3   My date for that evening was with my anti-Margo of the moment, a fairly attractive woman named Kaycee whom I had met some seven weeks before and whose real name was Karen Cross. It was a routine dinner-movie-and-sex-at-her-place date, except that this time the movie was to come first, since the only convenient showing of the film we had agreed to see was at six-forty-five, and I was to meet her in front of the theater – which was a ten-minute walk away from her apartment house – at six-thirty. If I were to leave the office within the next half-hour then I had plenty of time to go home, have a snack, shower, change, and meet her at the appointed time. But I began to experience a nagging reluctance to see her; it felt like a fear that having Libby on my mind would lessen, if not obliterate, my desire for Kaycee. I decided to call off the date; my pretext would be that I had some unexpected extra work – not a total lie, since thinking about Libby, and specifically about whether to take her case, was a part of my work. I began to key in Kaycee’s number, but with one digit left I pressed the OFF button. My feelings had changed: it now seemed to me that I needed a distraction from thinking about Libby – and even more so about Margo – and that seeing a movie with Kaycee, whatever happened later, would provide it. What happened later was that when we got to the Chinese restaurant and Kaycee took off her jacket, she turned out to be wearing a dress with a neckline similar to Libby’s top, with a similar display of cleavage. Later still, I found that imagining Libby while I was kissing Kaycee’s breasts as I was helping her undress was a potent stimulant. Afterwards, when I was preparing to go home to sleep – as I normally did – Kaycee put on a nightgown with an even deeper neckline. I asked her if she would like me to stay, and she said yes. I told her that I had brought only the one condom that we had used. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’ve got ‘em.” In the dark, the amalgam of Libby’s image in my mind and Kaycee’s flesh next to my body worked its Viagra-aided magic again and again. It was my first full night of sex – the romantic that I most decidedly am not would have called it a night of love – in perhaps a dozen years. The last one that I could remember was an unusually – for the Bay Area – warm night in Stinson Beach with Margo, on the eve of Greg’s return from his first summer camp; it was the high point from which the subsequent steady decline in our sex life could be measured. I woke up about six-thirty – my usual time, but with not nearly enough sleep – and as I looked at the quietly sleeping Kaycee, her brown-rooted blond hair disarrayed about her face and one strap of her nightgown down almost to her elbow, I felt drained of desire. Since I had no idea of her waking habits and didn’t feel like waiting for her, I got up, dressed, and scribbled Thanks for a lovely night – G on a piece of paper I tore from a pad in her kitchen and placed on what had been my pillow. She hadn’t stirred when I softly closed her door behind me. Driving home, I realized that I had already, unconsciously, decided to take Libby’s case. Of course I would be professional about informing her, and not call her until working hours on Monday. Independently of the merits of the case, I felt deep down that I needed an attorney-client relationship with Libby as insurance against an inclination to pursue her as a woman, a pursuit that would in all likelihood be fruitless. Even if she were available – and she had told me nothing about her personal situation – I felt that I was simply not in her league, age-wise, looks-wise, or status-wise. I must note that I would never have a personal relationship with a client, unlike Jerry Brucker, who went to business school before law school and graduated the year that LA Law premiered, with Arnie Becker becoming his role model. The next woman I would pursue, I decided, would be not an anti-Margo but a pseudo-Libby: a more mature, less glamorous version of the woman who was now occupying my mind. It was time to end it with Kaycee. I wouldn’t make it too abrupt; I had to consider her feelings, even though our relationship, had, from the outset, been about sex and a modicum of companionship, with no pretense of romance.   We first met in the ticket line of the same movie theatre, to which we had both gone alone in order to see, as it turned out, the same movie – March of the Penguins – that I would have gone to see with Greg if he hadn’t just gone back to Arcata for summer classes. We chatted as we entered the theatre and we sat together through the showing. Afterwards I asked her if she would like to continue our conversation over some drinks. “Sure,” she said, “but I live real close, so why don’t we do it at my place?” Her place turned out to be a spacious apartment in an elegant building, expensively if somewhat garishly furnished. It was filled with exotic knickknacks from every continent, but the carpets, appliances and furniture seemed top-of-the-line. When, after taking off my jacket and hanging it on a chair, I let myself down on the sofa it felt like the most comfortable one I had ever sat in. “Would you like some nice chardonnay?