by Martin Clark
“Thank you for your time,” she said to the doctor. “I’m sorry we have to inconvenience you. I’m sure you’re busy. We’re all grateful and appreciate you disrupting your practice to see us.”
“Okay,” he replied, attempting to sound gruff, but clearly a reformed man now.
Lisa adeptly moved him through a series of questions, and she knew precisely how and where to nudge him toward a favorable answer, and when she was through with her examination it was clear the plaintiff had an unexpected ally, a jaded, experienced physician—not the usual hired gun—who was certain the case involved a permanent disability that would cause the unfortunate victim pain and suffering for years to come. Blindsided, Chip Maxey tried to impeach Dr. Corbett with a series of office notes and prior reports, directing the doc’s attention to his own diagnosis and comments, none of which mentioned any long-term problems.
“Listen,” Corbett finally told him, his tone contentious, “I’m the doctor here, okay? I know what my own notes mean. But just because everything healed doesn’t mean it won’t hinder him down the road. No one asked me about residual injury until today. Now that I’ve been asked, I’m telling you.”
When the physician had departed and the three lawyers were left with the court reporter, Brooks glanced at Maxey and asked what his company was willing to spend. The younger lawyer was still miffed, almost punch-drunk, and he grunted and spread his hands, more bewildered than angry, and he finally mumbled, “We’ll have to reevaluate our position, I guess.”
“Very wise of you,” Brooks encouraged him. There was no condescension in his voice. He was seated close to Maxey, and he patted him on the shoulder. “It happens to the best of us,” he added. “Not much you can do if the doctor turns sour on you.”
“Yeah,” Maxey said.
“Nor is this Mrs. Stone’s first rodeo. She certainly lives up to her advance billing.” He looked at Lisa while he was speaking.
“Listen, gentlemen,” she remarked, “this isn’t a big case, and the truth is I caught a break with the doctor. We’d offered to settle for twenty-five thousand. Our position improved today, plus now I’ve got more time and money invested. I’ll take fifty-five and be done with it if we can wrap this up by the end of the week. That’s a fair number for everyone.”
“I’ll check with my client,” Maxey said dismally.
Maxey was anxious to leave, and after he’d managed to regain a semblance of composure and shake hands, and after his briefcase—not properly snapped shut—spilled open, and after he’d collected his papers, files, cell phone, calculator, two energy bars, pen and a sailing magazine with the assistance of Lisa and Brooks, he finally was able to hoof it through the lobby and put the deposition and other attorneys behind him. The court reporter said her goodbyes and followed Maxey out, her equipment expertly stored and rolled away on a compact, two-wheeled cart.
“Nice kid,” Brooks volunteered when he and Lisa were by themselves. “He has some skills.”
“Yep,” Lisa said. “I agree.”
Brooks was standing, and he relaxed against the rounded corner of the conference table, crossed his legs at the ankles and fiddled with a shiny silver beast of a wristwatch. The attention to the watch seemed ordinary, not contrived or foppish. “It’s close to quitting time. I’m on the verge of a scotch or cold beer. Haven’t decided which yet. You’re certainly welcome to bend an elbow with me.” He began looking her in the eye roughly midway through, near the “haven’t decided” part.
Because she’d spent a lifetime on the receiving end of men’s overtures, some clumsy, some sophisticated, some raw, some pitifully pleading, some as practiced and delicate as Brooks’s, and because she could X-ray the come-on right out of all the innocence, she immediately understood that Brett Brooks had a grander agenda than happy hour cocktails and a bowl of salty bar snacks, and damn—the recognition showed in a faint pull at the corners of her mouth—she was impressed he was skilled enough to drop the flirt virtually deadpan, tucked away in a rake’s code and dispatched on a very private frequency, at once deniable and altogether unmistakable.
“Well, I’m surprised,” she answered. She let the sentence hang, tweaking Brooks, sending back a confirmation instead of putting the kibosh on his mischief and thanking him just the same and declining as if nothing had happened.
He cocked an eyebrow, abandoned the watch. “Surprised?”
“I never would’ve pegged you as a man who drank before five. Or a beer guy.”
