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.Outside her open bedroom window she heard the sirens and the garbage trucks and the occasional car alarm that filled the night, and she wondered why this evening they seemed so very loud and intrusive.Chapter Twenty-Three."Meat is a social food--a shared food," Howard Mansfield told John over lunch, dabbing at his mouth with a paper napkin between bites of his patty-melt sandwich on rye."The family or the tribe gathers together after the hunt.They celebrate, they reaffirm their bonds, they rejoice in their kinship.It's been that way forever.And though most of us these days are pretty damn far removed from the meat when it was living and breathing, we still approach it as a ritual food.""Thanksgiving," John murmured."Or the great Easter ham.""Or even the backyard barbecue.Nothing like the smell of a little seared flesh to awaken in all of us that great tribal need for connection." Mansfield was a month shy of fifty.When John had first moved to Vermont, the older man had been a partner in the Burlington firm where John practiced.Then Mansfield left to be a judge and John left to be a public defender: a job John thought would be more interesting than handling the city's municipal and real estate business--his specialty at the firm--and allow him to feel better about himself when he came home at night.And feeling good about what he did was important: He knew how entitled his childhood had been, and he understood exactly what had driven his mother to volunteer her time in the dingiest classrooms she could find in the city.Now Mansfield was on the Vermont Supreme Court, and John was running the county public defenders' office.They saw each other infrequently, no more than once a season, but it was Mansfield who had taken him hunting last fall, and it was Mansfield who had suggested ten months ago that he simply use a ramrod to extricate the jammed cartridge from his gun's chamber.The two of them were having lunch now at a Burlington diner with the improbable name of the Oasis, a classic aluminum-sided train car with a green rendering of a palm tree on the restaurant's neon sign."My brother-in-law would argue that meat is about power," he told Mansfield."The only reason it became a social food was because peasants got to eat it so rarely.When they did, it was a big deal.A feast.""Vegetarians--people who choose not to eat meat even when it's available--have always been comfortable with their nonconformism.They're not social misfits, but they are social renegades.I'd wager there has always been a little distance between them and the bonfire.""You know, I don't believe Spencer has a lot of friends other than his FERAL cronies.He moved a lot as a kid, so he has no buddies from childhood.And he and Catherine have been their own little world since they fell in love as freshmen, so he doesn't have many pals from college, either.""Your sister's a vegetarian, too, right?""Yes, but not a vegan.And, for the record, she does have friends.""Women friends?""And men.""Really?""She's a magnificent flirt.""Brothers always think their sisters are flirts.""Are you speaking as a Freudian?"He smiled."Nope.As an older brother."Outside a dairy delivery truck began to back into an alley across the street, the vehicle's horn automatically emitting the loud whooping cries it made whenever it moved in reverse, and the two men grew silent.When it was parked Mansfield continued, "So: You want my opinion on who your lawyer should be.""That's right.""I hate to be predictable, but I believe your best bet is our old firm.I'd ask Chris Tuttle or perhaps even your friend Paul Maroney."The two attorneys were indeed among the candidates John was considering.And though he was pleased that Mansfield was validating his choices, he wanted to know why the older man had said perhaps even Paul: It suggested there was a chink in Paul's armor that he hadn't considered.And so he asked Mansfield whether he had a preference.Mansfield raised his gray, beetling eyebrows, and put down his sandwich."You and Paul are a little closer than you and Chris.True?""I don't think I've spoken to Chris in a year.Maybe longer.I see Paul every so often for lunch or a beer and sometimes at events at Willow's school.Paul has a son a year younger than Willow.""Well, they're both equally capable.But Chris is more likely to approach your situation with complete objectivity.And that's what you need
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Tematy
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Chris Priestley [Tales of Ter Tales of Terror from the Tunnel
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