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. “Chardonnay is okay.” She poured two gobletfuls from a bottle whose label I recognized – it cost around thirty dollars – and sat beside me, with about a foot between us. “You have a beautiful place,” I said as I took a sip. The wine really was nice, though hardly three times as nice as one that I would typically serve to company, nor fifteen times as nice as the Two-Buck Chuck that was my daily fare. “Thank you,” she said. “I work hard to be able to afford it.” “What do you do?” “I’m a travel agent.” “Really?” I said, surprised. “I thought that these days people act as their own travel agents, surfing the Internet for the best fares.” “Yes, except for the ones that don’t. There are still people who don’t care about the cheapest fares and who” – she smiled and gave me a sly look – “appreciate the personal touch.” “I’m sure you have a really nice personal touch,” I said, trying to be sly in return. The attempt was evidently successful, because she edged next to me and said, “I think I do,” as she put her hand on the crotch of my pants. Its principal occupant sprang instantly to attention. I slid my hand under the hem of her dress, but she moved away. “Let’s get more comfortable,” she said as she stood up and moved toward her bedroom. I didn’t follow her immediately. I took advantage of my unexpected readiness and put on the condom which I took out of the inside pocket of my jacket. By the time I got into the bedroom she was already lying on the bed, undressed. When I lay down beside her she pulled me onto her and inside her, with no further ado. This beginning had set the tone of our liaison.   When I got home there was a message from Kaycee, timed six-fifty-five. So she was an early riser after all. “Hi Gary,” the message said, “there was something I meant to tell you this morning, but I obviously didn’t get a chance. Please call me.” “Kaycee speaking,” she answered the phone, as she always did. (At her office it would be “KC Travel, Kaycee speaking.”) “Hi,” I said. “Oh, hi, Gary, thanks for calling. What I was going to tell you was that I was going away for six weeks, in about ten days. I am taking a group to Southeast Asia.” “That means that after next weekend…” I began. “That’s right.” “I’m sorry, but it so happens that I’m busy both Friday and Saturday.” It was true: I had parties to go to both evenings. “When are you actually leaving?” “Tuesday morning.” “Would Sunday evening work?” “I don’t think so. I’ll be swamped with work on Monday, and I’ll need a good night’s sleep. So I guess we’ll just have to say good-bye on the phone now. It’s been really nice with you…” “Likewise,” I said. “Maybe we can see each other again after I come back, in seven or eight weeks. If you’re still interested.” “And if you are,” I countered. “Maybe.” This was turning out really easy, I thought. “Good-bye, then, and have a wonderful trip.” “It’s work,” she said, “but I manage to have a good time anyway. Good-bye, Gary, and thanks for the good time you’ve given me.” She hung up before I had a chance to respond. I felt relief, as usual. Mingled with some regret, to be sure, since I had enjoyed Kaycee’s company, but not enough to form a post-liaison friendship. When I was an undergraduate, some of my best friends were girls that I had had flings with. This was even what happened with Margo: We met in what was – literally – our first class in law school, got together that evening to smoke a joint and have sex, and then gradually became friends. Eventually, at the beginning of the second year – Margo had spent the intervening summer in Europe – we became true lovers. But since I restarted my sex life in my late forties, this sort of thing doesn’t happen any more. I have enough friends as it is. As a moderately prosperous straight single man in San Francisco, I have a fairly busy social life. I wouldn’t call it an active one; it would be better qualified as passive, since it is based largely on my being invited by various friends and acquaintances to dinner parties, cultural outings and group hikes in order to improve their demographic balance. On occasion I have had the impression of an attempt at matchmaking lurking behind the invitation, but if such attempts have in fact been made, they haven’t been successful. The idea of dating a friend of a friend doesn’t appeal to me, because I don’t expect such relationships to last, and the prospect of having an ex-girlfriend in my social circle doesn’t feel comfortable. None of these feelings ever applied to