Other people

One Archibald Widmer

When I telephoned Thomassy that morning in March of 1974 and asked him to lunch, I counseled myself to muster a casual voice. As I waited for him to get on the line, I thought the protections are gone. I had reluctantly perceived that civil and well-educated people now accepted gratuitous violence against strangers as ordinary. Therefore I had to conclude that George Thomassy had chosen an appropriate profession in criminal law and I had not.

Thomassy misinterpreted my casualness. He was preparing for trial, he said, and wasn't taking time for restaurant lunches.

"I wouldn't mind joining you for a sandwich in your office," I said, hoping my insistence wouldn't seem pushy.

Thomassy said absolutely nothing. It wasn't ill breeding. I took it to be a technique for extracting the most information without the commitment of even an acknowledging word.

"George," I went on, "I wouldn't trouble you about something trivial. It's about a case."

"Yours?"

I realized he thought that I had run into a noncivil aspect of some client's case and was seeking his advice.

"The victim is mine, not the case," I said.

He waited for me to go on.

"It's my daughter, Francine."

Again, no sound from him.

"It's rather…"

He could have said Go on.

"George?"

He acknowledged his presence with a sound, but no more.

"Look George, hell, she's been raped."

At last he spoke. "Does she know the man?"

"Yes."

"Jesus, she's just a kid."

Any other lawyer of my acquaintance would have immediately said I'm so sorry.

"Francine is twenty-seven."

"When did this happen?"

"Tuesday," I said.

"Is she all right?"

It was ridiculous for me to expect from Thomassy the ritual responses I could hear from my friends. His questions were not etiquette. He was already at work.

"I said is she all right?"

"Yes," I said. Then, "No. She's frightened. The analyst she's been seeing suggested she consult a lawyer. I guess I'm the only lawyer she knows. She hadn't intended to tell me."

"Has she been to a hospital?"

"Yes. No serious damage. To her body, that is."

"Did they take the tests?"

"I didn't think to ask." The truth is I wouldn't have known to ask.

"Has she been to the police?"

"Yes. They took some notes. She's worried sick."

"Why?"

"The man lives in the apartment over her."

That was when Thomassy said, "All right, let's have lunch."

"When?" I asked.

"How about today?"

I didn't know whether we'd been disconnected or Thomassy'd simply hung up. I hated the idea of calling back, but I did.

"George, shall I bring Francine to lunch?"

"No."

"I thought I'd save you time."

"I want to hear what she told you without her around."

It's a different world, criminal law. "What time?" I asked.

"Twelve-thirty's okay."

"At your office?"

"Meet me at Dudley's," he said.

When I report to you that Thomassy is regarded by other lawyers like myself as the best criminal lawyer in Westchester County, what is it I mean by "the best"? When a man runs a mile faster than any living human has heretofore, he has achieved an absolute, but how few of life's activities — art, pleasure, the law — can be so precisely determined! I remember William York Tindall used to say that his idea of perfection was to be able to put his legs up after a fine meal and listen to Mozart while smoking a Romeo and Julieta cigar. I knew exactly what he meant, though Mozart was by no means my favorite composer, and since the cigar makers fled Havana, Romeo and Julietas are not the smoke we once prized. If I had to be restricted to seeing one painting for the rest of my life, even if it was a Rouault or a Rembrandt, I should soon weary of it, but I can think of a small collection, perhaps a dozen or so, that might keep my eyes content. However, if you have been involved in a crime, and you need to deal with the law, you'll find that very few private individuals can hire a battery of attorneys; you usually pick one, and if the matter is important, you narrow your choice to the best. Hence Thomassy.

At Yale, even before I entered the Law School, it was made clear to me that all of the lawyers who inhabited the social echelon I came from without exception practiced civil law. Criminal lawyers, even the best, had a touch of taint. Their affairs caused them to associate not with the kind of people they would invite to their homes, but with labor racketeers, embezzlers, Sicilians, and worse. Moreover, criminal law was comparatively unremunerative except for those few lawyers who were primarily actors or outlaws.

And so, since I knew what was expected of me, I prepared myself for a career of luncheons in executive dining rooms in which, even today, women are not permitted with grace, and for the gentle world in which adversaries were friends. When we met, we always talked of something else before we got down to business. The stakes in our kind of law are always measured, ultimately, in dollars. In criminal law, the stakes are usually a man's freedom, and under some conditions could mean a man's life.

