How It Ended

I like to ask married couples how they met. It's always interesting to hear how two lives become intertwined, how of the nearly infinite number of possible conjunctions this one or that one comes into being, to hear the beginning of a story in progress. As a matrimonial lawyer I deal extensively in endings, and it's a relief, a sort of holiday, to visit the realm of beginnings. And I ask because I have always liked to tell my own story--our story, I should say--which I had always felt was unique.

My name is Donald Prout, which rhymes with trout. My wife, Cameron, and I were in the Caribbean on vacation when we met Johnny and Jean Van Heusen. We were staying at a tiny, expensive resort in the Virgin Islands, and we would see them in the dining room and later on the beach. Etiquette dictated respect for privacy, but there was a countervailing, quiet camaraderie born of the feeling that one's fellow guests shared a level of good taste and financial standing. And they stood out as the only other young couple.

I had just triumphed in a difficult case, sticking it to a rich husband and coming out with a nice settlement despite considerable evidence that my client had been cheating on him for years with everything in pants. Of course, I sympathized with the guy, but he had his own counsel, he still had inherited millions left over and it's my job to give my client the best counsel possible. Now I was enjoying what I thought of as, for lack of a better cliché, a well-earned rest. I hadn't done much resting in 12 years, going from public high school to Amherst--where I'd worked part-time for my tuition--to Columbia Law to a big midtown firm, where I'd knocked myself out as an associate for six years.

It is a sad fact that the ability to savor long hours of leisure is a gift some of us have lost, or never acquired. Within an hour of waking the first morning in paradise, I was restless, watching stalk-eyed land crabs skitter sideways across the sand, unwilling or unable to concentrate on the Updike I had started on the plane. Lying on the beach in front of our cabana, I noticed the attractive young couple emerging from the water, splashing each other. She was a tall and elegant brunette. Sandy-haired and lanky, he looked like a prep-school boy who had taken a semester off to go sailing. Over the next few days I couldn't help seeing them frequently. They were very affectionate, which seemed to indicate a relatively new marriage (both wore wedding bands). And they had an aura of entitlement, of being very much at home and at ease on this pricey patch of white sand and turquoise water, so I assumed they came from money. Also, they seemed gloriously indifferent, unlike those couples who, after a few days of sun and sand and the company of the loved one, begin to invite their neighbors for a daiquiri on the balcony to grope for mutual acquaintances and interests, anything to be spared the frightening monotony of each other, without distraction or relief.

•

The example of the Van Heusens was invigorating. Seeing them together revived the concept of matrimony for me. After all, I reasoned, we were also an attractive young couple--an extra pound or two notwithstanding. I thought more of us for our ostensible resemblance to them, and when I overheard him tell an old gent that he had recently graduated from law school and passed the bar, I felt a rush of kinship and self-esteem, since I had recently made partner at one of the most distinguished firms in New York.

On the evening of our fifth day we struck up a conversation at the pool-side bar. I heard them speculating about a yacht out in the bay and I told them who it belonged to, having been told myself when I'd seen it in Tortola a few days earlier. I almost expected him to recognize the name, to claim friendship with the yacht owner, but he only said, "Oh, really? Nice boat."

The sun was melting into the ocean, dyeing the water red and pink and gold. We all sat, hushed, watching the spectacle. I reluctantly broke the silence to remind the waiter that I had specified a piña colada on the rocks, not frozen, my teeth being sensitive to the crushed ice. Within minutes the sun had slipped out of sight, sending up a last flare, and then we began to chat. Eventually, they told us that they lived in one of those eminently respectable communities on the north shore of Boston.

They asked if we had kids and we said no, not yet. When I said, "You?" Jean blushed and referred the question to her husband.

After a silent exchange he turned to us and said, "Jeannie's pregnant."

"We haven't really told anyone yet," she added.

Cameron beamed at Jean and smiled encouragingly in my direction. We had been discussing this very topic lately. I was ready; for some reason she didn't feel quite so certain. But I think we were both pleased to be the recipients of this confidence, though it was a function of our lack of real intimacy, and of the place and time (we learned, somewhat sadly, that this was their last night).

