Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  He spun around and spat at the black man, “Fuck you. They’ll drag your black ass off, but they ain’t touching me. I got friends, you know, family. I got connections. I’ll be out of this place when you’re on a bus to the joint.”

  “Maybe so,” the black man said, heading to the bunk, his head down. “Maybe so.”

  He pressed on. The black man was big, but he was old. “You’re a fucking loser, man. You got your ass busted for shooting some dumb kids for trying to steal your car. If that’d been me, I’d never got caught. I’ve gotten away with things make you look like a pussy. You hear?”

  The black man had rolled over on the bunk, facing the wall.

  “You look at me when I talk to you, boy. You know who I am?”

  The black man remained motionless on the bed. The Latino moved closer, sure of himself now, excited at his power. In the bunk the black man looked small, defenseless.

  Leaning into the bunk, he hissed, “I’ve done things make your frizzy hair stand on end. Man, I’ve done things make shooting a couple of kids nothing. Richard Ramirez. You know him? The Nightstalker.” He started poking himself in the chest. “Friend of mine. That’s what. Fucking friend of mine, man. Fucking brother. Front page in the paper too, man. On every front page in the country.”

  The black man slowly rolled over and fixed him with his huge round eyes. “Boy, youse not right in your head. Get ‘way from me now. Let old Willie alone. I ain’t starting nuthin’. Let old Will alone.”

  “You ever rucked a white woman, Willie? You ever put your black dick in a white woman’s pussy? How ‘bout a redhead? You ever rucked a redhead with freckles and skin as white as a fucking baby? Soft, too, Willie. They soft, man. Their skin’s like velvet, like one of them paintings.”

  The black man ducked to keep from hitting his head on the upper bunk and stood to his full height, at least six-six or more. He put his hands in front of him to shove the other man back, but it wasn’t necessary. The Latino was backing away, his face ashen.

  “I knows whats youse done, boy. Is heard whats youse done. And if’n I was you, I’d be quiet bout it. Willie’s been to the big house, boy. They don’t like boys like you. Boys do the things you done.”

  He was cowering in the corner, pressed against the back wall, only inches from the filthy open toilet. Just the mention of prison filled him with terror. He was small, his body unconditioned and wasted from drugs and alcohol, his power sucked from the helplessness of his victims. In jail he could survive, but not in prison. He knew what would happen to him there.

  He took the few steps to the window and stared out again. “This is your fault, you bitch,” he whispered. “This is all your fault.”

  CHAPTER 3

  They were sitting in a booth at Denny’s, two blocks from the Elephant Bar, sipping black coffee and eating cheeseburgers. They were laughing and getting sober.

  Lily picked her burger apart and with a fork poked the meat, displaying the bloody insides. “This is raw.”

  “Send it back,” he said. “They’ll kill it for sure this time.”

  “Think I’ll just pass.” With one hand she shoved the plate away and moved the coffee cup in front of her. “So tell me exactly what happened with Judge Fisher.”

  “I found the little bastard snorting cocaine. Not much more to tell than that.”

  “But how did he have the gall to call Butler and complain? Wasn’t he the least bit concerned?”

  “Hell, no. He just told Butler that I was a madman and barged into his chambers and that he didn’t want to see my face anywhere near Superior Court again.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. His black eyes were now alert and mischievous. “I did happen to go up and down the hall and tell a few people that Fisher was having a little party and that they better hurry if they wanted to do a few lines of the best Colombian coke around.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lily said, laughing at the scenario. “Do you have a death wish or something? I thought you and Butler were on great terms, that he thought you could do no wrong. Why didn’t he back you up?”

  “Oh, Butler’s a good man. He believed me. Just took the easy way out, the path of least resistance. His theory is that when the dirt flies, we all get buried in it. I actually think he felt bad about the whole thing. When all is said and done, he’ll probably give me homicide. Maybe in six months.”

  Lily brushed her hair off her face. The waitress came with the check, and she grabbed it and threw a twenty on the table. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this new job, Rich. Isn’t it hard to become involved in the cases and then have to rely on someone else to actually try them?”

  “That’s what supervision is all about. If you can’t trust people or feel you have to track every single proceeding in that unit, you’ll lose your mind. Don’t nag and don’t be a baby-sitter, Lily, or you’ll fall into that age-old stereotype of the woman manager.”

  Lily stared into space, digesting his advice.

  “Ready,” he said, sliding out of the booth and then looking down at her twenty. “By the way, you have to pay at the cash register.”

  Outside in the cool air, he stood close to her. “I’ll walk you to your car. Where did you park?”

  In her mind she saw herself already walking through the door of her ranch house. The first thing she saw every day was the backyard. “I parked at the center,” she said, looking straight in front of her. John had decided to redo the sprinkler system himself about six months before and had dug up the entire yard. He had then planted one side in with sod, leaving the other side dirt after he couldn’t figure out how to get the sprinklers working.

  “My car’s at the bar. I’ll drive you,” Richard said. “You shouldn’t be walking around alone at night.”

