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relief, really,” she said.
    “I understand, but it spoils our conversation. I used to enjoy hearing about them. At each other’s throats.”
    “Actually, the field is moving towards a consolidation of ideas. It’s an exciting time.” She enjoyed her work and was not in the mood, at least at the moment, to mock her colleagues.
    “How’s the Dillard case going?” she asked.
    “It’s too soon to know.”
    “Who’s handling the prosecution?”
    “Minor Robinson.”
    “Oh, yes, Minor.”
    I watched her face in the mirror. She kept expressionless, pretty much. Minor was a widower. He had moved here from LA about the same time as myself, but he’d met Elizabeth sooner, and the two of them had gone out for a while. I’d seen them playing tennis a couple of times before Elizabeth and I had gotten together. He’d been my rival, I guess, though how much spark there’d been between them, I didn’t know. I did know that Minor wasn’t fond of me. Since he’d been promoted to lead prosecutor, my referrals from the county had dropped off. Almost all my clients were on the defense side now.
    “How’s Minor doing?” she asked.
    “He’s doing fine. I ran into him at the courthouse last week.”
    “I saw him myself, a couple of weeks back,” she said. “In Larkspur—at the racquet club. I was waiting for Fran.”
    “Oh.”
    She turned to me now. The gray in the blouse brought out the gray in her hair, but the effect was not unattractive. Her eyes were an icy blue. Something about the way she looked at me, it went right through me.
    “Where do you want to go to dinner?”
    “The Blue Chez.”
    It was a place we went often. So did a lot of other people we knew, particularly in the legal profession. It was an upscale restaurant in the so-called French Quarter up in San Rafael. It had been a larger neighborhood once, I think, but it was hard to tell because now it stood isolated under the downtown underpass, a block or so of plankboard Victorians done over in muted colors, with bright flowers in the boxes outside.
    It was also, as I have mentioned, the place Dillard took his wife the evening she was murdered.
    A valet took our car. On the restaurant walls hung paintings of the French countryside. In those pictures blowzy women swung baskets of cheese and bread down cobbled alleys. The alleys were clean and bright, with no sign of menace.
    We made small talk.
    The waitress brought the first course, asparagus and walnuts in a fruit vinaigrette.
    We ordered a Chardonnay from the Alexander Valley.
    The room bubbled, and fragments of conversation from the surrounding tables drifted through our first course. I experienced one of those moments when the boundaries between myself and the world seemed less pronounced than usual, as if the snippets of talk originated from within myself. I’ve been reading Thomas Moore, you know , his book about the nature of the soul A Mexican waiter refilled our glasses, head bent. High-throated laughter echoed from somewhere nearby, disembodied. The baby boomers are inheriting everything, but they don’t deserve it. It’s their parents did all the work. My thoughts were filtered through the wine, part of the conversation around me. Elizabeth’s gaze was on the table, focused inward. Have you been following the Mori case? She was a bit of a run-around from what I hear.
    The waiter returned
    More Chardonnay. Same vintage. With a taste of oak and not too fruity.
    Never mind the price.
    It was a weeknight, and before long the Courthouse Gang arrived, as they called themselves, and they took a table by the window. I had been a member of the group myself once. Among them were Minor Robinson and also Alex Milofski, the homicide cop.
    After a while, Minor came over to our table.
    “Elizabeth, Jake,” he said, nodding to each of us in turn. “How are you doing?”
    “Wonderful,” I said. “Just wonderful.”
    He was a good-looking man about my age, lean and well built, with black hair and a