Nevertheless, I was fascinated by criminal law, and read the cases as if they were a form of specialized pornography contrived for my pleasure. I kept in touch with a few criminal lawyers so that, on occasion, I could derive some vicarious satisfaction from the brinksmanship of their cases. Above all, I maintained my now decade-long acquaintanceship with Thomassy, who practiced in the county in which I had always made my home. I sometimes thought, if my ancestors had come from Armenia instead of England, and if I had the perfectionist zeal that animates a man moving up from the bottom of the ladder rather than the ennui that lazies one at the top, I might have been like Thomassy. In America we toy with the idea that because we are a highly mobile society, we are not greatly stratified; it is supreme nonsense. In a way we are more class conscious than the Europeans because you cannot always pigeonhole an American by his accent or dress, and with newcomers you are compelled to watch carefully for the telltale nuance. However, in all classes we share one addiction: we admire winners. We root for the underdog so long as he is pushing for the top. Pity never excites us as much as triumph. We think of ourselves as sportsmanlike, but what we do is savagely tear down goal posts when our team wins.

The very naive think winning unimportant. When trouble strikes, they are quick to change their minds. I was once involved in a matter that affected not only my client but also the national interest. The matter was out of my field because money was not the issue. Moreover, it was a matter in which the outcome could not be compromised; we either won or lost totally. I phoned Edward Bennett Williams in Washington, and though we had never spoken before, within two minutes of hearing the subject of my concern, he said, "Come on down." He took the case and, of course, won it. But most criminal matters — the felonies that attract our interest in newspapers and worry us when they invade our neighborhoods — are tried locally, and one wants as advocate a lawyer who knows the individuals and customs of the courts in the immediate area. Like the nearly million other inhabitants of Westchester, if I were accused of a crime, particularly if I were guilty, I would want only Thomassy to represent me. I dread the possibility that Thomassy might become a judge and hence unavailable to me except as a friend. Besides, the quality one pretends to look for in a judge is fairness. That is not Thomassy's virtue. The boxers and ball players whom we adulate are known for their victories and not for their sportsmanship.

Please don't misconstrue my intent; Thomassy has as many surface flaws as good leather. He doesn't pay attention to his clothes. A glen plaid suit for everyday wear, a dark blue suit for special occasions, a knit tie that shows up two or three times a week, cordovan wing-tip shoes that are rarely polished. I have observed him at dinner parties. He does not keep his left hand in his lap. He sometimes begins eating a moment before everyone else. If someone bores him, Thomassy does not dissemble. You'd think that the son of an immigrant would pay more attention to the tenuous signs of class, but Thomassy seems to lack interest in passing into the Wasp superstructure of lawyerdom. Yet there is about him none of that reserve from which some lawyers look down at humankind in trouble. He maintains the aspect of a calm observer, but one knows that sinew binds the bones of his lank frame, that he is a jungle fighter of Orde Wingate's class, a puma among the cats of criminal law.

Thomassy claims he was born on January 1, 1931, at 12:01 A.M. in Oswego, New York. The circumstances were suspicious. The Oswego Herald had offered, in that depression year, a $500 prize for the first child born in the new year, and it is said that the doctor attending Thomassy's mother took a potentially dangerous step in keeping the child's head from emerging for a full five minutes in order that his parents might win the award. Nineteen thirty-one was interesting for other reasons than Thomassy's slightly delayed birth. That year Elmer Rice's Counsellor-at-Law was a smash on Broadway. Across the ocean, Oswald Mosley formed a fascist party in Britain; Pierre Laval, of similar predilections, was elected Premier of France; German millionaires Hugenberg, Kirdorf, Thyssen, and Schroder undertook to support the Nazi Party; and Pius XI issued his encyclical on the new social order. In innocent America, Jane Addams and Nicholas Murray Butler shared the Nobel Peace Prize, and Jehovah's Witnesses greatly expanded their organization in anticipation of the apocalypse.

My name is Archibald Widmer, and I will always remember the lunch with Thomassy that changed the course of his life.

I talk to you the truth. I don't want to call the boy George. My wife Marya, may she rest in peace, herself named after the mother of Jesus, we are in this new country only four years, she gives birth to a son, and calls him George, an American name used by everybody, especially Greeks. He is son of successful horse dealer who owes money to nobody. He should have been christened Haig after me, or Armen after his grandfather. For me, George sounds like a foreigner.

Look you, my hands are rough from work but my head is full of Armenian truth from centuries. Greeks call themselves what, the cradle of civilization, assfuckers! Armenians took civilization out of the cradle! Smart Jews, America is full of them, they learn from suffering, eh? When George was a boy, millions of Jews killed in Europe, smart ones, dumb ones. When I meet a Jew I tell him before this century began, 200,000 Armenians in Turkey, massacred! In Constantinople, 7,000 killed like pigs. In 1909, in Cilicia and Syria, 20,000 more Armenians butchered. During the Great War, the Turks — may their women die in childbirth — tried to force our women and children to take Islam, to make Moslems out of the first nation to be Christian in the world!

