Unfit to Practice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Paul backed out.

  “I don’t know why, but lately it seems like she’s involved in every case I defend. I think she’s taking it personally.” Nina consulted her watch. “I’m exactly four hours into my day. I had to take a witness apart and it was damned unpleasant. Jeff Riesner was opposing counsel. I had to sit passively through his nasty cross of my client. Then Officer Scholl gave me a push and a warning. A morning like this makes me wonder why I do it.”

  “Hello to you, too, Beautiful,” Paul said.

  She exhaled the breath she had been holding and all the poisons of the courtroom went with it. She smiled, shook her head, said, “Sorry.”

  The man deserved her full attention. Ah, how she adored him. Tall and blond and hers at the moment, Paul van Wagoner worked for her as an investigator now and then. She had spent the past several weeks at his home in Carmel playing house, making love, and jumping ocean waves with him. Now they were back to their real lives, his in Carmel and hers in Tahoe, and, although the geographical separations hurt, Nina felt more tightly bound to him every day.

  Using his left hand, he pulled out of the lot. His right arm circled her, pulling her close to him.

  Taking in the fresh smell of his leather jacket, she kissed his cheek, letting the physical tensions of the morning slip away in his comforting presence. “The farther we get from the courthouse, the better.”

  “Good. Let’s go all the way out to the Y and eat at Passaretti’s. You have time?”

  “Kevin Cruz’s hearing was adjourned for the day. We start up again tomorrow.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Besides what you’d expect in a full-scale custody battle?” She paused, reviewing the morning, which chugged through her mind in a blur of questions, answers, and lightning judgments. “Riesner’s odd lately.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “I really don’t know. Just more at me than ever.”

  “Family-law cases are the worst,” Paul said. “Give me a good old corporate dispute, partners gouging out eyes, stabbing each other in the back, but, hey, it’s just business. Next week they’ll be toasting the next great joint venture.” He turned left onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard.

  “Anyway, it’s over until tomorrow and I’m going to put it out of my mind. And concentrate on you.”

  “I like that,” Paul said. He ran a finger down her cheek. “Love me right and I’ll love you right back.”

  She kissed him again. “It’s so great when you’re here. I wish you could stay forever.”

  “Come live with me in Carmel. You know that’s what I want.”

  He popped that out as casually as popping a beer. It was the ongoing struggle between them. How could they possibly create something strong and permanent living 250 miles apart?

  “I know.”

  “Luck was with me this morning,” Paul said. “I got the two witness declarations you wanted signed. Wish you had been able to drive Highway 89 with me up to Tahoe City. Whitecaps starting up, the sky that sensational transparent blue that you only see when it’s swept clean and a storm’s blowing in. Fall announcing its imminent arrival. The file’s in the backseat.”

  Nina disentangled herself and twisted back, retrieved the file, and set it on the floor in front of her. Otherwise she’d never remember it. Curling herself against Paul again, she said, “I hate it that you have to leave.”

  “Job’s over,” Paul said. “I’ve got an office in Carmel crying for my attention. You could always come down again this weekend.”

  This reminder that he led a life complete and separate from her gave her a pang. The nights without him were hard. She missed the rise and fall of his chest, the rhythm of his breath. “You know I want to, but I’ve got an office in Tahoe crying for my attention too, and Bob needs new shoes and the house is a wreck.” They drove along the lake under a lowering sky. Wind flattened the water way out and threw up ruffled whitewater closer in. One last sailboat tacked into the Keys harbor, the sail taut and the two people inside pulling hard at the ropes, their yellow life jackets bright in the half-light.

  “We better get you on the road fast,” Nina said. “You should just drop me at the office.”

  “No way will I miss lunch with you. It’s too early in the year for snow. What’s a little rain?”

  “You’ve seen the mountain rainstorms,” Nina added. But she didn’t really want him to leave so she didn’t ask again. While they ate at Passaretti’s, the light rain turned into a downpour. By the time Paul kissed her good-bye in the parking lot of the Starlake Building, the skies were delivering a four-star one-for-the-books drenchfest.

