by Tonya Plank
“I know, Rory.” He shook his head. “That’s not it. I just want…I just want you to be happy and confident. As I said, confidence comes from inside. That’s all. I just…if you’re not confident in general, you’re not going to be comfortable in anything. Including this. I just…that’s all.”
I looked back at Daiyu. She looked down.
“Well, we’ll give this a try,” I said more soberly, hoping he wasn’t right this time.
“Oh good,” Daiyu said, peering back up at us hesitantly, as if she was afraid to ask the next question—which was about which colors we wanted.
“Black,” I said just as Sasha said, “Gold.” Of course, I wanted the color that would hide all the flaws; he wanted the flashiest one.
Daiyu laughed but heartily this time, not nervously. “Colors are always an issue,” she said, emphasizing the ‘always.’
“Okay, how about I wear a dark tan/dark golden hue for the finals and you let me wear the black for the first several rounds. That way I’ll have my confidence up when I wear the flashier color?” I said to Sasha. But right after the words left my mouth I began to wonder what I was thinking. I’m going to need my confidence most in the end.
Sasha closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. “Rory, I don’t want to fight. But I think black is way too basic for this kind of dress. It has a basic cut. We need a color that stands out a little more and says something.”
In the end, I was the one to compromise most, color-wise. Which I guess was fair since he’d compromised on the style. We ended up with a deep rich magenta for the first dances. Purple and cinnamon red were favorite colors of mine, and this was a nice combination, and a darkish hue that wasn’t at all garish, like I’d seen certain bright purples and reds appear on the floor. And, yes, he got his gold for the finals. But it was this gold with a very interesting black embroidery weaving through. Daiyu had a beautiful pattern that looked like what the lovers in the Klimt painting The Kiss were sheathed in. Or like Chanel! It actually made me want the finals to be here now. Assuming we made them. Huge breath.
***
“Skinny, skinny,” Daiyu’s assistant said as she took my measurements.
Sasha told her I’d likely gain some weight, hopefully eight to ten pounds. She said she’d try to make everything a size bigger; we could take the lines in if I didn’t gain what we expected.
“That’s good?” She looked at me.
I forced myself to nod. Yes, I needed to gain ten pounds. And I would.
Chapter 6
Soon, the will-drafting dried up at work and I was left again with nothing to do. I went around asking partners if they had anything for me to do, but nada. I popped my head into Gunther’s office, explaining that I currently had no assignments and would love to help in any way I possibly could on trial prep for Jamar’s case. But he simply shook his head. No further explanation—no I don’t have time to work on that right now, the trial’s been delayed, or I don’t need help. Nothing. When I tried to inquire further, he simply held his palm toward me, eyes focused on his computer. I felt like taking a picture of the palm, in case he later tried to pull on me that I was supposed to have been working on that exact case all this time. But I didn’t have my phone with me.
I returned to my office and rechecked—for the third time—the last will I drafted, just for something to do. I was wondering how I was going to occupy myself and report billable hours for the rest of the day if nothing came in when I received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Melinda Berenson from a small firm called Berenson and Fredericks.
“You represented Patrick Warren at trial, correct?”
“Yes, I did.” I bolted upright. “Oh, are you the attorney who was assigned to his appeal?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh, thank you for calling me. How is it going?” I was a little afraid to ask but curious how he was treating a new attorney.
“Well, actually. Very well, thanks to you.”
What? I wasn’t sure what she meant. She sounded serious, not at all sarcastic.
“I wanted to let you know his conviction has been overturned and a retrial tentatively ordered, depending on the outcome of his mental competency examination.”
“Mental competency? Are you serious? I tried so hard to get the judge to—” I said, out of breath.
“I know you did.” She laughed. “I read the trial transcripts.”
My heart was racing. The appeals court had actually reversed Mr. Warren’s conviction because the trial judge didn’t do what I had asked for so, so, so many times.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“Yes! Just hyperventilating a bit. Oh my gosh, that’s all I wanted. For him to be examined.”
