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The lights had been off. I’d turned them off, the way I liked it.
    “No,” I said. “Paul—”
    “I told you you had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen, and as much as I wanted to know more about them, I liked you altogether too much to do that on the first date.”
    I kept my eyes closed, remembering. His kisses passed my knee and made a trail on the inside of my thigh. I felt myself easing back into the pillow while he kissed me, this first date that had so much promise. He had thrilled me. An architect with a pedigree and an open heart.
    “I told you I thought I was falling in love with you, do you remember? That I was in it for the long run.” I felt his kiss move up my thigh, under my robe. The notepad slipped from my lap and the sound it made as it fell to the carpet came from some other time and place. “I had to put you out that night, like a cat.”
    He always said that, Like a cat . I used to laugh. I felt myself warming.
    “I love you,” he said, and I let myself hear it. Let myself believe it for just a moment. It pushed my problems away, swept aside Fiske and Patricia, my managing partner, and my new HPV virus. I wanted to forget it all, get lost for a while. Slip away. No one had to know, no one had to see. Not even me. I reached up and switched off the light.
    “Do you remember what else I told you that night?” he asked, his voice soft in the darkness. Familiar. Like his sigh, and the throatier sound that would come later. “That it wasn’t one night, it was forever.” His mouth reached the top of my thighs, and he kissed them until my legs parted.
    I remembered. It was the first date, then the first time we made love. Then the time after that and the time after that, too. All the times, all of the same piece, seamless. When the loving was still there and so palpable you could feel it like the bones on his back when he was on you. You could hear it in the sounds you made, and in his, too, deeper. You could feel it in the slickness between you, belly-level, in summer, and the way it warmed your feet in winter, no matter how cold it was.
    That’s what I remembered, all of it came flooding back, and in a minute it was inside me, filling me up, suffusing me with good feeling.
    He was right about one thing. I loved him still.
    If I could think back.
    And the lights were off.

9
     
    T he office wall was crowded with diplomas and certificates and the slick desktop reflected the squat and omnipotent silhouette of a unique breed of high roller: the managing partner of a law firm. I’d first met Ed “Mack” Macklin when I was a young associate and he had kissed off the last firm that wouldn’t ante up every time he sneezed. Mack became my mentor, although I never realized before this moment how much he resembled Edward G. Robinson. But maybe that was because I was feeling like the Cincinnati Kid.
    “Why are you getting out of the Sullivan case?” Mack said, relaxed in his cushy leather chair. His office was the largest in the firm, and well-appointed. An expensive leather couch and chairs clustered around a glass coffee table; a wall-length English credenza held some neat files and an expensive, albeit untouched, laptop computer. The virgin laptop was the hottest power prop, signifying that Mack had the juice to make the firm buy him a toy and also that he was too important to play with it. You had no power if you actually used your PowerBook.
    “The Sullivan case is over. The plaintiff is dead.”
    “The judge called me last night, Rita. He was very disappointed. Said he expects us to stand behind him if he’s charged with murder.”
    “Judge Hamilton called you at home?” Fiske was making all the right moves, and I was the sacrificial pawn. “What time did he call?”
    “What’s the difference? He’s a friend.”
    “Of yours? Since when?”
    “Since last night.” Mack laughed abruptly. “Judge Hamilton is one of the most prominent members of the federal bench. He wasn’t