Margo, since I never thought of Margo as an ex. At least, not until the day before, when Libby Schlemmer forcefully pointed out Margo’s ex-ness to me. I was due to meet with Margo for brunch the next day, to discuss some money matters relating to our building and to Greg’s expenses. Such meetings happened routinely, every two or three months, and they always passed with no discomfort. It would never have occurred to me until this day that Margo would in any way be taking advantage of me. But this time I began to sense an undercurrent of wariness creeping into my attitude. I spent most of the day hiking on Mount Tam with a motley group of acquaintances in my age group. Most of the group’s members had first met in the Sierra Club. Eventually they found the hiking pace that the leader demanded too rigorous to allow chatting along the way, and so they formed their own, anarchic anti-club. Joyce had been one of the original group members, and it was through her that Margo and I joined, about a year before our separation. Now I was the only one of the three still hiking. The weather was cool and foggy, as sometimes happens in August. The hike was relatively effortless, and full of chitchat – about Barry Bonds and BALCO, about the growing violence in Iraq, about Schwarzenegger’s political problems – that I found pleasantly distracting. In the evening I went to a concert of Venetian baroque music, given at an old Lutheran church in the Mission by an unassuming but very competent group playing period instruments. Unlike performances at the Opera House or the Symphony Hall, concerts of this kind are, for me, not social occasions, and I like going to them alone. I did, on one occasion, meet another solitary music lover, Wendy Wang, who became another sort of lover – and concert companion – for three months. Now that I was finished with Kaycee, there lurked in the back of my mind the possibility that I might repeat the Wendy experience. But nothing of the sort happened. The musicians seemed to have some tuning problems at first and, even after they resolved them, I had trouble focusing on the music until after the intermission. By then I was tired and relaxed, and I could imagine myself dancing a minuet in an eighteenth-century palazzo to the rhythms of Albinoni, or sitting in a pew of Santa Maria della Salute listening to a mass by Benedetto Marcello. When it was over, I went home for a good night’s sleep, which I needed after my previous night.   The Sunday brunch with Margo went pretty well, considering. Considering that for the first time in my dealings with her, I felt wary. Considering that I was holding something important back from her. Considering… I remembered learning in my class in legal Spanish that considerando is Spanish for ‘whereas.’ Here I was again, thinking in translated legalese. But we had no difficulty in achieving the purpose of the meeting, which was to strike a balance between Margo’s share of the income from our building and her contribution to Greg’s expenses for his senior year, which had just begun. The balance, according to my breakdown, was slightly in my favor, and she raised no objection.   Monday morning I asked Diane to call Libby Schlemmer in order to tell her that I would be taking her case, and to set up an appointment. Early in the afternoon Diane told me that Libby had returned her call and would be coming in on Wednesday. Libby wouldn’t become my client, of course, until she came to my office and signed the representation agreement. But the matter had already aroused my curiosity, and I couldn’t help thinking about it. The crux of the matter was the proof of paternity. Peter’s remains had already been cremated and the ashes scattered. (If only she had come before the scattering, I thought.) It seemed unlikely that there would be any other source of direct genetic evidence. Indirect evidence might come from Peter’s siblings in Ohio, if any of them we willing to cooperate, since a quarter of their DNA would be shared with their putative niece. But such cooperation also seemed unlikely, since it would be to their detriment: absent a child, they would stand to inherit the half of Peter’s estate that would not go to his spouse or domestic partner, and all of it if there were, legally, no such spouse or partner. True, they were rich – they had inherited their parents’ estate, including the share that would have been Peter’s had he not been disowned – but the rich, as I’ve found, are no less greedy than anyone else. That left circumstantial evidence. I already knew, from previous attempts at documentary research, that the online archive of the Chronicle went back only to 1995, so that I would have to spend some time in the Main Library scanning old society pages. Before doing that I would need to know Libby’s exact birthdate, and limit my search to the timeframe of some nine to twelve months before that.