“I know. I called to thank you for making so many appeals for the judge to order the exam. You put them on the record and you made them so clearly. The issue was absolutely preserved for appeal and I think it’s what made the appellate division so outraged.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It was hardly like this slipped by anyone’s attention. I mean, the way it looks on the record, the man very likely has a mental condition—I mean, it looks like schizophrenia to me—that prevented his understanding of what was going on and his ability to participate in his own trial. Total constitution violation on its face.”
“Oh my gosh. Wow.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually argued the whole thing correctly. Judge Rothstein had made me feel like such a moron. “Well, will you let me know the outcome?”
“I sure will. And I’m faxing over to you the court’s decision,” she said, then verified the number.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Berenson. I really appreciate it.”
“No, thank you, Ms. Laudner.”
Wow. I had to catch my breath after I hung up. Thus far, I’d felt like such a loser at this job, like I couldn’t do anything right. Now I was being told I’d, in effect, won my first case, since what I’d tried so hard for was eventually rewarded.
The fax machine was right outside my office. I heard the papers printing out. I dashed out and grabbed them, just to make sure I hadn’t heard her wrong. I mean, Rothstein was overturned!
Sure enough, she was right. And my name was mentioned by the presiding justice who authored the opinion. “Aurora Laudner from Vanderson, Rickels, and Edelstein, the law firm representing Mr. Warren pro bono, made numerous, specific, detailed, and timely requests for a competency exam, each of which the court below denied. We find she well preserved the issue for appeal and that those requests should have been granted…”
Wow, my name recorded for posterity. Okay, it wasn’t a United States Supreme Court case, but still. It was my first. And the appeals court said I was right. And actually named me. I held the papers to my chest for a moment and breathed deeply, then popped up and did a little dance down the hall to tell Gunther the good news. He was perturbed this morning when I asked him about Jamar’s case but surely he’d be happy to hear about this. It was, after all, a victory for the office.
But I began to lose my nerve the second I spied his frustrated face. He was looking at his computer screen with venom. I stood at his office for about a minute before deciding to leave. And the second I made that decision, he glanced up.
“Oh what is it now, Rory? I’m work—”
“It’s just…I just received a phone call from the appellate lawyer representing Mr. Warren.”
His frown grew deeper and angrier.
“No, no, it’s good this time! The appellate division overturned his conviction on the grounds I’d argued for. And they ordered a new trial, pending the outcome of the mental competency exam I kept asking the judge for. Can you believe it? And they actually mentioned me, and the firm, by name, saying I’d argued the issue clearly and cogently and preserved it well.” I was out of breath just saying it.
I couldn’t decipher the look on his face. It was a combination of shock, anger, confusion, and relief all at once. The mass of emotions so
contorted his features, I actually took a step back from him.
“What’s in your hand?” he asked, an almost accusing tone to his voice.
“The decision. She just faxed it to me.”
“Who’s she?”
“The appellate—”
“Never mind,” he said, waving me off. “Just let me see it.” He held his hand out to me, looking at the papers like they were a death sentence.
I just stood there shifting my weight nervously while he read the whole decision. I didn’t know what else to do. I was hoping he’d perk up when he saw the firm’s name mentioned. But he didn’t.
“Rory,” he said, finally looking up. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” He took a deep inhale. “I was going to wait, but now seems like the right time. Have a seat, please. First, close the door.”
I did as he asked, wondering what was up and feeling like it wasn’t something good. The “please” was very unusual for him. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He did this for several minutes. Then he put them on again, looked straight at me, and smiled. Actually smiled. The smile was very slight and a bit fake-looking but I could tell he was trying hard to be collegial. This was a first in my experiences with him, apart from our initial interview.
“Do we have a new pro bono criminal case?” I knew we didn’t. I knew this was not going to be good. I was just blabbering out of nerves.
