“You sure no one’s out there, in the office?” I say.
“No one.” He undoes the button above my breasts, exposing the string of pearls inside my blouse. I stop his hand and his eyes meet mine, uncomprehending. “I won’t hurt you, Grace,” he says softly. “Let me. Let me love you a little.”
“But I—”
“Shhh. I dream about this, about doing this with you.”
“Armen—”
“Let me. You have to.” He smiles and moves my hands away, placing each one on the armrests of the heavy chair. “Keep your hands there. We’re going to take this slow.”
I feel myself breathing hard, excited and scared. “We can’t do this, not here.”
“Hush.” He unfastens the next button, then the next. “Look at yourself, you’re so beautiful.”
I look down and see a flash of pearls tumbling between my breasts. The scalloped cup of a bra. My skirt hiked way up, past the opaque ivory at the top of my pantyhose. I can’t stand it, being undone like this. I look away, out the window. I expect to see the night sky, but the wall of plate glass reflects a dark-haired man and a lighter-haired woman astride him.
Strangely, it’s easier to bear this way, like in a mirror. I can watch it as if it were happening to someone else.
“It’s all right now,” he whispers.
I watch him slip the silk blouse from my shoulders, freeing one arm and the other, then reaching around and unhooking my bra. I feel my breath stop as he tugs my bra down slowly, as if he’s unveiling something precious and pure. He takes a breast in each hand and teases the nipples, and I feel an exquisite tingle as each one contracts under his thumbs. I encircle his head, this head of too-long hair that I know so well, and he burrows happily between my breasts, nuzzling one and then the other.
I hear myself moan and wrap my legs more tightly around him. He responds, rocking me against the hardness growing in his lap, sucking at one nipple and then the other. I feel wetness where he’s suckled and then a slight chill as he suddenly lifts me up and lays me gently back on his arms across the table. My legs lock around his waist and my hands reach for the edge of the table. My pearls fall to the side, the Hightower papers flutter to the floor, and God knows what else slides off the desk.
Poised over me, he stops suddenly. “You’re not looking at me. Look at me, Grace.”
I watch him in the reflection. I can’t do what he’s asking.
He turns my face to his, and his expression mingles concern and pleasure. “Why won’t you look at me?”
“Is your marriage really over?”
“Yes.”
“You swear it?”
“On my life.” He bends over and kisses me gently, pressing between my legs. “Now let it go, Grace. Let go.”
I close my eyes as my body responds to him. And then my heart.
The ringing of a telephone shatters a deep, lovely slumber. I hear it, half in and half out of sleep, not sure whether it’s real.
PPPRRRRRRINNNGGG!
I open my eyes a crack and peer at the clock. Its digital numbers read 7:26 A.M.; I’ve been asleep for two hours. I have four whole minutes left. The phone call is a bad dream.
PPPRRRINNNGGG!
It’s real, not a dream. Who the hell could be calling at this hour? Then I remember: Armen. I feel a rush of warmth and stumble to my bureau, cursing the fact that I don’t have an extension close to the bed like everybody else in America. I wish I could just roll over and hear his voice.
“Honey?” says the voice on the line. It’s not Armen, it’s my mother. “Are you up?”
“Of course not. You know how late I got in, you were baby-sitting. What do you want?”
“I’ve been watching the TV news.” I picture her parked in front of her ancient Zenith, with a glass mug of coffee in one hand and a skinny cigarette in the other.
“Mom, it’s seven-thirty. Did you call to chat?” I flop backward onto my quilt.
“I have news.”
I’m sure. You would not believe the things my mother considers news. Liz Taylor gained weight. Liz Taylor lost weight. “What, Ma?”
“Your boss, Judge Gregorian? He committed suicide this morning.”
I sit bolt upright, as if I’ve been electrocuted. I can’t speak.
“They found him at his townhouse in Society Hill. I didn’t know he lived in Society Hill. They said his house is on the National Register of Historic Places.”
I’m stunned.
“He was at his desk, reading papers in that death penalty case.”
“How—”
“He shot himself.”
No. I close my eyes to the mental picture forming like cancer in my brain.
“There was no suicide note,” she continues. “They called somebody named Judge Galanter, who lives in Rosemont. This Galanter gets to be chief judge now, eh?”
I shake my head. There must be some mistake. “My God,” is all I can say.
“Judge Galanter says the court will continue with its operations as before.”
I think of Galanter, taking over. Then Armen, dead. This can’t be happening.
“Galanter said the Hightower case will be reassigned to another judge. Wasn’t that the case you stayed late on?”
“Who found him?”
“His wife, when she got in from Washington. She’s the one who called the police.”
“Susan found him? Did she say anything? Did they interview her?”
Her response is an abrupt laugh; I imagine a puff of smoke erupting from her mouth. “She’s holding a press conference this morning.”
Susan. A press conference. What is going on? Why would Armen do such a thing? I close my eyes, breathing him in, feeling him still. Just hours ago, he was with me. Inside me.
“Are you there?” my mother asks.
I want to say, I’m not sure.
I’m not sure where I am at all.
I pack Maddie off to school in record time and barrel down the expressway into Center City, rattling in my VW station wagon past far more able cars. KYW news radio confirms over and over that Armen committed suicide. I swallow the pain welling up inside and tromp on the gas.
I can’t get to the courthouse doors because of the press, newly arrived to feast on the news. Reporters are everywhere, the TV newspeople waiting around in apricot-colored pancake. Cameramen thread black cables through a group of demonstrators, also new to the scene. There must be forty pickets, walking in a silent circle, saying nothing. I look up at their signs, screaming for justice against a searing blue sky: HIGHTOWER.
But I have to get inside.
“Would you like one?” asks an older man in a checked short-sleeved shirt. He holds a pink