“Noon’s my bright line. You might be pleased to learn this means I’ve never bothered with a mimosa. No dog hair for me, either.”
“Well, it’s been a pretty grim week. Heck, it’s been a pretty grim year. A drink would be a welcome perk. Let me give my husband a call so he won’t be concerned.” She put on her coat. “I’ll yield to your local knowledge. Where should we go?”
Walking to her car, she used her BlackBerry to leave a message for Joe, told him the deposition went well and that she was stopping off for a meal on the way home, and then she followed Brooks to Metro!, a restaurant on Campbell Avenue, where they sat at the bend in the L-shaped bar, cater-cornered to each other. Brooks settled on scotch, she informed the barkeep in black pants and a white shirt she’d like a martini with lots of olives. She’d considered her order during the drive, what she’d drink…and what her choice would signal, another hint and cipher in their shadow conversation. She’d renewed her lipstick, but not too much, and checked herself in the rearview mirror.
She and Brooks talked shop and swapped funny legal stories and commiserated about how difficult and cutthroat their trade had become, and he asked the bartender to bring them a plate of the house sushi. After folding her arms across her chest and glancing at the art deco wall clock, Lisa agreed to another martini and Brooks pushed his glass toward hers and nodded for another drink as well. She debated a cigarette but thought better of it. He mentioned a recent client charged with killing his wife and described how the cops had seized this moron’s computer and discovered hundreds of Google searches for “poison,” “hit man,” “overdose” and, of course, so there’d be no doubt, “how to kill your wife.” The lamebrain had even adopted cats and dogs from the local pound so he could experiment with different poisons and doses, a twist that caused Brooks to breach the boundary between personal and professional and despise his own client.
She steered the conversation more personal after that, asked him whether he had pets, and he told her he didn’t but wound up reciting all his great childhood purchases from Roses department store and the tiny-print ads in the backs of magazines: sea horses that materialized when a pouch was emptied into water, chameleons, iguanas, fighting fish, hamsters and painted turtles.
“Remember those turtles?” he said brightly. “They were so cool for a kid. You kept them in a plastic bowl. The bowl came with a raised center island and a flat green plastic tree that notched into the island. You filled the bowl with colored gravel flecks. I always seemed to get red or pink gravel.”
“Yeah,” she said, “and the turtles would usually somehow escape and you’d find them dead or dying, dry as a bone, smothered in carpet fibers.” She laughed. “They were banned when I was really young, right?”
“I think so,” Brooks said. “For sure, you don’t see them these days. Haven’t for a long time.”
The gin was warming her cheeks and neck and bumping everything a tick toward the good, the bar noise and other people welcome, happy, Impressionist background, the give-and-take with Brett Brooks now past chatter about statutes and courtrooms. She rearranged herself on her stool, crossed her legs and slid closer to the bar. She sipped the drink, matter-of-factly ate a toothpicked olive and set the glass down, still a third full, her lips imprinted in red on the rim above the clear alcohol. “Do you smoke?” she asked him.
“No, never have. Took care of my mom in her last few years. She died of lung cancer. Would light up even when she was on oxygen. Horrible. The experience did away with a
ny chance I might try it.” He shrugged. “But feel free if you’d like.”
“That’s okay. It’s hit and miss with me.”
“I didn’t mean to sound so negative.” He smiled and flipped his hands open.
They ate all the sushi, but she left her drink unfinished. When she said she needed to leave, Brooks gestured for the bill, and she objected to him paying, reached in her purse and had her wallet ready before the tab made it to them. The bartender hesitated and diplomatically placed the brown leather folder smack in the middle between their glasses.
“Split it, then?” Brooks said.
“Fair enough.”
“Come to think of it, maybe you ought to treat me—I’d say you had a far more profitable afternoon than I did.”
“I did have a very nice afternoon,” she said, but didn’t look at him when she spoke, instead studied their bill and slid thirty dollars—her share—into the leather cover.
“I’m glad you decided to come. Enjoyed the company.”
