Free Juice by Stephen Becker Page B

“It was too much,” Davis said. “For a month I was you, Kuno Landauer; I was split, half of me a lawyer and half of me—something else, I don’t know what; and now I want to be myself. I want to make money and drink and stare at women. I can’t stand the sight of you. It’s like an old mistress; a year later she’s a hag, and your teeth grind when you think about her.”
    Landauer nodded sadly. “I know. I know. Finish your beer, and then go.”
    Six months later Landauer had sent him the bound manuscript of his first piano sonata. Davis had tried to play it, without success. It was in a bookcase now, and dusty.
    Almost a year later, at a party given by Judge Francis Winkelmann, an inveterate party-giver (Mrs. Winkelmann loved society) and, as Davis described him, a pillar of expediency, Davis had been introduced to Mrs. Newbery. The shock was immediate, profound, and lasting. He had turned suddenly self-conscious; tall, awkward, dark, his face as always, outside the courtroom, the perfect mirror to his mind; the intentness, the falcon’s eye, the graying hair, the predatory nose and chin, all revealing the spasm of desire he had felt even before she spoke. He knew that she had seen it, and he knew more (still she had not spoken): that she was glad of it.
    â€œYou’re Kuno Landauer’s friend,” she said.
    â€œYes. Do you know Kuno?”
    She shook her head. “No. But I followed the trial. It was miraculous. I can’t tell you how much I admired you.”
    Kuno, Kuno, Davis thought, what have you done to me now? His heart labored.
    â€œIt was the only serious case you’ve had that I know of,” she said.
    â€œThat’s enough,” he said coldly. “If I’d known it would negate the rest of my work I’d never have taken it on. This isn’t the first time I’ve had it thrown in my face. Be good enough to remember that another lawyer, without my shabby and sensational past, might not have pulled it out.” He bowed and started away from her.
    â€œGood for you,” she said. “Would you get me a whisky and water?”
    He stopped, glared, and fetched her drink. “All right,” he said. “Damn you. Where’s Mr. Newbery? I’ll challenge him.”
    â€œMr. Newbery is dead,” she said, and instantly defiance rose between them.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Davis said remotely.
    Then he saw in her eyes what she had seen in his, and he was sorry for her. “Let’s sit down,” he said, “and not talk.”
    They did. They sat silently for half an hour, aware that they were communicating in an older and more reliable manner; when they rose each knew that they would leave together.
    â€œNot really,” Davis said afterward. “It wasn’t really communication. But it gave us both time to complete the illusion, feel the emotion fully, absorb it, so it was a part of us always afterward. The party ended when I looked at you; and I ended; and you ended; the universe was never the same again, because there was a new quantity. Where there had been nothing, there was now—what? May I use the word? Is it all right?”
    â€œHow you do prattle,” she said. They were in Davis’ bed weeks later.
    â€œMy every word is homage,” he said gallantly. “It couldn’t have been love at first sight,” he went on, “because we all know there’s no such thing. No such thing as love at all, for that matter: simply covetousness or self-love, a kind of preening, the woman as phylactery, the outward sign of the inward mystery. But if you had played Beatrice—Benedict’s, not Dante’s, God knows—and asked me to kill Claudio—which, by the way, is one of the finest colloquies in Shakespeare—I think I just might have done it. And then come back and said that I hadn’t quite caught your name.”
    â€œWhat is your earliest