by Nancy Adams
“Objection!” cried one of the defense team. “We’re not here today to listen to other crimes separate to this case. This is about the damage to the building and no more.”
I felt the need to stand up.
“But this is, isn’t it?” I put to the court. “This is about home security, and our client has suffered as a result of Langley’s negligence in allowing its building to remain open to dangerous people, putting the lives of its tenants at risk.”
“Sustained,” came the voice of the lead judge and I turned sharply to him. “Mr. Stewart is right, Ms. Dillinger,” the judge stated. “We should keep proceedings to the building.”
“Thank you, your honor,” came Mr. Stewart’s smarmy response.
I was about to say something, but I felt the cooling presence of my father’s hand on my arm and I simply sat back down.
All eyes returned to the poor, sobbing woman whose terrible pain had just been overruled.
“Then I don't know what else to say,” she wept. “Just that the place is a death trap in a hundred ways. And that I hate Langley for allowing people to live like this”—here her voice became a crescendo of spiteful anger—“for allowing decent people to dissolve into indecency. For treating us worse than animals. For debasing us like this. Children for God’s sake. Debased. For allowing me to be—”
“That is all, Mrs. Marx,” the lead judge bellowed, filling the courtroom with his tenor voice.
The grieving woman fell into tears and shrugged off the foreman’s hand when he attempted to lead her away from the stand. In the end, I had to go over and help her shivering frame step down and rejoin the others. As we passed the defense team, many of them still wore the faint hint of smugness upon their expressions, completely impervious to human emotion.
More and more statements were given, a barrel-load of human turmoil unleashed on the court: damaged living quarters, damaged health, homes described as boxes and cages rather than rooms and dens. “They’re sending us to the Devil,” one particularly pious old man went, waving his walking stick at the court. I heard the building described as hell on many occasions, of how it had become a beacon for listless creatures to pour in through the broken doors and terrorize the inhabitants. It almost broke my heart, and pricked my anger, to hear the defense team bat away so much of it with their ‘objections’ and their legal speech. Each deposition was reacted to with indifference, as though the lives of those people meant nothing.
It was toward the end of this first day of statements that the courtroom doors opened at the back and a shiver ran through me. It was as though all the heat had been sucked out of the room and I instinctively turned to see who had just entered. Another shiver immediately raced through me when I saw the cold figure of Andrew Kelly strolling in and taking a seat at the back of the room. What is he doing here? was the first question that hit me. Was he here to see me? As for my father, he was too engrossed in the goings on in court and obviously hadn’t noticed Andrew’s entrance, so I decided not to inform him of it yet.
SARAH
A half hour later, the judges recessed court until the next morning and we all began filing out. As we waited at the back of the multitude, I took my father’s arm and ushered him to a private corner.
“Andrew Kelly’s here,” I informed him in a hushed voice when we were away from the others.
My father’s eyes instantly darted about the room, a mixture of anger and tepid fear shining in them. His eyes stopped sharp when they reached the back row. I followed his gaze, and there, sitting as before, was Andrew Kelly, seemingly oblivious to the people as they went past, his eyes fixed firmly on Dad and I.
My father burst toward him, but, just as he had to me earlier on with the judge, I held his arm, pulling him back.
“Wait until everyone’s left,” I whispered.
It wasn’t long before the room was nothing but the foreman, Daddy, myself and Andrew Kelly, with Karl and Paul having gone on ahead.
“I gotta ask you to leave now that court is in recess,” the foreman said.
“It’s okay, we’re going,” I replied softly.
Dad marched toward Andrew, who was getting up as if to leave, and, upon reaching him, my father said in an agitated voice, doing his best to control its volume, “What are you doing here, Andrew?”
“I haven’t come to speak to you,” Kelly nonchalantly replied as he began strolling out of the room, giving us the impression he was leaving us behind. “I wish to speak to your daughter,” he added as we came out the doors into the hallway, where Theresa had waited for me.
I quickly asked her to meet me in the coffee shop in about ten minutes, that I had something important to attend to first. She simply smiled and left. Then I turned to Andrew, who stood to the side of my father and acted as though Daddy was no more than the air itself, his eyes feasting on nothing except myself.
“What is it, Andrew?” I asked in annoyance.
“I just came to see how the case was going.”
“What is that to do with you? Are you stalking me?”
He grinned malignantly at this and shook his head.
“No, no,” he repeated. “I mean you no harm. No harm at all. I just take an interest in this particular case is all.”
“And I can guess why that is,” my father couldn’t help snapping.
“Is he deaf?” Andrew addressed me. “I’m sure I told him earlier that I wished not to address him and here he is making statements to me. He used to be sharper than that. Has poverty really dulled his senses as much as they say?”
“I’ll show you dulled senses,” crashed indignantly from my father’s mouth, “you son-of-a—”
“Daddy!” I let out, gripping his arm once more.
He turned to me, his face convulsed in a paroxysm of crimson anger. But upon looking at my benevolent expression, the fires in his bulging eyes steadily dissipated.
“Go wait for me with the others at the coffee shop,” I gently advised.
His countenance melted and, before walking away, he took one more look at the smirking face of his enemy, who appeared untouched by any of this. As Dad went on his way, Andrew’s steely eyes followed him to the end of the lobby, and only when Dad disappeared into the elevator did he return those emotionless orbs back to me.
“I see you’ve forgiven him,” Andrew remarked in his typical insouciant manner.
“Of course I have. And you should forgive Josh. Did you get his letter?”
“Yes, I did, but I’m afraid I don’t go into all that Christian forgiveness folly. I’m a little more Old Testament myself—wrathful God bringing plagues and pestilence, that kinda stuff. If it had been my father, I would have never spoken to him again.”
“You haven’t come here to upset me, have you?”
“No, not at all. I was just wondering how you thought it went today? In court that is.”
“Why are you here?” I felt the need to ask again, ignoring his question.
“Like I said, I’m interested in the case.”
“Why?”
“Because I own a majority stake in Langley Holdings.”
His words were like rocks pelted at me.
“You!?” I exclaimed. “But your name’s nowhere on any of the paperwork.”
“Well, I should hope not,” he scoffed. “I have shares in it through a portfolio of subsidiary companies. My name shouldn’t show up on any of it except if you’d worked your way through a mountain of paperwork and business licenses. But I guess you people don’t have those types of resources. Ask your father about how to hide yourself in paperwork, it was practically him that taught the rest of us.”
“So you’re behind Langley?”
“Not exactly, but I guess you could say that I’m the intellectual will that governs it.”
“You let those people live like that?” I said, barely able to control myself.
“Those people let themselves live like that,” he spat back. “Although it was interesting to hear some of
them speak. I almost got the impression that I was watching farmyard animals that had been shaved and placed in human clothing talking up there.”
“Why do you do such evil?” I asked in a half-whisper, the question more an act of musing than an actual request.
Appearing to deduce this himself, Andrew ignored my inquiries and continued.
“I only came to see things a little, but my main point was to see you; as I said before.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I wish to ask you to look after my son. He’s all yours now and is your responsibility.”
His voice had softened here and there was the faint betrayal of emotion.
“What do you care?” I asked, ignoring his sentiment.
“I care more than you’ll ever know.”
“Then why try to ruin him?”
“Because I can’t have him defy me. He is either my son, or your boyfriend; not both. However, I still care and hand him over to you.”
“To me!? You make it sound as though your son couldn’t look after himself. You’d be surprised. All these past weeks, he’s been studying, looking forward to going back to college. He’s determined to do well.”
“I feel he’ll need more of a miracle than mere determination in that respect.”
This last statement sent an odd feeling pervading through me.
“What do you mean?” I needed to know.
“Hasn’t he called you?”
“Of course not, my phone’s been switched off all day because of court.”
“Oh! Then I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but I’ve cut Josh’s funding for college. Unless he can find the thirty-odd thousand shortfall, as well as support himself for almost a year of studying, he’s just gonna have to get by on his high school diploma.”
I was stunned with the knife of this latest treachery and instantly felt bitter sadness for Josh. All these past weeks he’d had nothing to look forward to other than completing college. He’d continued his hard work and perseverance and I was deeply proud of him for that. For everything that Andrew had taken away, this was by far the worst; the malevolent father had taken away his son's future.
“I hear that the McDonald’s around the corner is hiring,” Andrew went on in his cruel speech. “He could flip burgers with all the immigrants. Maybe he could sideline as an amateur English teacher; teach them on the job. He took Spanish at high school. Le gustaria papas fritas con eso, señor!”
“Why are you so despicable, Andrew?” I had to ask. But before he could answer in his usual conceited style, I added, “First you tell me to look after him and then you go on about having taken away the one hope you’d left him: his college.”
“I told him: he leaves me, he leaves with just the clothes on his back. You think I was gonna continue to finance his education too? Of course not. He’s naked now, and only has you to cover him. And how long will that last, huh? Until you realize that you’ve inherited a man-child, good for absolutely nothing. All I ask is that you use all of that good Christian heart to make sure that he doesn’t end up all the way at the bottom.”
“Just part of the way,” I interjected harshly.
“Yes, just that,” he replied knowingly. “You know, I always liked you. Didn't want to, but just did. I can see why he’s so drawn to you. You’ve so much hope contained in those eyes. You almost defrost the heart of a stone-cold bastard like me. But only just.”
We continued to gaze at one another for a moment, my face stiff with anger, nose wrinkled, his own face completely restrained, impassive, showing not an ounce of anything.
“Just look after him,” he suddenly announced. “Love him and make sure he stays alive.”
