcony off the master bedroom.

I text:

But I don’t send it. My first texts were lame. This whole new exciting way to communicate secretly with your mistress, and I start by asking about her cellular reception? And now I say we have to be careful? Talk about unsexy.

I should have thought this out more. But I didn’t. I erase and type this instead:

Better, because it shows caring. But still comfortably occupying wet-blanket territory. Up your game, Simon.

No. It’s true, I haven’t done anything like this before, but no.

Pop quiz: What would someone not feeling insecure say to her right now?

Do you really like me? Are you sure? Cuz I like you tons!

Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all night.

I’ve never met anyone like you.

I think I love you.

None of the above.

I’m going with (e). I’m not going to use the “L” word. How about this:

That’s better. Yeah. I send it before I can talk myself out of it. Take another sip of my Starbucks. Her text box starts bubbling. She’s typing a response:

Wow. Phew. That went well.

I close out the phone, power it off, and remove the SIM card.

Wicker Park. Back when I was in college, this was the cutting edge of hip, the place to live, the place to hang. It still is to a lot of people, but it’s become a bit too yuppie now for the younger crowd, and some of the cool dives and concert rooms and coffee bars have been replaced with AT&T and Lululemon stores and Fifth Third Bank branches.

I work late at the law school. At about seven-fifteen, I start out from the school on a ten-mile round-tripper to Wicker Park and back. At the halfway point, I stop outside a bar called Viva Mediterránea, on Damen north of North Avenue in the city. Never been here. The back patio, adjacent to the alley, is full of revelers tonight, people in work clothes enjoying an extended happy hour, college kids and grad students just getting started.

I stand in the alley, sweaty and the good kind of tired, and look around. To my right, Viva’s back patio. To my left, the rear side of a condominium building on the next street over, a few of the condo owners out on their back patios grilling meat and enjoying a cocktail of their own.

I’m near people having fun without being elbowed and jostled. Not especially well lit, either.

Yes, this is going to be my spot. The alley behind Viva Mediterránea.

Our plan is to text twice a day, ten in the morning and eight at night, times that fit with our schedules. We will leave our phones off the rest of the time. We have to be careful. Anyone could understand why. You can’t just leave your burner phone lying around to beep or ring when the wrong person—say, your spouse—happens to be near it.

It means I will have to adjust my running schedule, which is disappointing, because I love my morning runs, but there’s something to be said for running in the evening, too, and this route from the law school to Viva wasn’t bad at all.

I pull out my green phone, as it’s 8:00 p.m., insert the SIM card, and send this:

She replies promptly:

Hello stranger danger

Emphasis on the danger. I try not to think about it. But it’s always going to be there. She replies again quickly:

Fair as in blond, but she’s playing with me.

She responds:

A chant goes up on the patio, the patrons at Viva. There’s a TV out there, and Contreras just hit a homer for the Cubs. It’s good to be young. I return my attention to the phone:

Her reply:

That’s a softball:

Bubbles, as she plays with a response. Then:

Nice. I like that. For the record, my mother didn’t name me Simon Peter as a nod to a biblical character. She always wanted Simon for my first name, and Peter was her father’s name. But the religious ed teachers at Saint Augustine loved to use my full name.

I reply:

I smile to myself and power off the phone. I remove the SIM card and stuff them both into the pocket of my running shorts.

This way of communication will serve our purposes perfectly. As long as we’re careful.

As long as we’re very, very careful.