In 1920,I have a good memory, this Woodrow Wilson, President of America, refuses to lift a finger to protect Armenia. My father says if America will not come to us, we go to America.

Armenians are the greatest horse breeders in the world. What is a man without a horse? As soon as we earn some extra dollars, I give to my son, who must carry on this holy tradition, a pony. I go out with him Saturday, Sunday, ride, ride, ride, and what Georgie says? He is bored by horses. Sick! I show him how I always sell right horse to right people, how, if hurt horse is brought to Haig Thomassian, I make horse well, not shoot. I never give up. I take Georgie to cowboy movies. I show him wagon trains. I tell George who do you think pulled them, Jews? Horses made America. America needs horsemen. I tell George a man on a horse is a man not to be conquered. The kid's face looks up at me with pretend respect but his eyes say bullshit. I shout at him a horse means freedom, he looks away. His eyes are already on college, the city, somewhere else.

I knew he would leave, but could I even in an old-country nightmare imagine he would change his name to Thomassy, an act of treason against his own father! He can blah-blah-blah in court, but what is he? An Armenian who cannot ride a horse is like a Jew. The cossacks slaughtered the Jews. Whoever saw a Jew master a horse?

In 1969 my wife dies. George Big Shot comes to Oswego, at the funeral tells the story of Marya, her whole life from a little girl, and I ask him where does he know so much, not from me. He shakes my hand as if I am the boy. I tell him now is the time to move back, we have plenty crime in Oswego, good business for lawyers. He refuses me. I tell you, in his soul my son is a Turk.

Sure, on my birthdays the telephone rings, his secretary says "George Thomassy calling," and I yell at her, "Thomassian, Thomassian!" Then I hear George's voice. I feel he wants to talk, ask questions about what I do, how I feel, but I give him the least words, "yes" or "no," until he gives up. Even if he becomes the biggest lawyer in the whole United States, to me, as an Armenian, he is nothing.

Dudley's was a six-minute drive from Thomassy's office, an oddball restaurant on Rockledge Avenue in Ossining, wedged between houses that had seen better days. Around the corner from Dudley's was Liberty Street, which led to Sing Sing, and the caged vehicles carrying prisoners often passed Dudley's front door.

Inside, you stepped into another universe, thick purple carpeting, antique signs on the walls, and cascades of living plants under a bank of plant lights artfully concealed in the skylight. On Fridays, in the old days, you were likely to find John Cheever at a table with friends, the folk singer Tom Glazer, editors wooing authors, middle-class women with a fondness for Dudley's very large lunchtime cocktails, and the oversize carafes of wine. The menu was eccentric — wildflower omelets in season, superb soups, a cheesecake that rivaled that of Lindy's in its heyday. Dudley's had imperfections: the washrooms were sometimes cleaned so casually experienced customers would do their washing up elsewhere; the bench seats sometimes gathered enough breadcrumbs to satisfy a pigeon. The young waitresses, as lovely as the cascading plants, sometimes served the host before serving his guest, but one didn't mind. It was an ambience that made Thomassy comfortable.

Thomassy looked as if a make-up man had dusted shadows under his eyes. He had always seemed younger than his age, but now, despite his admirable energy, he looked forty-four. No longer the boy wonder.

"How've you been?" I asked him.

"I put on a blue sock and a black sock this morning. My secretary noticed."

"You ought to get yourself a wife."

"Thanks," he said and shut me off.

I hadn't meant it as an intrusion into his private life. I suppose we were all aware of the succession of attractive women he squired about on occasion. One couldn't help wondering why Thomassy avoided anything resembling a permanent relationship. It was as if his women were cases also, occupying his attention for a time, then put out of mind.

"Who's the analyst who suggested your daughter see a lawyer?"

"Remember you gave me a reprint of an article on the three types of human personality?"

"I gave a lot of those away. What was the name of the psychiatrist?"

"Gunther Koch," I said.

"That's right," said Thomassy. "Now I remember."

"You ever meet the man?"

"No. Damn, it's a small world. I give you something to read, and your daughter ends up on his couch. How long has she been seeing this Dr. Koch?"

"Maybe half a year or more. My wife and I encouraged her."

"Why is she seeing an analyst?" Insomnia.

