Client Privilege

by William G. Tapply

  Now she had almost nailed down a breakthrough assignment with Life. She had lost out. But she seemed undaunted. Now, in spite of her disappointment, I saw her reemerging as the vibrant girl with the ironic grin who had maneuvered a meeting with me outside a courthouse in New Haven a long time ago. “The man with the three-piece-suit face,” she had called me. There was some hippie in her then. Now there was some yuppie. But there was no mistaking it. It was the old Gloria, soul restored. I was proud of her, happy for her.

  And at the same time, profoundly saddened, too. It felt like a loss to me. I didn’t like that feeling.

  Skeeter brought our drinks. Gloria’s was served in a tall glass with a straw. Mine was in a squat glass with a side of branch water. “Better have another one ready for me,” I said.

  Skeeter arched his brows at me, then nodded. “Sure thing,” he said.

  I downed my bourbon in one long, burning swallow. Then I took a sip of the water.

  Gloria touched my arm. “What’s the matter, Brady?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  She put her face close to mine. “Hey,” she said. “I’m okay. This is a little setback. Nothing to get all morose about.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s not you.”

  Skeeter brought me another drink and took away my empty. I drained it, too. Gloria sipped her Willie Mays through a straw.

  “This is delicious,” she said.

  “Go slow. Skeeter’s concoctions have a way of creeping up on you.”

  “So does that stuff.”

  “Barkeep,” I called to Skeeter. “One more, s’il vous plaît.”

  Skeeter turned and frowned at me, then shrugged. In a minute he brought me my third drink. I decided to sip this one.

  Gloria leaned away from me and seemed to study me. Then she began to nod her head. “I get it,” she said slowly. “This is really a big relief for you, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Your—what do you call it, your mood.”

  “What the hell are you trying to say?”

  “You couldn’t stand to see me make it. You want me to suffer in your absence. Your goddam ego. You don’t believe I can function without you. If I’d gotten that assignment, it would shatter your illusion of yourself. It’d force you to see that I don’t need you.”

  I smiled. My face felt stiff. “Shit, Gloria. It’s nothing like that. I want the best for you.”

  She looked down at the bar. “Part of you does. But there’s that other part of you…”

  I reached to touch her hair. She drew away from me. I shrugged and pulled my hand back. “I can’t speak for the different parts of me. Maybe you know them better than me.” I paused, trying to pin down the thoughts that tumbled around up there. “The only part I can speak for is the one that is so damn proud of you…”

  I put my forearms on her shoulders and crossed my wrists behind her neck. I leaned toward her until our foreheads rested against each other. I had the odd feeling that I might cry. After a moment Gloria moved her head so that our noses touched and our eyes were staring into each other’s. She crossed hers and giggled. We rubbed noses. “I can’t stand you,” she whispered, grinning.

  “Me either,” I said.

  She bent to her drink. I sipped my bourbon.

  “Brady,” she said. “What is it? Really?”

  “I’m kind of in trouble, Gloria.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Shall we have a burger?”

  She frowned, then nodded. “Sure. I’m starved.”

  “I think I’m drunk,” I said. “Hey, Skeets.”

  He came over. “No more, Mr. Coyne.”

  “Hey—”

  He folded his arms. “I never seen you drink like this before. You’ve had enough. Want some coffee?”

  “We want burgers, Skeets.”

  He held up both hands, a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, Mr. Coyne. You want yours pink, right?”

  “Right. Pink and hot in the middle. Like Gloria, here.”

  Skeeter looked at Gloria. “If you want me to call a cop, ma’am…”

  “I think I can handle this bum,” she said. “Make mine pink and hot too.”

  Gloria chatted about Billy and Joey, our two sons, while we sipped our drinks and waited for our burgers to arrive. Joey had made the high school honor roll again. His only discontent was his inability to conquer a certain member of the volleyball team named Debbie. Billy, a sophomore at UMass, was still talking about dropping out. He had a new career goal, Gloria told me, about the fifth since he had started college. Now he wanted to be a fishing guide in Idaho.

  “I’d like to do that,” I said. “That’s a very realistic goal.”

  “Well,” she said, “don’t think I don’t know where he gets his sense of reality.”

  “He should do what will make him happy,” I said.

  “You are so supportive, Brady.”

  “You say that with just a faint trace of sarcasm.”

  “I do?” she said.

  “Life is too damn short,” I said. “Before you know it, it’s something you can only look back on. The best thing is to be able to look back and nod your head and smile and say, ‘No regrets.’”

  “So what about you?”

  I nodded. “So far, plenty of regrets. I shoulda been a fishing guide, for one thing.”

  “And us?”

  “What, regrets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honestly, no. We’ve done the right things. Getting married was the right thing. Just look at the boys. They exist because of us. Getting divorced was the right thing, too. Otherwise I bet you wouldn’t have even taken a shot at that assignment from Life. Being here together is right, too. Don’t you think?”

  She leaned toward me and kissed my mouth softly. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess.”

  Our burgers arrived. We ate without talking. When we were done, Skeeter came over. “Coffee, Mr. Coyne?”

  “Another bourbon,” I said.

