She had major surgery less than forty-eight hours ago. I’m a basket case and she’s making wisecracks. “Dr. Urbach said the surgery went well,” I tell her. “She thinks they got all of it.”
“I hope so. If they do this again, I won’t have any plumbing left.”
Two days after her mastectomy and she’s ready to fire her doctor. “She told me she was pleased with the result. She said the prognosis looks very good.”
“She said that last time.”
“I know. She said you’ll be able to go home in a few days.”
She looks around the hospital room. The TV is tuned to the Giants game, but the sound is turned down. The dresser is covered with flowers. She looks at them and says, “Did you see the note from Armando Rios?”
“Yes. I thought it was very nice.”
“It’s retail politics at its finest.”
“That it is.”
“Leslie sent flowers, too. It was nice of her.”
“She’s a good person.”
“Yes she is. I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
“Me, too.”
“Maybe you could ask the nurse to pass some of the flowers around to some of the other patients.”
“I will.”
She closes her eyes and then reopens them slowly. “Is Grace okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. I talked to her a little while ago. They won their second playoff game tonight. She got two hits and a walk. They’re in the finals on Wednesday.”
“Maybe Dr. Urbach will let me go watch some of the game.”
“Maybe.” Grace is staying at Sylvia’s tonight. “I’ll bring her back over in the morning.”
This elicits a smile. “I can’t wait,” she says. “Has she said anything to you about Angel?”
“Not much.” Angel is down in L.A. to do publicity for the movie. “She’s keeping busy with baseball.” I hesitate for a moment and add, “She mentioned it briefly when we were at home last night.”
Rosie perks up. “What did she say?”
“It isn’t so much what she said—it’s what she did.”
“Which was?”
“She took down all of the pictures in her room of Angel.”
Rosie gives me a troubled look and says, “Did she say why?”
“She just said it was time for a change. Evidently, Angel is no longer the hot item she was a few weeks ago.”
Rosie’s eyes turn serious. “You don’t think she knows the truth, do you?”
I reflect for a moment and say, “I don’t think so.”
“She’s very perceptive.”
Just like her mother. “She’s only ten, Rosie.”
“She watches the news every day.”
“There’s no way she could have figured it out.”
She sighs and says, “I’m not so sure about that.”
Neither am I.
Rosie tugs at the IV and asks, “Where did Tony go?”
“He took your mom home while you were sleeping. They didn’t want to wake you. He said he’d be back in the morning. He left some oranges for you.”
“Everything quiet at the market?”
“Status quo. Rios stopped by on Wednesday. Apparently, he’s been asked to help a nonprofit group obtain approvals to build a low-income housing project on the China Basin site.”
“Is he going to do it?”
“Yeah. He told Tony he might even do it for free.”
“Armando Rios is developing a conscience?”
“Not exactly. Evidently, Dominic Petrillo and Carl Ellis are putting together a competing proposal. I think Armando wants to stick it to them.”
“Perhaps he’ll do it legally this time.”
“Perhaps.”
She asks if I’ve talked to Theresa.
“Briefly. She’s holding her own. She persuaded Angel not to contest Big Dick’s will.”
“That’s good news. Where is Angel going to stay when she gets back from L.A.?”
“Theresa’s house for the time being. The Return of the Master isn’t doing very well at the box office. Angel’s acting career may be finished.”
Rosie takes another drink of water and swallows hard. “My baby niece the sociopathic murderer,” she whispers.
I take her hand but I don’t say anything. Then a young nurse comes in and says, “I’m afraid visiting hours are over, Mr. Daley.”
Rosie winks at her and says, “Just a few more minutes.” The nurse smiles and closes the door behind her. Rosie looks at me and says, “I wanted to ask you about something.”
“What’s that?”
“I got a phone call from Dean Berring over at Boalt on Tuesday.”
“Yes?”
“He said he was having trouble getting hold of you, so he asked me if I was going to accept the offer to run the death penalty clinic this fall.”
Uh-oh. “You mean he asked you if I was going to accept.”
“No, Michael. He was very explicit. He wanted to know if you had been able to persuade me to come help you run the death penalty clinic.”
Busted. “He really wants me to do it,” I tell her.
“So it seems. Does this mean you’re going to break up Fernandez and Daley?”
