Trouble

by Ann Christopher

  “You are a damn fine lawyer,” he told her, kissing the side of her neck.

  “I was trained by the best.”

  “You weren’t worried, were you?”

  She pulled back and threw a hand over her heart, looking affronted. “Absolutely not!”

  “Liar.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Laughing again, she pressed her palms to her cheeks and shook her head. “Oh, my God, I almost wet my pants waiting for the jury to come back.”

  Tugging her hand, he pulled her to the chairs, where they sat.

  “So, listen...I got you something.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Yeah?”

  He reached into his jacket’s breast pocket and pulled out a gold charm bracelet with a single round charm on it.

  “Ohhh, thank you!” she breathed, studying the engraving as he put it on her wrist. B&B. “B and B?”

  “For Baldwin and Baldwin. It’s time we make a few changes at the firm. I need a new partner, don’t you think? You’ve earned it.”

  She gaped at him. “What? But we talked about me becoming a partner when I’d practiced for seven years. It’s only been five.”

  “You’re ready,” he said simply.

  Overcome, she threw her arms around his neck and rained kisses on his face.

  Yeah, he thought, laughing. Life was good.

  “I love my bracelet,” she said when she let him go, holding her arm out to admire it.

  “Good.”

  “For a minute there, I thought the engraving might stand for Baldwins and Baby. But Baldwin and Baldwin works, too.”

  He’d opened his mouth to tell her about his trip to the jeweler and how he’d agonized over other potential sentiments for the engraving, but then the neurons finally started firing in his brain.

  “And baby?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

  “Mmm,” she said, now wiping a fingerprint smudge off the charm.

  “Don’t mess with my head, woman. Are we pregnant?”

  “You’re not. I am.”

  He froze, his heart thundering to a full stop while those dizzying words sunk in.

  Dara was pregnant.

  They were going to have a baby.

  She squeezed his arm, a vague frown marring her forehead. “Is that okay? You always said whenever I was ready, so—”

  Jesus. He couldn’t even think.

  “Yeah, but I...I didn’t know you were ready. How long have we been trying?”

  “Remember that night in front of the fire about a month ago?”

  He blinked. Grinned. Flushed. “Yeah, but I didn’t know. I could’ve...I don’t know ...done something,” he finished lamely.

  She laughed. “You did do something. Very well, as I recall.”

  Staring into her shining brown eyes for one arrested second, absolute disbelief gave way to purest joy, choking him up. Not too many things made him cry, but this news vaulted straight to the top of the list.

  “Oh, no.” Dara pulled him in so he could press his face to her neck while his shoulders heaved and he let the waterworks flow. “Don’t cry, my baby,” she murmured, rocking him as she rubbed his head. “Don’t cry.”

  Laughing now, he swiped the back of his hand over his eyes and stared at his wife. His love. His life.

  “I always thought I couldn’t love you any harder,” he told her.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was wrong, angel.” He kissed her smiling mouth. “I’ve never been more wrong.”

  Afterword/Author’s Cut

  I love editing. It’s one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

  —Steven Spielberg

  I love editing, too, Steven!

  In my case, there’s something about finding the perfect words to convey the exact feeling/mood/sensation/atmosphere my characters are feeling that really makes my creativity flow. For me, this is when the work gets buffed and polished. If I’m really lucky, the manuscript will shine after a good edit.

  Unfortunately, there’s a painful dark side to editing, which is that sometimes an author has to ruthlessly delete her favorite scenes in the service of the novel as a whole. In other words, no matter how much an author may love her precious passages/scenes/chapters, and regardless of how much time she’s spent, tears she’s shed or blood she’s spilt to get those ideas out of her head and onto the paper, if they don’t carry their weight and make the novel better, they’ve got to go. No exceptions.

  As William Faulkner famously said: “In writing, you must kill your darlings.”

  Where am I going with this?

  The first edition of Trouble had some scenes that were, upon reflection, in dire need of killing. They were either duplicative of other scenes or, in the case of some of the scenes concerning Jamal, took the readers too far afield from the heart of the novel, which is the love story between Mike and Dara. So, in order to make the story tighter and better, they had to go. I deleted them from the text of this new edition.

  Buh-bye, deadweight. Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on your way out.

  Aaaaaand ...no. Can’t do it. Apparently I’m not as ruthless as I need to be.

  I’ll have to work on that.

  Meanwhile, here are those poor deleted scenes. Like Pluto, once considered the equal of Saturn and Jupiter, but now demoted to dwarf planet status, these scenes are—to me, at least—gone, but not forgotten.

  Cheers!

  Ann Christopher April 2014

  In the following scenes, deleted from the first third of the book, Dara and Jamal forge a friendship while Dara and Mike fret about Jamal’s troubled life and future.

  —AC

  In the days after meeting Johnson at the justice center, Jamal took Dara under his wing. He introduced her to the courthouse and showed her where the clerk’s office was and how to file pleadings. He taught her the ins and outs of the firm’s computer system and fixed the copy machine for her when it jammed, complaining the whole time about how annoying she was because she always needed him to save her butt. Soon they were bickering like siblings.

