something it may not matter where you go, but even so you eventually get there. Right then, right there, I arrived. I dialed another number, heard it answered on the first ring. “Cranston and Associates, this is Lowell.”
“Lowell, it’s Jonathan Sweetwater. I know you told me not to reach out but this is not related to the matter we discussed in your office; this is different. I would still like you to continue with the previous matter, but now I have something else entirely to discuss, a little bit more complicated, but I believe it will be right up your alley.”
There was a lengthy pause. I couldn’t even hear him breathing. “Hello?” I said.
“Yes, I’m here.” His voice was curt, dismissive. “I’m sorry, whom did you say this is again?”
“It’s Jonathan Sweetwater.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name. I would appreciate if you do not call this office again. Thank you very much.”
And he hung up.
FORTY MINUTES LATER, WITH a light sweat dampening my shirt collar, I was staking out a detective in the lobby of his own building. I couldn’t stand outside for the pouring rain so I pretended to use my mobile, pacing in circles inside the revolving door while rain-soaked businessmen shook out umbrellas on the clean white floors, leaving damp footprints and streaks of black and gray.
My thoughts were jumbled and mostly incoherent, but the one Ikept coming back to was that now I had literally lost my mind. I should have been on the train back to Connecticut, to figure out my marriage and everything I truly valued. Instead, I was standing in the lobby of an office building hoping for a freak of happenstance.
A woman was smoking a cigarette directly outside, and every time the door revolved the whiff of smoke enveloped me. It was a filthy smell, made my aching head feel worse. I could see her lips moving between drags; she was talking to herself or to someone else in her mind. People who talk to themselves are either angry or crazy and she had to be angry; she was dressed too well to be crazy. Her fingers shook as they lifted the cigarette to her lips, and her entire life flashed before my eyes. Ditched by a man she loved deeply, perhaps this very day, and now she was rehearsing what she would say when she saw him. And I realized, as her trembling fingers went to her mouth again, that my father was right. This woman, like all of us, was the sum total of the decisions she had made. And what she was saying, in a voice so low even she could not hear, was all the things she wished she had said before. When people speak to themselves what they are really talking about is all the decisions they wish they could make over again. But they can’t, of course. And neither can I. We are all the sum total of our decisions, and when we have chosen poorly there isn’t anything more we can do about it than stand alone in the rain and complain.
“Mr. Sweetwater.” I spun around. It was Cranston, in a tan raincoat over a dark suit, close enough I could shake his hand without extending my arm. “I thought it was you,” he said softly. “I was trying to catch your attention from across the way. You seemed preoccupied.”
“I was,” I said. Finding Cranston had been my intention, yet the sight of him added to my anxiety. “I tried to call you.”
“I told you not to,” he said. “I did suspect it was you but I cannot be too careful. I promised you complete discretion and that is my personal guarantee. What can I do for you?”
“Can we go up to the office and talk?” I scratched my head. “This is going to require a little explaining.”
MY SECOND VISIT TO Cranston’s office felt markedly different from the first.
“Are we coming along on our other matter?” I asked as he executed a simple search at my behest.
“We are.”
“Anything I should know?”
“With your permission,” he replied, without removing his eyes from his computer screen, “I would prefer to complete the
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