  Inside, she barely had time to fold up her umbrella and prop it in the corner of her office before the afternoon steamrolled her. Her assistant, Sandy Whitefeather, was in and out on errands, leaving Nina mostly on her own to answer the phone and handle emergencies. Two old personal-injury clients soaked up time without resolving anything. An interpreter slowed down a complicated phone call to the Vangs about a settlement offer in their insurance case.

  Then, to cap off an already crowded afternoon, sisters named Brandy and Angel told her a harrowing story about witnessing something on a camping trip that had ended with a suspicious death the next site over.

  She took notes, thought fast, kept her eyes on the tasks at hand, tried to keep track of everything. Between the phones and the thirteen other cases that needed attention in the interstices of the main appointments, she drank her bottled water and hung in there. She let the rough morning go and decided she had had a good day because Paul was in it.

  Outside, dark came early and water flowed down the street. The lights flickered once or twice. Inside, Nina kept right on trying to fix people’s problems and bring order back into the chaos that afflicted them. She thought once or twice about the Cruz custody case. Paul was right. Custody disputes between two more or less competent parents who both loved their kids were the most painful cases for the lawyer as well as the parents, because no just solution existed. You couldn’t saw the kids in half. They had to spend most of their time somewhere.

  She felt bad for Lisa Cruz, for what she had done to her.

  When the last client had left and she was finally alone, she washed most of the hardened crud off the coffeepot, turned out the lights, packed her briefcase, and slung her purse onto her shoulder. Umbrella in hand, she headed down the hall not feeling anything at all except the desire to get home. She made it only a few steps at a normal pace from the office door before immense raindrops, ballooned into drunken saturation, reduced her hair to string and her boots to sodden. A gust of wind turned her umbrella inside out.

  Abandoning all dignity, she ran for protection. She threw open the Bronco’s door with such force that it seemed for a second it might break off. Safely inside, she tossed her briefcase and broken umbrella to the floor of the backseat and waited. The sky could only dump so much water. For a few minutes, she watched heavy branches ripping and scattering like twigs in the force of the storm. Freshets of water cascaded down Highway 50. Cars pulled over to the side, wipers going like mad, as the street became a brook, a river, a lake.

  She let the drumming on the roof occupy her consciousness. Bob had probably made it home from school by now, and Sandy should be safe at home. Paul would be over Echo Summit and down in the Sacramento Valley by now. The briefcase on the backseat floor held her most pressing client files, the ones she would take to bed with her to read and consider.

  Sharp pellets struck the roof. Hail. People on the streets scurried for cover like mice escaping a marauding cat. “Just ducky,” she muttered as the streetlights blinked out all at once. Across the street, the neon flicked off on the Mexican restaurant’s sign.

  The whole town went dark, and this time the lights didn’t come back.

  A mountain town without power isn’t a town at all, but an animal hideout under the trees, like a deer nest or bear cave. They saw it all the time up here, the facade of civilization casu
ally torn away by snow, wind, storms, not to mention the raw human emotions uncovered after losing everything at the all-too-civilized casinos on the Nevada side of town. Scylla and Charybdis, and humanity reduced to headlights in the din.

  Now what? She gave it another minute, pulling for civilization, but nature had the town firmly in hand. No lights, rain lashing the windshield. She fumbled for her car keys, which were supposed to be clipped with a metal carabiner to her purse strap, but they weren’t there. She must have dropped them somewhere. She clicked on the overhead lights, which ran on the battery, and looked through her keys on the ring. House key and office key, check, mystery key, check, Bob’s spare bike-lock key, yep, but no car key.

  She hadn’t seen the doggone key since she’d parked at the office at eight that morning. Sandy had dropped her off at the courthouse and Paul had picked her up.

  She should go back into the building and look for the key, a very daunting thought right now, but she was already half out the door again when she remembered that she had an old plastic key in her wallet, which the auto association had sent her for use in an emergency.

  The fan on the heater at home wouldn’t work without electricity. Bob would be making a fire and enjoying the process entirely too much. She should hurry before he burned the cabin down.

