An Imperfect Spy (15 page)

Kate stared at Bobby for a worried moment; then she crossed the room to the telephone.

“It’s me,” she said when Reed picked up. “You’re supposed to tell me why I have to leave for Staten Island this very minute.”

“Betty Osborne asked to see you. We talked our way into seeing her, Bobby and I, when we were out there this morning with some of the students. We managed to arrange for the coordinator to let you see her this afternoon. He won’t be there tomorrow, and I don’t know when else. We’ve got to grab this opportunity, Kate. They could well change their minds, and insist on your applying as a regular visitor
through the proper channels. I told them you’d be there this afternoon.”

“Can’t you come with me?”

“I can’t, Kate. Didn’t Bobby tell you? I have to go to court with a student. Bobby will go with you; she knows the way, and the drill, all that. She’s got a prison ID for you to wear.”

“Am I supposed to be a lawyer?”

“Of course not. The ID just means you’re connected with a properly registered lawyer—me—and with Bobby, who they know is working with me. Okay then?”

“Okay then,” Kate said. “But just tell me, why did she ask for me?”

“She’s heard of you. Ask Bobby. I’ve got to go. See you at home.”

Kate turned to Bobby. “All right,” she said. “I’ll make a pit stop first. How do we go?”

“I’ve got a car. We take the Verrazano Bridge.”

“You mean I don’t even get a ferry ride?”

“It’s faster. Come on, Kate. We said you’d be there by four-thirty at the latest.”

“Not till you tell me why me?”

“She was a graduate student in English, at your university, I think. She seems to want to talk to a literary type. Maybe all she wants is to argue with you about the English novel. Come on, Kate!”

Kate looked at Blair, who shrugged his shoulders. “Talk to you later,” he said. Kate picked up her bag and marched down the hall to the women’s room.

“Don’t take forever,” Bobby said.

Kate wanted to stick out her tongue at her, but decided that Bobby’s eagerness was on Betty Osborne’s behalf, no rudeness to Kate intended.

Eight

O
NCE
they were away in the car and free of the worst of the traffic in lower Manhattan, Kate looked at Bobby, intent on her driving. “I still don’t understand why we have to go today, right off the bat like this. Why wouldn’t tomorrow do?”

“You don’t understand how it works,” Bobby said.

“Of course I don’t understand. I also don’t understand how the law school works, how any law school works. God only knows what I’m doing there, or here with you, for that matter.”

“Sorry,” Bobby said, glancing over for a moment at Kate. “You see, we regularly visit the prison on Wednesday afternoons. The people there have to be notified of the clients we wish to see by noon of the Monday preceding our visit. You can’t just add
names. Getting you in there this afternoon took a lot of special pleading. It’s a favor to Reed, who really saw the chance to learn something about this woman, and pulled a lot of levers to make it possible for you to see her right away. I understand he did this because you particularly asked him to. That’s why all the hurry. I’m sorry if I was too pressuring about it.”

They rode in silence for a bit, over the traffic-clogged routes to the bridge. It never failed to amaze Kate, the few times she ventured out of Manhattan, through Queens to the airports or, today, through Brooklyn, how the roads were always jammed, no matter what the hour, and how there always seemed to be an accident of some sort to add to the congestion. Bobby, like Kate and Reed, drove a standard shift, so that she had continually to change gears on this start-and-stop trip, grunting with impatience at each plunge of the clutch.

“Why don’t you talk, Bobby?” Kate said. “It beats sitting here seething at the traffic, as though it were a watched pot that wouldn’t boil.”

Bobby, changing lanes, said nothing. Even in the new lane, which now stopped moving just as the old one had, she still said nothing.

“What do you know about this woman I’m going to see?” Kate asked. It seemed a reasonable question.

“No more than you do. She shot her husband; she got the gun from someone. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it. All she said was that she wanted to talk to you. We haven’t even got the papers yet, because
we haven’t got her case. Maybe you can arrange that—to get her to ask for Reed to manage her appeal, I mean. Surely you can manage that.”

They reentered the zone of silence. Kate decided, as they approached it, that she had never before been across the Verrazano Bridge. Well, who, after all, did she know on Staten Island? In her extreme youth, she had ridden on the ferry, but only for the ride. It occurred to Kate, not for the first time, that she knew remarkably little beyond Manhattan about New York City. But, she comforted herself, she knew more than the city’s employees, policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, bus drivers, most of whom lived somewhere beyond the city limits, even in New Jersey. Policemen in Japan, she had read, always lived in the district they policed. What interesting facts one picked up and remembered in strange boroughs.

After a time Kate decided to break the silence. She turned a bit in her seat to face Bobby more directly.

“You’ve fallen in love with Reed, haven’t you?” she asked, as gently as she could. “I’ve always thought the phrase
fallen in love
particularly apposite. I mean, that’s what happens, isn’t it? One minute we’re on firm ground, the next minute we’re in a free fall.”

Bobby turned to look at her so steadily that Kate grabbed the handle just above the door. “Watch it,” she said. “However you may feel at the moment, nothing will be solved by our crashing into something on the Verrazano Bridge. Think of the traffic.
Think of the prisoners. Think of that dreadful law school.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t know, please believe me. It’s just my craziness.”

