“Because I’m worried about you and Max.” She takes a deep breath. “And I have some things to tell you that I felt needed to be said face-to-face.”
Danielle feels a fresh uneasiness. “What things?”
“Later.” Georgia settles back into the couch.
Danielle waits. Their specialty is shorthand speech. Georgia begins the beguine.
“How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Max?”
“Not great.”
“He hasn’t tried to—”
“No!” She pulls back. “Of course not!”
Georgia places a cool palm on her arm. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you don’t always tell me the worst.”
Danielle gives her a miserable smile. “It’s because I can’t even bear to think about it.”
“Do you have a diagnosis?”
“No.” Before she lets Georgia continue her cross-examination, Danielle changes the subject. “Tell me something about the outside world.”
Georgia doesn’t let her down. There is the latest office gossip—who’s sleeping with whom; who made a fool of himself at the summer recruiting party; which associate is brown-nosing which partner; which partners are trying to screw around other partners.
“So,” says Danielle, “how did you manage to get away from the office? From Jonathan and Melissa?”
Georgia’s lovely face bleeds from blushed pearl to arsenic white. “Oh. That.”
“Oh, what?”
Her deep indigo eyes fall to the floor. “Well, like I said, there are a few things I have to tell you.”
“A lot, I’d guess.” Danielle’s voice is dry. “And don’t try to put a good spin on it, Georgia. You look like shit, and I want to know why.”
Georgia meets Danielle’s eyes. Brilliant tears, unshed, skate on her lower eyelids. “It’s Jonathan,” she whispers. “He’s been … fired.”
Danielle thinks of the cutting-edge plastic surgery group in which Jonathan has been the boy genius. “What are you talking about? He became a full partner last year, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Her voice trembles.
“So what happened?”
Wet diamonds course down her cheeks. “They found out.”
“About the drinking? Well, that’s not exactly—”
“He’s been doing cocaine—a lot of cocaine.” Her voice is flat, dead.
Danielle is stunned. “But how did anyone find out?”
Georgia gives her a look of shame and fear. “He operated on a woman while he was high. Everyone in the operating room could tell.” She closes her eyes. The rest comes out in a whispered staccato. “Her face is horribly disfigured. There’s going to be one hell of a lawsuit. It could ruin their practice.”
“When did this happen?”
“A month ago,” she says miserably, her face deathly pale. “He never said a word.”
“Did his partners turn him in to the police?”
“At first they were in damage-control mode, but then they searched his desk and found a huge stash.” Her words are hollow reeds in a blistered wind. “They say he was dealing, Danielle. Can you believe that? Jonathan—a coke dealer!”
“God, Georgia, what now?”
“They reported him to the medical board and fired him immediately. The board suspended him pending a complete investigation.” She shakes her head. “There’s no question that they’ll jerk his license. He’s finished.”
“Where is he now?”
“The last time I saw him, he was in the apartment, locked in the bedroom—drunk. He told me to get out.” The thin thread that held her snaps. Georgia’s head falls into her hands as brutal sobs pound her small frame. Danielle holds her dear friend until they subside. Georgia looks up with frantic eyes. “What am I going to do? What about Melissa?”
“Where is she now?”
“I grabbed her; took her to my mother’s house in the Bronx; and came here.” Georgia’s face is titanium white. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Danielle pats her hand. “You did the right thing. Can you stay for a few days?”
Georgia shakes her head. “I have to leave at noon. I start trial in the Simmons case on Friday.”
“What timing.”
“No kidding.”
Danielle retrieves her keys from the desk and takes one off of the ring. “Stay at my place for as long as you want. When I get back, you two can have the guest bedroom. We’ll figure something out. Right now you need to concentrate on Melissa and that trial.”
Georgia takes the key with a grateful look and wipes away her tears. “I may just use your place as a getaway from the office. I’m desperate for some peace and quiet.” She sighs. “Melissa and I will stay with my mother until I can figure out what to do. Thank God Mom is retired, and Melissa isn’t in school yet.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, enough about me. What’s going on with Max? How are you holding up?”
“Oh, Christ, Georgia, let’s not.” She hears the tension in her voice.
“Okay.” Her voice is as patient as Danielle’s is not. “I won’t demand ugly details. Just tell me one thing. When are you coming home?”
Danielle shoves an ashtray full of cigarette butts across the coffee table. “In a week, maybe two.”
“You’re coming back for the partners’ meeting, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. I don’t want to leave Max, but I’m sure as hell not going to risk my partnership.”
“That’s my girl. You’ll be our first female partner. How can they not anoint someone who won a fifteen-million-dollar case in front of the Supreme Court? Still, you’d better put in some face time very soon.”
Danielle shakes her head. “Not now. They’re having trouble titrating Max’s medication, and he needs me here. He looks terrified every time I even suggest that I have to go back to New York.”
“How often do you see him?”
“Mornings and afternoons.”
Georgia glances around the room. “What do you do the rest of the time?”
A migraine blooms somewhere behind Danielle’s left eye, enveloping her forehead in a deep, twisting pain. She thinks briefly about Tony but doesn’t mention him to Georgia. It already seems as if it were a dream. “I work. That’s not entirely true. I try to work.”
Georgia leans back. “Well, that’s good, because things are heating up at the office.”
“What do you mean?”
Her blue eyes cloud. “It’s another reason I came out here. You need to know what’s going on. That worm, Gerald Matthews, is sucking up to every partner in his usual unctuous manner, letting them all know he’s the natural choice for your spot.”
“I’m not worried about him,” says Danielle.
“Well, worry about this.” Georgia gives her a pointed look. “E. Bartlett is up to something, and it isn’t good.”
Danielle