  “You’re taking pretty good care of me,” she said to him one day, when he stopped by her office to see if he could bring lunch for her when he came back from the courthouse.

  “Don’t get excited.” He scowled. “This doesn’t mean I want you for my baby mama or anything.”

  One day she poked her head in his office to discover him poring over his GED textbooks. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Waiting for a bus,” he said without bothering to look up at her.

  Dara laughed. She’d long since learned to ignore his perpetual crabbiness and had come to think of him as the firm mascot—Baldwin & Co.’s own personal Oscar the Grouch, a thousand times grumpier than the original.

  But before she could think of a comeback, Mike, coffee mug in hand, strolled by on his way to the kitchen.

  “You two planning a revolt?” he asked.

  “Jamal was just telling me how much he loves to study,” Dara said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jamal said to Dara. “It’s a good thing you’re cute because you sure ain’t funny.”

  Dara smacked him on the arm.

  “Ouch! Can I get workers’ comp for this abuse?”

  “Don’t let him fool you, Dara,” Mike interjected. “I talk to his teacher every week, and she says he’s the hardest-working student she’s got. Never misses a class.”

  “Looks like I need to sue you and the teacher for violating my privacy rights,” Jamal said, flipping a page in his book.

  A laughing Mike continued on his way to the kitchen. “Where’d you get the idea you had any rights around here?”

  Dara loved to watch the two of them together. It quickly dawned on her that Jamal and Mike had a complicated and intricate relationship, like square-dancing partners, and they both knew the steps. They’d both pretend they barely tolerated the other, when really they’d kill or be killed for each other.

  The other thing she quickly discovered w
as that Jamal was extremely bright. One day, when she’d gone into the conference room to review her notes before she left for class, she’d seen Jamal’s books spread all over the table—and an open notebook. Glancing furtively around to make sure no one saw her, she snatched up the notebook, which was opened to a draft essay written in Jamal’s microscopic but neat hand, and saw it was about life on the streets. After a moment she sank into a chair to get comfortable; she didn’t care whether Jamal caught her nosing around in his things or not. The essay was bleak and honest and horrifying. And astonishingly good.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jamal cried when he returned and found her.

  “I’m reading your story” she said, unrepentant. “It’s amazing.”

  Jamal’s frown creased his forehead and pulled his lips into a tight line. He snatched the notebook from her. “Why don’t you keep your hands off my stuff?”

  “Your story is really wonderful. You should submit it to some magazines and—”

  “You think the fellas ̓round the way want me to go publishing stories about how they run the neighborhood?” He cocked his head as if considering the idea. “Yeah. Good thought. I’m sure they wouldn’t care if I wrote about the shootings and whatnot.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. “Well ...You could change the names and—”

  “Drop it, Dara,” he barked.

  The fear in his eyes, plainly visible beneath the bravado, shut her up. She tried not to stare at him, but it was hard. What was it like for this boy who wanted to make a new life for himself in the same old neighborhood with the same old problems?

  “Do you see any of your old ...friends at home?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah.” His jaw clenched as he shoved his books into his backpack.

  “Do they try to get you involved with ...things again?”

  Jamal’s entire body tightened, and the scornful look he shot her actually made her flinch. Actually made her feel guilty for the sheltered life she’d lived with her two parents in their nice brick house in the suburbs, where the worst thing that happened was a drunk driver occasionally knocking down a mailbox.

  “No, Dara,” Jamal said. “They were cool once I gave ’em my freakin’ letter of resignation.”

  He strode out, leaving her standing there, gaping, in the middle of his office.

  The next morning, they ran into each other near the reception area.

  Dara, who’d fallen asleep last night wondering if she’d ruined their fledgling friendship, tried to act normally.

  “Hey,” she said, nervously smoothing her skirt. “Sorry about yesterday.”

  There was a pause.

  Jamal ducked his head and shuffled his feet.

  “I didn’t mean to be a punk,” he mumbled.

  Dara brightened and waved her hand. “Oh, you know. I can be a little nosy sometimes.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Well, anyway,” she said earnestly. “You should think about what I said about having your work published, Jamal.”

  His head came up and his jaw dropped. “Jesus! Don’t you ever give up?”

  “No.”

  Scowling, he folded his arms. “I’ll think about it. But I ain’t making any promises. Okay?”

  Without waiting for her answer, he wheeled around and took off down the hallway.

  “Okay,” she called after him.

  Once he was safely gone, she clapped her hands together. “Thank you, God,” she whispered, turning toward the steps.

  But on her way past the downstairs copy machine, which was hidden behind a cubicle screen, she was startled to see Mike looking bemused. Warm. Admiring.

  “Thank you, Dara.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Flustered, she nodded. “I mean ...It’s nothing.”

  He hesitated, looking as if he wanted to say something else, but, for God’s sake, people, how was she supposed to think when he looked at her like that?

  Time to go, Dara.

  “I’ll just . . .” she began, but the rest of the sentence evaporated in the space between her brain and her tongue.