“I would be very surprised if he didn’t know,” Kate said. “But he will never let you or even himself face the fact. That’s the male way of dealing with things, and I have to admit, reluctantly, that from time to time it works.”

“You don’t mind. Not that you have anything to worry about …”

“Let’s say I’m not exactly in any position to mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” Kate said. “Reed is very attractive and very lovable. Is it hard, working with him every day?”

“It isn’t every day, it’s just twice a week; once when we go to the prison, and once in the office when he comes in to look things over. Mostly, I’m there keeping the records, answering the phone, checking up to see the students come in at least once a day to get messages and see how their cases are going.”

“Bobby,” Kate said, sighing. “Please keep your eyes on the road. You don’t have to look at me, just listen. Help Reed to get on with his clinic, and it will pass, I promise. Just don’t act on any of these obsessions when you’re working with him, and by the end of this semester a lot of this will be over.”

“What I can’t imagine,” Bobby said, eyes forward, “is how I can get the hots for the husband of
a woman I admire, who is, in any case, far too old for me. The husband, I mean, not the woman. And if you come up with some Freudian thing about fathers, I’ll never speak to you again. Except in the line of duty, of course.”

“Bobby, why not tell me what the rest of the problem is? It’s not just Reed, although you do have a crush on him.”

“A CRUSH!”

“I withdraw that patronizing word. You feel drawn to him, you like to be with him, you want him, or think you do. It’s thrown some kind of spanner into the works; you’re worried beyond your feeling for Reed, which ought, I think, to be both painful and pleasurable, like pushing your tongue against a sore tooth.”

“I’m worried, Kate. I think I’m some sort of monster. Well, not monster really, but, well, not normal.”

“
Normal
is absolutely my least favorite word,” Kate said. “It is a statistical and conventional approximation, no more. When my mother was young, it was not normal to have intellectual ambitions, if one was a girl. Later normal meant being a virgin till you got married, and then moving to the suburbs. Normal is what sells fashions and face creams and other consumer items. Now that we’ve made that clear, what the hell are you worrying about, Bobby? I think you’re great, apart from eyeing my husband, of course.”

“I always hated being a girl. Not because I wanted to be a boy, but because I’ve always hated
all the things girls are supposed to like: clothes, fashion, makeup, cooking, hostessing, gardening, sewing, being ‘with it’ in any way. I can’t think it matters, well, if things go together, or if your hair is frizzy or straight, or about eye shadow. I’m being incoherent, I know. But more and more I felt that way; sometimes I met girls who agreed with me, or, even better, liked me even if they didn’t agree with me. But I’ve always had to pretend ‘feminine’ interests which I don’t feel. That’s one of the reasons why I want to be a corporate lawyer. I’ll have to dress up, but it will be a costume, the way I would have to wear a uniform if I joined the army. One day I hope I’ll be a good enough lawyer to act the way I want and wear what I want.” Bobby sighed.

“Surely you must know,” Kate said, “how many young women there are, women your age, who feel the same. My god, they’re even in detective novels these days.”

“Only written by much older women who are usually married and living in decorated houses.”

Kate laughed. “Well, you may be right about that. Nonetheless, you’re an accepted sort of character; you’re you. Why not just be happy with that; Reed thinks you’re great and I think you’re great, and infatuations, maybe even obsessions, pass in time.”

“If I was gussied up, Reed, just for an example, might take me seriously.”

“Why on earth,” Kate said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice, “should you want a man to take you seriously when you’re being false to yourself? You can’t have it both ways, as I daresay you
know. You want permission to be your sort of woman, and yet you want to be the other sort for a man. That’s not only illogical, it wouldn’t even work. I promise you, Reed would far prefer you, or any woman, as herself. That’s one of his most endearing characteristics, of which he has many. Bobby, there has to be more to this than what you’ve said.”

“When I was a kid, I thought, well, that means I’m a lesbian. That’s how everybody describes lesbians, isn’t it? And then I turned out not to be, to want men, but not to want them all the time, not to be anybody’s permanent acquisition. Oh, shit, I’m not making any sense.”

“You’re not,” Kate said with some firmness. “Your view of lesbians, just for starters, is ridiculously stereotypical. Most of the lesbians I know adore cooking and flowers and dress like something out of
Vogue
. If the problem is deeper than you’re managing to convey, maybe you need some sort of professional help, some sort of therapy. But I think you’re just muddled, because of Reed and maybe other reasons I don’t know about.”

“You’re right,” Bobby said, sniffing. “I’m sorry.”

“Now”—Kate assumed as chipper a manner as she could—“tell me what to expect when I get there. Not the woman, but what happens, what sort of a room do we meet her in?”

“Just an ordinary room; you sit across a table. You can’t hand her anything but legal papers, nor she you, not even a letter to mail. That’s a criminal
offense. But there’s no reason for you to hand each other anything.”

“Can I take notes?”

“Yes. The only other thing, but Reed will tell you this, is do nothing without telling the client. I mean, Reed is the lawyer, and he has to keep his client up to date on everything. This is all rather confusing, since she’s not his client yet.”

“She seems to have studied literature in graduate school,” Kate said, “so she’s probably nutty as a fruitcake, like everyone who studies literature. If she had actually gotten a Ph.D., I would have given the case up as hopeless before we even got there. Oh, my, so this is what a prison facility is like?”