Invasion of Privacy

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Terry’s face, white as milk against the soft gray of the lynx, looked sly. She stepped closer to Nina, and Nina felt the lush fur brush her again. "Did you see the woman from the Tahoe Mirror in back?" Terry asked.

  "Yes."

  "Controversy. Lawsuits. Publicity. Worth every dime. This is my chance. No more chamber of commerce propaganda films. No more PBS shit that pays close enough to nothing. After this is shown, I’ll be able to get the backing for a full-length feature film. It’s already in the planning stages. And it’ll blow everyone away. I’ll be rich and famous. Riesner got it right. He’s an asshole, but he reads me right."

  "That’s not what you told me at my office. You said you had put your heart and soul into this work of art—"

  "And a hundred fifty grand, mostly borrowed."

  Nina realized then that she disliked Terry. The First Amendment was America’s most shining statement of liberty. She had taken this case because it presented a constitutional issue, but Terry mocked it while she hid behind it.

  Terry said, "Come on, don’t give me that high-minded crap you gave the judge. You’re not that naive. You look like one thing, but you’re really something else, hmm? Soft on the outside, doe-eyed. Curvy little female body. Inside overloaded with that big bulldoggy brain. I saw you push Riesner away. That was gutsy. He must outweigh you by a hundred pounds."

  Nina said, "Well. Call you next week, as soon as we get the judge’s decision." And when I get it, I’m outta this case, she said to herself.

  "Don’t you want to know how Riesner’s right?" Terry said. "I mean, between you and me, confidentially of course?"

  "Okay. How’s he right?"

  Terry leaned close, pushed Nina’s hair away from her ear. The snow had begun falling. The lynx coat pressed against her, deep and warm and sensual, but made after all from carnivores. "I am a pervert," she whispered. "Maybe someday you’ll find out some of the things I’ve seen and done. I gave up on conventional standards a long time ago, and I’m not just talking art here."

  Nina cleared her throat, moving away, thinking that no one knew what lawyers had to put up with on a daily basis. "I see."

  "Wait," Terry said, taking her by the arm to stop her. "I want to ask you something—you lived in Monterey before coming to Tahoe, right? I mean, you’ve been up here less than a year."

  "That’s right, except for a few years in San Francisco. Of course, I spent almost all my summers up here."

  Terry stared at her. "I’ll just bet you did," she said, nodding, her initial astonishment slowly giving way to a more calculating expression. "How is it I never made the connection before? I saw you with Riesner, and it started me thinking.... Here I am going through life congratulating myself on how damn smart I am. Well, is my face red. I thought I’d hire the new local hotshot woman lawyer, do my bit for the females of the world. And look what I got!" she said. "You, of all people."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Terry let go of Nina’s arm and stood a few feet away, seeming to study or memorize her features. Then, in a burst, as if she couldn’t help herself, she began to laugh, and the laugh built until tears ran down her cheeks. "Gotcha!" she said suddenly, stepping toward Nina, then back. "Gotcha!"

  Nina moved far enough away to feel she had an adequate safety zone between her and her client. People passed in the hallway, some noticing Terry’s crazy laughter, some ignoring everything. Some time passed before the torrent spent itself, and Terry’s face spasmed back into focus, reorganizing into the person Nina had thought she knew.

  "Are you all right?" Nina finally ventured to ask.

  "Me?" Terry said, her voice miraculously restored to normal. "If I were you," she said slowly, "I’d worry more about myself." She turned, her heels clacking on the hard floor and out the door into the snow, enveloped in her dead skin, looking like a strange thing, an animal walking upright with a human head.

  2

  AT NINA’S OFFICE, IN THE OUTER ROOM BY THE door to the hall of the Starlake Building, an elderly man in a tan parka and slacks waited for his free half-hour consultation, leafing through one of her state bar journals, his eyes uncomprehending. The only other magazines out on the rack beside the client chairs were a Native American monthly and the Greenpeace news-letter. A new basket in the corner held unidentifiable dried plants. Sandy Whitefeather, her secretary, had been at it again, trying to remake the office into a style Nina privately thought of as nouveau tribal.