  Trailing off, she scurried on her way, propelled by his burning gaze on her back.

  A week or so later, Mike hung up the phone and rubbed the back of his neck to relieve some of the tension permanently lodged there. He glanced at his watch and realized it was just after six. Wait a minute. Was Jamal still here? He got up and strode into the corridor outside Dara’s office.

  “Jamal!” he bellowed down the hall. “Jamal!”

  Dara, who’d started spending more and more time back at the office after classes—he had no idea why—sat at her computer and looked up at him just as Jamal poked his head around the screen that hid the upstairs copy machine.

  “What are you still doing here, man?” Mike asked. “You’re going to be late for your GED class!”

  “Well, you told me to finish making these copies before I left,” Jamal said, flapping a stack of papers at him.

  Mike shook his head. “You don’t have the sense God gave a goat. I didn’t mean for you to be late for class. I’ll take you. Get your stuff and meet me at the front door.”

  Dara had begun packing up her backpack to go home, but she looked up and smiled as Mike wandered into her office. Lately he’d developed the troublesome habit of seeking her out before she left for the night, even though he knew he shouldn’t. But it felt like something crucial was left unfinished if he didn’t see her that one last time each day.

  “That boy’s going to be the death of me,” he told her.

  Dara cocked her head and studied him, her brows knit in concentration. He could almost hear the wheels spinning in her sharp little mind.

  “You don’t want Jamal on the street at night, do you?” she finally asked.

  “I was heading that way, anyway,” he said, a complete lie. But he didn’t want to make a big deal out of his concern for Jamal’s safety for fear Jamal would resent and resist it.

  “No, you weren’t,” Dara said flatly.

  Thoroughly disconcerted, Mike could only stare at her.

  What kind of Jedi mind trick was this? Every day this woman found new ways to mess with his head. And the way she looked at him sometimes—with those big shining eyes; expressive eyes; hypnotic eyes—would make him crazy if he wasn’t careful.

  “It’s no big deal,” he muttered, dropping his gaze and praying she couldn’t read his thoughts through his lowered eyelids. “Forget it.”

  “It is a big deal,” she insisted. “And when he makes something of his life, it’ll be because you believed he could. He’s dedicated, hardworking, and smart, and no one would ever have realized it if you hadn’t taken an interest in him. You volunteered to be his mentor. You stay in touch with his teacher. You drive him to class. It is a big deal.”

  Mike stared at her in slack-jawed astonishment, fighting the urge to touch her. Kiss her. Pull her up against him so he could discover, once and for all, how her body felt against his.

  Seconds passed.

  An eternity passed.

  For the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything to say. How did she understand him so well on this issue and still not have the slightest idea he was fighting a losing battle to control his attraction to her?

  “You’re”—he paused, clearing his throat—”you’re good for him, too. I know you’ve been helping him with his English work.”

  “It’s been my pleasure.”

  “Good,” he said, knowing he had to get out of there and away from her gravitational pull ASAP, before he said or did something he’d regret. Which was pretty much everything he wanted to say or do at the moment. “Guess I won’t fire you today, then.”

  She grinned.

  His heart contracted.

  Without another word, he spun on his heel and left, leaving another little piece of himself behind, with her.

  The next night, Dara drove her car through the dark streets, compulsively clicking her automatic door locks every several b
locks or so. After reviewing Jamal’s essays for him, she’d forgotten to give his notebook back before he left the office this afternoon, so she’d decided to drop it off at his apartment.

  It’d seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan until she got to Jamal’s sketchy neighborhood.

  Groups of people, mostly men with bulky jackets and sweatshirt hoods pulled low over their eyes, stood on every corner, eyeballing her car as she drove by.

  Probably because she stood out like a toaster in a swimming pool.

  Finally, she found Jamal’s apartment building, an old brownstone with crumbling steps and looping, swirling white graffiti climbing the walls like kudzu. Miraculously, there was a free parking space in front of the building. She parked and climbed out, squeezing her way past yet another group of menacing men. Too bad she didn’t have any of Mike’s business cards to pass out. Surely, everyone in this group kept a criminal attorney on retainer.

  The heavy front door was ajar, emitting the stench of old cooking grease and something sharper. Urine, maybe.

  She climbed the steps to the second floor and knocked on his door. She heard someone on the other side mumbling and checking the peephole, and then a loud “What the ...?” before Jamal yanked the door open.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Dara?” he snapped without preamble.

  “I—I’m returning your notebook,” she said, surprised by his alarm and, beneath the surface, his shame. “I know you need it for class.”

  He snatched it from her, then grabbed her arm and marched her back down the steps and outside, to her car.

  “Overreact, much?” Dara yanked her arm back, trying to get free.

  Jamal finally turned her loose. “Don’t ever come here alone, Dara. This ain’t the suburbs. Wait till Mike hears about this.”

  “You’re tattling on me?” she cried, outraged, because, even though she’d known better, she’d still ignored that most basic rule of humanity: No good deed goes unpunished.

  “You bet your ass I am,” Jamal grimly assured her.