action, and he leaps from the bed, an errant tear running down the side of his nose, and he grabs the receiver from Elena’s nightstand, steps out of their bedroom, his voice low and froggy when he says, “Yes? Hello? Do you know it’s seven thirty on a Saturday morning?”
“Mr. Tabor, my apologies,” says a deep male voice with a strong accent. “This is Altan Odaman, the president of the International Lawyers Association, calling from Istanbul, Turkey. If I figured the time difference incorrectly, my heartfelt regrets. Nonetheless, I am delighted to personally invite you to this year’s conference. To be held in Medellín, Colombia, from September tenth through the twentieth. I am also delighted to inform you that, by special vote, you have been chosen to make a presentation. This is highly unorthodox, as you know. No first-time invitee has ever been afforded the opportunity to address the group. But your legal approach for recovering those Goya paintings is of great interest to everyone. Do you need time to determine your availability, or can I assume you will clear your schedule to attend? Spouses, of course, are invited as well.”
In the small landing that leads from their bedroom to the living room, Simon stares at the photograph on the wall—Elena in the hospital bed with their first child barely an hour old, named Luz within moments of her worldly entrance and called, ever after, Lucy—and he sees nothing.
For several seconds, he is made speechless by this call to join the most elite of lawyers who handle global cases that alter the international landscape. But his eight years of experience as a cross-border litigator focused on the repatriation of stolen art, relics, religious icons, and sometimes ancient bones kicks in; he is naturally quick on his feet, able to pivot his courtroom cross-examinations as required, and he gathers his wits and his words and expresses his sincere and honest delight and grateful thanks to Altan Odaman and the nominating committee.
“Yes, of course I will attend, thank you so much for this honor,” he says, and Odaman provides him with the highlights about the first-class airline tickets and the five-star accommodations, the ten-day schedule of programs and seminars and social events, telling Simon all will be set forth in a comprehensive email, and then Odaman rings off.
When he turns, Elena is behind him, tousled from sleep, her skin tawny gold, her high cheekbones flushed, her lips again full, and her smile is shot through with such love and intimacy that he doubts his sleeplessness, as if this year of sleeplessness has been itself a bad dream, doubts his concern that there’s a slackening of their prior closeness, doubts himself for debating the strength of her love.
“You’re not running this morning?” she asks, and when he shakes his head, she says, “Great. Lucy’s already in the pool. Why don’t you pack. I had your tuxedo pressed, it’s in the closet. In a little while, I’ll make birds in the nest for everyone.”
“I …” Simon says.
How does he express to Elena the enormity of the high honor he has just received from the president of the ILA, that it is even more meaningful than making partner in February? How does he implore her to accompany him, to carefully suggest it is time to leave the children behind, as they have not been left since their births? How does he convince her that they’ll figure out who will care for them in their absence, but going to Medellín, Colombia, is vital, not just for his career, although absolutely his attendance at this conference will thrust him forward exponentially, but so that the two of them can temporarily escape the tough daily grind, be alone together as they have not been in five years, recover themselves as the couple they once were. Ten days far away from their precious children, who are adorable pixies and love bugs, whose hugs and kisses are indescribable, as are their plaintive, plangent demands that their needs be swiftly met. Ten days far away to remember who they are: Simon Tabor and Elena Abascal, a couple happily married and in love.
“The ILA called, didn’t they?” And Elena’s look is that special intimate look he hasn’t seen in a while, and there is a gentleness to her voice he wouldn’t have predicted, and he is so surprised by both, by his awareness of how long they have been absent, that he must forcibly drag air into his lungs, recognizing with a jolt that his morning hollowness is gone. Whatever evaporates during these nights has resurfaced, reshaping his insides much earlier than usual.
Elena steps closer and closer until the tips of her breasts touch his bare chest. Sparks light up his body; if he looked down, surely he would see fireflies encircling the two of them. Her pink tongue flicks across his mouth, and in a heartbeat she’s tugging at his lower lip, pressing down with increasing force, imprisoning his lip with her incisors, until he tastes blood. She steps back, grips his wide-awake cock, squeezes once, then leaves him there.
He hears the door to Isabel’s room opening, and finds himself speculating, not about why ravens were trying to devour him this morning, or if Elena still loves him, or if he can induce her back into bed—it’s been so long he can’t recall the last time—or what implications the conference will have on his career, but whether, against all the odds, Colombia might be the place where his sleep is restored.
PHOEBE TABOR REPRESENTS MAJOR Los Angeles–based novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights, sculptors, painters, and video artists, musicians, bands, and composers. It’s her still-minor clients, those beginning to climb the vines of recognition and success, that she worries about most, because their expectations are consistently unrealistic. They walk into her office presuming fantastic offers are on the table, and she must return them to reality. And it’s always tough, because they have written the meaningful novel, the great script, the deep play, have created the phenomenal sculpture, the suite of inspired paintings, and it’s her obligation to tell them no one is biting, or the bite isn’t as big as they’d hoped, or the film director has rejected the neophyte composer’s score, or the gallery has rescinded its offer to mount the young artist’s new show. The facts are nearly as hard to deliver as to hear, but by the time Phoebe’s clients hug her, they understand where they are, yet still have faith in their futures, because she is a truth teller. Honesty is the pillar upon which she has built her law practice. Inside, past the heavy door with its stylish engraved nameplate, Phoebe Tabor, Esq., she commands a large retinue of lawyers, paralegals, and assistants, and insists that in all their firm activities, they heed her honest manner of transparently conducting business.
And yet recently, in her personal life, she has veered in the opposite direction, adopting subterfuge as her modus operandi, although calling it subterfuge is finely glossing the state of things.
At eight fifteen this Saturday morning, Phoebe, dressed in a black sundress and Grecian sandals, all of her limbs lightly tanned, stands at her closet mirror and arranges the hair her mother calls chestnut into a loose sexy braid. She assesses her image. Yes, she looks the part, will be viewed by her family as a woman in love.
She leans in close, fragmenting her pupils, and in those fragments she sees the unjustified complications she’s brought into her life. She pulls back from the mirror and her pupils reassemble, black surrounded by irises of darkest brown, eyes so falsely guileless she has to turn away from herself.
She rustles through closets and drawers, delving through sedimentary layers of acquisitions, flinging out her choices, and packing them into her small rolling bag—used for all her loverly weekends away: an old one-piece bathing suit for the laps she always forgets to swim, a new bikini for chaise sprawling and oiling up next to the big pool alongside her sister and sister-in-law, another summery dress purchased to wear with a man a few years back who pursued her hard for a date and when she at last gave in stood her up, tennis shoes and shorts and a tank top from her youth for taking a walk in the heat with one or some or all of her family members, a college-era tennis skirt and shirt in case her father wants to play, silky pajamas that hold memories of an enjoyable four-week romp