“No, unfortunately not. There will be no new assignments for you, Rory. I’m sorry.”
My heart sank. Two weeks ago I thought he was ready to fire me because I went to the competition instead of working all weekend. But then he had me help him with Jamar’s hearing, and following that, ordered me to return to the rest of my workload. I’d just had a pretty big victory. I’d made the firm look competent, if not good, in an official appellate decision. Why would he fire me now?
He looked me straight in the eye. “I have to ask you to look for another job. Your work has been under par here and lately you’ve been gone a lot. You’ve been making it clear you lack passion for the law. You’re not taking your cases seriously. You’re working basically forty to fifty hours a week. Those are secretarial hours. You want to work those hours, you should have been a secretary.”
Passion? I knew he was angry about my refusal to let the job interfere with social obligations when I didn’t even need to stay extra hours to get the work done. But to say I lacked passion? That was going way too far. “You think I lacked passion in the Warren case? And in Jamar’s case? I begged you to let me work on Jamar’s hearing and I just won—” I was fuming, and my voice was raised.
“Yes, and obviously I now know about that, and congratulations for that, Rory. Seriously. The Warren case was the one case you did well with. You started out here very well.”
The one? What was he talking about? He kept telling me to stop bothering him with my piddly questions while I was working on the Warren case. He made it seem like I was completely incompetent.
“And you’re telling me I lack passion for Jamar’s case?” I knew he hated that I called Jamar by his first name but I was becoming angrier and less able to contain myself, and was not the least bit interested in phrasing things his way.
“Rory, please. You can’t just be passionate about one or two cases. You have to care about all of them that way.”
“But-but-but…” I had to calm down and gather my thoughts. “I didn’t have any other cases that you or anyone else here gave me a lot of work on. Just short research assignments. And basic wills. I didn’t get to know the clients—”
“Rory, please. The decision has already been made. We had a partner meeting last night and we talked about it. You’re embarrassing yourself if you fight this. You lack passion, you lack the ability to work on your own. That’s another reason I have to let you go. I need people here who can take the initiative, do things themselves. We’re a very small firm. I don’t have time to run everyone’s cases for them. You were always in my office asking questions when you were working on the Warren case, now that I remember. I basically did the Warren case myself.”
I was dumbfounded. I sat there open-mouthed. I had a bazillion words but none of them would come out. He was always so dubious about Mr. Warren’s possible lack of competency. I wasn’t sure he even would have argued the issue if it was his case. Now he was going to take credit for it?
“Rory, look.” He sliced the air with his hands, and changed his tone slightly. “I’m sorry, Rory. I really am. I really wish it would have worked out. I do. And it’s my fault, really. I shouldn’t have hired someone so new, so fresh out of law school. We need people who are a bit more seasoned. But now I know what I need and you should know better what you need. So, this has been a learning experience for both of us.”
It was an all-out struggle to blink back the tears. I so didn’t want to let him see me cry.
***
Sasha rested his hand gently on my knee the whole drive home. He didn’t say anything to me in the car except “congratulations” and “I’m sorry.” Which was perfect. I needed to just think, to just be. I was still so stunned. I’d done as good a job as I could have. I was nervous, not lacking passion. I just couldn’t believe the way Gunther had turned everything on its head.
Well, I guess in the end I didn’t have to make my hard decision. I’d had it made for me. Now I’d concentrate entirely on Blackpool.
Sasha had assured me that the absolute last thing I should worry about right now was money. He’d pay for everything for now—even my rent. And the way he’d explained it, I wouldn’t be mooching. I would be spending all day every day training with him for a huge competition. The stars were compensated by their sponsors. So he’d pay me my portion out of the sponsorship payments. For now, I was paid to be a dancer. I actually had a dance career, like I’d originally wanted.
Sasha also suggested, when I worried I wouldn’t be able to return to a law career like my sister had warned, that I could use my illness as my reason for taking a leave of absence. Anorexia spectrum disorder had caused health problems—both physical and mental—and I needed to take a little break for my health. No need to say I left for a dance career, he’d said. Not unless, of course, I decided I wanted to.
