Free About Schmidt by Louis Begley Page B

you wanted it. Then you would be running the firm and asking your partners whether their clients or anybody else needs them!
    Schmidt salted his French fries. He had been picking at them daintily, with his fingers, as though he really meant to leave them on his plate. They weren’t bad. To hell with abstinence. He decided he would eat them, down to the lastone. What would he get in return for denying himself a little fat? Sometimes Gil’s memory was more irritating than charming. One could go for months without seeing him, and he would take the conversation up just where it had ended, remembering tidbits one wished had been forgotten or never mentioned.
    That’s precisely it. DeForrest wanted the job. He wanted it more than I. In fact, I’m not sure I had a reason for wanting it. I might have only wanted to be sure I could get it. That’s not enough.
    And DeForrest?
    He had this ambition to be presiding partner for years; at times he seemed quite childish about it. Also, he had gotten rather tired of practicing law. It’s something that happens to lots of lawyers, but it hadn’t happened to me. So it was natural he should get the job. Besides, he had all sorts of ideas about what should be done—quite a manifesto. I had no program—I guess I would have just tried to keep things as they were.
    What would have been wrong with that? You always liked that firm, and you seemed to make enough money. Do you wish now you had been less accommodating?
    Not really. DeForrest might have put up a fight and won. That would have been very tough on me and bad for the firm. Anyway, I would have left just the same, at the same time, and I would be in the same spot now.
    Schmidt was stuck with this answer. What was the use of admitting that he had stood aside because Jack DeForrest had told him over and over they would each have what they wanted most? Schmidtie, you want to shape the practice andthat’s what you should do, leave the administrative headaches to me, you don’t like that stuff. An unofficial, happy duumvirate. It hadn’t worked out that way, though; there was no sharing with Jack. Overnight he had been diminished, and it escaped no one that something had gone wrong: Schmidt remained just as he had been, with his own clients and his own shrinking practice—for the likes of Riker to carp at.
    He smiled at Gil and helped himself to half of what remained in the bottle.
    Let’s sound that cheerful note. How are the sublime Blackman girls?
    Still working hard at their dead-end magazine jobs. Refusing to be grown-ups. Lisa is without a boyfriend and becoming frantic about it. Nina has found a new one who doesn’t earn a living and never will. To be precise, he is having his voice repositioned—from baritone to tenor, because he thinks he looks more like a tenor. By an Albanian coach! And his father is an Orthodox priest in Scranton! I wonder what the paternal voice is like. Lisa and Nina haven’t stopped playing with dolls. Perhaps they had too many dolls’ tea sets.
    And Elaine’s kid?
    Schmidt had forgotten her name, something that never happened to Gil.
    Lilly. Lovely Lilly. No change. She’s a harmless, dull child. I wish she spent more time with her father. It would make it easier for Elaine and me to travel. His girlfriends are practically her age! I tell Elaine that’s built-in company for Lilly and should make it easier for him to take care of his daughter. She doesn’t see it that way. Why do you and I always carry on about our children like a couple of barnyard hens?
    Because we love them.
    No, it’s guilt. I have a reason—I abandoned mine and their mom and have lived with silly Lilly and her mom, so I can’t grow up and act like the father of grown-up women. But you? You and poor Mary were always perfect, and at least there you have got what you deserved—the beautiful, intelligent, and completely successful Charlotte! Any news?
    She told me last weekend that she is getting married. No surprise there: