by John Decure
Why I ever thought my life would get better if I was promoted to supervising deputy attorney general, I do not know. Management—ha! Times like this it seems I can’t even manage to get my hand out of my pants.
Not literally. I was twisting a rubber band, winding it between my fingers to create a little digits-in-bondage scene, rewinding the peeper’s view I’d sneaked on Bradlee when we’d passed in the hallway twenty minutes ago. Black skirt, white silk blouse, black leather jacket trimmed with silver studs like bullet tips she’d bitten off herself—yeah, this one, she could chew bullets smiling, believe me. Swaying hips and high boots. Ay Dios mio, Lord have mercy. A lawyer looking like, what, like she’s here to remind you you’re nothing but a weak little sinner, little boy, well… it ought to be against the law. Typically, without even trying she gives off that air: brutally untouchable, hair swept back by the shades on her head, eyes never meeting mine, barely nodding in acknowledgment of my chirpy, gutless hello. The most soul-wrecking part of these little exchanges is that I know she’s way out of my league, but again and again, I see her and desire her and—hell no—I sweat and I stew, refusing to own up to that intoxicating sense of want.
Not that I could blame her for ignoring her supervisor, the great Raul Mendibles. Since her untimely misstep on the Burgess ISO matter, she’d been relieved from handling medical board cases, doing her penance by working a case load of little-board garbage, nothing but routine legal paper-pushing. Respiratory care, acupuncture, midwifery, hearing-aid-dispenser shlock. An outright waste of her talents, but that’s what happens when you try to take a moral stand that has the unpleasant side effect of making your biggest client agency look deceitful. I’d warned her—well, not quite, but she should’ve just let that consent form thing with Jerry Roggin slide; I mean, Dr. Burgess was a nutcase and Roggin had his pompous ass nailed, dead to rights. Try telling Bradlee that, though. No, she’d looked right through me like Justitia herself, weighting those scales in her favor with the judgment that you don’t do the expedient, boss, you do what’s right. Made me feel like a weenie, as usual….
Ah, Mendibles, your tortured life is rife with tragedy! Every beautiful woman you’ve ever tried and failed to make it with has been headstrong, Mendibles. It’s like they went to school for it or something.
I freed a hand and ran it through my ragged black mop. You look ill, Myrna had commented two hours earlier at the breakfast table, like maybe you lost weight.
Lot on my mind lately, I said. Then she gave me those sad-dog eyes she uses when something’s on her mind. Twenty–one years of marriage, you notice those things. Out with it, I told her.
“You were talking in your sleep again.”
“I’ve been working too hard.”
“Raul? Baby. Who’s… Bradlee?”
The guilt rushed up hot in my cheeks. My tongue stumbled to form the right words but never got rolling.
“Wha…. Who? No, nobody. I mean, we work together, yes, um, yeah, she’s an actual person. But nobody really, Myrn.”
Ay, abogado! There’s a difference between standing accused and being guilty as charged, you dummy!
Her face was round with sad wonder.
“She? Bradlee’s a woman?”
“Yeah, she’s an attorney, on the team I supervise. At work.”
“Oh. Oh. Well….” Relieved—then not so relieved.
“Well, what?”
Myrna tittered. I hate that nervous-energy, babykins titter of hers.
“No. It’s silly, too silly to even say.”
“You made an issue of it, so follow through.” I folded my arms like I was her daddy instead of her husband. “Gotta finish what you started.”
“It’s just me being dumb. I had this, um, crazy thought. You know…”
“No, I don’t. I’m not clairvoyant.”
She squirreled around in her chair, her big brown eyes too shy to take on anything but the tablecloth.
“It’s like, Bradlee’s a man’s name and—I don’t know. It made me think, maybe that’s why you and me haven’t been… you know…”
“This isn’t a game show. I’m not going to guess.”
“Why we haven’t been uh… doing it. No, it’s crazy. But just, like for a minute, I thought… maybe, you were attracted to… no, doesn’t matter. Bradlee’s a girl.” She smiled as if she’d solved a problem. “Never mind. It’s dumb.”