  “Aw,” he said, “if I serve you and you go smash up your car, I lose my license. Don’t put me on the spot, huh?”

  “I’m not driving, Skeets. Gloria will drive me home.”

  “I will?” she said.

  “Won’t you?”

  “What, so you can get sloshed?”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

  “Tell you what,” I said to Skeeter. “Give me half a cup of coffee. Fill the rest of it up with bourbon.”

  He shook his head. “It don’t work.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  Skeeter studied me for a minute. “Okay. I guess so. Ma’am?”

  “Just coffee,” said Gloria. “I’m driving.”

  When Skeeter brought our coffees, mine liberally laced with Rebel Yell, Gloria said, “Now sip it slowly and tell me what’s on your mind, what this thing is that’s making you so weird.”

  “I guess I can tell you. I can’t say names. You understand.”

  “Something involving a client?”

  I nodded. “I think one of my clients might’ve murdered a man. He set it up so it would look like I did it. That’s why those cops visited you the other day.”

  “Checking on your alibi.”

  “Yes. So I’m stuck here, maybe knowing who did it and the cops thinking it was me, and I can’t really even talk to them. Makes me seem suspicious as hell. Anyhow, I’ve been trying to get a handle on it. I mean, if I can make the link between the dead guy and my client—”

  “You need evidence to give the police.”

  “Right. But it has to be evidence that is separate from anything my client has told me. I can’t violate his privileged status with me.”

  “So you’re playing sleuth again.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “It’s getting a little drunk around here, did you notice?”

  She smiled. “I noticed.”

  “So I have a name. A wo
man. I gotta talk to her. Trouble is, the name I got is the name she had before she got married. I can’t find her unless I know her name. I found her parents. They won’t tell me.”

  “So you’re stuck. And that’s why you’re acting stupid.”

  “Yup.” I grinned at her. “That’s why I’m acting stupid. Because I am stupid. And because they might want to arrest me. And if they arrest me and put me in Walpole, I would be unhappy. The fishing is shitty at Walpole.”

  “But you didn’t do it, Brady.”

  “Ah, I love the delusions of laypeople. The delusion that only guilty people are convicted of crimes.”

  “The same reason doctors overreact to their own symptoms, right?”

  “Yeah. Doctors know that people really die.”

  Gloria tipped up her coffee cup and drained it. “Come on, big guy. I’m gonna tuck you in.”

  I finished my drink. I fumbled for my wallet. “I got it,” said Gloria.

  “No, no…”

  “Yessir. This is my party. I invited you. I got you drunk.”

  “Talked me into it,” I mumbled. I had begun to feel sleepy.

  Gloria paid Skeeter. We climbed off our barstools. Gloria put her arm around my waist and we made our way to the door.

  “Hey,” called Skeeter.

  We turned.

  “You gonna be okay, Mr. Coyne?”

  “I am in excellent hands, barkeep. Excellent hands. Excellent.”

  He was shaking his head when we left.

  I tipped my head back during the short ride to my apartment. I struggled to stay awake.

  Gloria parked in the garage in the basement of my building. She helped me onto the elevator. When we got off at the sixth floor, she said, “Which one is your key?”

  “The gold one.”

  “There are four gold ones.”

  “It’s round on the end.”

  “Forget it. I’ll try them all.”

  She got the door open and helped me in. “Oh, Jesus, Brady Coyne. What a mess.”

  “It’s how I like it.”

  “Do you ever do laundry?”

  “Nah. I just buy new stuff.”

  “That’s how it looks.”

  I dropped my parka on the floor by the door. Gloria picked it up and draped it over a kitchen chair. I went into the living room and sat on an old newspaper on the sofa. I began to tug at my boots. I couldn’t seem to keep a grip on them. My hands kept slipping away, and when they did I fell backward against the sofa.

  “Let me help you,” said Gloria.

  She had removed her coat. “Nice blouse,” I said. I reached out and touched the sleeve with my forefinger. “Silky. Like skin.”

  “You hardly ever used to get drunk,” she said, kneeling in front of me and pulling off a boot.

  “Uptight,” I said. “I was always too uptight.”

  She grunted at the other boot. It slipped off. “You’re not uptight anymore, huh?”

  “Nope. Not me.”

  “Come on,” she said, holding her hands to me. “Let’s tuck you in.”

  She helped me up. We went into the bedroom. She took the old clothes off the bed, shook them, and piled them on the chair. I sat on the edge. She worked at the buttons of my shirt. I leaned forward and put my face in her hair. She looked up at me and smiled. “You used to get drunk in New Haven,” she said.

  “You remember that.”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “That was before we got married.”

  “Before you got uptight.”

  She peeled my shirt off. She undid my belt. She unzipped me. I tried to prop myself up so she could shuck off my pants. I kept collapsing.

  “Stand up,” she said.

  I did. She got my pants down around my knees, and I fell onto the bed. I closed my eyes.

  It was a black sleep, like death. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night. My head hurt. I tried to hitch myself into a sitting position. My hand brushed bare skin. It wasn’t mine. I reached beside the bed and flicked on the light.