"A lot of people have insomnia," he said impatiently.

"Not like hers. She'd go weeks without a good night's sleep. Deep circles under her eyes. On only two or three hours' sleep some nights, you get desperate. She did. I suspect she was taking at least three Seconals a night for a month when Priscilla and I found out."

"Who's her doctor?"

"She didn't get them on prescription. Someone at the U.N. was selling them to her. Anyway, it was a palliative, not a cure. We encouraged her to see Dr. Koch to get at the source of her restlessness."

"Was she that way as a child?"

"Not at all. It started right after college. George, you sound like an analyst."

"Any analyst who sounds lilce me ought to be fired. Did you ever witness a rape trial?"

"No."

"Read a transcript?"

"No."

"Everything gets dragged out."

I hated the seamy things adversaries seemed to have to pull out of witnesses in criminal trials. It violated my sense of privacy to open boxes that should have stayed shut.

"Ned, when it comes to cases of this sort, your daughter — and you, too — may bump into surprises. You don't like surprises."

"I'm glad you understand," I said.

"Sure you want to go further?"

"I'm merely the Miles Standish here," I said. "It's not my choice."

"You know Cunham?"

"Only by name."

"He's interested in cases that'll keep him in the newspapers."

"I don't want this in the newspapers."

Thomassy's forefinger circled the rim of his martini glass.

"Cunham's looking for corruption or multiple murder these days. He thinks rape is petty cash."

"Could you talk to one of the assistant D.A.s, perhaps one of the younger ones who might be sympathetic to a woman's point of view? I've really had no contact with those people."

Thomassy looked at me with what I thought was sadness. To him, I suppose, those of us who didn't know the D.A.s were businessmen, not lawyers. He had settled back in his seat, and so I leaned forward as if to bridge the chasm.

"Will you try to help her?"

"If I believe your daughter's story."

I could never say anything resembling that to a client to his face.

Thomassy went on, "Why doesn't she just move out of the building and be careful from now on."

"Not Francine."

"Tell me about her."

"She's part of the new generation, George."

"What does that mean?"

"She doesn't live by our rules. George, you know what Wasp families are like. We read people's expressions, but we don't comment on them. Francine does."

Thomassy smiled.

"Saying what you think all the time," I told him, "is very like high treason in our world. I've accommodated myself to her rebelliousness because it's temporary. Her children will revert to type."

"She might end up with a Sicilian."

It was my turn to be amused. "I can't believe she'd carry things that far," I said. "Although I must say she tried to quit Radcliffe in her last semester as a protest against the degree. I made her go back on grounds I was ashamed of. I told her how much I had already invested in that degree. She mocked me, but finished up. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have gotten her job."

"Where?"

"The U.N."

It made me nervous that Thomassy hadn't taken a single note. When a client first briefed me about a situation, I always had my long yellow pad in front of me, getting the details down. It gives them security, and me as well. Was Thomassy expecting to remember all this? Or did it not matter?

"Boy friend?" he asked.

"From time to time."

Thomassy laughed. "Surprised you haven't got her married off already."

"Young women don't get married off today, George. Judging by her friends, most of them don't get married even on their own initiative. No contracts."

"Tough for lawyers. Like you, I mean."

I wanted to respond to him, but I didn't want to get embroiled in a side issue. I had promised her a lawyer who could advise her how to go about getting the rapist convicted. But I abhorred the idea of being trapped in the middle. I wanted Thomassy to see Francine, not to question me.

The food came. Thomassy was tolerant. He let us eat. Then he said, "Tell me about the rape."

"George, I'd really prefer that you asked her."

"I'm asking you."

"She just said she was by the man who lived upstairs."

"No details?"

"I'm her father."

"If she doesn't have a current boy friend, who else would she tell the details to?"

"No one. Not even her sisters. She's like that."

"The details are important."

"Yes, I know."

"She'll have to tell me."

I nodded.

"Will she lie?"

"Francine tells the truth even when she should give other people the comfort of white lies. The original wild duck." It occurred to me that Thomassy might not know Ibsen.

"The Wild Duck…" I started to explain.

"I know," said Thomassy, cutting me ofiF. "Who's going to pay?"

"I said she works at the U.N."

"This could cost a lot more than a young secretary can spare."

I was pleased to have caught him in a prejudice. "Francine," I said, "is the research assistant on the staff of the American Ambassador. Her compensation is quite adequate. She's very bright," I added. "I'll stand behind her bill, of course. Just in case."