  Sandy was a Washoe Native American, one of the tribes of people who had lived at Tahoe for ten thousand years before the prospectors and millionaire vacationers and gamblers came, and she let no one forget it. The Oriental rug Nina had started out with, the black-and-white photographs, the ferns—all had disappeared, item by item, over the months, to be replaced by bright hangings and striped woolen rugs and baskets.

  Sandy had once been Jeffrey Riesner’s file clerk and she still resented being treated as his firm’s token minority employee. Although she had been Nina’s legal secretary for only a few months, she was now the solid backbone of Nina’s solo practice. Since the beginning, when Nina opened up at Tahoe after a sudden flight from San Francisco and her five-year marriage to Jack McIntyre, Sandy had brought in clients, whipped off the paperwork, and, after the shooting, kept things going while Nina convalesced.

  Today she wore a new skirt, a bold black-and-white print, with a long black overblouse and heavy silver jewelry, and black boots. She was stapling the appellate brief Nina had dictated the day before, while keeping a vigilant eye on the new client.

  "Hi, I’m Nina Reilly," Nina said to him, walking over and shaking his hand. "I’ll be with you in five minutes. Sandy, would you come into my office?"

  She stood by the door as Sandy walked in, her slow and dignified tread a protest against being diverted from her task. Nina went to her lakeside window and looked for her favorite sight—the goliath Mount Tallac, almost ten thousand feet of snow and ice on the western horizon, jutting into the sky, soaring above the infinite blue of Lake Tahoe, which she could glimpse through the trees. The mountain put her puny troubles with Riesner and Terry into perspective.

  Sandy had chosen the more comfortable of the two orange client chairs. "Did you win?" she said, right to the point.

  "Milne took it under submission. We’ll hear in a few days."

  "How did it go?"

  "Fine, I guess. Riesner collared me in the hallway and tried to bully me, and Terry dropped all pretense of being a suffering artist who can’t deal with these small minds attacking her. She’s in this for the money. I wrapped her in the flag, talked about the Constitution, but after talking with her afterward, I wondered why I even took the case."

  "It’s how you cover my paycheck each month," Sandy said. "How did you feel, being back in that courtroom?"

  "I had a couple of bad minutes. I found myself examining the floor for bloodstains. I felt eyes on my back. I was hunching my shoulders, waiting for the blast. Then Milne came in, and I forgot all about it."

  "That’s good," Sandy said, nodding.

  "I’m taking only civil cases, Sandy. I mean it. I don’t want that kind of fear haunting me ever again. But I’m starting to wonder if civil cases are any different. I had to fight just as hard, and we were all splashing around in a sea full of bad feeling, as usual."

  "Admit it. You enjoy the fight," Sandy said.

  "Yeah. I haven’t lost that."

  "My nephew got shot two years ago, cleaning his gun. It left a circular scar on his foot; looks a lot like the one on your chest. Know what he did?"

  "I can’t wait to hear."

  "He got a tattoo on top of it. A rose."

  "Why a rose?"

  "He doesn’t have much imagination. What I’m sayin’ is, his foot looks like an art object instead of a—"

  "I’m not going to get a tattoo, Sandy. You’re not going to decorate me too."

  "I was thinking for you, maybe, a smoking gun," Sandy said.

  "Which
reminds me of why I asked you to come in here. I want you to put Time back in the magazine rack, and Ladies’ Home Journal, and Sports Illustrated. Nobody wants to read the stuff you have out there."

  "Reactionary drivel," Sandy said. "We have an obligation to bring people politically up to speed."

  "That’s not my business here. The magazines are to keep stressed-out people in a good mood until I can get to them. And reading about the evils of French nuclear testing is not going to relax them."

  Sandy considered, and saw Nina wasn’t going to back down. "Could we keep Native American Life?"

  "If we must."

  "Okay. Here’s Mr. Powell’s Client Interview Sheet. Divorce."

  "Send him in." The rest of the day began.

  Matt opened the door and grabbed the grocery bag from her arms. Nina’s brother wore his baseball cap and a 49ers sweatshirt, though the living room was warm from the fireplace. "Drop everything! Plan B!" was all he said as he made for the kitchen. He was two years younger than Nina, and, she usually thought, much wiser. He had straightened out early, married, fathered two kids, built himself a home, and stayed here. He’d grown up gracefully.

