Till the Butchers Cut Him Down by Marcia Muller Page B

again—to a velvety blackish
     red. We’d talked about his reasons for the other color choices: yellow because I wasn’t traditional enough for red or sentimental
     enough for pink; exotic tangerine because it described our passion. But this strange deep red? Neither of us had so much as
     mentioned it.
    I went over and touched the flower’s soft petals, breathed in its rich fragrance. Red—the color of love, the deeper the better.
     Red—the color of shed blood, the product of violence. Which? Both had been components of that tumultuous week. …
    My fingers tightened on the stem of the vase. Suddenly I wanted to pick it up and hurl it at the wall. Better yet, seize the
     rose, rip its petals off, and trample them.
    After all we’d gone through during that week, after all we’d almost lost, after all the commitment I thought we’d made to
     each other, Hy was once more out of reach. Had, since he dropped me at Oakland Airport in early July, been off on an uncharacteristic
     spate of traveling whose significance I failed to understand.
    Postcards arrived and phone calls came. The plain white cards—Hy wasn’t the picture-postcard type—bore both U.S. and foreign
     postmarks and messages of no consequence. The calls were brief, filled with superficial chatter: Yes, my business license
     had come through. No, I hadn’t taken on any clients yet. Yes, the weather was hot and muggy in Miami—or rainy in London or
     overcast in New York. No, he wasn’t exactly sure where he’d be going next. I’d filed the cards in order, listed the dates
     and cities of origin of the calls. Neither gave a hint of an organized itinerary; neither revealed the purpose of his travels.
    For some time now Hy had expressed dissatisfaction with his participation in the environmental movement; he felt his confrontational
     style was outmoded, his fund-raising ability limited. In June he also had been forced to face his past and reassess his future.
     Like me, he’d opted for change, but so far I hadn’t a clue as to what form that change would take. All I knew was that his
     travels were not the typical idle wanderings of a man with a good deal of money and time on his hands.
    I also suspected that somehow his movements were connected to a mysterious nine-year hole in his life—a period that had almost
     destroyed him and about which he’d told no one, not even me.
    I didn’t know what hurt more—his refusal to open up to me or his absence right now when I needed him most. I’d set out on
     the riskiest venture of my life: for the first time I was working alone without the support of an employer; money was flying
     out the door, but clients weren’t flying in; my sister had saddled me with a teenager with criminal tendencies. And now I’d
     been presented a first case that was potentially lucrative but riddled with complications. I needed to talk with Hy, my touchstone,
     but I hadn’t the faintest idea of where in the world to reach him.
    I eyed the rose malevolently. Plucked it from the vase and fingered a petal, contemplating a perverse variant on the old he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not
     game, involving atrocities I’d have liked to commit upon my lover. Then I replaced it, straightening its greenery. No sense
     in trivializing the situation; no need to add childishness to my roster of character defects.
    Forcing my attention back to Suitcase Gordon, I decided to go upstairs and see if Rae was home. In the past I’d often benefited
     from her insights; maybe she could cut to the core of my uncertainty about taking him on as my first client.
    Rae lived in a big skylit room in the attic. She, Ted, tax attorney Pam Ogata, and corporate-law specialist Larry Koslowski
     were the last holdouts from the days when All Souls was a poverty law firm in the strictest sense of the term and offered
     its underpaid staff free rooms as part of their meager compensation package. The four stayed because they enjoyed the camaraderie,
     and more