Reversible Errors Read Free Page A

that?" Rommy hunched forward confidentially, awaiting a cue. As the idea settled, he managed a laugh. "That'cl be a good one." It was all news to him, although he claimed in those days he was regularly rousted by the police, providing some faint support for Pamela.
    Rommy really had nothing to offer in his own behalf, yet as they conversed, he denied every element of the state's case. The officers who'd arrested him said they had found a necklace belonging to the female victim, Luisa Remardi, in Gandolph's pocket. That, too, he said, was a lie.
    "Them police had that thing already. Ain no way it was on me when I got brought down for this."
    Eventually, Arthur handed the phone to Pamela for further questions. Rommy provided his own eccentric version of the sad social history revealed by his file. He was born out of wedlock; his mother, who was fourteen, drank throughout the pregnancy. She could not care for the boy and sent him to his paternal grandparents in DuSable, fundamentalists who somehow found punishment the meaningful part of religion. Rommy was not necessarily defiant, but strange. He was diagnosed as retarded, lagged in school. And began misbehaving. He had stolen from a young age. He had gotten into drugs. He had fallen in with other no-accounts. Rudyard was full of Rommys, white and black and brown.
    When they'd been together more than an hour, Arthur rose, promising that Pamela and he would do their best.
    "When you-all come back, you bring your wedding dress, okay?" Rommy said to Pamela. "They's a priest here, he'll do a good job."
    As Rommy also stood, the guard again snapped to his feet, taking hold of the chain that circled Rommy's waist and ran to both his manacles and leg irons. Through the glass, they could hear Rommy prattling. These was real lawyers. The girl was gone marry him. They was gone get him outta here cause he was innocent. The guard, who appeared to like Rommy, smiled indulgently and nodded when Rommy asked permission to turn back. Gandolph pressed his shackled hands and their pale palms to the glass, saying loudly enough to be heard through the partition, "I 'predate you-all comin down here and everything you doin for me, I really do."
    Arthur and Pamela were led out, unspeaking. Back in the free air, Pamela shook her slender shoulders in relief as they walked toward Arthur's car. Her mind predictably remained on Rommy's defense.
    "Does he seem like a killer?" she asked. "He's weird. But is that what a killer is like?"
    She was good, Arthur thought, a good lawyer. When Pamela had approached him to volunteer for the case, he had assumed she was too new to be of much help. He had accepted because of his reluctance to disappoint anyone, although it had not hurt that she was graceful and unattached. Discovering she was talented had only seemed to sharpen his attraction.
    Til tell you one thing I can't see him as," said Arthur: "your husband."
    "Wasn't that something?" Pamela asked, laughing. She was pretty enough to be untouched at some level. Men, Arthur recognized, were often silly around her.
    They passed a couple of jokes, and still bantering, Pamela said, "I can't seem to meet anyone decent lately, but this"-she threw a hand in the direction of the highway, far off-"is a pretty long trip to make every Saturday night."
    She was at the passenger door. The wind frothed her blondish hair, as she laughed lightly again, and Arthur felt his heart knock. Even at thirty-eight, he still believed that somewhere within him was a shadow Arthur, who was taller, leaner, better-looking, a person with a suave voice and a carefree manner who could have parlayed Pamela's remark about her present dry spell with men into a backhanded invitation to lunch or even a more meaningful social occasion. But brought to that petrifying brink where his fantasies adjoined the actual world, Arthur realized that, as usual, he would not step forward. He feared humiliation, of course, but if he were nonchalant enough she could