  When she and her son had moved to Tahoe last spring, Matt and his wife, Andrea, had invited them to stay with them. The partnership worked out well, so far. Nina had a home and backup for her son and herself, and she offered in return occasional child care along with some financial relief.

  "Where’s Bobby?" she called after him. "What’s going on?"

  She went to the door of the boys’ bedroom and looked in. Lying on the floor in the gloom of winter’s early darkness, her son pushed the buttons of his control unit with utter concentration, a video game on the TV, while his cousins Troy and Brianna watched, enthralled. "Hey, guys," she said. "Bobby, come say hi."

  "In a minute," Bob said, never taking his eyes from the screen. She backed away and went into the big extra room Matt had built, with its pine chest and yellow spread, and hung up her blazer, changing into jeans and an old flannel shirt.

  In the kitchen, Nina surprised Andrea and Matt in an embrace, their eyes closed and arms tight around each other. Andrea was the same height as Matt, and his face was buried in her curly hair. At the sight, a wave of longing washed over Nina.

  They broke apart as she came in. Matt looked sorry to see her, but Andrea smiled and said, "How’d your day go?" Two big rattan baskets sat on the table covered with red-and-white gingham cloths.

  "It’s improving," Nina said. "Aren’t we making dinner?" Matt put a beer in her hand, which she popped standing at the counter.

  "New plan," he said mysteriously. "I’ll go rustle up the kids."

  Andrea sat down at the table, pushing her red hair out of her eyes. "I’m beat. End of the week," she said. "Two new women in today." In addition to her extraordinary efforts at keeping things going at home, she managed the local women’s shelter. "To tell you the truth," she said, "I’m delighted to let Matt cope with dinner for a change. I didn’t know what he was up to until I got home, and you had already gone to the store. He made stew. And coffee, and hot chocolate."

  "He’s usually on call on Friday night, isn’t he?"

  "His buddy Hal is answering the pager and taking the tow truck out for him tonight. I think Matt’s sick of hauling cars out of ditches, and he wants to do something different tonight."

  "But where are we going? It’s dark out there and, what, twenty degrees?"

  "All he said was ’dress warm.’ Down coats, boots, the works."

  At the Lakeside Park beach, Matt scraped snow off a redwood picnic table and bench, and threw first plastic, then cloths over them. He placed an oil lantern on the tablecloth, lighting and adjusting it to low. "See? Better than those ultrabright gas ones," he said. "The moon’s out. The kids can build a snowman." The three kids had started one already, over by the lake’s edge, where the snow was thinner. "And I brought wood and charcoal for the pit. I’ll get that going."

  "I don’t suppose we brought any moonshine, Andrea," said Nina. "I’m in the mood." Lake Tahoe slapped a few feet away. The mountains surrounding it glowed in the dark off in the far distance. Silver light cast tree shadows across the wide beach.

  "Hot toddies," Matt said, his breath making clouds in the still, cold air. "Red thermos, basket number two." He put four big mugs on the table, then walked over to the nearby pit.

  "Which of the kids reached twenty-one while I wasn’t looking?" Nina asked, looking at the four mugs.

  "Oh, we have a guest tonight, one who will require liberal hot libation after his long journey." She poured Nina a steaming cupful. "Your favorite private investigator."

  "Paul? But how?" He lived in Monterey, over two hundred miles away.

  "Well, he called and asked for you, and I said you were at the store, and he said he was in Sacramento on a job and could he stop by, pretty please. What are you going to do with a guy who asks to stop by a hundred miles and six thousand feet up the mountains from Sacramento? He’s coming to dinner."

  "Here?"

  "Any minute now."

  A few feet away, Matt busied himself with building the largest bonfire a concrete stove could hold.

  Andrea and Nina stuck to the table and the red thermos. "He keeps calling me at work, but I haven’t been calling back," said Nina.

  "And why is that?"

  "A good question, one well deserving of an answer."

  "Which is ...?"

