Stone picked up the phone. “Your Honor, how are you?”
“So-so,” she replied. “Can I buy you lunch today?”
“Sure. Downtown?”
“Let’s do it in your neighborhood; I’d just as soon not be seen together around the courthouse.”
“The Box Tree at twelve-thirty?”
“Good.”
“I’ll book.”
The Box Tree was a dark, cozy restaurant not far from Stone’s house. He got there first and ordered half a bottle of wine. It was all the two of them would drink at lunch.
She came in five minutes later and, once again, he thought how attractive she was – small, blond, pretty, and very fit. He sought her lips, but she offered her cheek. Uh-oh, he thought. “How are you, Sara?”
“I’m all right.”
He hadn’t seen her for a week, a long time for them. They usually spent two or three nights a week together. “You look wonderful today.” He poured her a glass of wine and waved at a waiter, who brought menus.
“I’ll just have the wine,” she said. “I can’t really stay for lunch.”
“You came all the way uptown for a glass of wine?”
She looked him in the eye. “It hasn’t been going well, Stone, you and I.”
“Funny, I thought it was going extremely well,” he replied.
“You would think that,” she said. “Fact is, I don’t like sneaking around so the other lawyers I deal with won’t know; I don’t like recusing myself from your cases and not being able to say why; and good sex isn’t enough.”
“I thought we had more going than sex,” he said.
“I thought so, too, for a while, but I was wrong. We meet each other’s needs, to a point, and that point ends right after sex.”
“You’ve met somebody, haven’t you?”
She shrugged.
“Haven’t you?”
“All right, I have; actually, it’s somebody I’ve known for a long time but am getting to know better.”
“It’s the real thing?”
“I don’t know about that yet. It might be, if I can devote some time to it.”
Stone nodded. “And I’m using up a lot of time.”
“You’re using up a lot of me, Stone, and I’m not getting enough back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry; you’ve always been straight with me. I know you don’t have any interest in marriage, and I thought that was okay, but it’s just not. I need something in my life with a future. I’m thirty-four, and I want kids before I’m forty.”
“I can understand that,” Stone said into his wine glass.
“Not really,” she said. “It’s just not something you can empathize with. You’re a sweet man, Stone, in lots of ways, but deep down inside you’re very… contained. I almost said cold, but that would be a bum rap. You’re just not… easy to reach. I’m probably not the first woman to tell you something like that.”