The Syndrome

“Where were you, Scout?”

“What do you mean?” Adrie

“Yesterday! Dream team’s here, poring over the wonders of asphalt curing times and you were—what? You took off for lunch, and… now it’s Sunday? What happened?”

She thought about what to say, and what not to say. It was tricky and awful, all at once, because she couldn’t really tell Bette about Bonilla and Duran—or she’d seem like a lunatic. But she couldn’t lie about it, either, because the truth would eventually come out. It had to. She wanted it to. Until then… “Things are real complicated, right now.”

Bette’s jaw dropped.

“You want some coffee?” Adrie

Bette blinked, milking the moment. Finally, she said, “Okaaaaay… so, when did Slough get you?”

Adrie

Bette blanched. “You mean—you haven’t talked to him yet? Oh my God. You haven’t been home?”

Adrie

“Well, I hope he was worth it,” Bette said, “whoever he was, because… you didn’t even check your messages?”

Adrie

Bette raised her eyes to the ceiling, and sighed. “Well, he left, we left—a lot of messages for you.”

Shit. Adrie

Bette giggled—nervously—at what she thought was Adrie

“What do you mean, I’m the man.”

“You’re deposing McEligot.”

“What?! When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“But—” Adrie

“Well, some of us are actually jealous. I mean—”

A quiet, high-pitched moan from Adrie

“He said he was sending you his prep work,” Bette told her in a reassuring voice. “So you should check your e-mail. On the other hand, he was really in a hurry, so… who knows?” She sipped her coffee and headed for the door. “Delicious. Anyway… lucky you!”

“Wait a second,” Adrie

“Bill who? You mean Fellowes?”

“Unh-huh.”

“Not for a couple of days. He’s in Detroit. I don’t think he’s back until Tuesday.”

When Bette had gone, Adrie

That done, she logged onto the Internet and checked her e-mail. There were eight messages: two jokes, forwarded by friends; a couple of come-ons from AOL and E*Trade; and four bulletins from Slough, which boiled down to: 1) Call me. 2) Where are you? 3) You’re deposing McEligot. And 4) Here’s my prep work. (You’ll have to flesh it out a little.) Go get ‘em!

This last message included an attachment that, once she downloaded it, caused her to put her head in her hands. Flesh it out? With the exception of two or three sentences that she didn’t recognize, what Slough had sent her—his prep work on McEligot—was nothing more than the memo that she’d worked up for him. Which is to say that it included everything she already knew—and nothing more.

She called Slough’s number in San Diego, and left a message, saying that she’d received what he’d sent and that she was at the office if he wanted to talk. Then she put her head down, and got to work.

Time did not fly.

The McEligot deposition was a minefield, with each question posing a different set of problems and opportunities—so that, by the time Adrie

“I was worried about you,” he said, when she finally got him on the phone.

“It’s been really busy,” she explained. “And it’s going to be a couple of more hours. I’m not done.”

“I don’t like you being there,” he told her. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

His concern touched her. “I’m not alone!” she replied. “Everyone’s beavering away. As soon as I can, I’ll come back and finish up on the laptop. I’ll bring food.”

“Great, but—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

“Good idea,” he said, “but what I was going to ask is, why don’t you get some beer?”

It was ten o’clock when her tiredness finally gave way to hunger, and she decided to return to the motel. By then, she was the only lawyer still at work, though not the only person on the floor. From the corridor came the dull roar of vacuum cleaners, the squeak of polish on brass, the chatter of Spanish.

She could refine her notes at the Comfort I

Then she rode down in the elevator with a pretty girl in an Orioles sweatshirt who piloted her rolling bucket and mops through the doors when they stopped at the second floor. Alone in the elevator, the world seemed suddenly, eerily silent—until the doors slid open, and a wave of techno pop washed over her from a boombox in the lobby.

The rain had stopped, but a damp wind nipped at her cheeks as she hurried toward the car. If anything’s going to happen, she thought, now’s the time, this is the place. But there was no one that she could see. An old lady, walking a small dog. A young schizophrenic, shuffling down the sidewalk, dressed in what looked like half a dozen overcoats. Some musicians, sitting outside a club under the Whitehurst Freeway, sharing a joint. Parked cars and vans, but—not her own. A sizzle of fear zipped through her chest, then fizzled out when she remembered that she wasn’t looking for her own aging Subaru, but a new Dodge.

And there it was.

Peering through the glass to be sure the backseat was empty, she got behind the wheel and tried the ignition. A sluggish sound rose up from under the hood. And again. And again. Just as she was begi

She was creeping past the Ke

And so she relaxed, her mind turning to Duran as she crossed the Potomac, heading toward Springfield.

She couldn’t believe that she was going to spend another night in a motel with this guy—or what was worse, that he was now her only confidant. That, more than anything else, really got to her. It boggled the mind. Her eyes rose to the rearview mirror, and stayed there for several seconds before they returned to the road. Still no shiny black car, but in all this traffic, who could tell?

At the brightly lighted Sultan Kebab in Springfield, she ordered takeout for herself and Duran, then sat down to wait with the magazine section of the Post. There was a terrific recipe for preserved lemons and, reading it, she wished with all her heart that she might someday have time to do things like that—instead of spending her Sundays immersed in asphalt. Finally, the proprietor emerged from the kitchen with a pair of self-enclosed, Styrofoam trays containing rice, kebabs, and salad.