More Than Friends (27 page)

eleven

J. D. OVERSLEPT. HE HADN'T DONE THAT SINCE

college, and then only on the mornings after the nights Sam had gotten him drunk. He had an internal alarm clock that worked three hundred and sixty-five days a year. It would have worked this day, too, if he hadn't been up absurdly late the night before trying to put his belongings in some sort of order in the bedroom and bathroom, and that after making dinner for himself, then cleaning up the mess the kitchen had become. Sure, he could have eaten out. But making his own dinner on his first night in his own apartment had struck him as a decidedly

... independent... thing to do.

No one had told him that spaghetti sauce spattered all over the place if the heat wasn't kept low. No one had told him that cooked pasta picked up speed as it left the pot and was apt to slide right over the plate onto the counter if care wasn't taken. And that was the second batch of pasta. He had lost most of the first down the disposal when he had tried to drain the water from the pot by tipping the works while holding the lid slightly ajar. The maneuver had only succeeded in burning the heel of his hand.

But that wasn't even the worst. The worst was the bottle of olive oil his elbow had inadvertently sent flying. He had had to wash and rinse the floor five times, and even then it looked oily, which didn't speak well for the grease-cutting claim of the dishwashing liquid he had used.

Now, not only had his internal alarm betrayed him, but so had the one on the nightstand. He still didn't know why it hadn't gone off at seven. It was eight-thirty now, and he was racing around a strange apartment trying to remember where he had put things the night before. He was certain that he had brought along his charcoal Harris tweed suit, a sure harbinger of November, on the first of the two trips from Constance that he had made the day before, but he couldn't find it in the closet. Ditto for half his ties. Not that he was reaching the getting dressed stage fast. His razor blade had turned dull halfway through his shave, and he didn't have a spare. So he gave his chin a nick or two, which he might have done anyway since the shower had steamed up the mirror so that he couldn't see what he was doing. Now he had to wait to get dressed until the bleeding stopped or risk getting blood on his shirt or tie. So, with tiny pieces of tissue stuck on his chin, he went to make breakfast.

The good news was that the newspaper he had ordered was right at his door as promised. The bad news was that he had forgotten to buy milk for his breakfast. So he dumped the cereal back into the box, swept the overflow into the sink, and put second best, a bagel, into the toaster while he read the paper. He was barely past the first page when the toaster started to smoke. He pushed up the handle; the bagel stayed down. Smoke continued to curl toward the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm. Swearing broadly, he silenced it by knocking it down with the handle of the mop that had come in so handy the night before.

By that time he was determined that no bagel would get the best of him. So he took a fork and began to pry pieces of it from the grillwork on the inside of the toaster. He ended up with several quarter chunks and lots of crumbs that couldn't be spread with cream cheese--which was just fine, since he had forgotten to buy cream cheese, too. That was when the full force of what he had done hit him. For the very first time, standing there in his new kitchen with his feet sticking to the floor and the ruins of breakfast before him, reality came into focus.

He had left Teke. He had left the house and the children. His nineteen-year marriage was on the verge of breaking up. His future was suddenly open.

The part of him that had depended on Teke, that liked being a Popewell and appreciated the constancy of the house in the suburbs, was terrified. That part wondered whether he had acted hastily. Not so the part that had dabbled with other women, thought his law practice boring as hell, and resented every word John Stewart Maxwell said. That part was determined to make breakfast better tomorrow. Sam sat on the sleek upholstered chair assigned him. His legs were comfortably crossed at the knees and his elbows propped casually on the arms of the chair. To the television audience, he was a man of easygoing confidence. Inside, he was suffering.

He would never have agreed to do this show had he not turned down half a dozen others since winning Dunn v. Hanover. Only when his partners and the public relations firm had thrown up their hands in unanimous despair had he capitulated. One show, he had allowed. Preferably midmorning when no one he knew would watch, he had thought to himself. As fate would have it, early morning was what they had arranged, and he was hating every minute of it.

"I think the court decision was all wrong," an admitted abuser was saying. "I don't think I should be held responsible for something I did twenty years ago. I've changed. I don't do those things now."