Thomassy waved the offer away. Which meant he accepted it. It was a great relief to me to pass the ball to him. In over twenty years of practice, I've never had a client's wife or daughter involved in an incident of this sort. Statistically, it would seem that some must have been. Is it the subject that makes it impossible for them to broach? Or is it me?

His full nomenclature was Archibald Edward Widmer III. No one was about to call him Archie or Eddie, and Edward sounded like the Duke of Windsor so everyone in our crowd called him Ned.

What was the chemistry? He looked good in white suits. He was clean. His forearms were muscular. He blew into my ear on our first date. From the start, I trusted him to look out for my interests. He made me feel safe. Men weren't adversaries in those days. We didn't put excessive weight on orgasmic response or subject our feelings to psychoanalysis. We aimed for wedlock.

My friends thought Ned prissy. Edith's Brock concealed something behind his facade of shyness I didn't want to get in bed with. And Alison's Peter — what ambisexual lusts were camouflaged by his toothsome flash of condescension at every man, woman, and pet that came into view. My Ned was not prissy once our bedroom door was shut.

Most men say they want sons. Ned wanted daughters and got them, Joan, then Margaret. He turned into a talented coddler of little girls, a fanny patter, body hugger, all in the guise of warm fatherhood. Then Ned went through that brief berserk period, announcing he was ready to resign his partnership and shoot off to Tahiti or somewhere with or without me. He'd make love everywhere except in bed. And during that wild time, Francine was conceived. What a beautiful thing she turned out to be. Blond hair that would never turn dark like her sisters' and mine, and two Indian touches, high burnished cheekbones, and eyes that were almost almonds in shape. Her pupils were a strange blue, as if Wedgwood could glisten. She never had to experiment with make-up, as her sisters had. She shot up there at a very young age, taller than any of us except Ned. Joan and Margaret went through the same gawky period I had, but Francine could have been a ballerina the way she moved. I found it difficult to connect her graces to our genes.

I remember when I first discovered Francine got the curse. It was time to tell her the facts of life just as I had Joan and Margaret, but when I did, Francine led me on a bit, pretending she didn't know what I was talking about, and then I learned she'd had it a year earlier without so much as a word to me. The older girls were so dependent on me for things like that. I told Francine she made me feel useless, and she said "No, no" and assured me she did want to hear about the private things from me, so I thought what the hell, and started bravely to explain about intercourse. Francine listened as if she were mesmerized. Or was she putting me on? "You know all about this," I said, and she said, "Please, Mom, tell me about fellatio and cunnilingus." Would you believe that in a thirteen-year-old? Where did she — from the others? Joan? Margaret? I was in a panic until Ned came home. When I told him, he just grinned, and I lost my temper at him.

"Priscilla," he said, "there is absolutely nothing we can do about something she already knows."

Children were discovering our secrets much too soon. I didn't want to give up at least trying to be a mother to Francine. Once, when she was fourteen, still growing taller too fast, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of desertion and panic and told her, "You are my last baby," and she said, "Mother, I am not a baby."

Bereft of my motherhood, I fled upstairs to my bedroom and smothered my face in the pillow to muffle my desperate sobbing at the prospect of being dutyless, jobless, useless, marking time till I would die. I wasn't ready yet for change of life or death, why did I feel pushed, what was the hurry?

I don't remember if I fell asleep for a moment or not. I do remember the stroking of my hair. I turned. Francine was bending over me. With her fingertips she touched the tears in the comers of my eyes, then took my hands in hers, squeezing them, saying, "Mama" — she hadn't called me that in the longest time — "Mama, you are not old."

In truth, I had been childishly tormenting myself and she, at fourteen, was comforting me with reality. Joan and Margaret had grown up without looking back, but Francine was constantly glancing over her shoulder, as it were, to see where I was, where Ned was. No wonder he loved her so. I truly don't think I was jealous of the way Ned treated her as a woman when she was still a girl. I never had doubts about Joan and Margaret finding their places, marriage, children, the right men. But would Francine find someone she could have regard for? At twenty she said she didn't have time to be serious about anyone. At twenty-five she said to me that men were boys. I worried about her. About something happening to her. I didn't think about rape. Though Ned must have, mustn't he?

You've got to fix an image in your mind to visualize a person you haven't met. When I asked my father what Mr. Thomassy looked like, he said he was a very good lawyer! I pictured him dark-skinned and beak-nosed because of his name, not an American look, more like some of the not-quite-Caucasians I see at the U.N., flat cheeks, the kind that don't look slick shaven even in the morning. I imagined him leaning forward a bit, on the balls of his feet, ready to point. At me! Accusingly!

