The Furthest City Light (7 page)

The rush hour traffic finally caught up to us and we had to slow down until we were barely moving. Every once in a while, Donald groaned in frustration, no doubt counting the minutes until he could smoke again. To the west, the foothills were bathed in a soft peaceful glow. It would be dark in less than an hour.

“This is a sad job we have,” Donald muttered.

I looked over at him in surprise. “Yes, it is. Nobody ever needs our services for a happy reason.” I hesitated. “Okay, you can smoke, but you have to lean as far out of the window as possible.”

“Really? Thanks!”

I sighed. “You’re welcome.”

We drove the rest of the way home in companionable silence.

When I was nineteen years old and still suggestible, I allowed my friend Leslie to talk me into dropping acid with her. We were at a party on the bohemian (i.e. seedy) edge of Beacon Hill celebrating the end of our first year at Boston University.

I’d known Leslie since the third grade and whenever I’d gotten into trouble—ditching classes, smoking cigarettes in the park, getting drunk at my sixteenth birthday party, hitchhiking to the Newport Folk Festival—it was always with her. We’d been inseparable all through high school and so far through college.

Although it never occurred to us we ought to be sexual (“alternative lifestyles” weren’t quite yet in vogue), it’s clear to me now that had one of us been male, he or she would have been my first ex-lover. Instead, we were simply best friends: innocent, sweetly clueless women who dated men but preferred each other’s company to anyone else’s.

As soon as we arrived at the party, a fashionably gaunt man with long flowing hair handed each of us some blotter acid and advised us to hurry since everyone else had already dropped theirs twenty minutes ago.

“We want everyone to be in sync,” he explained.

I looked at Leslie. “I don’t know about this.”

“Oh come on, Rachel. It’ll be a new experience.”

It was May 1969 and everyone was being urged to use psychedelic drugs to blow their minds and thus expand their ordinary limited consciousness. And so, before I could stop her, she swallowed her portion. Throughout our years together, it had been Leslie’s genius that got us into trouble and mine that got us out—usually at the last possible moment—mainly because I could think faster than almost everyone around me and even more importantly distinguish the truly dangerous people from the merely wacky. But I couldn’t help Leslie, I reasoned, if I couldn’t understand her and so I swallowed mine as well.

About forty minutes later, I tapped Leslie on the shoulder and informed her I’d figured the whole thing out. We were part of an unorthodox but valid experiment in which some people had been given LSD and others a placebo, the point being to see if those of us who had been given the placebo would begin to imitate the ones who were genuinely under the influence.

“It just stands to reason,” I explained, lifting my arms to include, at that moment, the whole gestalt of everything.

Leslie stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “That’s brilliant,” she said, pulling me down to the floor. For the next hour, we crawled around on our hands and knees trying to guess which people were under the influence and which ones were faking it.

“I bet they’re faking it,” Leslie would say, pointing at a couple of women who were tossing record albums out the window, or a group of men trying to light their hair on fire.

“I don’t know,” I’d reply. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell.” Although I was trying not to notice, it seemed as if I could actually see all the atoms in the air zipping around and colliding with one another like bumper cars in an amusement park. The room felt very crowded.

“What about that cannibal in the corner?” Leslie finally asked.

“What cannibal?”

“The one with the big white bone in his nose.”

I stared in the direction she was looking. “I don’t see any cannibals, Les. Which makes me think you took the real thing, not the placebo.”

She shrugged. “Anything’s possible. What do you see?” She pointed across the room at a middle-aged man with short black hair who was wearing a tuxedo.

“Him?” I started to smile. I could feel my face cracking as if it were made out of dried clay. “That’s Jerry Lewis, but he’s acting genuinely funny which makes me think I took the real thing as well, since Jerry Lewis is never genuinely funny.”

Leslie shook her head in awe. “My God, Rachel, you’re probably the only person in the world who could have rationally determined you were out of your mind.”

If so, it was the last rational thought either one of us had for the next twelve hours. The night is sketchy, but at some point I was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching Leslie press her thumb repeatedly into the carpet attempting to kill thousands of tiny blue insects. After what seemed like hours, I grabbed her arm and told her it was useless, that she’d never get them all. The Doors were singing “Light my Fire,” and the next thing I remember we were kissing.