"But you did them then," an avowed abusee argued. "What was done to me has affected my whole life. I'm suffering now for what my father did to me then. Shouldn't he suffer, too?"

"Mr. Pope," the moderator prompted, "isn't that your major argument?"

Sam struggled to focus in on the discussion. "Not exactly, not if revenge is the goal--"

"It's not revenge," the abusee charged. "It's justice."

"It's a waste of time," the abuser retorted. "I live a good life now. I work hard, I earn my money, I pay my taxes, I treat my family well. Bringing me to trial for something that happened so long ago is a waste of everyone's efforts. What good'll it do? Life goes on. People put things like that behind them."

"But I can't" the abusee cried. "I live with it every day of my life."

"Mr. Pope?" the moderator prompted again.

Sam cleared his throat. He was struggling to separate his own situation from that being discussed, but although he sided with the victim, he felt he had "perpetrator" written all over him.

"Our system of justice rejects the concept of an eye for an eye," he said slowly, "which is why revenge for its own sake is no good. Paying reparation for wrongs done is something else." He would gladly pay reparation, if that would make things right with Annie, with Teke and J.D." with the kids. He would gladly pay Michael's medical bills, foot the bill for his tutors, buy him whatever, if it would help. "If the person abused has suffered--and continues to suffer--mental and physical pain for wrongs done, such that normal living is disrupted, he or she has a right to sue for restitution."

"It's greed, pure and simple," the abuser stated. "They want the money."

Sam was wishing that something as simple as money would solve his problem when the abusee made him feel even worse by saying, "No amount of money could possibly make up for what I've gone through." And back and forth it went, with emotions running high, just as the producers wanted. Sam's emotions were running high, too. He was feeling guilty. And fraudulent. And unworthy of entering a single viewer's living room, all the more so with each reference to him as an authority in defense of the abused. He was infinitely grateful when the show ended.

A short time later, returning to the office, he spotted J.D. in the restaurant in the ground-floor atrium of their building. There were others at other tables, men and women in business suits, their intermittent conversation punctuated by the genteel ring of silver on china. J.D. sat alone with the newspaper and what looked like a huge breakfast that he was just starting to eat. It seemed the perfect opportunity. Sam had been trying to catch him relaxed and idle for days.

Not about to ask and be turned down, he dropped onto a chair. "We need to talk," he said.

J.D. turned a page of the paper and folded it back. "I'm taking a break. Can't it wait until later?"

"The office is no good for this kind of talk. J.S. has ears in the walls."

J.D. forked up a mouthful of Belgian waffle. He chased it down with fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Sam motioned the waitress for coffee. "How's the apartment?"

"Great," J.D. said, and started on a rasher of bacon.

"All settled in?"

"Um-hmm."

"Do you need help with anything--hanging pictures, mounting tie racks, hooking up the VCR?"

"It's done."

Sam nodded. He supposed supers did that kind of thing, but it felt odd. He had helped J.D. with more mechanical nuisances than he could count. "If there's anything I can do, just yell. New places can be depressing as hell until you get them fixed up the right way." J.D. wiped his hand on a napkin before turning a page of the paper.

"This place is furnished. There isn't much fixing up to do."

"You like it, then?"

"I wouldn't have taken it if I didn't."

Sam smiled a thank-you to the waitress who brought his coffee. "It must be weird, quiet after all those years in a full house." He tried to picture his own house that way, with the kids off to college, their rooms empty and dark. The only good part of it would be that he had Annie all to himself. They could make love where and when they wanted. If they were making love. Which they hadn't yet. Not since Teke. J.D. kept eating and reading.

Sam watched for a minute. Then he took a frustrated breath. "Either you're still angry, or you're scared, or starved, or that paper's more interesting

than I am. Come on, J.D. Put the goddamned thing down and talk to me."

J.D. set the paper aside. He draped his arm over the spare chair to his left, leaving his right hand free to lift his toast. "Scared?" he asked curiously.

"That I may say something tough."

