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gym.”
    Pierce paused there. Any fair external inventory would count him lucky: he was even fitter than when they had last seen each other, and the twelve years since had lent a keenness to his face without thinning or graying his dark shock of hair, leaving the Damon Pierce of the courtroom a still youthful but commanding presence, tall and slim and quick of tongue and mind. “Nevertheless,” his e-mail conceded, “my career thrives more each year. And I arm myself for Judgment Day by giving pro bono advice in international human rights cases, a faint echo of my time at The Hague.
    “As for my former literary ambitions, the only real writing I do is to you.
    “Which brings me, I suppose, to Amy.
    “We’re divorcing. It’s really not her fault. The most critical thing I can say is that Amy never questions her life. If her client is a crook, he just is. My tendency to ponder the meaning of it all strikes her as a waste of time.
    “Why did we marry? To begin, Amy’s a gorgeous strawberry-blonde, so tall and elegant that she looks more like a ballerina than a lawyer. And wicked smart—smart and beautiful, you’ll recall, tends to get my attention. Amy is also the most self-possessed person I know, so that even her bursts of anger seem less spontaneous than chosen. The same spartan discipline governs her exercise and diet: at thirty-five, she remains so youthful that I once teased her that when she dies at ninety, they’ll have to cut off her leg and count the rings to figure out how old she was. She had the grace to find that funny—of course, she herself is often funny in a matter-of-fact observer’s sort of way. A lawyer’s way.
    “But then we lived like lawyers. Every Saturday we sat at breakfast and updated our professional and social calendars for the next four weeks. Our conversations were like telegrams—no words wasted. For two trial lawyers, time is always a problem, and there was never enough.
    “The question became, For what?
    “Expensive dinners alone. Vacations in Fiji. More expensive dinners with other childless couples who trumped Fiji with Montenegro. Fundraisers for abortion rights or battered women or the Democratic candidate for whatever. Comparisons of trial tactics: Amy was so delighted with the exercise of her considerable skills that I once told her she would have cheerfully represented Martin Bormann. ‘Only for the cause,’ she retorted, a slight dig at my pro bono work. Her most grotesque clients became her babies.
    “There it is. I wanted them; Amy didn’t.
    “Not her problem, but mine. Amy has no illusions, least about herself: that she never wanted kids was just a fact, and Amy never fudged facts. But as you so often suggested, I’m a bit of a romantic, and sometimes still believe that I can make life, even people, turn out as I hoped. And what I hoped for was two small Pierces.
    “A couple of years ago, I realized that I was the only one who heard Amy’s reproductive clock ticking. When I said as much, she countered me with jaundiced humor: ‘Have you checked out your partners’ lives postchild?’ she asked. ‘Moving to the dullest suburb for the “best schools”; planning car pools and sleepovers and after-school enrichment programs;going to parent-teacher conferences and obsessing about how to propel their obviously sociopathic seven-year-old toward Stanford Medical School, until their only friends are the other lobotomized couples whose only subject is “the kids”—’
    “’Beats hearing about Montenegro,’ I interrupted. ‘Somewhere during that last dinner, I realized Chris and Martha are the biggest waste of time since reality TV.’ Suddenly I became serious. ‘Amy,’ I said slowly but clearly, ‘just loving
you
is not enough.’
    “For a long time she just looked at me. ‘It might be,’ she answered, ‘if you still did.’
    “All at once I realized how good she was at stating facts.
    “That
fact, once she brought it to my attention, was