I was the lawyer and he was the logical one!
My thoughts at that moment on returning to said law career: I was thrilled that Mr. Warren’s conviction was overturned and, regardless of what Gunther had said, I was taking the outcome of that as a victory—my victory. And I was definitely sad I wouldn’t be able to help Jamar anymore. I was very passionate about those two cases. But for now, I knew if I wanted to return to law it would be in criminal, or helping poor people in general. No wills for rich people. Boring and meaningless. To me.
For now, I decided, so be it. For now, it was time to concentrate solely on Blackpool. I’d figure out what I was doing with the rest of my life after we won the competition. Because we were going to win!
Chapter 7
Over the next few weeks, I practiced at Sasha’s so much I practically lived there. It almost seemed like a waste for him to pay my rent when I was at his place so often. But I wasn’t ready to move in just yet. This was my first apartment all on my own. I still needed to savor the independence. Plus, while we were training I needed to go home once in a while and sleep in my own bed or it would be too much stress on our relationship. We were both so anxious about Blackpool, our nerves could easily fray if we didn’t have some time and space to ourselves. I really enjoyed working so hard for a finite goal. It was so different from my law job, where I often felt like no matter how hard I worked, Gunther wouldn’t appreciate it, might even become downright mad, the judges would roll their eyes at my motions and arguments, and the clients either didn’t know I existed or hated me, in the case of Warren. But this was something I had control over. The harder we worked, the better we got, and the better we’d do when it counted.
I used Sasha’s studio for my own practicing and his barre for
stretching—sometimes with Greta, sometimes on my own—while he was at Infectious Rhythm teaching group and private lessons. He still had plenty of students despite the defection of the witches, as I’d begun to call them. More than plenty. He’d had to promise the studio the second Blackpool ended, he’d allow them to fill his vacant private slots with new students. There were so many applications for them, the studio had to do a lottery to choose the new students.
Since the witches were no longer at Infectious Rhythm, I took all of the advanced Latin competition-style classes there—besides Sasha’s of course—as well as my mambo classes and the team workouts. So, I’d go to Sasha’s every morning for practice—sometimes taking a quick swim as well—leave sometime during late afternoon, drive home and walk to the studio since I hated trying to find parking there and I lived so close. After I’d have my class, I’d walk back home and eat dinner. And Sasha would pick me up after his last private and take me to his place to practice together, almost always with Greta. We’d decided I’d only stay overnight on the weekends, so, like I said, our anxiety levels wouldn’t hit the sky and crash and explode. We didn’t always keep that promise we made to ourselves, of course. I ended up spending about half of our nights together staying over anyway!
Words cannot describe how nice the atmosphere at the studio was without the witches present. Rajiv had said he’d seen Luna since Cheryl’s fight with Sasha, but I never did. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. That they would try in some way to sabotage our Blackpool.
Which is why I assumed she had something to do with the black sedan parked illegally in front of my apartment building several nights in a row. The first night I saw it, I thought nothing of it. I only took notice because it didn’t have the obligatory parking permit either dangling from the rearview mirror or pasted on the front window. Parking enforcement was so strict in my neighborhood, I thought the poor guy was going to get towed. The next night I saw it again, parked across the street this time, again illegally. I wondered if the driver hadn’t been parked long enough to have been towed and hence didn’t learn his or her lesson. But as I walked outside to wait for Sasha an hour and a half later, I saw it parked yet again in another spot, again illegally. I really started to wonder. Just then, a white Prius with the words “Parking Enforcement” painted in yellow on its side pulled up. Finally, I thought. But just before the Prius reached the sedan, the sedan’s lights came on and it pulled away in haste, tires making a screeching sound on the asphalt. It made me jump. I hadn’t realized there was anyone inside the car. Had someone always been sitting inside, I wondered?
