Chapter 65: Miranda
The doorbell was a relief.
Andrew had been doing his best — sitting with Ross, listening, offering what he had — but there was a limit to how long a person could absorb the specific grief of watching someone you liked suffer through something inevitable, and he'd been there forty minutes.
He stood up. "I'll get it."
He opened the door.
The woman on the other side had been mid-sentence, talking at the door before it opened, the tone of someone who had rescheduled this meeting twice and had prepared remarks. She stopped when she saw Andrew.
A beat.
"Well," Miranda said. "Unexpected."
"Miranda."
She looked exactly as he remembered — sharp in the specific way of someone who had decided early that competence was more reliable than charm and had developed both anyway. She was in her work clothes, good coat, the organized bearing of someone whose day had a structure and this detour was a calculated addition to it.
"You're Ross's friend," she said. Not a question — she was already revising her model of the situation.
"You're Ross's lawyer," he said. "His parents hired you?"
"They called me in February." She glanced past him into the apartment, taking in its current state with the neutral efficiency of someone professionally accustomed to walking into rooms that told stories. "He missed our last two appointments."
Ross appeared from the hallway, having apparently heard the door. He looked at Miranda with the expression of a man who had forgotten an obligation and was now remembering it at the worst possible time, then looked at the apartment with fresh eyes, then looked at Andrew with a silent appeal.
"Ross." Miranda's voice shifted into the register she probably used in conference rooms — warm but load-bearing. "Why don't you clean up for a few minutes. We can go somewhere and talk."
"Yeah — yes, absolutely." Ross looked grateful for the instruction. He disappeared into the bathroom.
Miranda stepped inside. Looked at Andrew.
"How long has he been like this?" she said, quietly.
"Two weeks since Carol left for Vermont. Probably a few weeks of declining before that." Andrew kept his voice low. "He's keeping his museum work going. That's the one thing."
She nodded, filing it. Then her expression shifted — the professional register stepping slightly aside.
"You never called," she said.
"You didn't leave a number."
"I left enough information for someone motivated to find a number."
This was, Andrew reflected, accurate. Miranda had a way of communicating in what she left out. "I wasn't sure calling was the right move."
"It probably wasn't." She said it without apparent regret. "I don't generally recommend it either. But you could have."
Ross came back out — shaved, face washed, a clean shirt, the transformation that was possible when someone had a reason to produce it. He looked meaningfully more like himself.
"Coffee?" he said. "There's a place nearby—"
"Central Perk," Andrew said. "I know the way."
Miranda had parked on a side street rather than the garage two blocks closer to the coffee shop, which Andrew noted without commenting on.
Ross got out of the back seat and headed toward the corner. Miranda remained.
"I'll be right there," Miranda said. "I need to tell Andrew something about the paperwork."
Ross nodded with the easy trust of a man who had no reason to be suspicious of his lawyer and his friend having a professional conversation, and walked ahead.
Andrew looked at Miranda.
"There's no paperwork," he said.
"Obviously there's no paperwork." She turned in the driver's seat to face him with the expression of someone who had made a decision and was in the process of executing it. "This is revenge."
"For what."
"For not calling."
"Miranda—"
"Relax," she said. "I'm not actually going to do anything. I'm just going to make you think I might for about ten minutes so that you spend the rest of the afternoon mildly unsettled." She straightened her coat. "It's proportionate."
Andrew looked at her. "That's a very specific definition of revenge."
"I'm a lawyer. Proportionality is the whole job."
She got out of the car.
He got out of the car.
They walked to Central Perk at a normal pace, three feet apart, saying nothing.
[Observation (Proficient): 69/100]
Central Perk was doing its mid-morning business. Gunther was behind the counter. Monica wasn't in — she was on lunch service prep by this point in the day. The couch was occupied by a couple Andrew didn't recognize.
Ross had claimed the armchair and was holding a coffee with both hands, staring at it with the meditative focus of a man who had temporarily exhausted his thinking capacity and was letting the caffeine do preliminary work.