  "I’m not sure why." Nina finished her first cup and offered it up for a refill. The hot liquid traveled in a fiery stream down into her chest. Despite the frigid air, she felt cozier by the minute. "Because he knocks things over," she added. "He’s too big and he’s unpredictable."

  "He’s got a house in Carmel."

  "He’s pushing too hard. And all he’s after is a fling."

  "That’s right, just keep coming up with excuses to keep him away," Andrea said. Nina had more to say but Andrea’s comment squelched her.

  "He has one hell of a set of shoulders on him," Andrea went on, grinning. "He’s a prime specimen of the male persuasion."

  "He’s an ex-cop. He has that attitude, you know. ’Spread ’em.’ And he hates babies and children."

  "He’s willing to sit down with three kids tonight, just for the honor of sharing supper with you. He’s brave enough to try to get close to you, which I suspect not too many men are."

  "Why do you say that, Andrea?"

  "Who are you saving yourself for?" Andrea said. "Isn’t it about time you got over being shot and let the world back in?"

  "You’re really on my case tonight," Nina said. "Too many people have already been on my case today. If you don’t mind, I’d like to just sit peacefully on this bench for a few minutes, get my strength back up."

  "Sorry," Andrea said, reaching across the table to give her hand a pat. "I just hate seeing you all alone. It’s in my genes. My little old grandmother was a matchmaker in a little old ghetto in Lithuania."

  Bob materialized inside the golden circle of lamplight. "Would you like something?" his aunt asked him.

  "I’m cold." He was holding his black No Fear baseball cap, which had fallen off and was covered with snow. Andrea took it from him and brushed the snow off.

  "I’ll warm you up, kiddo." Nina held her arms out.

  He came to her, letting her hold him and kiss him on the cheek. Eleven years old, in the middle of a growth spurt, his frame was still childish and narrow, his shining dark hair was getting longer by the day, and his skin remained soft and unblemished. But male hormones marshaled invisibly behind that little-boy face. His feet were already bigger than hers. At some point soon his voice would darken and lower. More and more he looked like ... but she didn’t want to follow that thought on this cold night, with Paul coming to keep her warm, in good company. Banish old ghosts to the closet, where they belonged.

  Andrea handed him a mug of hot chocolate, which he drank in one gulp, wiping his hand over his mouth when he finished. />
  "How was school today?" Nina asked.

  "Okay." And he was gone. She watched him running to his cousins, wondering why he wasn’t talking to her. "Back in a minute, Andrea," she said. "Bobby, wait up! Let’s take a little walk."

  They had gone a few hundred feet from Matt’s warm fire when Bob stopped.

  "Mom ..." He hesitated, standing with his hands in his pockets. The last time he wore that expression, he had accidentally dumped Sandy’s word processing files on the work computer. "I have to tell you something. You’re going to be mad."

  "I figured," Nina said. "What is it?"

  Silence for a long moment. Then he said, "I punched a kid out at school. Taylor Nordholm. I had to go talk to the principal. Mrs. Polk’s gonna call you."

  "Are you hurt?"

  "Not me. But I knocked him against the wall of the gym. He was bleeding and he had to go to the doctor."

  "Bobby," Nina said. "Why were you fighting? Look at me; don’t look the other way."

  "How should I know?" her son said. "Sometimes you just have to hit something. And he’s such a jerk— he was laughing at me and trying to knock my hat off...."

  "He started it, then?"

  "Yeah, it was him. Trust me, it was. So they can’t sue us, can they?"

  "That’s not what I’m worried about. We have to call his parents, find out how he’s doing."

  "Mrs. Polk said they might suspend me."

  "Oh, sh—"

  "Let ’em. I don’t care," Bob said. "I hate school."

  She took his cold face in her hands, saying, "How long have you been feeling this way?"

  "I got my reasons. You know. You almost died when you got shot."

  She looked at him in the moonlight, such a beautiful, healthy kid, except now she was seeing he wasn’t all right, finally seeing what she had been trying not to see in the months since the hospital. The shooting had affected him. He wasn’t over it.

  "What if you had died?" he cried. "Who would have taken care of me? Jack? He doesn’t care about me anymore. He’s not my real dad anyway."