“No, Rosie. I’m thinking of converting Fernandez and Daley into a slightly different format—one that provides regular paychecks.”
She tilts her head and asks, “What do you have in mind?”
“I told the Dean I’d run the clinic only if I could persuade you to do it with me.”
“When were you planning to mention this to me?”
“After you got out of the hospital.”
I see the corners of her mouth turn up. “And what will happen to our firm?”
“It will remain open on a limited basis. The Dean said we can continue to take on selective cases.”
“What about Carolyn and Rolanda?”
“They’ll continue to run Fernandez and Daley from our lovely offices on First Street. They’ll probably have more work than they’ll be able to handle.”
“How do you figure?”
“The clinic will be high profile. There will be cases that we won’t be able to take on. We’ll be able to refer them to Carolyn and Rolanda.”
She closes her eyes and thinks about it for a few moments. Her expression becomes reflective. “I don’t know, Mike.”
“It might be nice to have something steady for awhile. The benefits are good. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be able to put some money away for retirement for the first time. “Besides,” I add, “if it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to hustling up cases for clients who won’t pay us.”
She chuckles. “Do we have to move to Berkeley?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I don’t. I like where we live. Grace likes her school.”
“Then we’ll stay put.”
She tugs at the tape that’s holding her IV in place. She turns to me and says, “You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it something you’d really like to do?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“The timing may be good, Rosie. We’ve been fighting other people’s battles for almost twenty years now. I’m going to be fifty next year. You need to take care of yourself. We both want to spend more time with Grace.” I take her hand and say, “I think we should take some time for ourselves. Let some eager young law students do the legwork for a few years. You can get healthy. I can coach Little League. We could take the summers off. We might get to go on a real vacation every once in awhile.” I wink at her and add, “We could go down to the Tuscany for a few days. I stayed in a really nice suite for a couple of hours last week.”
This elicits a smile. “I’d like that.” Then she turns serious and asks, “Why now?”
“I’m tired, Rosie. I was thinking about my dad when we were in Vegas. He put off his retirement for a couple of years to make some extr
a money. By the time he got around to doing it, he was already sick. I don’t want that to happen to us. I don’t want to wait too long.”
She doesn’t say anything.
I reflect for a moment and say, “There’s something else. We’ve had a pretty good run in the last couple of weeks. Angel killed her husband, and we got her off scot-free. Tony accepted a bribe and we got him off, too. Carolyn’s son may have been selling drugs, and we got him off with a slap on the wrist.”
She smiles and says, “Nice hat trick.” She adds, “We’re good lawyers, Mike.”
“I know. But we’re not that good. Angel got off because Dominic Petrillo and Carl Ellis cut a deal after they decided it was in their best financial interests to blame Big Dick’s death on his son. Tony got off because Dennis Alvarez is a good cop who put the squeeze on Armando Rios, who cut his own deal with Ellis. Ben got off because I was sleeping with a Superior Court judge who did me a huge favor when she felt guilty about breaking up with me.”
Her smile gets bigger. “What’s your point?”
“In the grand scheme of things, we did very little as lawyers that had any bearing on the outcomes.”
“We can still take credit for our successes, can’t we?”
I smile. “Of course.”
“But you’re saying we got lucky.”
“Yes.”
She gives me a long, hard look. Then she says, “You’re right. It’s contrary to my nature, but I’m prepared to admit that we caught a couple of big breaks the last few weeks. We may not get so lucky the next time. In my experience, it evens out over time.” She shrugs and says, “What does any of this have to do with your decision about whether to take the job at Boalt?”
I try to choose my words carefully. “My dad used to play blackjack. He had a system—or so he said. He tried to explain it to me once or twice, but I was never able to understand it. I couldn’t remember the cards.”
Rosie is getting tired. “So?”
“I asked him right before he died whether his system really worked.”
“And?”
“He told me the smartest guys weren’t the ones with the best card counting systems. The smartest guys were the ones who knew they were lucky when they got on a hot streak. They knew when to quit when they were ahead. For what it’s worth, I think we may have just finished our hot streak. It may be time for us to quit while we’re ahead.”
