by Amy Faye
There were times that I regretted it, of course. There would have to be. Nobody goes through their entire lives without thinking, at least one time, that they’re making a big mistake and they ought to slow down and think about it.
But in my case, things were a little bit different, in part because there was so much that I needed to get done. A good person might be nice to spend time with. A good person might help out charities, or might give themselves to furthering some sort of cause.
A good person leaves the people around them better than he found them. But I don’t have time to worry about that kind of thing. I have to think of myself first and foremost as a businessman. Someone who makes sure that the name ‘Blunden’ doesn’t go down in history as a waste of everyone’s time.
At some point, though, something changed. Maybe it was gradual, or maybe it was all at once. It’s hard to know for sure, because I didn’t notice it until it was already too late.
I didn’t notice until I was up at four in the morning, my arm wrapped around Cait’s shoulders as she snoozed into my chest. Now that the dam had broken on the whole sex thing, we’d spent hours and hours making sure that we made up for lost time.
I didn’t get one ounce of push-back from her. I didn’t hear an argument. I didn’t hear a complaint. I didn’t even hear her suggest that she might want to take a rest. Hell, I could barely keep up with her.
And that’s the problem, I guess, in a way. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Every step along the way I needed to be the one in charge. And I don’t know if that’s fair.
Cait’s a good person. At least, as far as I can tell. She’s not a saint by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody who’s so prepared to move her hips that way can be, and if she were then it would be a waste of the best pair of breasts I’ve ever seen.
But if the criteria is that she leaves the world better than it was when she arrived, then I’d say she’s succeeded, and that’s got me thinking about the fact that for the past month I’ve done just about everything that I could to break that down and make sure that it served me.
Then there’s the fact that when I repeat those words back in my head, it doesn’t upset me nearly as much as it should.
Oh, I’m sorry that I hurt her, and I know that I did that. I’m sorry that I put her in bad positions, I’m sorry that I made her life harder than it needed to be. I’m sorry that I pushed her past her comfort zone.
But I’m not remotely sorry that I did everything I could to make her mine, and only mine, because if there’s one thing that a scumbag like me can do, then it’s to get the best thing you can find and hold on to it.
It makes me look good. As if by being anywhere near someone who’s so damn good, I’m better myself. But that’s not how it works.
In reality, she’s like some kind of shooting star, and I’m just a hanger-on, hoping that I can use a little bit of my money and a little bit of my power and a little bit of my loose morals to make sure that she spends at least a little of her energy pulling me along with her.
I close my eyes. This isn’t the sort of thing that I should think about at all. But in the middle of the night, on two hours’ sleep, I’m going to be so much worse. If I were in my right mind, I wouldn’t be sitting here beating up on myself.
If there’s a change that needs making, I’d figure out what it was. If there was something else I ought to be doing, I’d get to work doing it. But at four in the morning, I’m not going to be doing anything. Eventually, I’m going to be going back to sleep, and I’m going to wake up with nothing more than the vague recollection that I spent almost an hour thinking about how I’d done something terribly wrong.
But I’m not going to solve any problems. That’s not something that four in the morning self-loathing does. It’s just for the sake of suffering, pure and simple. I don’t know if I should stop, though. Because whether I am suffering, or I’m not suffering, the one thing I know is that I’m going to get what I’ve got coming to me, and for everything I put Cait through, it’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of suffering before I get anything approaching a happy ending.
Cait’s breath catches in her throat and she kicks awake, halfway. She looks up at me, and I look down at her.
“Go back to sleep, babe.”
She shakes her head. “No, I have to go potty.”
“Then go.”
She nods drowsily and slides out of bed. I watch her naked ass move from side to side as she walks. I’ve done wrong by her, and I’ve been doing wrong by her since I met her.
But there’s one thing I can do to make sure that I don’t keep screwing up. One thing that I can at least make an attempt at. If I reach some conclusion, maybe I’ll be able to sleep. Maybe I’ll be able to remember it in the morning.
If it kills me, I’m going to get her out of this mess, and make sure that she gets something for her trouble. If that means that I don’t get any money for myself, then so be it.
Not that I don’t want the money, of course.
Sixteen
Cait
I am used to the work I’m doing. That’s something that I couldn’t have said three months ago, but now it’s something that I’m comfortable with.
Secretarial work isn’t totally unfamiliar, and it wasn’t when I started working for Jasper. In fact, I’d have called myself slightly overqualified. After all, I’d been doing secretary work for a paralegal team for almost five years, on the side. Which is to say that I had to handle fairly important documents, which contained fairly detailed and complex information, and keep all those balls in the air at the same time while I dealt with clients and making sure that everything was scheduled.
At Blunden, I didn’t have to do anything complex or difficult. Not ever. It was something that I had a love/hate relationship with, and I was going to continue having a love/hate relationship with it going forward.
