Beautiful Day(24)

Pauline had been on a mission. Doug knew that now because she had confessed to it. She had told him that she had chosen him as her divorce attorney because she knew he was recently widowed and she wanted to date him. The Tonellis and the Carmichaels both belonged to Wee Burn Country Club in Darien, although they weren’t well acquainted. Doug and Arthur had been paired together once for a golf tournament. Pauline and Beth had met a couple of times side by side at the lipstick mirror in the ladies’ room during a dinner dance. Doug didn’t remember Pauline from the club. However, she mentioned their mutual membership at Wee Burn within the first three sentences of their meeting. She threw out names of friends of his—Whitney Gifford, Johnson McKelvey—and then she expressed her condolences for his wife (“such a warm, lovely woman”) and hence established a personal connection and common ground.

She started bringing things to their meetings. First it was a hot latte, then a tin of homemade blueberry muffins, then a bottle of green chile sauce from a trip she’d taken to Santa Fe. She touched him during these meetings—she squeezed his arm or patted him on the shoulder. He could smell her perfume, he admired her legs in heels or her breasts in a sweater. She said things like “I really wanted to go to the movies this weekend, but I didn’t want to go alone.”

And Doug thought, Yeah, me too. Then he cleared his throat and discussed ways to negotiate with Arthur Tonelli.

On the day that Pauline’s divorce was final, Doug did what he had never agreed to do with any client before: he went out for drinks. He had planned to say no, just as he always said no, but something about the circumstances swayed him. It was a Friday in June, the air was sweet with the promise of summer; the victory in the courtroom had been a good one. Arthur’s attorney, Richard Ruby, was one of Doug’s most worthy adversaries, and Doug, for the first time in his career, had beaten Richard Ruby on nearly every point. Pauline had gotten what she wanted; she had divorced well.

She said, “Shall we celebrate?”

And for the first time in nearly two years, Doug thought another person’s company might be nice.

“Sure,” he said.

She suggested the Monkey Bar, which was the kind of spot that Doug’s partners always went to but Doug had never set foot in. He was charmed by Pauline’s confidence. She knew the maître d’, Thebaud, by name, and he whisked them through the after-work drinks crowd to a small round table for two, which was partially concealed by a curved banquette wall. Pauline ordered a bottle of champagne and a plate of gougères. The waiter poured their champagne, and Doug and Pauline toasted their mutual success.

Pauline smiled. Her face was glowing. Doug knew her to be fifty-four, but at that moment, she looked like a girl. She said, “I’m so glad that’s over. I can finally relax.”

Doug let his own deep breath go; he was still experiencing the winded euphoria particular to conquering his opponent. It was not unlike a good game of squash. Doug thrived on the competition. He wanted to win. His job was to liberate people from the stranglehold of an unsatisfactory union  . Many times when a divorce was declared final, his client would spontaneously burst into tears. Some clients saw their divorces as an ending, not a beginning; they saw their divorces as a failure, not a solution. It wasn’t Doug’s job to put a value judgment on what was happening, only to legally facilitate it. But he had to admit that he felt much better about his profession when he was faced with a client as buoyant as Pauline.

Drinks at the Monkey Bar had been a success. Doug had headed home on the train feeling nourished by actual human interaction. He had not fallen in love with Pauline, but he had appreciated the hour drinking champagne and eating golden, cheesy gougères, admiring the wall murals by Ed Sorel, regarding the well-heeled crowd, and enjoying the presence of a convivial, attractive woman. He realized, as he and Pauline parted ways outside the restaurant on Fifty-fourth Street, that he would miss her.

And then the universe had worked its magic. A few weeks later, on the Fourth of July, Doug had played golf at Wee Burn, and then he’d stayed to swim some laps at the pool, where he met up with the Drakes, who invited him to join them on the patio for dinner. Doug had nearly declined—he no longer socialized with any of his and Beth’s couple friends because he couldn’t abide being a third wheel—but it was a holiday, and if Doug went home, he was looking at an evening of drinking whiskey and watching a recap of Wimbledon on TV. And so he stayed and ate dinner with the Drakes and met up with more friends whom he hadn’t seen since the funeral. These friends all mentioned how wonderful he looked (he did not look wonderful) and how much they’d missed him (though what they meant, he suspected, was that they missed Beth), and Doug realized how limited his life had become.