When I mentioned my profession, Johnny solicited my advice about firms; he was going to start job-hunting when they returned. I was curious, of course, about how he had come to law so relatively late and what he had done with his 20s, but I thought it would be indiscreet to ask.

We ordered a second round of drinks and talked until it was dark. "Why don't you join us for dinner?" he proposed as we all stood on the veranda, reluctant to end the moment. And so we did. I was grateful for the company and Cameron seemed to be enlivened by the break in routine. I found Jean increasingly attractive--confident and funny--while her husband was wry and self-deprecating in a manner that suited a young man who was probably a little too rich and happy for anyone else's good. He seemed like someone who was consciously keeping his lights on dim.

As the dinner plates were being cleared away I said, "So tell me, how did you two meet?"

Cameron laughed; it was my favorite parlor game. Telling the story of meeting and courting Cameron gave me a romantic charge that I had ceased to feel in the actual day-to-day conduct of our marriage.

Johnny and Jean exchanged a meaningful look, seeming to consult about whether to reveal a great secret. He laughed through his nose and then she began to laugh. Within moments they were both in a state of high hilarity. Of course, we'd had several planter's punches and two bottles of wine with dinner and none of us except for Jean was legally sober. Cameron in particular seemed to me to be getting a little sloppy, especially in contrast to the abstinent Jean, and when she reached again for the wine bottle, I tried to catch her eye, but she was bestowing her bright, blurred attention on the other couple. Finally Johnny said to his wife, "How we met. God. You want to tackle this one?"

She shook her head. "You try, babe."

"Do you smoke a cigar, Don?" He produced two metal tubes from his pocket. Although I am not a big fan of cigars, I occasionally smoke one with a client or a partner, and I took one now. He handed me a cutter and lit us up, then leaned back and stroked his sandy bangs away from his eyes and released a plume of smoke.

"Maybe it's not such an unusual story," he proposed.

Jean laughed skeptically.

"You sure you don't mind, honey?" he asked her.

She considered, shrugged her shoulders and then shook her head. "It's up to you."

"I think this story begins when I got thrown out of Bowdoin," Johnny said. "Not to put too fine a point on it, I was dealing pot. Well, pot and a little coke, actually." He stopped to check our reaction.

I, for one, tried to keep an open, inviting demeanor, eager to encourage him. I wouldn't say I was shocked, but I certainly was surprised.

"I got caught," he continued. "By agreeing to pack my old kit bag and go away forever, I escaped prosecution. My parents weren't too pleased about the whole thing, but unfortunately for them, virtually that same week I had come into a little bit of gramps' filthy lucre and there wasn't much they could do about it. I was tired of school anyway. It's funny, I enjoyed it when I finally went back a few years ago to get my B.A. and then do law school, but at the time it was wasted on me. Or I was wasted on it. Wasted in general. I'd wake up in the morning and fire up the old bong and then huff up a few lines to get through a geology seminar."

He inhaled on his stogie and shook his head ruefully at the memory of this youthful excess. He did not seem particularly ashamed but rather bemused, as if he were describing the behavior of an incorrigible cousin.

"I went sailing for about a year--spent some time in these waters, actually, some of the best sailing waters in the world--and then I drifted back to Boston. I'd run through most of my capital and I didn't feel ready to hit the books again and somehow I just kind of naturally got back in touch with the people who had been supplying me when I was dealing at Bowdoin. I still had a boat, a 36-footer. And I got back in the trade. It was different then--this was more than ten years ago, before the Colombians really moved in and took over Stateside distribution. Everything was a lot more relaxed. We were gentleman outlaws, adrenaline junkies, sail bums, freaks with an entrepreneurial jones."