 When we finally stopped, Leslie traced a finger down my face and said, “I thought I was kissing myself.”

And I said, “I thought I was kissing a tabby cat.” Which we thought was hilarious.

I can’t recall if we kissed again, but an hour or so before dawn I remember following her down a narrow hallway into an overly bright kitchen. As I stood there shielding my eyes, I saw a table covered with various foods, all of it alive and wriggling. I watched Leslie reach for the chicken wings and stopped her just in time.

“Watch out, Les,” I warned, “they’re alive!”

She dropped the wing in horror. “Oh my God, you’re right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We stumbled down some streets in the dark and ended up at the Charles River where we bushwhacked for a while until we found a secluded bench overlooking the water. The neon lights from the Cambridge side of the river turned our watery view into a shimmering pink and purple tapestry. We listened to the ancient sound of frogs and to the leaves rustling in the wind.

When we finally woke up, we were lying on the bench with our arms wrapped around each other. Leslie’s face was pressed against my neck. The sun was high in the sky and I guessed it was almost noon.

“Wow,” Leslie whispered, “wasn’t that the most amazing night?”

I thought of all the terrible things that might have befallen us. But hadn’t. “We were very lucky.”

She nodded happily. “I know. I can’t wait to do it again.”

My first and only foray into the mind-altering world of hallucinogens. After that, I decided I liked being in control of myself and as much of my environment as possible. And so, unlike Leslie, I passed up spending the next six years doing drugs, continued my education, and became a criminal defense attorney instead. The last time I saw Leslie she was heading off to join a commune somewhere in Tennessee. Although I never tripped again, I still carry a permanent souvenir from the adventure. Whenever I’ve been under prolonged stress, I suffer flashbacks from the drug: the atoms in the air begin to dance and everything around me seems to be alive and breathing.

“How lucky can you get?” Vickie joked when I first told her about it. “Yogis spend years in silent meditation in order to experience the same thing.”

***

The night before the pretrial motions hearing in Emily’s case, I lay in bed with Vickie, holding her for a couple of minutes before she went to sleep. Her strong lean body never failed to astonish me. How could just yoga, walking and gardening make anyone so fit? I was even more fit, of course, but I worked at least ten times harder. Since I was feeling wide-awake and antsy, I figured I would read a few more chapters from
The Golden Notebook
by Doris Lessing (a book I’d started in college and was determined to finish before I died) and then slip into unconsciousness.

Vickie sighed in my arms. “You’ve been working so hard, sweetheart.”

“Doctors and lawyers,” I murmured.

“Yes, but I control the number of hours I work and you don’t.”

My body stiffened slightly. “I try but—unlike you—I don’t have the luxury of turning down a client.”

“Exactly.” But then she sighed again, a lovely sound that meant she didn’t want to argue.

Thank God, I thought, then snuggled closer, rubbing my nose against hers the way my parents always used to rub theirs together. Once, when I was seven, I asked what they were doing. “It’s an Eskimo kiss,” my father explained. I was confused. “But aren’t we Jewish?” My father nodded. “This is the special Jewish Eskimo kiss.” My mother giggled. “Very rare,” she added. And then both of them were laughing. When I told Vickie the story, she clapped her hands delightedly. “Let’s be as happy as they were!” I didn’t remind her that later on my father died and that after that, my mother was never very happy again.

I brushed my hand across my girlfriend’s breasts, considered making love but decided there wasn’t enough time. “Go to sleep,” I murmured.

Vickie began tracing the worry lines along my forehead. “I just wish you could do your job without it taking so much out of you.”

“I can’t,” I said simply.

“I know.” She made a face. “Will it go all right tomorrow?”

“I hope so,” I said, ignoring the rest of her concerns. For the past year and a half, she’d worried that the stress of public defending was taking too much of a toll on me. I disagreed but pretended to consider the idea of going into private practice where I’d have a normal caseload, normal hours, and a much less interesting job. You’d think being married to a doctor would be great, but in many ways it wasn’t. She was an internist, not an oracle, but try telling her that.

