LOVER’S LEAP (Part Two of a Short Story)

If you have not yet read Part One, you will find it at this link: LOVER’S LEAP (Part One of a Short Story)

DREAMS OF LOVE

Nadine was due to complete her one year clerkship for Judge Halliday at the end of June. He offered to write her as many letters of recommendation as she needed. She appreciated how easy he made it for her. He even had her sort through resumes for upcoming applicants and pick out her favorites for his attention.

Ten days before her departure, Anthony came up to her after the morning session adjourned and the courtroom had cleared, asking if she had a moment.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, would you like to join me for dinner?”

She noted to herself that he was the only court employee, besides the judge, offering to bid her a farewell beyond a cordial “Best of luck for the future.”

“Do you mean tonight?” she asked.

“Yes, tonight. Is that okay with you?”

She thought, I don’t have a shawl for later evening, I’m not really prepared. She hesitated for a few seconds to consider the situation but not enough for him to notice—that would be rude of her—then decided not to make a deal of it or get into a calendar discussion.

“Sure, that would be nice, tonight is good . . . thank you Anthony.”

His serious expression relaxed just slightly at her acceptance, but the change was obvious to her.

“Thank you Nadine. I’ll meet you at five on the front steps.”

She felt her face warm—perhaps a blush?—at the new emphasis in his voice, so sure, so masculine, so . . . determined. Plans in place.

She wondered if he had noticed, when he offered, “I don’t mean to rush you. Let me know if you want to change the day, it can be tomorrow . . . . ”

“No, no, it’s just fine, I’ll see you soon!“ And with that, she left for the cafeteria, while Anthony stayed to straighten out the papers strewn on the table from his case that morning.

Nadine customarily left the courthouse through the side door closest to street level and the crosswalk that led towards the station. This time, she exited through the grand rotunda to the top of the granite steps overlooking the traffic on the street below. But first, she stopped in the ladies’ room to make sure her hair looked okay, considering the effects of the humid weather, meaning frizz. She couldn’t tame the volume of her hair so just quickly ran her fingers through from forehead to shoulders, then touched up her lipstick with the rosy pink she’d chosen that morning to go with her dark blue dress.

She spotted Anthony standing by the front entrance, as promised, the courthouse workers streaming around him in their haste to leave. When she was about six feet away, he acknowledged her with a nod and they descended the steps together. Nadine picked up her pace alongside him and the hundreds of commuters rushing to make the 5:20 train.

The late afternoon sun felt warm on her skin, not a cloud in the sky during this week of the longest day of the year.

It occurred to her that this was the first time she had ever seen Anthony outside of the courthouse. The daylight felt intimate in a light-hearted, innocent way. She enjoyed the slight rush of anticipation at the prospect of their upcoming adventure in the city. No shawl, but a dress stylish enough for New York, the dark blue sleeveless sheath with the scoop neck and cinch belt.

They rushed to the platform together as soon as the track was announced. She delighted at their joint mission to catch the next train, two lawyers gaining their freedom from judge and jury at the end of the day.

On the train in, they talked about the Italian vacation for him, options for a future career for her—had she considered joining the prosecutor’s staff? She brought up her trip last summer, accompanying her widowed grandfather to court his sister-in-law in Paris, a successful pursuit. Anthony listened attentively at her story of their later in life romance, a story Nadine loved to tell.

She mentioned her aunt, a long-time career prosecutor in neighboring Union County. Anthony didn’t know her but asked if she’d influenced Nadine to become a lawyer. Nadine shared her admiration for her aunt, a pioneer in a man’s profession, overlooked for a judgeship because of her sex. She felt her radical self stir inside her—the Nadine who cheered on Betty Friedan in the college chapel, joined a peace march to Washington in 1966, held up signs for the law school contingent, B.C. Against the War.

She felt a moment of regret at mentioning her aunt’s struggles in the Old Boys Network. Am I coming off as too strident, too political for a “getting to know you” conversation? She quickly dropped the subject of women’s inroads in the legal profession.

Anthony didn’t venture beyond collegial conversation appropriate to two co-workers, but no matter, neither did she, picking up on the cues she was taking in. Even so, she enjoyed the new informality of their give and take. She wondered about the possibility of a friendship if she did decide to stay on in New Jersey. If she left, she supposed that would be the end of it.

They walked several blocks through midtown to 48th, the streets too congested and noisy for them to say much more. Nadine kept her surprise to herself when Anthony escorted her into Caesar’s Roman Forum, a theater district restaurant known for its extravagance of decor and service and its patronage by celebrities. The street noise disappeared; an opulent world appeared, for those with a means of entree into it.