He frowned slightly, as if hearing the faint note of self-justification, of (continued on page 159)How It Ended(continued from page 92) self-delusion, of sheer datedness. I had largely avoided the drug culture of the Seventies, but even I could remember when drugs were viewed as the sacraments of a vague, joyous liberation theology or, later, as a slightly risky form of recreation. But in this decade the romance of drug dealing had become a hard sell, and Johnny seemed to realize it.

"Well, that's how we saw it back then," Johnny amended. "Let's just say that we were less ruthless and less financially motivated than the people who eventually took over the business."

Wanting to discourage his sudden attack of scruples, I waved to the waiter for another bottle of wine.

"Make sure the wine's not too chilled," Cameron shouted at the retreating waiter. "My husband has sensitive teeth." I suppose that she thought this was funny.

"Anyway, I did quite well," Johnny continued. "Initially, I was very hands-on, rendezvousing with mother ships out in the water off Nantucket, bringing in small loads in a hollow keel. Eventually, my partner Derek and I moved up the food chain. We were making money so fast we had a hard time thinking of ways to make it legit. I mean, you can't just keep hiding it under your mattress. First we were buying cars and boats with cash and then we bought a bar in Cambridge to run some of our earnings through. We were actually paying taxes on drug money just so we could have some legitimate income. We always used to say we'd get out before it got too crazy, once we'd put aside a really big stash. But there was so much more cash to be made, and craziness is like anything else, you get into it one step at a time and no single step really feels like it's taking you over the cliff. Until you go right over the edge and down and then it's too late. You're smoking reefer in high school and then you're doing lines and then you're selling a little and then you're buying an AK-47 and then you're bringing a hundred kilos into Boston harbor."

I wasn't about to interrupt to question this logic, to say that some of us never even thought of dealing drugs, let alone buying firearms. I filled his wineglass, nicely concealing my skepticism, secretly pleased to hear this golden boy revealing his baser metal. But I have to say I was intrigued.

"This goes on for two, three years. I wish I could say it wasn't fun, but it was. The danger, the secrecy, the money." He puffed on his cigar and looked out over the water. "So anyway, we set up one of the bigger deals of our lives, and our buyer's been turned. He's facing 15 to life on his own so he delivers us up on a platter. An exciting moment. We're in a warehouse in the Back Bay and suddenly there are 20 narcs pointing .38s at us."

"And one of them was Jean," Cameron proposed.

I shot her a look but she didn't turn to catch it.

"For the sake of our new friends here I wish I had been," Jean said. She looked at her husband and touched his wrist and at that moment I found her extraordinarily attractive. "I think you're boring these nice people."

"Not at all," I protested, directing my reassurance at the storyteller's wife. I was genuinely sorry for her sake that she was a part of this sordid tale. She turned and smiled at me, as I had hoped she would, and for a moment I forgot about the story altogether as I conjured up a sudden vision of the future-slipping from the cabana for a walk that night, unable to sleep, and encountering her out at the edge of the long beach, talking, claiming insomnia, and then confessing that we had been thinking of each other, a long kiss and a slow recline to the soft sand.

"You must think--" She smiled helplessly. "I don't know what you must think. John's never really told anyone about all of this before. You're probably shocked."

"Please, go on," said Cameron. "We're dying to hear the rest. Aren't we, Don?"

I nodded, a little annoyed at this aggressive use of the marital pronoun. Her voice seemed loud and grating and she was wearing a gaudy print top that I hated, which seemed all the gaudier beside Jeannie's elegant but sexy navy halter.

Johnny said, "Long story short--I hire Carson Baxter to defend me. And piece by piece he gets virtually every shred of evidence thrown out. Makes it disappear right before the jury's very eyes. Then he sneers at the rest. I mean, the man is the greatest performer I've ever seen."

"He's brilliant," I murmured. Carson Baxter was one of the finest defense attorneys in the country. Although I did not always share his political views--he specialized in left-wing causes--I admired his adherence to his principles and his legal scholarship. He was actually a hero of mine. I don't know why, but I was surprised to hear his name in this context.

"So I walked," Johnny concluded.

"You were acquitted?" I asked.