  Gloria blinked at me.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Trying to sleep.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to stay.”

  “You expect me to walk home?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “Serves you right.”

  I closed my eyes. It helped my head. “Did we—?” I said.

  “You passed out, lover.”

  I touched her hip experimentally. She was wearing panties. Nothing else. “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Sometimes…” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I…”

  She touched my chest. “I’m here,” she whispered.

  I turned and she moved against me. I held her close to me. She tucked her face into the hollow against the side of my neck. Her hands moved on my back. After a moment she tilted her head back and looked at me. “Do you want…?” she said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  All the moves were from memory, and yet somehow it was new. There was little passion to it. We explored, we made discoveries. Making love with Gloria seemed inevitable and logical, something we had been pointing to for ten years. Afterward we lay beside each other on our backs, staring up at the ceiling.

  “How’s the head?”

  “It still hurts. The rest of me feels much better.”

  “I was thinking,” she said.

  “What, Gloria?”

  “Your problem.”

  “Do I have a problem?”

  She turned to look at me. She smiled and touched my leg with her hand. “Not that kind of problem, dummy. You don’t have that problem. The one that was bothering you, I mean. The one that made you feel like you had to get drunk.”

  “Funny thing,” I said. “For a while there, I had forgotten about it.”

  “That woman who got married, whose name you don’t know?”

  “What about her?”

  “There are records, aren’t there? When someone takes out a marriage license?”

  I turned and held her face in both of my hands. “The smartest thing I ever did was marry you.”

  “And,” she said, “divorce me.”

  I held her for a while. We were a familiar, comfortable fit. I began to drift. Then I sensed her moving away from me.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Where are you?”

  “I’ll be back,” she said.

  I blinked into the darkness. I saw her pale naked body move out of the room. I waited to hear bathroom sounds, but none came. After a few minutes I climbed out of bed. I staggered for an instant against a sudden pain in my head. Then I went into my living room.

  Gloria was standing silhouetted against the big glass windows overlooking the harbor. She was hugging herself and her head was bowed. I moved beside her. “Hon?” I said.

  “Hi.”

  “You all right?”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “Coming back to bed?”

  “You go ahead. I’ll be along.”

  I touched her bare shoulder. She seemed to pull away. I let my hand trail down her arm. “Come on. It’s chilly out here.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I detoured to the bathroom. Then I returned to my bed. Gloria had not come back to it. I lay on my back and stared blankly at the ceiling, waiting for her. But sleep returned to me before she did.

  THIRTEEN

  I DIDN’T DARE OPEN my eyes. I didn’t dare move. Someone had driven an ice pick into my left temple, all the way through so that it came out at my right temple. By squeezing my eyes shut I found I could minimize the pain.

  I lay there, immobilized by my monster hangover, and remembered that I had dreamed of Gloria. We had made love. It was like the old days. No, it was better than the old days. An ancient feeling had been recaptured. I had forgotten that old feeling. It was something I hadn’t felt since before we were married.

  Experimentally, I allowed my eyes to open to slits. Gray
light suffused my bedroom. I creaked my head around to check the time. My digital clock-radio said 8:48 A.M. I never slept that late.

  On the bedside table next to the radio stood a tall glass full of crimson liquid. From the glass protruded a stalk of celery.

  Leaning against the glass was a folded piece of paper.

  I hitched myself up in bed and reached for the paper. I unfolded it. It read:

  Brady, dear:

  Try city hall. They record marriage licenses.

  It was lovely.

  Gloria.

  I rolled over and sank my face into the pillow beside me. Gloria’s smell. Her perfume, her sweat, her sex. It certainly hadn’t been a dream.

  I picked up the Bloody Mary she had made for me. Gloria made excellent Bloodys. She stirred in about a tablespoon of horseradish and several generous shakes of Tabasco and Worcestershire and the juice of an entire lime. She seasoned it with celery salt and fresh ground pepper. I stirred it with the celery stalk and drank it down fast. It was thick, like half-congealed blood, tangy and hot. I could almost feel it burn away the demons. The ice pick in my head began to melt away.

  After I finished Gloria’s Bloody Mary, I stumbled into the bathroom. The mirror was still steamed over and a big bath towel was spread over the rack. I touched it. It was damp. With my forefinger I wrote Brady & Gloria on the misted mirror. Then I wiped it clear with the palm of my hand. I climbed into the shower. I made it as hot as I could bear it, and I stood under it for a long time. Then I turned off the hot water and quivered under the frigid for a count of thirty.

  By the time I had toweled dry and slipped into jeans and a sweatshirt, I felt nearly human.

  Before she left, Gloria had brewed coffee. I poured a big mugful and took it to the table by the glass sliders. The two storm fronts, as predicted, had collided somewhere over my apartment. I could barely see the ocean through the thick mixture of rain and snow that angled down from a low sooty sky and splatted against the glass. I could hear the low moan of the wind trying to squeeze around the edges of the sliders. Three inches of slush covered the balcony outside the sliding doors. In the night it had snowed. Now it was in the process of changing over to rain. Later it would change back. Typical February nor’easter. Inland it would be all snow.