“You’re right, that is dumb. ’Cause I’m not gay.” I tried to sound indignant, but it felt like acting, because in truth, I was picturing what Bradlee looked like at this hour, having rolled out of bed in some tight little cotton thing, her hair mussed into a perfect mess, those hourglass hips swaying on bare feet across kitchen tiles for a cup of coffee.
The wife seemed oddly relieved, but the tears were leaking faster than her pillowy palm could wipe them away. In her half-open pink bathrobe, with her curly mud-brown locks clumpy from fitful sleep, those fullback thighs crossed to look even thicker, she looked worn down, her femininity defeated by time and a slowing metabolism. Repulsive.
“I… you don’t even have to say that, Raul, I know, know you… better than to think… I’m…. Not that gay men aren’t fine the way they are. I mean, Tio Marlo, he’s the best, a gem of a man—”
“Can we not discuss Marlo?” Her uncle, who broke off from the family due to a lot of perceived slights I never saw evidence of. “He likes San Antonio so much he can’t come to LA, even to see his nieces, that’s his business. But I don’t want to talk about him.”
“You’re right, as usual. What I’m saying… forgive me, baby.”
“De nada.”
I thought it was over, but she reached across the LA Times and took my hand, her boobs blotting out the lead headline.
“Raul, mi amor, just tell me one thing.”
I was flashing back to homeroom period, Roosevelt High, the cutie with the flyaway bangs, a sophomore with the curves of a woman already, always smiling from two chairs back, chewing on her pink sparkly pencil when I turned to pass back the latest handout. Half the guys in the class hit on her daily, making plans just out of earshot to get down her pants at the game Friday night, or the dance, or wherever. Took me three months—till just before the Christmas break—to even realize that she was smiling at me.
“Is, um, Bradlee pretty?”
The self-imposed guilt I carried around was enough; I sure as hell didn’t need my wife piling on. I needed to shut this line of questioning down before it started.
“Compared to you? Ha!” I chuckled casually, shaking off the absurdity of Myrna’s query. If I had a white suit, I could have been Ricardo Montalbán pitching Chryslers. It had the desired effect.
“I’m sorry, baby, it’s my hormones, or maybe this excess water weight—”
“Now, now.”
I kissed her wet red face—my Myrna, mamacita, the mother of my two precious little girls. Then I lied like Pinocchio. Anything to make my escape.
“This Bradlee? Actually, she has a kind of tough look. Almost like a girl who wants to be a guy.”
Myrna glommed right onto that bogus detail. “Oh, one of those. Chacho.”
“Anyway, she’s been frustrating me lately, is all. Got in some trouble on a case, made mistakes.”
“Will she lose her job?”
I shrugged. “Gotta stick by her side, since she’s on my team.”
Myrna seemed placated.
“You’re so loyal.”
I nodded to accept a compliment I didn’t deserve.
“Caught some grief from the client agency over it,” I explained. “But you know, you do what you gotta do, these situations.” Like, sell out on what’s left of your principals, for one thing.
“That’s my Raul.”
The undue praise served to cave my shoulders in a little more. Yeah, loyal to you and nobody else, you lying sack of caca.
Myrna wasn’t done. There was something else. The tears had dissipated, but not entirely. Jesus, would I ever
get to walk through that door over there to go to work? I patted her hand and urged her to speak up.
“The way you said it, said the name before, I almost…. No, you’d think I was silly.”
“Honey, please. I wasn’t even conscious.”
Her eyes swelled again.
“No. Three weeks ago. You were wide awake, Raul.”
She sniffled and gulped, more tears soaking her face. I cringed as a drunken memory stumbled forth, ugly and uninvited, from the back of my mind.
“You said it, said it that night, too. Her name.”
“Did not.”
“After we went out dancing, the night of Miguelito’s baptism. When we got home, you paid the babysitter and sent her home. We were on the bed, and you were tipsy, laughing at something stupid.”
“Abuelo’s hair. That bird’s nest comb-over, kept blowing sideways all night. The loose strands looked like a live electrical current. You gotta admit, it looked—”
“Then you pulled my dress up over my head and tore off my panties. Raul, we were—”
“Enough of this already—enough!”
Myrna shrank as she turned away. Then silence.
Let me cut to what matters, here. If you’re a husband like me, trying to be good but not often measuring up, your adoring wife lacking the perception to note the difference, well, you know the feeling. I thoroughly blew it, ended up saying way too much, denying my guilt. With Bradlee, of course, I’d done nothing, so there was no call to be so defensive. But then, I was raised Catholic, and yes, my conscience is burdened with everything that morally entangled and contradictory affiliation implies, dating all the way back to grammar school. Those Dominican nuns at St. Linus, their lessons on how impure thoughts are just as bad as impure deeds? Sitting there at the breakfast table with Myrna, it all came roaring back to me. Those nuns’ tales sounded questionable even then, even to a Boyle Heights third-grader who spoke shaky English and couldn’t even tie his scuffed black hard-soled shoes without an assist from his abuela, but man, they knew how to set the hook right in your gut, for life.
I still can’t shake this everyday guilt.
Defending myself, my frustration came off like passion, which led to more tears, and then…
“No!”
“Is that what you want? To break us up?”
“No, stop it! I love you!”
“Here—I got what you want!”
“Oh! No, Raul, no!”
The sloppy, torrid, knee-knocking make-up sex. Myrna, moaning hard, then crying softly, and when it was my turn to cry out, I made sure I knew my head this time and got off without adding a caption to the moment.
I got to the AG’s office an hour late. Relieved that attendance seemed light this morning, just a few secretaries chatting about a C-list celebrity dance competition show on TV last night, who’d brought doughnuts downstairs, and where they’d be going to lunch today. God, I’d been thinking about Bradlee a lot these last few days, trying to decide what to do about her. She had her issues, no doubt, saw a shrink for medication and was overheard, from time to time, having conversations with ghosts, but her work ethic was stellar and her lawyer’s intellect was a notch higher than my own, I’ll admit.
I knew I couldn’t keep her on small-bore, little-board cases much longer. Last week she’d done a half-day trial against a licensed hearing-aid dispenser, a guy who’d failed to return a little old lady’s money when the device he sold her didn’t work as advertised—such a thrilling legal battle that, according to Bradlee, the judge fell asleep twice. The week before it was an acupuncturist with dirty needles and no concept of how to spot infections. Another month of this junk and any good attorney would be looking to transfer out to another section. No way was I going to let that happen with Bradlee Aames.
I suppose I hadn’t dealt with this problem before because I didn’t know where I stood with Bradlee and hadn’t risked finding out. She hadn’t confronted me when the medical board hammered her for publicizing the mess Jerry Roggin made of the Burgess case, but her logical mind could’ve paced back through the events involving Roggin and the forged consent form without too much effort. She knew Roggin wasn’t a mind-reader and couldn’t see into the future. To cover his ass so swiftly and effectively, the way he did, someone had to have tipped him off before he’d walked into that courtroom. Someone like me, the only guy on both sides of the problem. Yet, to date she’d said not a word about it. I’d let her take a tumble in order to save Roggin—and by extension, the board—a major embarrassment. But it had cost Bradlee, and had damaged my standing with her. Probably hurt me more than I wanted to know—if only she’d say something. Anything!
So here it is: I had a hole card to play with the board. My off-the-record client contact at the board’s HQ up in Sacramento owed me, big time, for cleaning up an untidy personal mess that I won’t describe here, but trust me, it was ten times as bad as the Burgess case. The return favor I had in mind would be simple: put Bradlee Aames back on medical board cases. If I timed it right, couched my wish in the form of a demand, my contact would have to comply.
Only the situation was touchier than that. For one thing, I couldn’t overtly take credit for her reinstatement. If she knew the shit I’d pulled on Burgess behind the scenes, I’d be nothing more than a false hero. I also wanted to maintain my good standing with the board, even enhance it. Coming on too boldly would cost me. If I could re-insert Bradlee on just the right case at just the right time in a way that would make the board think I was doing them a favor, I’d be golden.
Getting back on good terms with Bradlee might take longer, but as long as she stayed working for me, I’d have opportunities to improve on that.