"Absolutely." He puffed contentedly on his cigar. "Of course, you'd think that would be the end of the story and the end of my illicit but highly profitable career. Unfortunately not. I told myself and everyone else I would go straight. But after six months the memory of prison and the bust had faded and a golden opportunity practically fell into my lap--a chance for one last big score. The retirement run. That's the one you should never make--the last one. Always a mistake. Remember, never do a farewell gig. Always stop one run before the final one." He laughed.

"That waiter is asleep on his feet," Jean said soberly. "Like the waiter in that Hemingway story. He's silently poxing you, Johnny Van Heusen, with a special voodoo curse for long-winded white boys, because he wants to reset the table and go back to the cute little turquoise-and-pink staff quarters and make love to his wife, the chubby laundress waiting for him all naked on her fresh white linen."

"I wonder how the waiter and the laundress met," said Johnny cheerfully, standing up and stretching. "That's probably the best story."

Cameron, my beloved wife, said, "Probably they met when the waiter comforted her after Don yelled at her about a stain on his shirt."

Johnny looked at his watch. "My goodness, 10:30 already, way past official Virgin Islands bedtime."

"But you can't go to bed yet," Cameron said. "You haven't even met your wife."

"Oh, right. So anyway, later I met Jean and we fell in love and got married and lived happily ever after."

"No fair," Cameron shrieked.

"I'd be curious to hear your observations about Baxter," I said quietly.

"The hell with Carson Baxter," Cameron said. When she was drinking her voice took on a more pronounced nasal quality as it rose in volume. "I want to hear the love story."

"Let's at least take a walk on the beach," Jean suggested, standing up.

So we rolled out to the beach and dawdled along the water's edge as Johnny resumed the tale.

"Well, Derek and I went down to the Keys and picked up a boat, a Hatteras 62 with a false bottom. Had a kid in the Coast Guard on our payroll and another in Customs. They were going to talk us through the coastal net on our return. For show, we loaded up the boat with a lot of big-game fishing gear, big rods and reels. And we stowed the real pay-load--the automatic weapons with night scopes and die cash. The guns were part of die deal, 30 of them, enough for a small army. The Colombians were always looking for armament, and we picked diese up cheap from an Israeli in Miami who had to leave town quickly. It was a night like this, a warm, starry, Caribbean winter night, when the rudder broke about a hundred miles off Cuba. We started to drift and by morning we were picked up by a Cuban naval vessel. Well, you can imagine how they reacted when they found the guns and the cash. I mean, think about it, an American boat loaded with guns and cash and high-grade electronics. We tried to explain that we were just drug dealers, but they weren't buying it."

We had come to the edge of the sandy beach; farther on, a rocky ledge rose up from the gently lapping water of the cove. Johnny knelt down and scooped up a handful of fine silvery sand. Cameron sat down beside him. I remained standing, looking up at the powdery spray of stars above us, feeling in my intoxicated state that I exercised some important measure of autonomy by refusing to sit just because Johnny was sitdng. By this time I simply did not approve of him. I did not approve of the fact that this self-confessed drug runner had just passed the bar and was about to enter the practice of law. And I suppose I did not approve of his happiness, of the fact that he was obviously rich and had a beautiful and charming wife.

"That was the worst time of my life," he said softly, the jauntiness receding. Jean, who had been standing beside him, knelt down and put a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly he smiled and patted her arm. "But hey--at least I learned Spanish, right?"

Cameron chuckled appreciatively at this statement.

"After six months in a Cuban prison, me and Derek and the captain were sentenced to death as American spies. I hadn't even seen either of them the whole time. They kept us apart hoping to break us. And they would have broken us, except that we couldn't tell them what they wanted to hear because we were just dumb drug runners and not CIA. Jesus, God," he muttered.

I sat down on the sand, finally, drawing my knees up against my chest, watching Jean's sympathetic face as if the sordid ordeal of the husband would be more real reflected there. I didn't feel sorry for him--he'd gotten himself into this mess. But I could see she knew at least some of the story that he was editing for us and that it pained her. I felt sorry for her.

