“I don’t know,” I say. “You’ve seen her more recently than I have.”
He looks confused; I keep talking.
“We had a fight. I’m not allowed upstairs.”
“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”
I’m cognizant of the time, of how little he has. “I’m controlling,” I say, getting to the punch.
Dr. Shaw laughs. It’s a nice laugh, odd in this hospital setting. “I’m familiar with this dynamic,” he says. “But she’ll come around.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“She will, “ he says. “You’re here. One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t try and make this experience above the simplicity of humanity, it won’t work.”
I stare at him. I’m not sure what he means, he can tell.
“You’re still you, she’s still her. You still have emotions. You’ll still fight. You can try and be perfect, but it will backfire. Just keep being here, instead.”
His pager goes off again. This time he snaps the lid back down on his cup. “Unfortunately, duty calls.” He stands and extends his hand. “Hang in there,” he says. “I know the road isn’t easy, but stay the course. You’re doing good.”
I stay sitting near the Starbucks cart for another hour, until I know Bella has finished treatment and is safely out of the building. When I head home I call David, but there is no answer.
The following week, I’m not at the hospital but, instead, on a plane with Aldridge to Los Angeles. Aldridge is seeing another client while we’re out there, a pharmaceutical giant who sends their jet for our use. We board with Kelly James, a litigating partner I’ve never said more than twenty words to over the course of my nearly five years at Wachtell.
It’s a ten-seater, and I take the one in the rear, by the window. I lean my head against the glass. I said yes to this trip without considering what it means. It is, of course, an answer to Aldridge’s original question. Yes. Yes I’ll take on the case. Yes, I’ll commit to this.
“You’re doing the right thing,” David told me last night. “This could be huge for your career. And you love this company.”
“I do,” I say. “I just can’t help but feel like people here need me.”
“We’ll survive,” he said. “I promise we’ll all survive.”
And now here I am, flying over an endless mountain range in pursuit of the ocean.
We’re staying at Casa del Mar, in Santa Monica right on the beach. My room is on the ground level, with a terrace that extends onto the boardwalk. The hotel is shabby chic Hamptons meets European opulence. I like it.
We have a dinner meeting with Jordi and Anya tonight, but when I reach my room, it’s only 11 a.m. We picked up half a day on our way across the country.
I change into shorts and a T-shirt and a sun hat—my Russian Jew skin has never met a sun it particularly got on with—and decide to take a walk on the beach. The temperature is warm and getting hotter—in the mid-eighties by lunchtime—but there’s a cool breeze off the ocean. For the first time in weeks, I feel as if I am not simply surviving.
We go to dinner at Ivy at the Shore, a restaurant practically across the street from Casa del Mar, but Aldridge still calls a car. Kelly is in town to see another client, so it’s just Aldridge and me. I’m wearing a navy shift dress with lilac flowers and navy espadrilles, the most casual I’ve ever been in a work environment. But it’s California, these women are young, and we’re by the ocean. I want to wear flowers.
We get to the restaurant first. Rattan chairs with floral backs and pillows pepper the restaurant as diners in jeans and dinner jackets clink glasses, laughing.
We sit. “I’m going to insist on the calamari,” Aldridge says. “It’s delectable.”
He’s wearing a light asuit with a purple paisley shirt. If you photographed us together, you might think it had been planned.
“Is there anything we should go over?” I ask him. “I have the company stats memorized, but—”
“This is just a get-to-know-you meeting, so they feel comfortable. You know the ropes.”
“No meeting is just anything,” I say.
“That is true. But if you try for an agenda, you often get an undesired outcome.”
Jordi and Anya arrive in tandem. Jordi is tall, in high-waisted pants and a cowl-neck sweater. Her hair is down and wet at the ends. She looks like a bohemian dream, and I am reminded, for not the first time, of Bella. Anya wears jeans, a T-shirt and a blazer. Her hair is short and slicked back. She talks with her eyes.