  On weekends John would sit in a lawn chair and sun himself on the grass side as if the dirt side didn’t exist. No matter how many times she told him how it irritated her and how ridiculous it looked, he made no attempt to correct it. She looked at Richard and replied: “Thanks.” She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to be the primary decision maker, the disciplinarian, the strong one in the family. She wanted to laugh and feel pleasure, feel attractive and physically desirable. She wanted to believe that a birthday was a cause for celebration.

  They walked in silence. She’d have to settle for the moment. Soon it would be gone. She’d be at home in her bed with John. After all these years of abstinence and John’s accusations that she was fooling around on the side, for the first time she wished it were true. And it could only be the man walking beside her, the same man she called forth in her fantasies. But he was married and there was no reason to believe he was even attracted to her. If John was no longer interested in her sexually, why would another man want her? She was no longer desirable. She might as well accept it. She’d accepted everything else about her life. She was thirty-six. Just a few more years and she’d be forty.

  He unlocked the passenger side of his white BMW and tossed what looked like his gym clothes into the backseat. In the driver’s seat, he put the key in the ignition and then dropped his hands in his lap and turned to her. He reached across and kissed her fully on the mouth, his hands buried in her thick hair. His face scratched her sensitive skin with day-old stubble. “Come home with me,” he whispered. “Please, I need you. I want you.”

  “But…” Lily said, thinking of his wife and teenage son, the fact that she should go home; the fact that she might want it now and regret it later. His lips were there again and his tongue probed in her mouth; his hands on her back pressed her to him.

  She was flooded with warmth, pushing herself closer into his body, her flesh alive with nerve endings. Everything washed away: the job, John, Shana, her birthday, her childhood, her caution.

  “Please,” he said. He lifted her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. “No one is there if that’s what you’re thinking. And no one is coming home tonight.” He took her hand and placed it on the crotch of his pants, on hi
s erection. She let it stay there as he kissed her again.

  She was a normal woman with normal desires. Richard wasn’t going to use her as a receptacle, as John would say. He was the repairman, the doctor, the magician. He was going to plug her back into the wall outlet again and turn on the lights. She wasn’t broken. She had just been put on the shelf.

  “Drive,” she said, “and fast. Drive fast.”

  They were standing in his living room, looking out over the city at night; he was nude, she was wrapped in a large bath sheet. The house was in the foothills, contemporary, with high ceilings and an open, airy feeling. Her jacket, her shoes, her bra and hose were scattered across the living room floor. They’d never made it to the bedroom.

  Once in the house, she had stripped her clothes almost ahead of him, and they had stood there facing each other in the darkness, a foot away, both their arms at their sides.

  “I always knew your body would look like this,” he said.

  “What does it look like?” she said.

  “Lush. It looks like mounds of strawberry yogurt. I want to taste it.”

  They made love on the sofa, their feet sticking off one end, arms and legs everywhere. It was the only piece of furniture in the room. With his long, sinewy arms he held her upper body down and buried his head between her legs. He lingered there even when she protested and sighed and cried out. “No. No. No.”

  She finally could take it no longer and dragged him up by his hair and forced him to switch places with her, and with her hair spread over the hard muscles of his stomach, she took him in her mouth, hungry for the taste and smell of him, the feel of him. “Oh, God,” he cried, “God.”

  She crawled on top of him and straddled him, riding him like a horse, pushed up on her arms, tossing her hair, leaning down to kiss him and then throwing her head back again. This was her fantasy. She was living her dream. She actually imagined she was on a great white horse, galloping over huge hurdles and streams, heading for the white light of pleasure. Finding it, she collapsed on his chest, sweating, satiated. He rolled her off onto the floor and turned her around and took her from behind, holding her buttocks in his hands and slamming against her until he exploded and fell on top of her. She fell onto the carpet, his heavy body on her back, his warm, heavy breath in her ear. “Jesus,” he said, “did I hurt you?”

  “Not hardly,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

  He lifted her wet hair and kissed the back of her neck tenderly. “I don’t think you can call that pain.”

  Suddenly embarrassed, she broke free, sat up with her knees drawn and her arms wrapped around them. Already feelings of guilt were fluttering in the pit of her stomach, but a quick look at Richard made them disappear. Shed finally met John’s accusations and suspicions. And it had been easy, too easy. And it had been good enough to want much more. Her body was screaming at her, begging her, demanding more. Perhaps she could actually feed this desire, this need. She could go on wanting Richard until he ignored her and disappointed her and no longer cared if she walked alone at night. This is what it must feel like when two people meet each other on an even level, she thought, share similar points of view. She let her eyes drift down with mock coyness, a smile playing at the corners of her lips; her behavior had been shocking, wanton, thrilling. People felt this good all the time, at every second in every day, somewhere in the world. Getting a divorce was not a crime punishable by death. She could feel this way again.

