"So, once you've admitted that you were unfaithful, I think he'll say that that's enough. There's no reason to identify your partner or partners, as the case may be, and declare Hadavas Day in the media. If Geoff tries to make you do that, which I doubt he will, I'm going to advise you not to answer and then if Geoff still insists, he'll have to go before Hadavas and see if he can get an order compelling you to answer. I doubt he'll want to do that, but if he does he'll just compound what I'm sure is already Hadavas's private disapproval of his choice of grounds. I don't think he'll get his order.
"Now this's important, Dan," Evans said, 'and not just because I assume you feel the same way as I do about publicly naming everyone who for whatever reason agreed to go to bed with you."
"Well," Hilliard said, "I like to think my natural charm and boyish good looks were at least part of the reason."
"Yes," Evans said, 'no doubt. All of us have our illusions. But still, if we can present you to Judge Hadavas as an honest penitent who regrets his sins and wicked deeds and the sorrow that he's caused his wife, instead of allowing Geoff to portray you as the unrepentant Casanova and lascivious rascal that we both know you really are…"
"Hey, take it easy," Hilliard said, "I've got a sense of humor, Sam, but I've never been that bad. All I ever did was take advantage of some situations I got into when my wife wasn't with me; that's all. It wasn't like I was ever on some kind of a campaign or something, see how many women I could go to bed with if I tried."
"I'm not joking," Evans said. "I'm trying to get you to see how Judge Hadavas will look at you, if we give Geoff half a chance to paint that kind of portrait. Because if Casanova is the portrait Judge Hadavas sees of you, it will cost you dearly, my friend. And by the way here, another thing I should ask you: Your wife's health and well-being were also involved here, along with her pride and dignity. When you were running around on her, did you always use a condom?"
"Yeah, that much I did do," Hilliard said. "It wasn't like I thought I was the first one that any of my ladies ever took a liking to. I didn't know what they might've gotten from someone they'd been with before. They probably didn't know either, as far as that goes, that AIDS stuff takes as long to develop as they're now saying it does."
"Every time?" Evans said. "Invariably?"
"What?" Hilliard said. "Yeah, I just told you that. For sure I didn't wanna bring anything home, give Mercy VD. I always used condoms, religiously. Even though I must say, I still don't like 'em."
"Yes," Evans said. "That's what prompts my next question. That matter of your religion. Did you actually have a condom available the very first time you found yourself in one of those sexual situations you mentioned? Good Catholic guy like you are? That would have been keen foresight on your part admirable or deplorable depending on your point of view. Either that or else finding yourself in that set of tempting circumstances wasn't entirely accidental. Mind telling me which one it was? Not to mention the practical aspect of where you could have kept your condom supply? Certainly not in your wallet, or at your apartment."
Hilliard sighed. "Look," he said, 'the first time I stepped off the reservation, it was with this woman who's in television news. She was young, still in her twenties, but she'd been around. And I had my eyes open too; the reason she came on to me was only partly because she had hot pants for me it was also partly, maybe even mostly, because she thought if she put out for me I'd tell her things the other reps who knew about them wouldn't tell to the other reporters. We fell in lust.
It wasn't ever love. It was sex, for both of us, along with ambition, on her part, and it was extremely good sex. And thrills, very good thrills, not cheap ones: this was a fine-looking woman who really liked being in bed with a man and would've found a man to do it with even if it wouldn't help her career. I had a good time with Stacy. I was with her for over three years."
"So?" Evans said. "Why're you telling me this?"
"Well," Hilliard said, 'because it seems to me that you've let yourself get a little behind the times about the dating game these days. I didn't have to go against my religion buying condoms before I went against it to have sex with Stacy the first time. Stacy had the condoms. Like I said, she was experienced. She got laid a lot, and she was prepared. She had a supply at her place."
"And I take it that you don't claim," Evans said, 'that your liaison with this woman, or any of the other women, however many there may have been…"
"So far, only eighteen," Hilliard said.
'"Only eighteen," Evans said. "You're quite sure of that."