J.D. swallowed a bite of toast. "Like what?"

"Like, did you really have to move out of the house? Like, do you know what that's done to the kids? Like, is it really over?" J.D. didn't blink. "Yes; yes; I don't know."

Sam looked away, swearing under his breath. "Christ, is that what twenty-some years of friendship boils down to?"

"You tell me. You're the one who destroyed the friendship." There was the guilt again, back as strongly as it had been on the television set. "Does it have to be destroyed? Isn't there a way to salvage something of it?" He held up a hand. "Don't answer if you're going to toss out more angry platitudes." He came forward and lowered his voice. "Listen to what I'm saying. That afternoon is over and done. I have apologized as best I can, I don't know how else to do it. Now I'm trying to move beyond it, which means trying to envision the future, but that's hard to do, because suddenly you're out of the picture. I don't want that, J.D. None of us does." J.D. was quiet, brooding in the direction of his plate. He had stopped eating.

Taking encouragement from that, Sam argued his case. "Your moving out of the house has hit everyone hard. Michael may be in rehab, but we can look forward to the time when he'll be home and back to normal. Your leaving is something else." He raised that same quelling hand.

"Forget the anger. Forget the smart one-liners. Talk to me, J.D. Tell me what

you honestly, deep down inside, feel. You may say that I don't have the right to know, but it isn't just me. It's Annie, and it's the kids."

J.D. set his mouth in a flat line. When he raised his eyes to Sam's, they were surprisingly direct, which was the first indication Sam had that he was getting through. The second was the absence of anger in J.D."s voice. "Honestly? Deep down inside? I think the move may be permanent."

"But why?" Sam burst out. He couldn't conceive of a life without J.D. an acre away. J.D. lent an order to the things they did. He was the restraining force when whimsy threatened to overtake reason. Now it seemed he was being taken over by whimsy himself. "On the sixth of October you loved Teke, on the eighth of October you stopped?" Sam snapped his fingers. "Just like that? It doesn't make sense."

"It does," J.D. said, "if the love was less than love all along. I'm beginning to think my marriage may have been flawed from the start. Did I have a relationship with Teke, or was it with Teke and Sam and Annie?

Think about it, Sam. It's been a bizarre arrangement."

"It worked."

"Bizarre," J.D. insisted. "The very first date I had with Teke was a double with you and Annie, and we did that through most of college. We got married within two months of each other, we took vacations together, we rented apartments in the same building, bought first houses in the same neighborhood, bought second houses that abutted each other. Hell, our children are nearly interchangeable. People looking at us are hard-pressed to tell which are the Pope kids and which are the Maxwells. So"--he took a breath--"the question becomes whether I fell in love with Teke or with the foursome."

"You had to have felt something for Teke."

"I did. But it can't sustain us as a twosome."

"You haven't given it a chance!"

"I gave it nineteen years. In the past, the slack between Teke and me was filled by you two. Now it can't be, because you're part of the problem. So there's just Teke and me. Through this whole trauma with Michael, we've been no help to each other, no help at all. If not now, when? My relationship with Teke is empty. Trying to hold on to something without substance is dumb."

"What about the kids?"

"They'll visit."

"What about Thanksgiving?"

"Teke can have it. No one's stopping her."

Sam was feeling depressed. "Sure, she can have it. She always has. She makes Thanksgiving like no one else does. But the fact is that Annie won't do it like we have in the past, which means that we'll be having separate Thanksgivings for the first time ever. That means Teke will be making turkey for the kids and no one else."

"Let her invite friends." On a more sour note he added, "Let her invite Grady Piper. They were lovers once, did you know?" Sam knew. Annie had told him that much. "It was a long time ago."

"He's still carrying the torch. That's why he came in the first place, and that's why he's staying. Just wait. He'll cause more trouble yet."

"Our men in blue haven't come up with so much as a misdemeanor. He looks to be doing a fair enough job on Cornelia Hart's place."

"Yeah, well, I'm thinking about the job he'll be doing on Teke. He'll screw her. Just wait."