Now he’s a quadriplegic the rest of his life, the insurance company won’t pay more than the $250,000 policy limit, which won’t even cover his rehab, much less take care of him and his family for the rest of his life, and the driver’s company is balking at paying anything above the benefit. Why? Because they’re claiming he ran the light, citing the traffic regulation that a left hand turn can be made on the yellow-to-red configuration but that a vehicle coming straight through, after the light hits yellow, is at risk, and they’re claiming it was yellow long before he hit the intersection, that he had ample time to brake, but chose not to. Which is a lie, and they know it. It’s a bullshit reason, a cover for the real reason. The real reason is that Clinton is a rich white Mormon and the lady trucker who hit him is Hispanic. And in this neck of the woods rich white Mormons are not well thought of. Even if they’re good family men, hard-working, industrious, and have the right-of-way at a traffic light.
The company won’t pay because they figure a jury will vote the issue on race, and around here the race not to be in this kind of trial is white. Reverse discrimination at its ugliest.
But what they’re forgetting, which they do all the time because they’re not only rich and arrogant, but stupid as well, is that I won’t be trying my case against Izela Munoz, Hispanic mother of four. I’m trying my case against a ten-billion-dollar energy company. If there’s one thing juries around here hate worse than rich Anglos, it’s rich energy companies. I’m going to show that jury that it’s not Izela’s money they’re taking, it’s a billion-dollar conglomerate’s.
I’m with the Hodgeses for a couple hours, going over details. Preparation for a trial such as this costs money, a lot of it. By the time you’re finished with the models and investigators and background and everything, all the hours, it’ll be over $50,000. I pay for all of it, out of my own pocket because I don’t bill them hourly, like in a normal case. I’ll take a percentage. Thirty-three percent. Some lawyers take fifty percent. It’s money well-earned, because you’re working without a net, essentially. You can make a fortune, but if you lose it’s all flushed. High risk, high reward. Up on the high wire—my kind of case. If I win, I’m solid again, triple-A rating. I can hold my head up anywhere, including the watering holes frequented by my former partners.
It’s after lunch before I get back to Patricia. She picks up her private line on the first ring. I get the feeling she’s been waiting for my call all this time.
“Will,” she says. She’s been crying. She isn’t now, but I hear the tears that she’s shed.
“What is it?”
It better not be about Claudia, that’s all I ask. I know she reassured Susan, but it could have been a con to get me to talk. She knows I don’t like to talk about her personal life any more. I’m finally over that, and I don’t want to get sucked back in.
“I’ve been fired.”
“What?”
The tears start. I can hear them, hear her trying to stop me from hearing them. She doesn’t pull it off.
“Fired. I’ve been fired from my job.”
“Why?” I’m surprised; stunned, actually. If there’s one thing I know about Patricia it’s that she’s a good, conscientious worker. And smart. Who fires a smart woman six months after she’s been hired and relocated at company expense?
“Because … oh shit, I’m so embarrassed.” More tears. She blows her nose right into my ear, a good healthy honk.
I know, then. Exactly why. She’s been looking for love in all the wrong places.
“I’ve … oh God!” She cries again. “I feel like such a jerk,” she says, talking and crying at the same time. “I’m sorry, this is stupid. I’ll call back later when I’m … when I’m …”; and she cries.
“Don’t be silly,” I counsel her, “and don’t hang up,” I add quickly, before she can. “I’m not going to judge you no matter what happened, so don’t worry, okay?”
“Okay.” Sniffle sniffle. Honk! I jerk the phone from my ear before I lose an eardrum. This woman is not demure and lady-like when it comes to emptying her sinuses.
“So … are you going to tell me?” I could fill in the blanks for her, leaving out only the specific names and places. I know this road like the back of my hand. But I wait for her to be forthcoming; that’s why she called: to tell me, not to be told by me.
She calms down. I picture her in her office, taking a deep breath, getting under control, sitting up straighter. She allowed herself a good cry, now she’s going to be an adult.
“I’ve been having an affair,” she informs me.
“I see,” I reply neutrally. The ‘I see’ you use in trial when you’re coaxing information from a reluctant witness. The ‘I see’ that helps lubricate the tongue.
“With one of the senior partners,” she continues. “Joby Breckenridge.”
“He’s the one that hired you,” I say, remembering.
“You’ve got a good memory,” she says.
I know Joby. He’s a straight shooter. Affairs aren’t his style. Certainly not casual ones. But there are always exceptions.
“Serious?” I ask.
“Very,” she answers. “Was,” she modifies. “Was very. At least I thought. Now it’s …” she tails off.
“Over.”