Rosie takes another sip of water. She checks the final score in the Giants’ victory and then turns off the TV. She takes my hand and says, “For what it’s worth, Michael, I think you may be right.”
There are tears welling up in the back of my eyes. “So you’ll do the clinic with me?”
“Yes.”
Yes!
“Of course,” she says, “you can’t hold me to anything I say in my current drug-induced stupor.”
“I’ll understand if you decide to reconsider in the morning.”
“And there is one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You’ll take Grace and me on that trip to the Tuscany as soon as I’m feeling better.”
“Deal.”
We sit in silence for a moment. Rosie looks out the window at the fog. She tugs at the IV and asks, “Anything else on your mind?”
“Just one thing.”
“Which is?”
How do I say this? “I’ve been thinking about us.”
“Us?”
“Yes. You and me. In fact, I’ve been getting a lot of free advice about it.”
She cocks her head and says, “So have I. What are they telling you?”
“They’re telling me that we should try to come up with some workable arrangement for our relationship.”
“Do you agree with them?”
“I do. Do you?”
She reflects for a moment and says, “I might be persuaded. What do you have in mind?”
I pull the tall vinyl hospital chair next to her bed and sit down. I take her hand and look into her eyes. Here goes. “Rosie,” I say, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking for somebody else. I love you, Rosita Carmela Fernandez, and I want to be with you.”
Her tired eyes turn sad. “We weren’t good at being married, Mike”
“I’m not saying we need to get married. Maybe someday, but not now. And I’m not even saying we need to live together. I’m kind of intrigued by the idea, but I think that may be more than we can handle.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I want us to acknowledge that we are a permanent couple. We won’t go out with other people. We’ll go to weddings, funerals and graduations together.”
She smiles. “Are you asking me if I want to go steady?”
“I’m asking you for more than that.”
I can see tears in the corners of her eyes. “So, you want me to agree to a committed, dedicated, monogamous, and otherwise permanent relationship, where we spend a lot of time together, attend public functions together and hold ourselves out to the world as a couple.”
“Right.” I give her a big smile and add, “We also get to have sex.”
The corners of her tired eyes crinkle as her face breaks out into a wide grin. “Excellent point.” She turns serious again and adds, “But we won’t move in together.”
“Not yet.”
“And we won’t get married.”
“Not right now. Maybe someday.” Maybe never.
“And we’ll keep our finances separate?”
“Absolutely.”
“And we’ll continue working together?”
“Right.”
“And you think this is really going to work out this time?”
“Given our history, I don’t know.” I take her hand and say, “It’s worth taking a chance. Last time we moved in together right away and got married in a hurry. That’s when everything went to hell. Maybe this time we should try doing things in a more orderly way. Maybe it will work out better.”
She gives me a half-grin and says, “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“What are we going to tell Grace?”
“Mommy and Daddy are back in business—in a unique way.”
Her eyes dance for an instant. Then she turns serious and says, “It isn’t exactly the type of relationship I had in mind when I was a kid. I was hoping for a prince—a knight in shining armor. I’m supposed to be a princess.”
“Sometimes, fairy tales don’t work out exactly the way you think they will.”
“That’s true. But the good guys are always supposed to live happily ever after.”
“In the real world, Rosie, this may be as close as we’ll ever get.”
She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. We look at each other for the longest time. Finally, she says, “I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
She looks at the IV. Then she looks down at her chest and says, “I’m damaged goods. It isn’t fair to you. You may have to spend the next five years taking care of me.”
What do I say? “I want to spend the next five years being with you. I want to take care of you if you need me.”
She licks her lips and takes a drink of water. Her eyes are now filled with tears. “I can’t do it, Mike. It isn’t right.”
“It isright. Love is all about being there when it counts.”
She leans back in her bed and wipes the tears from her eyes. Then she looks at me and whispers, “I could die, Mike.”
“I’m prepared to deal with that.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
She starts to lift her left hand before she realizes it’s hooked up to the IV. She puts it down and raises her right hand to my cheek. She says, “You’re a dear, sweet man, Michael Joseph Daley. And if you’ll be my permanent, dedicated, monogamous partner, then I’ll be yours.”
Yes! I swallow back my own tears and whisper, “You’re on.”
She gives me a tired smile and sa
ys, “Maybe your luck is changing.”
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