Driving to his office the first time, I got to the address without one wrong move. The place surprised me. It was a two-story professional building, new, in a good section of Ossining, near Briarcliff; from the way Dad had talked about Mr. Thomassy I had expected it to be a kind of nondescript store-front, walk-in sort of building. The directory in the lobby listed two doctors, a dentist, a real estate agent, and George Thomassy, attorney-at-law, by appointment only.

My appointment was for four o'clock and I turned the knob of the door to the outer office seconds before four. The reception room made you feel you were passing from a contemporary building into another world of paneled walls, subdued lighting, and heavy carpeting that had been put down a long time ago. At the left rear corner was the secretary's desk — I guessed she was his secretary — and she said, "Good afternoon, you must be Miss Widmer," and I thought Do I look like my father?

"I have an appointment," I said, which was a ridiculous thing to say since she knew who I was and there wasn't anybody else waiting.

"He'll be with you in a minute," said the secretary, glancing at her phone, "he's just finishing up a call."

I sat down on one of the brown leather chairs with brass upholstery nails. On the table in front of me lay an old National Geographic, a copy of The New Yorker that was falling apart, and some comic books. Who brought children along to waiting rooms like this?

When I looked up Thomassy was standing framed in the inner office door, watching me thumb through the comic books, Jesus! I felt like I'd been caught playing with myself. I stood up, put out a dumb hand to shake his outstretched hand, blushing. He didn't look at all like my conjuration of him; he was tall, lean, relaxed-limbed, loose, clean shaven, straight-nosed — no Arab, Greek, Turk, Armenian, whatever — firm, warm hand, and his grey eyes aimed straight at my eyes as he said, "Come in, Miss Widmer."

Those were the first words I ever heard from him and dozens of times since they have skimmed through my head, the mind-cutting bass rumbles of Come in, Miss Widmer, echoing again and again.

He stood aside to let me enter the inner office first. I was careful not to brush against him.

His desk near the window was cluttered with books, file folders, loose papers. In front of it was a brown leather armchair facing a matching couch. The rest was all bookshelves, closing the walls in around the cramped space.

He gestured me into the armchair, dropped into the couch opposite me, our knees almost touching. I was glad he didn't sit behind that desk. I can't stand it when men sit behind desks for the phoney authority it gives them. But I was unprepared to be so close physically to a man I didn't know.

"What do you do when you have a crowd?" I said.

He smiled. "I like to see people one or two at a time. There are folding chairs in the closet for emergencies."

"Do you have emergencies often?" I asked, glad to keep the real conversation from starting.

"My clients have emergencies."

He was examining me with those grey eyes. Was he thinking I looked like my father? Right now he's noticing I don't wear a bra.

The sun from the window was in my eyes. He got up, avoiding my knees, drew the blind just enough to block the offending rays.

"Thank you," I said.

"You seem," he said, "less…" His voice trailed off.

"Less?"

"Less upset than I thought you might be. You seem…"

I waited.

"Calm."

You expect me to be shrill.

"Have you seen the police?"

"Yes."

"Were they helpful?"

"No." They were impossible.

"You're seeing an analyst, a Dr. Koch?"

"Yes."

"What does he say?"

"He says hmmmmm to most things."

Thomassy laughed, a sharp, short, clear laugh. He was taking another look at me, as if something was contradicting the first impression he had formed.

"He said most women feel guilty about being raped."

"Do you?"

"No, I feel wronged. I want that son of a bitch in jail!"

I felt the heat in my cheeks, my whole body's instant rage. Control yourself was the one piece of childhood admonition that stuck like a flypaper echo I couldn't shake off. I took a lungful of air, watching him watching me.

"Did you say that to Dr. Koch?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said he doesn't put people in jail, I should see a lawyer."

"Lawyers don't put people in jail. Why do you want the man in jail?"

"For what he did." To me.

"Miss Widmer, revenge is not one of the services I provide."

"Did my father tell you the man lives on the floor above me?"

"Yes."

"How am I supposed to go on living in that place, worrying about what he's going to try next? I can just see myself in bed, trying to fall asleep, knowing his bed is right in the bedroom above. When I hear sounds up there, is it supposed to mean that weirdo is banging his wife or that he's getting out of bed to come downstairs and have a go at me again?"

"Please, Miss Widmer."

"Please what, it's my house, what's the use if I can't feel safe in it?"

"Try to calm down."

"My body is not a public urinal for some loonie to go shoving his thing in!"

"Please calm down."

"I'll calm down when I feel safe. When he's in jail. Why are you looking at me that way?"

"What way?"

"You're staring at me."