“Takes two to tango,” she says. “He isn’t interested in dancing anymore.”
“Well … these things happen.”
“They never happened to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was in love with him.” A silent pause. “I thought I was in love with him. Maybe I just wanted to be in love with him. It doesn’t matter anyway; not now.”
“How did he feel?”
“He said he was.” Another pause. She’s hearing herself as she tells me; some of this may be coming to her for the first time, even as she articulates it out loud, now. “He probably was. He’s not much of a dissembler, even if he is a chicken-shit son of a bitch.”
That’s the girl—get mad. Healthiest thing in the world. It isn’t your fault.
“Okay,” I say. “You had an affair …”
“Not just an affair, for Christsakes! An affair with a married man, who happens to be my boss.”
“It generally isn’t considered an affair if one or both of you isn’t married,” I inform her. “Otherwise it’s just fucking.”
“Oh …”
“So you had an affair with this guy at work …”
“My boss …”
“With your boss, which, by the way, is the most common kind …”
“Thanks. In other words I’m not even special,” she complains, starting to fall back into self-deprecation.
“You’re special, Patricia,” I assure her. “It’s just your affair that isn’t.”
“Whatever. I don’t see much difference.”
“You will,” I say. “Someday, when you’re over it.”
“Wonderful,” she exclaims bitterly.
Fuck. Why are you laying this on my head, lady? We’re divorced, remember? Long, long time. I’m not supposed to have to put up with this kind of shit anymore. I’ve got enough shit of my own to handle.
I don’t say that. I can’t. She is the mother of my child, now and forever. I will always be there for her, if only because I have to be there for Claudia.
“So you and your boss had an affair,” I continue, bringing it back to the center, “and it’s over. What does that have to do with your being fired?”
“Because we both can’t be in the same workplace anymore,” she says. “It’s too uncomfortable.”
“Too uncomfortable? Come on.”
“It is. That’s what he told me.”
“He told you?”
“When he told me he was letting me go.”
“Which was when?”
“This morning … last night … I mean we talked about it last night but then we talked about it again this morning. That’s when he said he was going to have to.”
She starts s
niffling again. I wait until she gets it under control.
“He’s firing you because he’s uncomfortable having you around?” I ask, as gently as possible.
She nods over the phone. “It’s too hard on him. He says he can’t work with me around. He can’t take the guilt—that’s what he tells me—told me,” she says, putting it already in the past. “He feels uncomfortable whenever he sees me. Because he still wants me,” she adds. “He told me that.”
“Well. Isn’t that a crying shame.”
“What?” she asks.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Is there an echo on this line? You. How do you feel?” I say to her.
“Awful.”
“Besides that. Could you still do your work? Seeing him around, still wanting him?”
“It’s hard.”
“Can you?”
“Yes,” she answers finally. She had to think about it. “I’d still get my work done.”
“So the bottom line is he’s firing you because you make him uncomfortable. Nothing to do with your performance on the job.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” I say, “I’ve got a very easy answer to this problem.”
I hear the pause.
“You do?”
“Yes.” I take a moment; I am, first and foremost, a litigator. “Let him quit.”
“I don’t think I heard you.”
“Yes you did.”
“Did you say ‘let him quit’?”
“See? You did hear me.”
Another pause.
“That’s … impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because … it just is.”
Again: “Why?”
“Because. It’s his firm. He’s the boss. He hired me. He can fire me.”
“The fuck he can!”
“Will. It’s his firm. He’s the senior senior.”
“I don’t give a shit if he’s the fucking Pope,” I tell her. “He can’t fire you for that.”
“Well,” she says timidly, after another pause. “If you’re talking legally …”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking. I’m a lawyer, that’s the talk I talk.”
Silence.
“Who hit on who first?” I ask.
“Who …”
“Come on, Patricia. If you want me to help you, don’t waste my time.”
“He did.”
“It wasn’t mutual.”
“I liked him. I found him … I find him attractive. Still. But he’s married, I wouldn’t start something.” She pauses. “You know me.”
Do I ever.
“Yeh. It’s not your style, going after married men.”
“No.”
“Just wanted to make sure. You’ve been going through lots of changes this past year.”
“Not this,” she assures me.
“Yeh, I know.” That goes too deep. “Okay. So your married boss made a play for you, you turned him down … did you?”
“The first time.”
“Right. You turned him down but he kept trying. Because he couldn’t help himself. He had to be with you.”
“That’s what he said. Practically word for word,” she adds, hearing the ironic cynicism.
What mortal shits men are.
“And his marriage was starting to go bad,” I continue.
“It is bad,” she says.