Brooks added his portion to their tab, gathered his topcoat from the stool beside him and went with her to the exit. Two women eating by themselves, salads and white wineglasses on their table, were watching him, and he had to sense their flattering stares, but he didn’t acknowledge them, acted oblivious. It was dark now, and chilly, and he walked Lisa to her car and waited for her to unlock the door. He kept his distance, but after she’d cranked the engine and dialed the heater fan to its highest speed, he took hold of the door handle to shut her in, the interior light burning, her file haphazardly tossed into the passenger seat, the gauges and displays of her base-model Mercedes glowing white and amber. There were splashes of red in the dash, too, mostly in the warning symbols and letters that spelled out important cautions.
“Drive safely,” he said, looking down at her. “Thanks again for the fun visit. I understand Gentry, Locke is sponsoring another seminar in a few weeks. A freebie and a great way to complete your CLE hours if you haven’t already done them. They’ve lined up Judge Weckstein to speak. He’s smart as hell and always entertaining. I think Justice Lemons is coming from the Supreme Court. I’ll drop you an e-mail with the particulars.”
“That would be great,” Lisa answered.
“Give Joe my regards.” He shut her door, and much of the light vanished.
She stopped a few miles later and bought a Blue Moon beer for the remainder of the trip, and when she pulled into their yard, the barn lights were burning and the winter sky was clear and flush with pinpoint stars and she could see Joe in the breezeway, his sorrel horse, Sadie, cross-tied at one end, a saddle and blanket straddling the top rail of a stall gate. She shifted the car to Park but left the engine running, and she walked to where he was, toe-stepping to keep her heels from sinking into the pasture. Brownie trotted to meet her, his tail going great guns.
“Been riding?” she asked. She petted the dog.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “I got your message. We did the trail down toward Snow Creek. Filled a flask and off we went.” He was wearing a heavy jacket. His shirttail was loose on one side, untucked. “I’d forgotten how long it takes. We came home in the dark.” He smiled. “Pretty deluxe, though. A nice ride.”
“Want to go again?” she asked.
There was a slapstick instant before he understood exactly what she meant, and he half-turned and checked his horse—just for a second—and then he grinned and looked at her full on and said, “Hell yeah, I’ll follow you to the house.” He fished out his flask and had a pull of bourbon. Instead, she was waiting when he turned the corner, and she stopped him at her Mercedes and opened the door, and they had sex in the backseat, jammed in and wrapped around each other, struggling to fit, her hose and panties and fancy shoes on the floorboard, a DJ’s patter and commercials and songs on the radio, the smell of perfume and brown liquor and quarter horse curling and roiling with the heat until they finished, her foot bottoms damp against the window glass, condensation everywhere.
“Lord,” Joe declared. “Damn.”
“Exactly,” she said, and all of a sudden she snatched his thick canvas jacket and leapt from the car, giggling and shrieking, wiggling her arms into the coat sleeves as she dashed toward the house, almost naked, the cold air slapping her thighs and belly and face.
Joe switched off the engine and jumped out right behind her, all his clothes left behind as well, and he caught her near the brick sidewalk and grabbed her around the waist, then stooped and lifted her off the ground and onto his shoulder, her feet pedaling in front of him, her head pointed back at the barn, and he carried her to the door and spun so she could reach the knob and let them in, the both of them laughing. “I think we ought to keep this celebration rolling,” he told her.
“Why not?” she said, standing in the foyer shivering.
Joe retrieved a bottle of grocery store chardonnay from the rear of the fridge, Lisa took a patchwork quilt from the blanket chest and moved the bathroom space heater to the den, and they buried themselves underneath the quilt and sat on the sofa in the heater’s orange glow and passed the bottle, slowly warming.
“Hey,” Joe said, finishing a swig and wiping his wrist across his lips, “since I’m spoiling you with cheap wine and Lord Byron–quality romance, how about we slay the bottle and then order up some TV jewelry? Should be a hoot with a buzz. I’ll spring for a ring or a necklace from the jewelry channel. We’ll call the 800 number and buy you a magnificent gift. Random and off the cuff, kind of crazy-love stuff. Not often you get four-wheel sex and then sprint around in the freezing dark with no clothes. We need to memorialize it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Oh yeah. No doubt we’ll land a great deal too. You’ll be the owner of some gargantuan, freakishly colored, semisemiprecious stone that ends in ite and is about a grade away from polished riprap. The envy of your friends. I’ll even make the effort to find the remote and bring you the phone.”
