such matter reflected the same pith and sensibility as the Gettysburg Address; they threw out offhand invitations to dinner, theater, and basketball games. Jake, as ever, accepted this attention with grace. His father was a politician and he knows the way, waving, laughing, parrying with various skillful jests.
I have known Jake Eiger most of my life. We went to high school together at Loyola, Jake two years ahead. You and I, Elaine, we were the kind of Catholics who grew up thinking we were a minority group, the mackerel snappers who ate fish on Friday and wore ash on our foreheads and made way for the ladies in black sheets; we knew we were regarded by Protestants as a clandestine organization with foreign loyalties, like the Freemasons or the KGB. Jack Kennedy of course was our hero, and in his aftermath America for Catholics, I think, truly was different. But you are ever the child, and I'll never really be sure there is a place at the table for me.
But Jake was a Catholic boy, German-Irish, who thought he'd joined the white man's country club. I envied him that and many other things, that his father was rich and that Jake was easy with people. Very good-looking, a movie-star type, he has smooth coppery blond hair that never leaves its place and is only now, with Jake a year or two past fifty, beginning to show less of the radiance that always made you think he was under a spotlight. He has prepossessing eyes--the kind of abundant lashes that you seldom see on a man and which gave Jake, since an otherwise unimpressive childhood, the misleading look of a worldly adult depth. There were always lots of girls after him, and I suspected him of treating them cruelly, wooing them in his soft way and rebuffing them once he'd gotten between their legs.
Still, when I was on my fourteenth version of who I would be, having decided against Vincent Van Gogh, Jack Kerouac, and Dick Tracy, and figured I'd give my dad's idea, law school, a try, Jake, of all people, became a kind of ideal. Our paths had split after high school but my role as Nora's intended brough t u s back in contact at little family dos, and Jake took it on himself to give me pointers and advice about law school and practice. Then when I got started at BAD he called upon me for a rather auspicious favor which he felt obliged to repay years later by bringing me here.
A rational person would be grateful to Jake Eiger for that. I made $228,168 last year, and that was after they cut my points for the third time in a row. Without Jake, I'd probably be in some interior office space with cheap paneling, practicing on my own, scrambling around to the police courts and otherwise looking hungrily at the silent telephone. But Jake flies and I float. He's still soaring for the stars and on his way has cut me loose to go to cinders as I plummet back through the atmosphere. A lesser type might be bitter, because without me Jake Eiger would be a handsome middle-aged guy looking for ways to explain why he gave up the practice of law many years ago. "Wash, Mack--" Martin had clapped down the phone, dispensing with the last interruption, and his secretary had finally closed the door. "About Brother Kamin.."
"Ah yes." I smiled brightly and waited to watch Martin dance this tightrope.
"Jake's aware, of course, that Bert is on another of Isis self-declared sabbaticals."
"Right." Smiles. Wash laughed out loud. Martin's such a card. "And I thought, frankly, that it would make more sense just to share with Jake everything that we've been concerned about. Everything. I don't want any misunderstandings down the line." Martin went on in a mood of impressive gravity. The room was quiet as he spoke, windowed on three sides, full of abstract paintings and the kind of kooky objects d'art that Martin adores --funny clocks, a side table whose glass top overlay an entire city carved of exotic woods, a shaman's crook that makes the sound of a waterfall when you turn it upside down. Rather than the
I have known Jake Eiger most of my life. We went to high school together at Loyola, Jake two years ahead. You and I, Elaine, we were the kind of Catholics who grew up thinking we were a minority group, the mackerel snappers who ate fish on Friday and wore ash on our foreheads and made way for the ladies in black sheets; we knew we were regarded by Protestants as a clandestine organization with foreign loyalties, like the Freemasons or the KGB. Jack Kennedy of course was our hero, and in his aftermath America for Catholics, I think, truly was different. But you are ever the child, and I'll never really be sure there is a place at the table for me.
But Jake was a Catholic boy, German-Irish, who thought he'd joined the white man's country club. I envied him that and many other things, that his father was rich and that Jake was easy with people. Very good-looking, a movie-star type, he has smooth coppery blond hair that never leaves its place and is only now, with Jake a year or two past fifty, beginning to show less of the radiance that always made you think he was under a spotlight. He has prepossessing eyes--the kind of abundant lashes that you seldom see on a man and which gave Jake, since an otherwise unimpressive childhood, the misleading look of a worldly adult depth. There were always lots of girls after him, and I suspected him of treating them cruelly, wooing them in his soft way and rebuffing them once he'd gotten between their legs.
Still, when I was on my fourteenth version of who I would be, having decided against Vincent Van Gogh, Jack Kerouac, and Dick Tracy, and figured I'd give my dad's idea, law school, a try, Jake, of all people, became a kind of ideal. Our paths had split after high school but my role as Nora's intended brough t u s back in contact at little family dos, and Jake took it on himself to give me pointers and advice about law school and practice. Then when I got started at BAD he called upon me for a rather auspicious favor which he felt obliged to repay years later by bringing me here.
A rational person would be grateful to Jake Eiger for that. I made $228,168 last year, and that was after they cut my points for the third time in a row. Without Jake, I'd probably be in some interior office space with cheap paneling, practicing on my own, scrambling around to the police courts and otherwise looking hungrily at the silent telephone. But Jake flies and I float. He's still soaring for the stars and on his way has cut me loose to go to cinders as I plummet back through the atmosphere. A lesser type might be bitter, because without me Jake Eiger would be a handsome middle-aged guy looking for ways to explain why he gave up the practice of law many years ago. "Wash, Mack--" Martin had clapped down the phone, dispensing with the last interruption, and his secretary had finally closed the door. "About Brother Kamin.."
"Ah yes." I smiled brightly and waited to watch Martin dance this tightrope.
"Jake's aware, of course, that Bert is on another of Isis self-declared sabbaticals."
"Right." Smiles. Wash laughed out loud. Martin's such a card. "And I thought, frankly, that it would make more sense just to share with Jake everything that we've been concerned about. Everything. I don't want any misunderstandings down the line." Martin went on in a mood of impressive gravity. The room was quiet as he spoke, windowed on three sides, full of abstract paintings and the kind of kooky objects d'art that Martin adores --funny clocks, a side table whose glass top overlay an entire city carved of exotic woods, a shaman's crook that makes the sound of a waterfall when you turn it upside down. Rather than the
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