Free I Regret Everything by Seth Greenland Page B

exactly my technique and I told her so.
    â€œWho do you write to?”
    â€œFriends, mostly, most of whom I haven’t seen much lately. They’ve gotten married or they live in other cities.”
    â€œI’m going to try that. Is it all right if I send one to you?”
    â€œSure.”
    There was a brief lull in the conversation and then it looked as if Spaulding was trying to decide whether she’d overstayed her welcome. Without moving, she appeared to lean toward the door. Was she too young? Eloquent arguments can be made to the contrary but here’s the simple answer: Probably. All right, that’s an equivocation but she was still the boss’s daughter, which felt even more reckless. I was seeing the doctor later and who knew what he was going to tell me? I thought about that comical ballet she had performed on Dirk Trevelyan’s lawn, the vitality that flames in youth.
    â€œThat was quite a performance you gave yesterday.”
    â€œI wanted to thank you for the ride but I couldn’t interrupt the meeting.”
    â€œPlease don’t do anything like that again.”
    â€œTotally. Bad doggie, no biscuit.”
    I shrugged and rolled my eyes and motioned for her to sit. Smiling apprehensively, she sat on the couch and asked what I wanted to discuss. “Art, poetry, the usual stuff lawyers gas about,” I said. We talked about the writing class she was taking and I told her I’d be willing to read whatever she wanted to show me. This prospect both surprised and excited her. It wasn’t so much a charitable impulse as a way to generate interaction that would not be overtly suspicious. Evidently, I was a little more taken with her than was wise but what risk was there in looking at poems?
    Reality intruded when Reetika needed Spaulding to do an errand. Before departing she took a postcard out of her pocket and laid it on my desk. On it she had written
For Mr. Best Lawyer/Poet/Art Guy.
It was a reproduction of
Composi­tion VII
by Wassily Kandinsky. A golden move and astonishing given her age. She glided out of the office without looking back.
    Dr. Tapper stared at my scrotum as if it held the answer to the riddle of time. The impassivity displayed when he squeezed my testicles suggested what he held in his hand were radishes and our encounter taking place in the produce aisle at Trader Joe’s. It was difficult to banish the notion of some kind of tumor wreaking havoc down there. Testicular cancer would be ironic when the one poem Jinx Bell was known for was about a terrorist mastermind having the contents of his ball sack excised. Would mine suffer the same fate?
    The room was bright, optimistic. It was easy to pretend this exam was an item on a to-do list, something to take care of before picking up the dry cleaning and going home. Dr. Tapper, having exhausted the garden of earthly delights that was my groin, now spent an inordinate amount of time kneading the sides of my neck. Swollen lymph glands, he finally announced, let’s have some tests shall we, nothing to worry about. Then this: Maybe we can get them done today, I’ll make some calls.
    It was Friday, traditionally a busy workday because clients often wanted to talk to me before the weekend. And the pressure on associates to be present at all times was intense. Partnerships were a Hobbesian competition and any unexplained absence gave the competition an advantage.
Where was Best at 4:00 in the afternoon yesterday? He wasn’t in his office. Anyone see him?
In the eternal jockeying for position that goes on in any major law firm the associates knew who was present and who was unaccounted for. The decision to cancel my afternoon was not made lightly.
    Scans were performed, blood and marrow drawn. The weekend crawled by. There was a party at Dirk Trevelyan’s Sutton Place townhouse that I was happy to attend (and flattered to be invited to). Vociferous in his praise whenever he introduced