"Anyway, we were treated better than some of the Cuban dissidents because they always had to consider the possibility of using us for barter or propaganda. A few weeks before we're supposed to be shot, I manage to get a message to Baxter, who uses his left-wing contacts to fly down to Cuba and get an audience with fucking Castro. This is when it's illegal to even go to Cuba. And Baxter has his files with him, and--here's the beauty of it--he uses the same evidence he discredited in Boston to convince Castro and his defense ministry that we are honest-to-God drug dealers as opposed to dirty Yankee spies. And they finally release us into Baxter's custody. Well, we fly back to Miami and----" He paused, looked around at his audience, "the feds are waiting for us on the tarmac. A welcoming committee of sweating G-men in cheap suits. They arrest all of us for coming from Cuba. But of course the feds are aware of our story--they've been monitoring this for the better part of a year. Out of the fucking frittata pan--"

"The sartén, actually," Jean corrected impishly.

"Yeah, yeah." He stuck his tongue out at her and resumed. "I mean, I thought I was going to lose it right there on the runway, after almost seven months in a cell without a window, thinking I was free and then--"

Cameron blurted, "God, you must have been ... I mean--

"I was. So now the federal boys contact Havana and ask for the evidence that led to our acquittal as spies so that they can use it for a smuggling rap."

I heard the sounds of a thousand insects and the lapping of water on the beach a few feet away as he paused and smiled.

"And the Cubans say, basically--Fuck you, Yankee pigs. And we all walk. Lord, it was sweet."

To my amazement, Cameron began to applaud. I realized that she was drunk.

"We still haven't heard about Jean," I noted, wanting to challenge him in some way. As if I suspected, and was about to prove, your honor, that they had in point of fact never actually met at all.

Jean shared with her husband a conspiratorial smile that deflated and saddened me, reminding me that they were indeed together. Turning to me, she said, "My name is Jean Carson Baxter."

I'm not a complete idiot. "Baxter's daughter?" I asked.

She nodded.

Cameron broke out laughing. "That's great," she said. "I love it."

"How did your father feel about it?" I asked, sensing a weak point.

Jean's smile disappeared. She picked up a handful of sand and threw it out over the water. "Not too good. Apparently, it's one thing to defend a drug dealer, prove his innocence and take his money. But it's quite another thing when he falls in love with your precious daughter."

"Jeannie used to come to my trial to watch her father perform," Johnny explained. "And that, to answer your question finally, is how we met. In court. Exchanging steamy looks, then steamy notes, across a stuffy courtroom." Pulling Jean close against his shoulder, he said, "God, you looked good."

"Right," she said. "Anything without a Y chromosome would have looked good to you after three months in custody."

"We started seeing each other secretly after I was acquitted. Carson didn't know when he flew to Cuba. He didn't have any idea until we walked out of the courthouse in Miami and Jean threw her arms around me, and except for a few scream-and-threat fests, he hasn't really spoken to us since that day." He paused. "He did send me a bill, though."

Jean said, "The really funny thing is that Johnny was so impressed with my dad that he decided to go to law school."

Cameron laughed. At least one of us found this funny. My response was much more complicated and, in fact, it took me a long time to sort it out.

"What a great story," Cameron said.

I wanted to slap her, tell her to shut the hell up.

"So what about you guys?" said Jean, sitting on the moonlit sand with her arm around her husband. "What's your wildly romantic story? Tell us about how you two met."

Cameron turned to me eagerly, smiling with anticipation. "Tell them, Don."

I stared out into the bay at a light on the yacht we had all admired earlier, and I thought about the boy who'd been polishing brass when Cameron and I had walked up the deck in Tortola, a shirtless teenager with limp white hair and a tiny gold ring through his nostril who'd told us the name of his employer, the owner, before he turned back to his task, bobbing his head and humming, looking forward, I imagined, to a night on the town.

I turned back to my wife, sitting beside me on the cold sand.

"You tell them," I said.