"I didn't mean to stare. Please take it easy."

"I will when he's in jail."

Please help me put him there. If I knew how, I wouldn't ask for help. I closed my eyes, took a long, slow, deep breath. He thinks I'm hysterical. I have to somehow control myself. My father used to say we all have feelings — dismay, anger, rage — the difference is how we control those feelings. Letting go is weakness. Shrillness is foreign to us. Oh God, are we disciplined!

I opened my eyes, determined. This man is trying to help me. I need to help him help me.

"That's better," he said.

"I m sorry."

"Understandable. Can we go on? There are facts I need to know."

I nodded.

"How many apartments in that house?"

"Six." Control the voice. "Two per floor."

"I gather you like it a lot."

"I've got a river view. The rooms are large. It's not expensive. It's convenient for commuting." It doesn't belong to my parents.

"Do you have a lease?"

"I don't want to move."

"How long is your lease?"

"Another two years. Is rape grounds for getting out of a lease?"

"I doubt it. Does the man — do you know his name?"

"Koslak." My image of him was the moment he opened his pants. I could kill him.

"You said something about a wife."

I don't see how anyone can live with him. "A wife and two kids that I've seen. At least two kids. You haven't answered my question. Will you help?"

The intercom buzzed. Without turning in its direction he said, "No calls."

"Thank you," I said.

Thomassy looked as if no one had ever thanked him for holding calls before.

"I won't require a retainer in your case," he said, "but I'd like you to settle once a month."

I nodded.

"It could get expensive. And I can't promise results."

What a wonderful line of work to be in, I thought. Heads you win, tails you win.

"How expensive?"

"Perhaps two thousand a month in the exploratory stages. If there's a trial, it might go to another five or ten."

That kind of money I can't afford.

"I'm sure your father will advance the monies if it becomes necessary."

I don't want to depend on anyone for money.

"Look," I said, "my father charges so much per hour. Don't you work that way?"

"Not really. I can't get involved in keeping track of phone calls and time sheets. If the client is a defendant, I usually get most of my fee in front."

"I'm not a defendant."

"I'm not asking for anything now. I'll bill you later. All right?"

What alternative do I have?

"You can trust me to be fair," he said. "I can't tell what'll be involved just yet. This isn't like a lawsuit. I can't file papers, that's something only the D.A.'s office can initiate. I know Cunham pretty well. The odds are he'll balk like hell. He'll decline to take it before a Grand Jury."

"On what grounds?" Again, an edge of shrillness in my voice. I have to keep calm.

"Truthfully? He'll see it as a threat to his work load. And other things."

What other things?

"You can leave those to me."

"I want to know."

"Cunham's a politician."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Please hear me out. The way a fellow like Cunham thinks is: men have half the votes. Most men of voting age have come close to applying a little pressure in a sex situation. Cunham will figure that if he lets this come to trial, a lot of men, while they won't identify with the rapist, will be — consciously or not — protecting themselves. Some of the women will sympathize with you, more today than a couple of years ago, but middle-aged housewives think a young woman of today who, I'm sorry, doesn't wear a brassiere, is looking for trouble. That adds up to a majority of voters on the other side, that's what Cunham'll be thinking."

"Koslak raped me!"

"That'll have to be proven."

"Not to me!"

"You won't be on the jury. And first Cunham has to be convinced to prosecute."

"Oh this is so frustrating. Trying to map out how other people think."

"That's the only thing my experience is good for."

"But it's so straightforward. Koslak broke the law."

"If everybody who broke the law ended up in court, most of the population would crowd the docket for the next century trying to work off one year's case load. Look, Miss Widmer, suppose I succeed in getting the D.A. to prosecute, suppose the Grand Jury indicts, suppose there is a trial and the man is convicted — that's a lot of supposes — are you going to pay the rent and groceries for the wife and two kids?"

"Are you crazy?"

"I'm not crazy, and neither is Cunham. Send that man to jail and you're adding to the welfare rolls. Bad politics." You re a cynic.

"Well, won't we be polite about it and say I'm a realist? Look, doctors get malpractice insurance. Lawyers do, too. But politicians can't get it because almost all of them are guilty of malpractice. They say they want this or that. What they want is to get elected. Everything else is subordinate."

"Including the law?"

"Yes. They're supposed to represent their constituents. In fact they represent themselves. A few D.A.s practice law, but all the others are politicians looking to get reelected, and rape is not a good issue for a D.A. at this time. You live in the same world he does. I know only one way to survive in it. See it as it is. Find out where the short hairs on the other guy are. If my way of viewing things makes you gag — you went to Radcliffe, right?"

