Swindlers by D.W. Buffa Page A

something of
the young girl I had once known came back, and I could not just
tell her to find someone else.
    “I’m sorry about the trouble you’re in,
Justine.”
    Her large eyes brightened with what seemed
almost gratitude.
    “You remembered.”
    “You changed, and it was a long time ago, at
least a dozen years, and you were very young and I was nearly
thirty, and….”
    “And you were crazy about my sister and I was
just a kid; and what I said to you, when you broke up, about
marrying you – that must have seemed like some adolescent fantasy.”
She waited until I smiled, admitting the truth of it, before she
added, “But even then I knew what I wanted, and I wanted you.”
    Something caught her eye, or perhaps she
wanted to change the subject by the fact of distance. She got up
from the wing back chair and went across to the window where her
glance moved down the narrow, busy street to the Bay Bridge, to the
hills on the other side and, beyond them, to a place she could not
see, the place where when she was growing up no one seemed to
notice her or pay her any attention.
    “I always like San Francisco. I used to come
out here, to get away from New York. Just for a few days, then I
had to get back…. New York is like that, you know.” Her voice was
distant, wistful, and full of mystery. She kept staring out the
window at the bay shining silver bright in the summer light below.
“You think you’ll go mad if you don’t get away from all the people,
all the noise; and then, even if it’s only for a weekend in the
Hamptons, you have to get back, afraid you might miss something if
you don’t.” With an expression that suggested the vanity of things,
she looked over her shoulder. “Or afraid that if you stay away too
long, no one will miss you. But then, after I married Nelson,
things changed, and we were always on the move, going wherever we
felt the urge.”
    She came back to the chair and sat down
again. For a long time, she stared at me and did not say a word.
The silence became complete.
    “Will you help me?” she asked, finally.
    “I better not.”
    “But why?”
    “You know why,” I said as gently as I could.
Her eyes cast too great a spell, and I looked past her to the
window. “I knew you when you were still…, I almost married your
sister. I knew your mother,” I said as I brought my gaze back to
hers. “I saw her just a few weeks ago.” There was no reaction,
nothing, not the slightest interest. “I might have been able to
represent Danielle; but you’re Justine.”
    “No, I’m not,” she said quite seriously, as
if I had made some kind of mistake. “That’s who I used to be; I’m
not her anymore.”
    “There are other lawyers, eager to take a
case like this. I can give you names; I’ll even make the call.”
    “I don’t want anyone else; I won’t have
anyone else! You’re the only one who can help me. Don’t you
understand? – You’re the only one I can trust. I’m in trouble, a
lot of trouble, and if you don’t help me, no one can!” She was
trembling so hard she could barely finish.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, as she took a
handkerchief from her purse and tried to dry her eyes. “I couldn’t
trust anyone the way I trust you; I couldn’t tell them half the
things they would want to know. You knew me when – that’s what you
said – when I was just a kid, but I knew you, too; knew you better
than you know. I saw what you were like, I saw how much it hurt
when my foolish sister did what she did. I would have done anything
for you then. I always believed in you, knew that, no matter what,
you’d always do the right thing – I still believe in you. I know
you’ll help me. You have to. It’s the only chance I have.”
    The decision, like all the decisions that
change our lives forever, had already been made, made somewhere
deep inside where a voice insisted that only a coward refused a
challenge, even when the danger was almost certain
self-destruction.
    “If