The next hour I spent reviewing every new unassigned case, coming up with a whole lot of nothing. I looked at the other half-dozen attorneys’ existing caseloads; there had to be something I could transfer to Bradlee, a case with conflicting dates that a stressed-out lawyer would be glad to hand off—right?
No such luck.
The phone rang: Poor, blubbering Myrna, broken up about some new imagined setback, an unforeseen defeat of startling magnitude. Something to do with a sale, these really cool designer Band-Aids, the store was out of stock, and some clerk wouldn’t give her a rain check.
Did she say designer Band-Aids? Good God. I wanted a drink.
Of course, she was still upset about how roughly I’d handled her when we were doing it. Jesus, sometimes she was so like a child it made me want to abuse her, just wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze…. No, no—bad thoughts, Raul. Unhealthy, man. If anything, she’s the victim here, spun in circles by your many falsehoods.
I promised myself that I’d take it easier on her until I worked out this situation with Bradlee. If it ever could be worked out. Myrna surprised me with some gratitude.
“You were too nice to say what was really going on, Raul.”
“Hey, I just remembered, there’s an unopened pack of bandages in that cabinet over the back toilet.”
“But that’s you, always considerate of my feelings.”
“I love you, Myrn, you know I—”
“This Bradlee, she’s attractive.”
My silence lasted too long and ended up saying plenty.
“Well, dear, I want you to know this is a new era.”
“Myrn, really, it’s nothing. She’s no one to—”
“I’ve let myself go, hon. Been too much a mom and not enough of a wife. Your woman. From here on out, I’m going to change that. Go on a diet. Exercise every day. Drop those stay-at-home-mommy pounds—”
“Myrn, stop. You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“—and look like a princess for my knight in shining armor.”
With each bogus assurance, her knight errant merely deepened his dishonor.
“Perfect, babe. I mean it.”
“Don’t make me laugh, Raul, ’cause I’ll probably start crying. I know how busy you are at work, so I’ll go. But not befo
re I tell you how much I love you.”
What I took from the conversation wasn’t anything new about my dear, hapless Myrna, for this was about her sixth personal-makeover speech I’d heard since our youngest, Lucita, went off to kindergarten. No, what Myrn got over on me was a timely reminder that sometimes you just have to let things happen. Look at it this way: All I’d done was blurt the name Bradlee, albeit at a few inopportune moments, and now the wife was bent on self-improvement. Not bad.
So then, why search so hard for the perfect medical board case for Bradlee Aames? If it was out there, maybe it would find me.
And—thank you, God—find me it did, that afternoon when the phone rang for the first time since the wife called to announce the New Myrna.
“Ray-ool, Ray-ool, the people’s tool.”
Major Coughlin, the board’s current president and my aforementioned off-the-record client contact, barking at me to close my office door because we needed to put our heads together, pronto.
Sure, the last time we’d put our heads together was on the Burgess case, so I knew exactly what he meant. I shouldn’t even be telling you this because board members are prohibited from discussing cases with prosecutors outside of a public board meeting—and the Major’s phone call to me was squarely out of bounds. But the Major is the kind of man who’s never let a legal nicety slow him down.
As for the gung-ho military name? Oh, please. There’s nothing the least bit battle-tested about Everett Scott Coughlin, MD. Talk to him those times he calls past midnight, lonely and snockered and bemoaning the judge’s latest adjustment to his alimony payments, and he’ll tell you his life story. Major, my foot. He was an army field medic for about forty-five minutes in Vietnam, just long enough to figure out that he had no stomach for the kind of blood and guts Charlie was serving up daily. They’d honorably discharged his ass, but at some juncture of that brief, ignoble experience, the Army shrink who’d gifted him with the diagnosis of chronic battle fatigue that got him his walking papers confused him with someone else, mistakenly referring to young Corporal Coughlin as Major Coughlin. That was all that our squeamish medic needed to begin rebuilding his tattered psyche, and for weeks, until they shipped him stateside, they called him Major. Since then, with equal parts bluster and bullshit, he’s managed to make the name stick.