The maitre’d acknowledged Anthony’s reservation and ushered them past the bar with its ancient mosaic on the wall, through the light glowing from bronze sconces, past silk draperies tied back with golden ropes, towards a table in the far corner.

The unaccustomed luxury of this jewel box of a room jarred her and relaxed her at the same time.

The waiter handed them opened menus, thick pages with burgundy script and a length of gold tassel wrapped around the spine. She felt Anthony watching her take in the luxury of the presentation. She stared at the waiter’s agile twist of the bottle as he poured red wine into crystal goblets. And at Anthony’s tie, the same rich color as the wine, the menu script, the intricate paisley material covering the chairs.

The blended sounds of piano, saxophone, and bass across the room filled in the gaps in their conversation.  Did Anthony know that she had never been in such a place, being only a year out of law school? Every need attended to discreetly, without exception.

Nadine asked if he’d been here before.

“No, no, I haven’t. I asked my sister to recommend a special place in the city.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of his answer. A special place?

Choosing a meal together somehow transformed the evening. Maybe it was his effort to please her, suggesting the caprese salad for an appetizer, then the special, a veal dish paired with a Pinot Grigio. After he placed their orders, she leaned back comfortably into her seat to enjoy a more expansive view of the room. Anthony pulled his chair in closer to the table, speaking in uncharacteristic softer tones that would never project in a courtroom.

His voice aimed only at her, she suddenly and surely knew that their meeting had crossed over into an encounter between Anthony, a man, and Nadine, a woman. No longer the prosecutor and the clerk playing their set parts in the courtroom, she sensed the boundaries between them changing, wavering. The ambiguity of it unsettled her. She tried to figure out how it happened while at the same time letting it happen.

Was it before the dessert? After, with the plates cleared, the shots of Sambuca arriving at the table? She lost track of the timing, although he must have planned it over and over. Anthony removed his glasses and placed them carefully in front of him on the pressed white tablecloth. He squinted even though the light was dim, maybe getting used to the undefined shadows and shapes around him.

He leaned toward her across the table. Nadine was absorbed by his face up close, framed by his thick, dark hair, just long enough to be wavy and slightly, charmingly unkempt. She held her gaze on him while adjusting to the physical nearness, transfixed by the dark eyes she had never seen unmagnified. She was struck by the handsome combination of his features, his slightly aquiline nose, his smooth close-shaven skin, especially his eyes with the mellow sheen of dark coffee beans fixed on her and holding her gaze in return.

She read him clearly—he said without words that he saw only her—a world he could live in.

He must have been studying her for a minute or two before he said, “Those earrings look so nice on you.” Nadine panicked for a split second. Which earrings was she wearing, the silver or the pearl? She touched her ear quickly and felt the teardrop shape of the opalescent pearls she had bought last week. She felt better knowing what she looked like to Anthony, no glinting silver in this golden place.

Her panic disappeared with the touch. She managed to thank him calmly.

While she was in his sights, he in hers, he reached into his pocket and set a small dark blue velvet box in front of her. She didn’t look down but caught it at the edge of her peripheral vision. Others walked quietly by, averting their eyes from the couple focused on each other, a velvet box unopened between them.

For a charged moment, she felt the impulse to flee before a gift came her way, an important one, surely signifying his strong feelings for her. Gold earrings? A pendant? A bracelet?

Before she could back away, Anthony reached over and took her hands in his—those large hands that slammed on the courtroom table with the force of his indignation now cradled hers tenderly, blanketing them completely.

In a split second it happened.

“I want to marry you, beautiful Nadine. You’ve been in my life every day for a year. I cannot imagine walking into court without seeing you there. I . . . .”

She interrupted, everything around her freezing into a picture of the moment, “Anthony, stop, please stop . . . I don’t know you, oh my god, I don’t know you at all . . . we don’t know each other . . . .”

She quickly lowered her eyes, saying no more, feeling a deep sadness for the disappointment he would hide by putting on his glasses and withdrawing his hands from hers, the imploring Why? he would barely manage, his voice breaking.

She left the box unopened. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to do.

They walked back to Penn Station in complete silence. Nadine shivered in the air conditioning blasting through the empty car. Without asking, Anthony wrapped his suit jacket around her shoulders. Before he got off at his stop in Newark, he insisted she keep the jacket for her ride home. She nodded in acknowledgment as he stood up to leave. She watched him walk forward down the aisle past the empty seats. Dark hair. White shirt. Black leather belt. Pin-striped slacks.