“Only after the bottle’s gone, okay? I want to make sure I don’t squander the purchase by being too sober.”
Forty minutes later, Joe phoned toll-free and bought a “stunning” six-carat tanzanite dinner ring—retail price $3,500—for $415, and soon after they slid longwise on the couch and fell asleep there, awakened by Brownie pawing the door around four in the morning. He’d been forgotten to spend the night in the barn but seemed no worse for it. At sunrise, they dressed and ate eggs and sausage and drank coffee, and Joe had to jump-start the Mercedes because he’d left a door ajar and the battery had drained, but they agreed it was a small price to pay for superior sex and tanzanite glory.
“Thanks for the effort,” she told him. “You’re a good husband.”
“Effort? Huh? It was fun. My pleasure. What a weird thing to say.”
The rollicking night buttressed Lisa’s spirits for several days, but soon enough her mood dipped and things declined to mediocre and bloodless again, and when Joe brought the TV ring from the post office and stood beside her desk and opened the cardboard packaging, she teared up, simultaneously appreciative and disappointed. She thanked him, and meant every word, and raised slightly from her chair to kiss him, but even before he left her office, she was mad at herself, frustrated, ticked off because she felt selfish and whiny, unable—no matter how hard she tried—to pin down satisfaction for any length of time, less than content despite her excellent husband and damn-lucky circumstances, just another shrew with impossible demands and no cure in sight. “Don’t be such a bitch,” she mumbled to herself, the room empty now, the tanzanite blue and aggressive alongside her wedding band.
Traveling to work at the beginning of December, Lisa topped a knoll near several cracker-box brick houses and caught sight of three young girls, probably still in elementary school, prancing through a cheerleaders’ routine while they waited for the bus, their spins and struts and hucklebucks and crisp steps and invisible pom-poms remarkably well synchronized, their winter coats in a casual heap alongside a narrow asphalt driveway, their expr
essions stitched with concentration. She passed a vase of faded plastic flowers next to a bridge where months earlier a teenager had wrecked his car and died on the spot, the concrete patch in the abutment brighter than all the dreary gray that bordered it. A rawboned man with a mechanical voice box was buying lottery tickets when she stopped for gas, and he told the clerk the numbers he wanted to bet, touched a black tube to his throat and spoke in a froggy, metallic monotone. He also had a tin of sardines and a breakfast malt liquor on the counter. The man was short a few cents, and Lisa made up the difference for him, discovered she knew his uncle, a retired bailiff named Garland Kinney.
At the office, she was antsy, easily diverted. She scanned the newspaper, played Bejeweled on her computer, put Brownie through his dog tricks and drank a diet soda. She cracked a window and lit a cigarette, then shoulder-propped against the window frame and watched a crew of city maintenance men as they decorated streetlight poles for Christmas, winding artificial holly from top to bottom. She read phone messages. Dictated a letter. Paid a credit card bill well before it was due. Joe was in neighboring Patrick County for a district court trial, and when he returned around noon she sat in his office and asked about the case, whether he’d won or lost.
“Not guilty for our defendant,” he said. “I’m pleased to report that I helped bring justice to yet another roadhouse assault-and-battery brouhaha. By my math, I’m now four victories away from receiving my expert certification in redneck bar brawls. We’ll have to get our cards reprinted to include my accomplishment.”
“Same old stuff?” she asked.
“It was pretty much what you’d expect,” he noted drily, “from a pair of drunk women in a boyfriend tussle. The usual cursing and spitting and hair pulling and eye scratching, plus the crowd-pleasing, shirt-rippin’ topless grand finale. Of course, despite walking away scot-free, my client was pissed because her Sam’s Club faux gold chain was broken and Judge Gendron wasn’t of a mind to order restitution.” Joe chuckled. “Gotta love this business, huh?” He put his feet on his desk, rubbed and squeezed the base of his neck. “Lunch? You hungry?” His tie was loose, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
