A Welcome Haunting - Part Twenty-One
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
It was late afternoon, a heavy stone’s throw from early evening. I called the Judge’s cell phone from a borrowed land line in a borrowed office. He picked up after several rings. I heard him clear his chambers before bringing the phone to his ear.
“Hello?” he inquired.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’ve figured it all out.”
In the moment that followed my declaration I knew he had sat down and leaned back in the leather chair behind his desk, the seat from which he presided over an office richly appointed in classic clubhouse style. I loved that office and its occupant and treasured the hours spent there talking politics, history and law. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing that office again and that my relationship with the Judge was forever changed. I was no longer welcome. I had a sharp lump in my throat I couldn’t swallow down.
“I’m going up, you know. It’s happening. The Governor called today,” he said with understated pride and a catch in his voice. “I expect I won’t have a difficult time being confirmed.”
“I heard. Congratulations. It’s well deserved and I’m really happy for you and your family.” I really was.
“Don’t think too harshly of me. The work you do and the way you do it just fit so perfectly with what needed to happen for this part to come together for me, for us. I’m proud of you for taking this on. I won’t apologize for doing it but I am sorry. You see the difference, don’t you?”
“I do.” I really did.
“I’ll miss you. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye Judge.”
There was nothing more for me to do but wait for the next call. I read newspapers and kept my phone sitting segregated and alone on the coffee table in front of the couch I was sitting on in the office I had borrowed for the day’s communications. It rang just forty minutes after my talk with the Judge.
It was Jackie.
“Let’s meet at the Peninsula Hotel in one hour.”
“Yeah, ok,” I agreed and hung up.
The bar at the top of the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue was just fifteen minutes away from where I was sitting. The all of Manhattan in every direction, anywhere Jackie could have suggested meeting, was nearby.
I was an hour away from being either something new and exciting or something very, very dead.