Andrew took the couch end nearest the door. Miranda sat in the other armchair, crossed her legs, opened her bag, and produced an actual legal pad, which Andrew found almost funny.
"Mr. Geller." Her voice recalibrated back to professional — clean, like flipping a switch. "I need an answer on the question I raised Thursday. Carol's attorney has been in contact, and your wife is back from Vermont tomorrow. Once she's back the timeline compresses."
Ross looked up. "What was the question Thursday?"
Miranda's expression didn't change. "Whether you want to pursue mediation or go directly to filing."
"Right." Ross set the coffee down. Mediation implied two people trying to find a solution together. Filing implied two people who had already found the solution and were implementing it. The question was really do you want to spend three months pretending this could go differently, or do you want to begin processing that it won't.
Andrew said nothing. This was the right conversation happening in the right room, and his job was not to be in the middle of it.
Ross was quiet for a long moment.
"Carol," he said slowly, "has already made her decision."
Miranda waited.
"So pretending there's something to mediate would just be—" He stopped. "It would be me refusing to hear what she's already said."
"That's one way to characterize it," Miranda said carefully.
"Is it wrong?"
A pause. "No," she said. "It's accurate."
Ross looked at his hands. The particular look of a person accepting something they'd known for a while and had been carefully not accepting.
"Okay," he said. "File."
He said it quietly, the way you said things you meant and didn't want to perform.
Miranda wrote something on the legal pad. The scratch of pen on paper in the ambient noise of the coffee shop.
Andrew looked at Ross and found him looking back — not asking for anything, just wanting someone to be in the room who knew what this cost. Andrew held the look and gave him a small nod, the kind that meant I'm here without trying to make it into something.
Ross nodded back. Picked up his coffee.
"Okay," he said again, more quietly, to himself. Settling it in.
Miranda closed the legal pad with the precise movements of someone returning to operational mode, giving Ross the privacy of her not watching his face.
"I'll need you in the office Monday to sign the initial paperwork," she said. "Morning if possible — before noon."
"I'll be there."
"Good." She stood, gathered her coat. "Andrew." She said it the way she'd said it at the door — neutrally, with layers underneath it.
"Miranda."
She left. The door settled behind her.
Gunther materialized with a coffee refill for Ross without being asked, which was the kind of thing Gunther did that made him easy to underestimate.
Ross stared at his cup.
"I thought it would feel worse," he said finally.
"How does it feel?"
Ross thought about it. "Like I finally put something down that was very heavy." He paused. "Which is terrible, because I didn't want to put it down."
"Yeah," Andrew said.
They sat with that for a while.
Andrew was a block from Central Perk, heading for the subway, when someone behind him called out.
"Hey — excuse me—"
He turned.
A woman about his age, slightly out of breath, holding something in her hand. She'd clearly come from the direction of the coffee shop.
"Sorry," she said, catching up. "This is going to sound strange." She held out his belt. "A woman inside asked me to give this to you. She said you dropped it."
Andrew looked at the belt.
He looked at the woman.
He took the belt with the expression of someone who had nothing useful to say and knew it.
"Thank you," he said.
"Sure." The woman smiled — not the smile of someone who had accidentally been involved in something, more the smile of someone who had been watching an interesting situation and was pleased to have had a role. "I'm Daisy, by the way."
"Andrew."
Her expression shifted — the particular shift of recognition. "Wait — Andrew Sanchez? The food truck on Columbus?"
"That's me."
"I knew it." She pointed at him with the vindication of someone whose instinct had been confirmed. "I came by in February. The seafood risotto. I've been trying to come back but you're not always there—"
[Cooking (Expert): 4/100]
The panel ticked. Andrew noted it.
"We're back on a regular schedule starting Monday," he said.
Her face did the thing that faces did when he told people who'd eaten the food that it would be available regularly. He'd gotten used to this reaction. He still found it gratifying.
"Monday," she said, like she was writing it down mentally.
"Monday," he confirmed.
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