"Radcliffe women seem to make a lot of men feel insecure."

"Young lady, nobody makes me feel insecure. Naive people worry me. They've got a lot of rocks to carry around on their backs until they discover wheelbarrows."

I took it as a good sign that he was taking the trouble to lecture me.

"Mr. Thomassy?"

"Yes?"

"I don't suppose you've ever been raped?"

"I've been seduced a lot," he said.

"There's a difference."

"We'll talk about the difference some other time."

"If you'd been raped, Mr. Thomassy, you'd sure as hell not just put it out of your mind and forget it."

"Revenge isn't exactly a pure motive."

"I didn't know you were a purveyor of pure motives."

"I'm a lawyer. I win for my clients."

"Win for me."

"All I'm saying is I'm not sure I can."

"I'll help you."

"How?"

"I'm resourceful. You won't have a sheep-dog client waiting open-mouthed for the voice of God. I'll do anything to jail that cock."

"Anything may mean wearing a brassiere to court."

"I'll have to buy one."

"Okay," Thomassy said. "Start by telling me how it happened, step by step. The ground rules are you don't color things, you don't lie, you don't hold back, censor, or omit. I want to know as much as you do about what happened. What was the date?"

"March twenty-second."

"I don't suppose there was a witness?" he asked.

"Is there usually?"

"No."

"I thought you didn't need witnesses any more."

"The law's changed, but juries haven't. If you're going to sound convincing to twelve citizens who've never been raped, we'll need corroboration from objectively ascertainable evidence besides your testimony."

"Jesus! You mean women are no better off than they used to be?"

"Not in front of juries. Your father said you went to the hospital. Did they get a semen specimen?"

"Mr. Thomassy, when Koslak left, the first thing I did was take a long hot bath. I felt disgusted. I douched four times."

"What did they do in the hospital?"

"When I told the nurse I'd douched, they didn't bother. They put something on my wrists for the rope burns that stopped the smarting. They couldn't do anything for my face."

"What do you mean?"

"It's gone away now, but he slapped me so hard I had a red hand mark right here."

"Did they find any bruises?"

"The only bruise I had was not from him. It's a black and blue mark on my left thigh from bumping into an open dresser drawer."

"Did the doctor note the bruise?"

"I told you it wasn't from Koslak."

"Really? How badly do you want him in jail?"

"Boy, you're in a nasty business."

"The nasty business is what happened to you, and if you think fairness will get you anywhere in court, you're mistaken. We're not dealing with New England probity. Miss Widmer. We're dealing with a man who forces sex on another person. A normal human being doesn't chance getting locked up for a bit of sex."

You wouldn't, would you?

"It takes someone with an overriding compulsion."

"You don't have overriding compulsions?"

"Sure I do. Not about sex."

"It's just like a good meal. Take it or leave it."

"It's not just like a good meal. You're getting off the track."

"No, I'm not," I said. "We're talking about hiring you, and I'm finding out more." I already know about the rapist.

"Maybe your father ought to steer you to a lawyer with more time on his hands."

"Maybe."

We sat there in our discomfort, each waiting for the other to talk. His eyes avoided mine. Look at me.

Finally he said, "I apologize. I shouldn't have said that. I am interested."

"In rape?"

"In you. As a client."

"I won't lie about the bruise."

"I didn't ask you to lie. Did the doctor make a note of it?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. Did he give you a morning-after pill?"

"I refused one. I'm on the regular pill."

"Because?"

"Because I don't want to get pregnant."

"The right answer is because you don't know when you might have sexual relations and you want to be prepared, which means that you've had them in the past and expect to continue to have them."

"Don't you?" I asked.

"The defense counsel won't be trying to impeach my testimony by making me out to be promiscuous and enticing."

"I thought they're not supposed to do that any more."

"Oh, he could get cut down by the judge, but the jury will get the message, one way or the other."

"That's awful."

"That's realistic. What else did they do at the hospital?"

"They gave me a shot of penicillin, just in case."

"That's good."

"What do you mean?"

"It means they believed your story that you were raped."

Story! "This is hopeless."

"I don't deal in hopelessness, Francine."

"Oh?"

"Oh what?"

"May I call you George?"

"It won't get your fee reduced. Call me anything you like. Now then, can we start at the beginning, the day of the rape?"

The sun's rays were no longer in the window. Thomassy got up, drew the blind wide open again, turned his desk lamp on.

"How much time have we got?" I asked.

"You're my last appointment for the day. Well, next to last. I've got a dinner date at seven. Shoot."