  They showered together in the master bathroom. Passing the bed, she saw it was unmade and the room was strewn with clothes and newspapers and glasses sitting on tables without coasters. In the shower, they rubbed soap all over each other’s bodies. He dumped half a bottle of shampoo on her head, and it dripped down into her eyes. “Get me a towel,” she screamed, actually laughing, listening to the delightful sound bounce off the walls, amazed that it had been manufactured inside her. “You’ve blinded me.” She took the little soap, greatly used, and made him turn around and rubbed it between the two muscular white cheeks of his ass, like she’d done to her daughter when she was young. He jumped and told her to stop, but she knew he loved it. Outside the shower, he wanted to comb her pubic hair with his comb so some of the hairs would be there in the morning. She couldn’t believe it, but she let him. It tickled. He commented on the fact that she was a real redhead, causing her to take one of his nipples and twist it hard, “Because you doubted me,” and because she just wanted to, had always wanted to do something like that. Afterward, he gave her the only clean towel and he walked naked, dripping water onto the carpet, to the living room, where they now stood and talked.

  He moved behind her and put his arms around her. “Do you want something to drink? I don’t have any tequila, but I can find something else.”

  Her head ached at the mere mention of tequila. “No, thanks. I have to go, you know, and soon.” She had already decided that his wife no longer lived there. She wanted it to be true so badly that she couldn’t ask. “I hate to do this to you, but you realize you’re going to have to drive me to my car.”

  “I don’t mind, Lily,” he said, his voice reflecting the beginning of a letdown. “But do we have to end it so fast? Can’t we just stay here a minute and relish it?” He turned her to face him and held her face in both hands. “This was much more than just an office fuck and you know it.”

  She sighed deeply, letting the air leave her lungs as if she were exhaling a cigarette. “I know.”

  Lily picked her clothes off the floor and put them back on piece by piece. She turned away from him when she hooked her bra in the front and turned it around, shaking her breasts into the cups. She put on her blouse first and then her panties. They were plain white comfortable cotton panties, and she was ashamed that they were not French cut lace.

  He was still looking out at the city as he spoke. “My wife left me for someone else. A month ago. It was a month ago today. She told me she was in love with someone else, and while I was at work, she came with a moving van and moved half the furniture out.”

  “I’m sorry, Richard. Did you love her?”

  “Sure, I loved her. I lived with her for seventeen years. I don’t even know where she is now. She’s here in the city somewhere, but she doesn’t want me to know where. Our son is with her.”

  “Do you know the man?” Lily asked, curious about the whole thing, wondering how she could want him so badly and someone who had lived with him for seventeen years no longer wanted him at all.

  “It’s not a man. Lily, my wife left me for a woman.”

  “Your son?”

  “He doesn’t know and I would never tell him. He just thinks the woman is her roommate.” His face was bathed in shadows. He was facing Lily now, but he quickly turned back to the window. “I mean, I don’t believe he knows.”

  “You might be surprised, Rich. Kids know a lot more than we think. He might know and have already accepted it. He is living with his mother, right?”

  “He’s a strange kid, off in his own world.” He glanced at Lily over his shoulder and saw that she was dressed and waiting. “Greg used to be an honor student and now he’s a surfer. Instead of studying, the kid surfs. He’ll be lucky to get into a junior college. I always dreamed he’d be an attorney, that maybe we’d someday have our own private practice. Dreams. Things don’t always work the way you plan them.”

  Lily came up and stood beside him. He draped an arm over her shoulder. “I’m curious, Richard. Forgive me. But did your wife explain any of this to you—you know, tell you how long this had been going on? Surely you knew something?”

  “Believe it or not, I didn’t know shit. I never knew a thing until she left. Oh, now she tells me she’s been seeing this woman for three years, but all that time I would have never known.”

  She saw his need to talk but knew she had to go. “Can we talk in the car? I wish I could stay and we could talk more, but I am married. It’s not a good marriage,”—she paused—“obviously, or I wouldn’t be here with
you. It may end soon, for all I know, but I don’t want it to end badly. Can you understand that?”

  “Just give me a second. I’ll get dressed.”

  At the government center complex, she leaned against the car and he kissed her. “Why do you park here? Don’t you know they can see you from the jail?”

  “Well,” she said, nuzzling him and softly biting his ear. “One day I might be able to park underground where the judges park. What do you think?”

  “I think there’s a good possibility if that’s what you really want. Did you know I recommended you for my replacement?”

  She didn’t and was pleased. “Thanks, and that was even before tonight.” She smiled, unlocking the door to her red Honda. She started the ignition and waved and then stuck her head out the window. “To be continued, huh?”

  “Right,” he said, “to be continued.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A loud clap of thunder woke her from a deep sleep, and the child jerked her body upright in her bed, feeling the warm, soggy sheets and her flannel gown beneath her. She had wet her bed but was relieved that it was still warm and not cold yet; it was so warm that it was almost comforting. Eyes glued to the window, she saw the lightning illuminate the large cedar tree. She began counting: “One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand.” Crack. She put her hands to her ears and held her breath, trying to keep the fear from making her cry out. Silence. She let out her breath in one long whoosh and fell back onto the bed, covering her head with the blankets. She had to get up soon and get the towel and place it over the mattress; she had to change her gown or the wetness would become like ice and she would start shivering. Inching the covers down slowly, the light was again there and the shape outside the window now moved. She screamed, unable to stop herself. She was in the mountains, at the ranch, and there were bears who wanted in from the rain, hungry bears.