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“You were a black elevator lawyer?”
That made him laugh.
“I don’t get it,” Mary said.
“You know,” Wil said, turning to Mary, “how the evil, supervillain, super-rich types always have a Gotham-esque urban skyscraper lair with a private black elevator that probably also descends to hell?”
“Is that a thing?” Mary looked around the table.
“Our elevator was the blackest,” Sam said. “I should say ‘is,’ because I’m still a partner. I have defended some truly despicable but extremely interesting people. People whose decision-making,looked at head-on, is astonishing in the magnitude and breadth of its badness.”
“Sam was telling us last week that he doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as bad people,” Mary told Wil. “Just people who make bad decisions.”
“Everyone deserves a defense,” Mike Jerry said mildly.
“It’s not just that,” Sam said. “We know that somebody like you, Mike, or Cord here is going to bring absolutely everything you’ve got to the challenge of representing the case of someone who’s been harmed. That’s as it should be. But there’s got to be expertise on the other side, too, making sure that whoever did the harming has been identified correctly and that the consequences are proportional. There’s got to be someone like me who’s the last stop as far as making a corporate defendantbelieveand fully comprehend their accountability, and, as Wil said, fix it with money, which is always going to hurt them more than their conscience will ever sting. I defend in order to redistribute.”
“But,” Wil said. “But,you haven’t talked to Fox Valley car wreck people. Fox Valley car wreck people have made some life choices, Sam. You can’t even begin to understand how dark the human soul can really be.”
He laughed again. Wil liked his easy laugh. It was a shame this man and his girlfriend didn’t want to kiss her. “What are you doing now that you’re in Green Bay?” she asked him.
“Probate.”
“So you can definitely sleep at night now. Probably sleep during the day, too.”
Sam laughed again. “Please come to dinner sometime. You would make Robin so happy.” He crossed his legs. “I’ve gathered, pretty easily, that you already know that law is for you.” Now his voice was serious again.
Wil let the seriousness of it sink in, and the way all three of these people were looking at her, which was with a lot of intelligent intensity. It was much more comfortable than she would have thought. She couldn’t feel anywhere inside her body if she wanted to go to law school, but she could feel that she liked being at this table with these four smart people looking at her.
That kind of thing—not just knowing what felt good but knowing why, and being able to start wondering what it might mean—had been easier and easier since Wil started her kissing project.
Katie appeared in Wil’s mind’s eye then. Her big eyes, her perfect eyebrows ever so slightly raised as she shrugged that flannel shirt off her shoulder.
Wil had been able to see, on the bright screen of her phone, how fast Katie was breathing.
Katie made that seem so attractive. Doing something different. Being afraid.
“It’s December,” Sam said. “Application season. All four of us have contacts and expertise that could help you figure out how to get yourself into school this coming fall. If that’s what you want to do.”
“Wow,” Wil said. “I expected so much more beating around the bush from a bunch of lawyers.”
Sam crossed his arms. “Do you want it?”
“How long—” Wil’s throat had a dry catch in it. “How long do I have to think about it?”
Sam looked at the other people at the table.
“It’s the holidays,” Mary said. “Maybe a couple weeks for someplace like Yale. They decide early. Michigan’s got a bigger window, so you have a bit longer there.”
Cord nodded. “The California schools are the ones I know the most about. Pepperdine, Loyola, UCLA. They’ll take applications into February, but they stop looking at them about a week into January.”
Mike shrugged and looked at Wil. “Two weeks. Give me a call. We know what you need to know to make this happen, and we can introduce you to anyone else you’re going to have to figure out how to impress.”
“I know Donna at Yale,” Mary said. “We went to school together.”
“I’ve got people at all those California schools. It’s how I got introduced to all the TV folks,” Cord said. “And Sam, don’t you have a friend at Harvard?”
Sam smiled. “William English,” he affirmed. “There was someone close to him who was in the category ofverybad decision- maker, and William was grateful for my assistance in directing him toward redemption.”