“Your yoga instructor?”

“Yes. Victor, the quality of my chi has turned. The energies of the five elements are not interacting within me in a positive way. Everything’s feeding upon itself. Water extinguishes fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood, wood controls earth, and earth absorbs water. Do you see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“My life is out of balance. Do you know feng shui?”

“All that mumbo jumbo about where to place the couch?”

“It’s not mumbo jumbo, Victor, and it’s about more than interior design, though the interior-design part of it is really lovely. But it’s also about keeping a balance in every part of your life.”

“And your life is out of balance?”

“So she says. I have to make a change, or the destructive energy is going to cause serious damage to all my chakras.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s okay, Carol. Stay calm. It’s not a disaster. We’ll make some changes. What is the problem? Is it your job?”

“No.”

“Your apartment?”

She shook her head.

“Do you need a new car? An upgraded wardrobe?”

“Do you think I need an upgraded wardrobe?”

“Well, you always say there’s not much a new pair of shoes can’t cure.”

“It’s not my shoes, Victor.”

“Then what is it?” I said, like a dope.

She sat and stared at me for a moment, and tears again began to fill her eyes.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Does this mean now? Right away? Can we at least have dinner?”

“I’m sorry, Victor. I’m so sorry. But I felt that things weren’t exactly perfect with us, even from the start. And you must have, too. There was always this distance between us. I tried, I thought maybe time might help. But now Miranda tells me that I don’t have so much time. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” I said, and surprisingly, I was.

I had never given Carol a real chance, and that was a crime, because if I sensed anything about her, it was that she had a true and yearning heart. Maybe she was too pretty for me, too well dressed, too obvious in her attempts to find answers where there are no real questions. Or maybe she was too damn connected with Dr. Bob. But whatever it was, I had never really made the effort to see her clearly. She had seemed to me like a finished product, picking a man the way she picked a blouse, trying to find something that matched her sense of style, but I think I was wrong in that judgment. She was no different from the rest of us, searching for something solid to hold on to in this world. I don’t know if I could have been that for her, or she for me, but I had blown any possibility of our finding out.

She downed the rest of her wine, wiped a tear from her cheek with a knuckle, gathered her things, clutched her bag to her chest as she stood. I stood, too. It seemed the polite thing to do.

“Good-bye, Victor,” she said.

“Good luck with your… whatever.”

“My chi.”

“That’s it.”

“Thank you,” she said before she started walking off.

“Carol.” She stopped and turned. “I’ve got something I want you to have.”

I reached up to my collar, loosened the knot of my yellow tie, untied it, held it out to her.

“Victor, that’s yours.”

“It’s not really my color. Keep it as a memento. Or give it to your friend Nick. He could use a neckwear upgrade. Take it. Please.”

She looked at me for a moment and then took the tie. She closed her eyes as she rubbed the silk against her cheek. Tears welled, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had I heard the sweep of violins.

“We’ll always have Strawbridge’s,” I said.

Damn, I thought as I watched her walk out of the restaurant and out of my life, she sure is pretty.

And then something caught my attention at the bar on the other side of the restaurant. It was an old man, tall and dapper, staring at me through the bar’s entranceway.

Whit.

He stood there and stared until he was sure I had seen him, before following Carol out the door. I suppose he figured he didn’t have to stay, that just his presence left enough of a message. This wasn’t simply the inevitable ending of a tepid affair, though it was certainly all of that. This was also another shot across my bow. Dr. Bob, my dentist, had told his patient, Miranda, the yoga instructor, to instruct Carol Kingsly, my sort-of-fulfilling sexual relationship, to give me the boot. And Whit, my old friend Whit, had shown up just so I got the full impact of the message.

The D.D.S. giveth, the D.D.S. taketh away, blessed be the name of theD.D.S.

I sat back down at my table and was thinking it through, the breakup, the warning, the sacrifice of my tie, the increasing amount of pressure being brought to bear, when the waitress appeared at the table.

“There’s only one of you now?” she said.

“Afraid so.”

“So what will it be?”

I looked up at her. She was pretty cute actually, short orange hair, black lipstick, a stud in her nose. She looked like she might be fun. I know she was only a waitress, and men are helplessly attracted to waitresses, it is something in our jeans, but still, it was a pretty good sign. I guess it hadn’t taken me too long to get over Carol.

“Let me have a hamburger,” I said, “and burn it.”

They have damn good hamburgers at Rembrandt’s, and I suppose, after being pushed around once again by Dr. Bob, I was in the mood for charred red meat.

68

A professor in law school used to tell us that we, as lawyers, were like gods of creation in the courtroom. Nothing existed unless we chose to show its existence. We picked the evidence, we picked the witnesses, we framed the questions, we created the universe of the trial. The next day in court, I was one angry deity, ready to shift that universe on its very axis, and I felt, strangely, up to the task.

I was feeling more myself than I had for weeks. I was bursting with energy, my mood was brighter, I had a little bounce in my step. What was the cause of my newfound confidence? Let’s put it this way: Popeye needs his spinach, Queeg needs his strawberries, Sauron needs his ring. And me, I suppose I need my red polyester tie. With my old friend rescued from the bottom of the sock drawer and back around my neck, I was ready to rumble. And my tag team partner that day was our criminalistics expert, Dr. Anton Grammatikos.

You want your expert witness to be tall and gray and well spoken, or maybe short and energetic and familiar to the jurors from the O. J. Simpson trial, or at least someone who doesn’t look like he’s ready to sell you a used car at a steep discount. Which is why Anton was available at a moment’s notice and a pauper’s price. But the thing about Anton Grammatikos, despite the underwhelming impression he made on the witness stand, was that he really knew his stuff.

“Your Honor,” I said after I had exhaustively questioned Anton on his credentials, which, despite his checkered sport coat, unshaven face, and truck driver’s manner, were quite impressive, “I move to qualify Dr. Grammatikos as an expert in the forensic sciences.”

“Any objection, Ms. Dalton?” said the judge.

“Could I ask just a few questions on his qualifications, Judge?”

“Go ahead.”

Mia Dalton winked at me as she stood up. “Dr. Grammatikos,” she said, “I understand you have written a book on the forensic sciences, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “It’s like one of those educational books, you know, like Golf for Idiots and Piano for Dummies.”

“And your book is in one of those series, Doctor?”

“Nah. When I pitched them, they said they wanted someone a little more famous, like that Dr. Lee guy, who doesn’t really know as much as he thinks, believe me. So instead I decided to start my own series. Well, you know, the idiot thing and the dummy thing had all been copyrighted, so I had to come up with something new, something fresh.”