She had admired many of his qualities from afar, his intelligence, his decency, the way he confidently handled any surprises in the courtroom. But this sweet gesture was so much more personal, a hint of the parts of him he hadn’t shown to her—or that she hadn’t noticed?—over the past year. She felt so unsure of herself, not at refusing the proposal, but at missing something about the soul of Anthony—and maybe her own.

It was after midnight when she stepped off the train, the town pretty much closed down. The taxi stand on the street was vacant. Fortunately, it was a clear and moonlit night, and so she started the walk through the shuttered downtown to her neighborhood one-and a-half miles away. She moved in a state of disbelief. How had the day changed from the regular morning commute to Newark to dinner in New York, from a marriage proposal to a train ride home alone, the last one out?

* * * * *

Nadine slept fitfully, at first dreaming of Anthony bounding towards her with the menace of a tiger, and she, stepping aside to let him lunge past her—the precise moment when possibility vanished between them.

She wished for time to roll back to that moment before she froze in terror at his reckless revelation of love, delivered in a torrent of three sentences that came at her across a table from nowhere she could understand. She wondered how she could have avoided it. But no, once they entered the restaurant, there was no slowing the emotions building within him, over the hours, over the day . . . . now that she knew.

Nadine tried to quiet her thoughts by lying perfectly still under the covers. Maybe she was awake, maybe she was dreaming, when she heard a voice in her head asking, what if the pianist across the room was playing Blue Moon or The Way You Look Tonight? What if Anthony had taken her by the hand after dinner, leading her between the tables and across the carpet towards the small parquet dance floor? In her mind’s eye, she said yes and followed him there. What if he reached for her and wrapped his arm round her waist, touching her ever so tentatively at first, then pulling her towards him? What if their cheeks touched and neither turned away? What if he spoke to her in whispers, awakening her own language of love, holding her ever so insistently closer to him? What if they talked some more—“Nadine, it’s so nice getting to know you this way”—laughed, lost track of time? What if he steadied her as the pour of red wine turned her limbs into sand? And then, only then, simply told her, “I’m falling in love with you.”

She woke to harsh streaks of morning light and the sound of Columbus meowing for his breakfast, realizing she had overslept and missed her train. She found her pillow on the floor—she must have tossed and turned during the night, something in her troubled, restless. She showered and dressed in ten minutes, grabbed an apple from the fridge, and opened the front door.

Wait, Anthony’s suit jacket. I need to return it to him.

She ran up the staircase two steps at a time to retrieve the jacket hanging over her desk chair. She felt something in the right hand pocket. The blue velvet box. After staring at it—so it was real, the night had been real—she flipped it open for a second, enough to catch the sparkle of a diamond, small but bright, and the handwritten note that simply said, I’ll get the band sized for you.

Those seven words, his love letter.

* * * * *

Nadine ran through the corridors and made it to her seat before the judge arrived. But Anthony did not show up that morning. A fill-in with a hesitant voice answered the call of the list, not quite sure of the status of the cases on the docket.

She watched the clock through the embarrassing recitation, then minute by minute until morning recess. She took the elevator upstairs to the county prosecutor’s office and asked to see Anthony. The receptionist informed her that he was in a staff conference with instructions not to be disturbed.

She took a seat and waited for him anyway, watching the clock again—she was expected back in court in fifteen minutes. When Anthony saw her near the front desk, he hesitated. But he didn’t turn away. Nadine stood up and extended the jacket to him. He took it from her and folded it over his arm, then felt in the pockets for the small velvet box that might have been left at the restaurant or lost on the train for all he knew.

It wasn’t there.

He looked at her, puzzled. She had never seen an expression of such alarm on his face. She quickly raised her left arm and held her hand out to him, not wanting him to worry for even one second more.

He looked at it, speechless. The ring shone on the third finger of her left hand.

“Anthony,” she said, “we have to get to know each other. If you’re willing to go along with me, let’s see what happens. We’ve had our first date. Can we try for another one? But next time on a proper weekend night—like tomorrow—okay?”

He broke into a smile that meant yes.

“Nadine, I couldn’t sleep all night, thinking of how I charged full steam ahead and scared you so. I planned to find you today and apologize . . . if you came back here at all . . . .”

They touched both hands together briefly, then separated, taking the elevator down to the courtroom. For the first time, they walked in together. No one there seemed to notice the subtle change in courtroom ritual.

They made no promises. Being the respectful ones, adhering to the agreed upon rules, they stepped back in time cautiously, starting as less than lovers but more than strangers.

[To be continued]