See, the reality was that Jasper didn’t need a secretary. He doesn’t have meetings. He doesn’t have an itinerary, per se. He’s not a bad boss, and not lazy by any stretch of the imagination. But he had a way of running things, and that way didn’t tend to involve a closely-packed itinerary.
It mostly involved efficient delegation, and part of that involved face-to-face meetings. That was what most of his time was, when he wasn’t in his office. Going around the managerial offices and making sure that he got a few minutes to talk to each of them, every day.
Whenever something needed doing, he would assign it, and then go to check on it after an appropriate amount of time to make sure that things were getting done. It was an efficient system, but the only thing that he needed a secretary for was as a status symbol and to keep his papers organized. Papers that he rarely referenced.
Filing an injunction requires a lot of legal documentation. It’s something that is best left to a lawyer, or even a team of lawyers. But if you don’t have a lawyer, or a team of lawyers, then you have to get one, and you have to start prepping a brief as much as possible.
And five years of secretarial work under a team of paralegals and one of the best lawyers in the country taught me a little bit about preparing a brief. Not enough to put me through law school, but it’s something, and I’m not about to try to complain about it.
“Yes, hello, is this…”
“This is Sheryl with Ackermann & Ackermann. How can I help you?”
I put on a smile, as if it would help through the phone. Then again, in my experience, it does help. You can hear someone’s smile in their voice, and it instantly changes people’s opinions even when nobody knows why.
“Hi Sheryl, this is Cait Blunden, Jasper Blunden’s wife, from Blunden Industrial? I’m calling about a, uh, personal matter?”
“We don’t do divorces,” she says dismissively. “We can refer you if you need.”
“No, that’s fine. I wasn’t calling about a divorce. My husband needed to get in touch with an attorney specializing in wills?”
“Oh, well. Okay. What’s the proble
m?”
“We’re concerned that the late Mr. Blunden’s will may have contained some kind of mistake, or… something? There are some highly suspicious passages, and we’d like to get an injunction started to make sure that we can have it looked at by the state. To ensure that it’s all in order, and everything.”
“We’re all full on case work at this time,” she said after a long moment. “Sorry that we can’t help you more. Good luck!”
I force the smile to stay on my face. “Of course. You too. Have a great day.”
Then I hang up the phone and toss it across the couch. “Bitch.”
“Another no?”
“How did you know?”
Jasper’s mouth splits into a narrow line. “I understand. There’s a lot going on, and I know that things are pretty tough right now. But we’re going to make this work, okay?”
I let out a sigh and reach for the phone. “I know. It’s just a lot of god damn phone calls.”
“I know,” he says. For a moment, I almost feel sympathetic towards him.
“I feel like we’ve called half the legal professionals in the state, and not a God damn one of them has had any time for us. You’d think that your name would mean something to them.”
“That’s the problem,” Jasper says. He seems like he’s about to continue when he drops the notebook from his hands and reaches to grab the phone wedged into the crook of his neck. “Yeah, hi, this is Jasper Blunden, I’m calling about contesting a will?”
I watch the look on his face as the conversation goes on. He does almost the same thing that I’ve been doing for the past two hours. At some point you get pretty good at it, no matter how naturally talented you are. Or, for that matter, how naturally talented you aren’t.
“Thank you for your help,” Jasper says into the phone, and then his thumb taps, and he adds, “Fuck you, too, buddy.”
I look to him and he shakes his head.
“What do you mean, it’s the problem?”
“I mean, you’re probably going to get tied up in some legal crap with us. And that legal crap is going to turn into exposure.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s great,” he growls. “As long as you’re perfectly happy with the press coverage being bad. You’re trying to help some yuppie assholes screw their dead father’s memory over? Yeah, sure. Great exposure.”
He taps the phone on his leg. Looks over at the wall, and then back at me. “We can get back to this later, I guess. Let’s get lunch, and we’ll start on the second half of the state.”
Seventeen
Jasper
There’s an old saying; everyone’s heard it. A man who defends himself has a fool for a client. Well, I don’t know if that’s true, or not. I know one thing for sure, though. I might not be defending myself, but as my own attorney bringing a suit against my own father, I am a fool. And that’s going to be a problem no matter what I do, because no matter how much I try to tell myself that I’m doing the right thing, it still feels wrong.
Of course, there’s also the fact that by doing this, I’m pissing off Arthur. I don’t know what kind of stick he’s got up his ass that this is making him so upset, but I’m going to have to talk to him about it once the dust has settled. Because sure, there are reasons that I could understand not wanting things to change.
For example, he’s a lot closer to meeting the requirements than Terry or I are. If he saw the possibility of taking the whole pie home, he’s not going to be happy that we’re asking to split it into slices again.
But the reality is, it is the right thing to do. There’s no denying that, and trying to is just lying to myself. Maybe for Art, it isn’t. Maybe because he and Katja have been together forever, and they really care about each other.
But the fact is, Cait’s got no reason to feel attached to me in the least bit. If anything, she’s got more than enough reason to hate me. She could want to see me dead in a ditch somewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to say a word about it.