  She would find the key tomorrow. Tonight she couldn’t go back in there. She fished out the plastic key and turned it in the ignition, hoping the flimsy white plastic wouldn’t break.

  The Bronco started up with a mighty roar.

  She crept down Pioneer Trail in four-wheel drive, sending up fin-shaped, watery plumes and jouncing over the forest trash. A few stalled cars surprised her in the middle of the road, one with the driver’s-side door hanging wide open, its driver too concerned about getting home to care about water damage.

  A branch from the sugar pine next to the porch sprawled across her downsloping driveway. She crunched over it, ran up the steps to the wooden porch, and unlocked the front door, noticing a pair of mountain bikes pushed together under the eaves. Two bikes, not one.

  In the entryway, stripping off her boots and socks, she could see just a corner of the orange Swedish fireplace, and all she could think about was dinner.

  A muffled commotion in the living room and scrabbling paws over the wood floors gave her warning of Hitchcock just before the big black dog rushed her. “You’re supposed to hear me before I come in the house, you silly animal.” She kissed the dog’s head and pulled gently on his ears. “Bob!”

  In the living room, the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the backyard was inky-no one had pulled the curtains-and the wood stove was cold. She groped for the lights, and when that didn’t work, she reached above the refrigerator for matches and lit the big candle on the coffee table.

  “Right here,” Bob said from the couch a few feet away. In the flickering light, another tangle of jeans and hair emerged next to him. Nina recognized Nikki, Bob’s bandmate, three years older and three centuries wiser, she of the sly brown eyes. Nina knew Nikki well, well enough to distrust her. An ex-client, sixteen years old, she had the anarchy-of-spirit thing down pat. Nina did not like her sitting there on the couch, feigning innocence, or the skinny hand clasping Bob’s.

  “Hi,” Nikki said, then, as if cued, disengaged her hand from Bob’s. She picked up a can of cola and drank deeply. Bob watched her drink.

  To cover a spasm of alarm, Nina turned her back on them, went to the fridge, and uncorked the half bottle of Clos du Bois, forcing herself to pour a glass instead of taking the swig she so fervently desired at that moment.

  “We were trying to do homework, but the lights went out,” Bob said.

  “I see,” Nina said. She took two sips and two deep breaths, walked back into the living room, and drew the curtains shut. While Bob and Nikki sat primly on the couch, she crumpled newspapers, tossed them on the grate, and dug out some kindling from the basket.

  “I’ll do that, Mom,” Bob offered. He got up.

  “Good idea. Nikki, there are more candles in the kitchen above the dryer. Would you mind getting a few? It’s still too dark to see.” And unwelcoming, to say the least, she thought.

  “Cold, too,” said Bob, who had apparently not previously noticed. He took the poker from Nina, jabbing the burning sticks in the wood stove. Nina sat down on the carpet, held her glass, and waited for the fire to flare up and send warmth her way. The sleeves of her blouse were wet, her very soul was wet, but she was damned if she was going to go into her bedroom to change and leave these two alone.

  Nikki’s bony knee came and went through a gaping hole in her jeans as she set candles around the room. The forlorn face and familiar defiant, ready-for-rejection expression inspired Nina’s pity, exasperation, and righteous motherly fear.

  “We were just going to practice a new song I wrote,” Nikki said. “I brought my guitar. It was all very structured. But you can’t play without electricity.”

  “Uh huh,” said Nina.

  “Well. I’m outta here,” Nikki said, heading for the door, reading Nina’s mind. “Have a good night.”

  “It’s pouring out there. Does your mother-?” Nina started.

  “I left a note, but she’s not home anyway.” Nikki found her parka on the floor. With the hood pulled tight around her face, she looked like an orphan boy.

  Bob said, “I’ll ride you home.” He got up.

  “Not necessary,” Nikki said.

  “Back in half an hour,” Bob told Nina.

  “I can take care of myself,” Nikki said.

  “Don’t be stupid. When are you gonna get a good offer like that again?”

