Free The Real Liddy James by Anne-Marie Casey

for her. And how do you tell the two people who made you that your onlydream as a child is for a different life than the one you have been born into?
    â€œThey must be very proud of you, though,” said Marisa, but Liddy had said nothing, because she had not known what to say.
    She had not yet learned how to make a complicated situation look simple.
    Liddy had taken to her profession like a swan to water. Her formidable memory and physical stamina got her through the study and the seventy-hour weeks as an associate (for years she had worked night shifts mopping floors with disinfectant so strong it make her gag; hours spent fact checking in an air-conditioned office felt like a vacation). She took her first month’s paycheck to Soho and, in the window of a gallery, saw a limited-edition print of an industrial landscape by Alfred Stieglitz, a framed black-and-white photograph of New York in 1910, the new skyscrapers rising over choppy gray water and smoke rising into the clouds. She paid too much for it, but she didn’t care. It was called
City of Ambition
and it seemed the perfect image with which to start her new life.
    No one had told Liddy that
nice women
never use the A-word.
    Marisa’s primary piece of advice to Liddy was to avoid the distractions and dramas of dating, particularly the dreaded office romances that had derailed far too many young women in her employ, and to focus on one partnership only.
    â€œDon’t marry another lawyer,” she commanded Liddy, with a confidence born of the fact that she had herself married late, to a retired and wealthy entrepreneur, efficiently producing twinsnine months later. “They’ll always put their cases first, and if you have kids, you’ll be the one doing the school run.”
    That night in Cornelia Street Liddy arrived with a man known as Intense Rafe, a part-time artist and full-time waiter, with whom she had been set up the previous month by her roommate.
    A story about ginseng picking in Appalachia, told by an enthusiastic woman with black corkscrew curls and a Hole T-shirt, was ending to considerable applause and the woman bowed happily, lifting her hand and pointing it in Liddy’s direction. As Liddy had the anterior vision of a flying spider, she sensed the movement early, and with no tale to tell, she hid behind Intense Rafe, ensuring that it was another man directly in front of her who was summoned to the little space in front of the microphone. Liddy, her chin perched on Rafe’s intensely bony shoulder, watched the man saunter up and tap on the microphone.
    â€œMy name is Peter James,” he said.
    â€œProfessor Peter James!” called out the very pretty young woman who had accompanied him.
    Peter smiled and began to speak. His story was fluent and involving, but Liddy did not really listen. She looked at him instead.
    With his messy, sandy-blond hair, his threadbare cords, and frayed Ralph Lauren shirt, Professor Peter James was shabby chic before anyone had ever thought of it; he combined this agreeably masculine disregard for grooming with the self-confidence and self-deprecation of a man who had achieved his career goals with ease.
    This interested her.
    Liddy guessed he was in his late thirties. He had no wedding ring on his finger, though she imagined he might be the kind of man who would not wear one, and as she looked around the room she knew she was not the only female to find him attractive. The very pretty young woman was hanging on his every word, and when he had finished she led the applause. But Peter did not hurry back to her, allowing himself to be waylaid at the bar by a tall and glamorous Slavic model in a fur hat.
    Liddy spotted an opportunity. She headed over, introduced herself to both of them, and participated in their sparkling dialogue, even making a couple of jokes that caused Peter to laugh out loud. When the fur-hatted model turned away to order more drinks, Liddy looked right into