“This is public knowledge?”
“He told me.”
Fucking Joby. No straight shooter he after all.
“He was going to leave her,” I say. “Whether you were in the picture or not. His marriage was over.”
“You know all the lines, don’t you?” she asks, anger in her voice.
“I know them, but I’ve never used them. Not those.”
“Sorry.”
“And you believed him,” I continue.
Total honesty: “I wanted to.”
My heart breaks for her, long distance.
“I’m sorry, Patricia.”
“It’s not your fault,” she says softly. I can hear the tears starting to creep into her voice again.
“No crying,” I plead. “Not now.”
“Okay.” Gathering herself. “All right.”
“My gender,” I say. “I’m apologizing for my gender.”
“Yes. For that, yes.”
“Patricia …”
“What, Will?”
“Do you want to hold onto your job? Keep working there?”
“Yes, of course. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.”
“And you can do quality work even with him around? Even with him in your face?”
“Yes.” With some determination, the first time I’ve heard that in her voice. “It wouldn’t be easy, at least not now, but of course I could. I’m a professional.”
Where have I heard that line before?
“Who knows about this?” I ask.
“The affair? Or that he’s firing me?”
“Either. Both. The affair.”
“No one … that I know of,” she says. “I mean I didn’t tell anyone. We were extremely discreet.”
But of course. Married senior partners having affairs with coworkers are usually extremely discreet.
“I’m sure he didn’t tell anyone,” she assures me; perversely assures herself.
“Including his wife,” I say.
“Definitely not his wife.”
I nod; I feel good, talking to her like this, giving her wise counsel.
“You should tell his wife,” I inform her.
“Will!”
“You owe it to her,” I say. “As one woman to another.”
“I don’t think so,” she answers reluctantly, after a decent pause. I’m setting wheels turning.
“You don’t think she should know that her husband’s fucking around on her?” I ask.
“Well …”
“With a junior member of his firm? Who he personally hired, from hundreds of miles away?”
“He didn’t hire me so he could … have sex with me,” she says.
I can hear the bell going off in her head: did he? Was that why? How far back does this go? Was I always just a piece of ass, from the first time I walked in his office, looking for a job? Was it any part, even one percent?
“Of course not,” I say reassuringly. “But it did happen. And as one caring woman to another, maybe she should be told,” I tell Patricia. “For her own good,” I add.
“I don’t know how good it would be for her,” Patricia says. “I think it would devastate her.”
“Then maybe ol’ Joby should’ve thought of that before he started having an affair with you,” I say.
She doesn’t answer.
“What about the other senior partners? Shouldn’t they be told?” I ask.
“Are you serious?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” I say. “This is the kind of thing that can ruin a firm. Not the affair per se,” I add, “that happens, we’re none of us perfect. The lying, the bullshit. Taking advantage of a junior partner.”
“He didn’t take advantage of me … not really. I went into it with my eyes open,” she says.
“The hell you did,” I say. “You fell for him and you had every reason to believe he fell for you and he played you for a fool and now that it’s over he’s dumping you, and not only dumping you, but depriving you of your livelihood. If that isn’t fucking somebody over, kiddo, I don’t know what is.”
I can hear her thinking. “If you put it that way …”
“This is the twentieth century, Patricia. Practically the twenty-first. Haven’t you heard of sexual harassment?”
“Of course, but …”
“But me no buts. He can’t fire you because he doesn’t feel like fucking you anymore …”
“Oh he still feels like doing that …”
“Because of whatever. He’s afraid to divorce his wife, he’s afraid he’ll get hur
t in the firm, he’s afraid it’ll cost him money, whatever. It doesn’t matter. He flat-out can’t do it.”
“So … what do I do?”
“Has he talked to anyone about firing you?”
There’s a pause. “I don’t think so,” she says, somewhat tentatively.
“Maybe?”
“No.” More positive. “We talked about it over drinks last night.”
“Over drinks?” I blurt.
“I didn’t know,” she answers defensively. “I thought it was same as always.”
“What a prick. I’m sorry,” I say, “but that’s crap.”
Softly: “I know. I felt like throwing my drink in his face.”
“Good you didn’t. For now. Anyway, so far it’s just you and him. And me,” I throw in.
“Yes. He wants it to be as smooth—that’s wrong, as contained as we—he—can make it. He doesn’t want to hurt my career …”
“Ha!” I interject.
“He just doesn’t want me in the same firm. He’s going to help me get another job first. And then …”
“A nice smooth-over, amicable parting. For the public.”
“Something like that.” Even as she mouths the words, she hears their hollowness, their hypocrisy.
Against the Wind Page 40