But it’s not fair that she’s come this far and she’s going to get nothing because she’s not pregnant. That’s complete horse shit.
Especially now that she’s the one filing all this paperwork for us. If she were still just my secretary, and nothing else, then I know she wouldn’t be. Even if she does have monetary motivations to get involved, that doesn’t begin to change things, not really.
So it’s my responsibility to make sure that things go smoothly. To make sure that things in the courtroom don’t get any worse than they already are. And sitting next to Terry, looking at his face, as the proceedings are getting started, I know him well enough to know that they’re not going to go smoothly.
“All rise,” says the bailiff. We rise, some of us slower than others. Cait slowest of all; she’s so tired lately. She works as late as anyone I’ve ever seen, and it’s taking a toll on her. She wakes up with me, and then stays up hours and hours past when I go to sleep, reading through legal precedents and the like. Finding answers. For us.
“You may be seated,” the judge intones. “Now. What do we have today?”
I rise. This is the part where I talk, I think. If Cait has explained it properly. Across the aisle, Spencer rises, as well, Art sitting beside him.
“Your Honor, my father…”
“Do you not have representation?”
“I was unable to retain legal representation, your honor, that’s correct.”
The judge’s eyebrows raise and lower and he nods to himself. “Very well, you may continue.”
“My father has been in a coma for the past five years. Since, uh, March of 2011. He recently passed away, and as a result, his will was read.”
“Okay, make your point, Mr. Blunden.”
“Yes, your honor. Ah. The stipulations of the will are highly irregular, and I believe, deeply, uh, suspect. My brother and I would like to have the stipulations, which are, again, highly irregular, your honor, dismissed.”
The judge looks at me, and I stand stock still. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do at this point, but I know one thing: I’m not supposed to piss him off. He seems to be weighing the argument for a moment, as if he’s thinking about what I’ve said.
“Very well. Mr. Spencer?”
“Thank you, your honor,” Spencer begins. “I would like to file a motion for dismissal, on the grounds that the late Mr. Blunden, before his accident, was found to be of sound mind and body by no less than two separate doctors, and it was under those conditions that the will was written.
“Now, under Michigan law, as you know, a will can only be contested under specific circumstances: diminished mental capacity; undue influence; fraud, or failure to execute the will properly.”
“And has it been faithfully executed?”
“There are stipulations which prevent me from completing execution until a later date, your honor, but it has been executed to the best of my ability, yes.”
I watch the judge’s expression. He’s the one who I have to watch out for. Spencer’s case is indefensible, as far as I’m concerned. It’s downright inhumane.
The judge’s mouth presses into a line. “Approach the bench, counselor.”
I start to move myself out from behind the table and Judge Cartwright puts up a hand. “Not you, Mr. Blunden. If I need you, I’ll call you.”
I sit down. They speak in hushed tones for a moment, the Judge’s face growing increasingly confused. I would almost dare to call him upset by something that’s being said. Suddenly the Judge speaks up.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“I’d like to see that. Five minute recess. Bring that to my office, will you?”
I watch Spencer walk back to his seat, pull the briefcase out from underneath it, and start back. The Judge starts to stand up, and the Bailiff intones again: “All rise.”
We do. It gives me a perfect vantage point to see Dick Spencer walking away with an expression that I know is
hiding a smirk.
“You son of a bitch.”
I hear the growl before I understand who’s saying it. Before I understand what was said, almost.
“What’s the problem?’
Arthur’s standing over me, as if I’ve done something. But I couldn’t begin to say what it is.
“Get out of the way, Jasper.”
I stand up. I can see the bailiff thinking very hard about coming over to see what the fuss is about.
“What’s the problem, Art?”
He’s not a small man, but I’m the tallest of the three of us, and I can’t imagine that I’m anything less than an imposing figure.
“I got no problem with you, Jay. So just get out of my way, will you?”
“Not until you tell me what—”
“She’s my wife, you son of a bitch!”
He reaches past me, trying to take a swing at Terrence. There was never any hope of reaching, but at that point the bailiff decides that maybe he had better step in after all. His arms wrap around Arthur’s waist and pull him back.
My heart, meanwhile, thumps in my chest, and I look over at Katja, sitting in the gallery. She’s got a Cheshire-cat grin on her face, and to my very great surprise, she’s staring right past me. Right at Terry. And the look in her eyes, sure enough, is one that should be spared for your husband.
“What the hell did you do?” I keep my voice at a harsh whisper as Art’s led out of the courtroom bodily.
“What does it matter? She was willing.”
“Don’t you have a scrap of decency?”
Terry’s expression is flat. “Why, should I?”
Eighteen
Cait
I don’t know what’s going on at this point. I know that Arthur’s being guided out, and I know that there was some words about his wife. Looking over at Katja gives a few hints. Then again, I don’t know that there needed to be any. I don’t know her that well, but given how cavalier the two of them were about trying to proposition me, it’s not surprising that she would sleep with someone else.