  “Then I’m stupid.”

  “Wait. I’ll drive you,” Nina said.

  “No. It’s not that far. Stay here and enjoy your supper.”

  Nina almost invited Nikki to supper right then, she looked so much like a starving hound dog who hasn’t eaten for a week, but there were limits. She wanted Nikki to go home, Nikki was heading out the door, and Nina wasn’t going to stop her.

  “Later,” Nikki said, strapping her guitar on her back. She flipped a hand at Bob and went out the door.

  Bob went to the window and looked out. “We should have made her stay,” he said.

  “Haven’t you got homework? You’re not supposed to-to-”

  “To what?”

  “Never mind. Do me a favor, honey. Just let me sit here for a second and drink my glass of wine in peace.”

  Bob shrugged, went into the kitchen, and came out with a turkey sandwich and a Gatorade. “Supper is served,” he said, then went into his room and shut the door, not too loudly.

  On an ordinary night, at this point in the course of events, she would cook, then tackle the files she had brought home, but the fire continued to burn, Bob had his sandwich, and the rocking-chair pillow lured her with its softness. She sat down to stare into the orange and red, listening to the whine and howl of wind outside. The briefcase was in her car. She was in no mood to stuff her warm feet into stone-cold boots and throw a coat on so that she could fight her way back through the damp, freezing night. She could allow herself to spend an hour this Thursday evening dozing here, stroking her dog.

  She yawned and flashed to a memory of Bob as a toddler. They were still living on the Monterey Peninsula, where she worked as a law clerk during the day and studied law at night. His preschool teacher called her in the middle of a meeting. “Bobby won’t lie down for naps,” she said. “We’ve tried everything, Ms. Reilly, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come and get him and take him home. He’s a disruptive influence on the other chil-dren.”

  She hadn’t known what to do with him then, and she didn’t know what to do with him now. But for now he was safe and warm, and she didn’t have to worry.

  She woke from a doze and checked her watch. Already nine o’clock! Down the hall, holding a candle like a Victorian to light her way, she opened the door and saw Bob retired safely under his covers, flashlight glowing,
his French textbook open beside him.

  Hungry, she made herself a grilled-cheese sandwich and poured herself another glass of wine, telling herself that up to twelve ounces actually helps your heart. Scanning the newspaper by the last of the firelight, she yawned again and pushed it into the brown recycling bag in the kitchen. A hundred small tasks in that room drew some spotty attention. She wiped, closed cupboards, listed groceries needed. It was late and too dark to work, but she still should go get her papers out of the truck.

  The kitchen lights crackled and died again. She hunted in the cabinets for the big flashlight for a long time, even exploring the dreaded laundry area. Giving up, she felt her way upstairs and down the hallway. Once in her own room, she tossed her clothes on the floor and climbed into bed, pulling the comforter up to her neck. Her files would be safe enough in the Bronco until morning.

  But they weren’t.

  Routines. The first slap of cold water on the face, the scalding-hot shower. The lick and promise of lotion over rough spots on her feet; the peppermint of toothpaste. Bob rummaging for cereal, the clink of his spoon as he ate. The radio flipping from pop to talk and back again.

  Friday morning rushed along, the storm over, the world outside steaming and sparkling, Bob late, Hitchcock barking for a walk before she had shaken off her nighttime coma and having to settle for a trip into the backyard, eggs needing to be cooked. The power had been restored and a multichrome rainbow of sunlight drenched the kitchen.

  She loved the part where she walked out the door in the morning, loved the blowing leaves, the smell of wood smoke, and heart-piercing mountains all around. Another day awaited, full of large frustrations and small triumphs and more fresh coffee, if she was lucky. Her office was her second home, and Sandy and Sandy’s son, Wish, were her second family. Her heart felt full; she felt sharp and cool; her son was ready for school; she had a full day ahead.

  But that morning when she went out to the driveway all dressed up in navy blue for morning court she stopped cold in her tracks. Two long seconds of unreality struck before she could collect herself and make sense out of what greeted her.