At that moment, he turned on his heels and walked away. I was about to shout something after him, but decided not to. He made me so mad, and now I found his sneering face looking down at me from all aspects of my life; Josh, my father and now the Miller case. He’d come to tell me two horrible things: one, that he’d finished his destruction of Josh’s life; and two, that he was behind Langley and would obviously fight us all the way with his spiteful iniquity. Knowing that he was behind it all, at least somewhere in the shadows, made me more determined than ever to get a result in this thing. But then the recollection of his supercilious countenance dulled my enthusiasm and gave me the impression that he knew he’d already won, that he held all the deck of cards in his hand and would string everyone along until finally defeating us.
Making my way out of the building and to the coffee shop around the corner, I began to feel that this was going to be the start of a very distinct vendetta against my family and that Andrew would personally make sure that resources were made available to Langley to defend themselves against the indefensible. I began to feel trepidation that he had found a way of ruining my father’s practice, and therefore ruining me as well in the process.
His visit had not been a good omen.
JOSH
An hour after Holman left with his envelope, another buzz sounded in the apartment, waking me from my depressive reverie. This time, thankfully, it was Charlie.
“Hey, man,” he said as he hobbled in through the door on his crutches.
“Hey, Charlie,” I replied, despondent.
“So we gonna finish painting the place?” he inquired as he removed his shoes.
“Not today, buddy. I’m…Well, not up for it.”
I slumped myself down on the sofa, taking up my former ass-groove. Having observed my glum demeanor, Charlie asked what was up. For a moment, I didn't know what to say. I was slightly embarrassed by it all. For the first time in my life I was completely naked, a castaway upon an infinite ocean, floating in the midst of an endless nothing. I was officially a ‘nobody’ and I felt ashamed to admit it to him. At least with college, I was on par with Charlie; I was working toward a profession. But now I was stuck all the way at the bottom, and I felt absolutely useless.
“What happened?” he wanted to know as he sat down next to me.
“Come on, Charlie. Can’t we drop it.”
“Is it Sarah?”
“No. She left for work three hours ago and is fine.”
“Then what is it?”
I turned to him and saw the solicitude shimmering in his gentle expression. It touched me and I felt for the first time in my entire life that here, sitting with me on this sofa, was an actual confidante among my peer group, someone who I could really open up to and not have to hide everything away from.
“Okay,” I muttered.
I got up from the couch and retrieved the screwed-up college letter from the garbage, where I’d stuck it not long after Holman had left. Sitting back down, I unfurled it and handed it to him.
“Read it,” I instructed.
He quickly scanned the crumpled page and tutted several times as he did.
“This is bullshit, man,” he remarked once he had.
“It certainly is.”
“Your old man has cut all your funding. This is real low, even for him. How can he do this?”
“Easily. He paid for it all, so he can just as easily refuse to pay anymore. He’s left me high and dry.”
“But isn’t there anything you can do? Can’t you request some kind of payment system or apply for a student grant?”
“Even if I did set up a payment system, I’d never afford the monthly payments; even if I got a full-time job alongside it. And they won’t touch me for a student grant, not with my history at the college, as well as the other two I’ve been kicked out of. Plus, they’d take one look at my billionaire father and laugh at me.”
“Yeah, but he’s not helping you, you’re not living at home.”
“Charlie, it’s no good. I’ve been worried that he could pull a shitty move like this for the past week and had a look into what I could do if he did. All I found was a big fat nothing. I just hoped he wouldn’t. Now he has, I feel numb, like I’m floating away or something.”
“Maybe we could get ahold
of the money,” he suggested.
“How, Charlie? How the hell am I going to magic thirty-three grand out of thin air?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could help, but I’ve only got about five hundred dollars in savings, and as much as my ma loves you, I don’t think she’d be willing to donate a good part of her pension plan.”
“It’s okay, Charlie. Thanks for the sentiment, but I’d rather drop it.”
“What about Sarah?”
“What about her?”
“Can’t she loan you the money?”
“Sarah!? She barely breaks even every month from the measly salary she gets at her dad’s practice. Then there’s her altruism that impels her to give away any spare cash. I don’t think Sarah is gonna be able to help. Anyway, I haven’t even told her yet.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“No. Holman only brought the letter around about forty-five minutes ago, and she’s in court until at least three, so her phone’s off. Plus, I’m not really that keen on telling her, if I’m honest.”
“Why not?”
I had to think about this for a moment.
“I guess because I’m afraid of what she’ll think of me now.”
“She loves you. Surely that’s enough. What could she possibly think about you that’s so bad?”
“That I’m a loser,” I returned sharply.
“But you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am. I’m no good to anyone. I ain’t got a dime to lift me up. I got no real skills. It’s not like I’m gonna walk into any type of decent job without a college education is it? And what do I know about work, huh? I got not one iota of experience in anything other than jacking off!”
We were both silent for a little while, Charlie unable to think of what to say next, and me just wanting to leave off the subject, to spread wings and fly away through the window as far from it all as possible.