Vickie hesitated. “Is anything in the room moving?”

I knew what she meant. “The drapes are breathing a little.”

She looked like she might start lecturing me again but didn’t. “When you finish Emily’s case, after you’ve won it, I’ll take you on vacation.”

“That sounds lovely. I’d like to go somewhere peaceful and quiet where there isn’t any crime.”

Vickie laughed. “I know it’s hard to believe, but the vast majority of people right here in Boulder don’t even think of committing crimes.”

“Really?” I asked, like a wide-eyed child who’s just been told that fairies and elves are always around us ready to help in any way they can.

“Really,” she promised, and kissed my forehead like my mother used to when she was young and my father was alive and she was carelessly happy.

“I’m a little tired,” I admitted.

“I know.” She paused. “You genuinely love this client, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I do. And I feel sorry for her as well. I want her to have a life.”

“Well I hope you win, for both your sakes.”

“Me too.” I sensed her next question before she could speak it and shook my head. “Defeat is inconceivable.”

“Yes sir,” she saluted.

“A little louder please.”

“YES SIR.”

“Good. Now pass me that thick heavy novel and go to sleep.”

“Yes sir.”

“You know,” I said, “except when we make love, I’d like you to act this way all the time.”

She snorted. “In your dreams, baby.”

***

Earlier in the week, Donald had located Hal’s ex-fiancée, who lived in Littleton, a suburb of Denver only thirty miles away. He’d simply looked through Hal’s high school yearbook and found her. In 1956, she’d been Janet Roberts. Now she was Janet Ellers. When Donald told her why he was calling, she asked if she could talk to me in person. I met her the following day at a trendy new vegetarian restaurant in Denver.

When I first saw her in front of the restaurant I was so shocked I stopped walking and simply stared, my jaw dropping open the way an amateur actress might register a bad surprise. That bastard, I thought. Janet lifted a tentative hand to acknowledge me.

“I know,” she said as I approached. “I look just like her. I saw her picture in the paper when she was arrested. Let’s go inside.” She ushered me through the door and found us a table by the window.

“It’s uncanny,” I said.

“Yes.” Even her eyes were a similar blue, but less opaque. It was like looking at the Emily that got away, the one who finished college, pursued a career, got married and had children. The Emily who never learned to flinch. My stomach hurt just looking at her.

A young energetic waitress appeared with a pitcher of water and filled our glasses. Immediately, I drained my glass and asked for more. Janet picked up her menu, dropped it, and picked it up again.

“I felt so bad when I read about the murder,” she said. “The reporter quoted you as saying that you would rely on self-defense.”

“That’s correct,” I said, waiting to find out if she was the ally I hoped she was.

“I’d like to meet her.”

I blinked in surprise. “Why?”

She took a deep breath and then let it out. “Because I believe she’s telling the truth, that she killed him in self-defense.”

“Did he hit you, too?” I asked.

She drummed her fingers on the table. “I think I’ve been waiting thirty years to tell this to someone.”

I nodded but said nothing. Every criminal defense lawyer learns how to act like a therapist, or they find another profession.

“Only once,” she finally said. “Actually, he just shoved me really hard and I fell against a table. Immediately, he was apologetic and assured me it would never happen again, he was so sorry. I wanted to believe him, but I’d seen something in his eyes just before he pushed me, something cold, almost reptilian, which scared the hell out of me. I knew I had to break it off with him, but I also knew I shouldn’t tell him why.”

The waitress returned and we ordered a few dishes off the menu. Neither of us was hungry. While we waited for our food, which we wouldn’t eat, she told me the rest of her story—how she managed to sidestep Emily’s fate. She’d held off for more than three months. Finally, when the Weld County Sheriff’s Department hired him, she found her way.

“For as long as I’d known Hal, he’d always wanted to be in law enforcement. While other boys fantasized about becoming an astronaut or a doctor who discovers the cure for cancer, Hal always dreamed about arresting the bad guys and locking them up.”