Breach Of Promise

by Perri O’Shaughnessy

  “Everything’s in his name,” Lindy said, wavering in her control. “The apartment in Manhattan, the house in St. Tropez. The only thing I have is my car, which is a Jaguar-very extravagant, leather interior, two phones…” She blushed faintly. “My biggest indulgence. Then there’s this worthless mining claim my father left me, and my personal bank account, where I put my salary checks-my fun money-”

  “Ah. You’re paid a salary?”

  “Well-up to today I was. Seventy-five thousand a year. Mike took the same amount for himself. Our accountants said we were employees of the corporation.”

  “Have you lived together all this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “No separations?”

  “No. Mike has always been a good man. Faithful. And I’ve been loyal to him. We love each other. We promised to stand by each other through thick and thin in the eyes of God. And we did. This Rachel thing… it’s so unlike him.”

  “You obviously know her.”

  “Rachel Pembroke. She’s our vice president in charge of financial services. She’s been sucking up to him for months but it didn’t scare me because Mike and I were so tight. This has to be just a crush. Male menopause, like the women’s magazines call it.” Lindy studied Nina’s desk, concentrating hard. “I have to get him back. He’s like bread to me. Like air.”

  “Yes,” said Nina.

  “I don’t like to analyze things too much. My way of dealing with problems is to act. I can’t just sit on my hands and do nothing. That’s why I need to talk to Mike, Nina. Then he’ll come back.”

  “I hope so,” Nina said. “But have you considered the possibility that he won’t come back? That it’s over between you?”

  “I’m considering that now.”

  “How much do you reckon your companies are worth, Lindy? Do you have any idea?”

  “Depends on who you ask. At our last audit, not quite two hundred fifty million dollars for everything, lock, stock, and barrel,” Lindy said. “Mike would say more like one hundred with equipment wear and tear, depreciation, all that jazz figured in.” Coming from her mouth, the amount sounded as prosaic as pudding.

  Nina sat back in her chair. “That’s… a lot of money.”

  “It’s not like there are piles of it lying around. Mike calls it the lifeblood of our business. We don’t personally get to spend it. Well, not usually. So tell me. What do you think? Will you be my lawyer?”

  “Let’s get to that in a minute. There’s something I should tell you first. Mr. Riesner, your husband’s attorney, normally is a litigator-his business is to try cases. If your husband has retained him, I think we have to consider the possibility that you and Mike might not reconcile-that this might be the opening salvo of a divorce case. At least I can tell you that we will handle whatever comes. California’s law is very clear-all property obtained in the manner you’ve described, during your marriage is as much yours as his, even if he’s splashed his name all over everything.”

  “No!” Lindy said. “This can’t happen. No litigation. I just need to see him…”

  “Well, let’s take it step by step. You want to talk to Mike. I’ll call Mr. Riesner and try to set up a meeting. There’s a hearing on this eviction notice set for November first, about two weeks from now. No reason Mike should live there instead of you, is there? It’s half yours, no matter what the deed says. It’s community property. As far as the termination and your removal from the board, I think it’s probably illegal, since you’re actually a half owner in the company. I can’t understand why you let him do that, put everything in his name.”

  “He just… he was so touchy about it. We’re a unit, Nina. You see? What difference did it make?”

  “Not much. Since you were married and the law protects you.”

  Lindy leaned over the desk and stared at Nina with red-streaked eyes.

  Nina thought, she has to understand somewhere behind those weary eyes that he is never coming back. But there are things I can do to help her get through all this. I can handle her legal problems. It’s a major divorce, and they’ll put up a fight, but when it is over, she’ll be a very wealthy woman worth millions of dollars. A mountain of millions.

  For once, a big, easy case, Riesner notwithstanding. Some good hard work, some hand-holding, a great big fee. An enormous fee, a lawyer’s coin in the fountain. Nina observed in herself a feeling she did not welcome, the first faint stirrings of greed.

  While she berated herself silently, Lindy spoke.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” Nina asked.

  “I’m telling you that Mike’s a good man. A decent man. He promised me we’d always share everything. He just never wanted to-I never could get him to-”

  Riding high on her excitement, Nina felt ready to handle anything. “To what?”

  “What I’m trying to tell you is…” She paused, her mouth open. She closed it, swallowed and tried again. “Mike and I never got married.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Or a telephone receiver, when Sandy, eavesdropping in the outer office, dropped hers. Or a big, easy case dropping right off the winnable spectrum.

  3

  “EXCUSE ME FOR JUST A MOMENT,” NINA SAID TO Lindy. She slipped her shoes on under the desk, pushed her chair back, and walked out the door, past Sandy, who was watching her quizzically, and down the hall to the women’s rest room.

  “Why, oh, why?” she asked the rest room mirror, which maintained a prudent silence.

  Nina threw cold water on her face and dried off with a paper towel. While running the rough paper over her cheeks, she started laughing. For just a nanosecond there in the office, before Lindy had spoken those crushing last words, Nina had thought she was going to have her first deep-pocket client, the kind that can actually afford experts and exhibits, investigators and appeals. And attorney fees. She had been mentally rubbing her hands together thinking of the fees like a greedy old Scrooge.

  Instead of deep pockets, she now appeared to be talking to a black-hole client, a cast-off girlfriend who had squandered her rights years before.

  “Palimony,” she told her reflection. Her reflection grimaced. Her cheeks were burning, and her long, fluffy brown hair had expanded and now threatened to take over the room. She wet her hands and tried to smooth it down.

  As usual, the man had been careful and the woman had been in love. Lindy wasn’t going to have any proof of an agreement to share everything, just a lot of memories of sweet pillow talk over the years. Palimony cases were poison and every family lawyer knew it. She had handled a palimony appeal herself while still doing appellate work in San Francisco three years before, and she had lost.

  The more she thought about it, standing there at the sink trying to squeeze her hair down, the madder she felt. Lindy didn’t yet understand that she had been given a swift kick in the pants and a bounce out the door. She was still talking about how she loved the guy! But how could she possibly understand what was coming?

  Mike Markov and Jeff Riesner would crush her, then condescend to a paltry agreement to pension her off if she promised to be a good girl and shut up. If she was lucky, she would end up with enough money to join those other middle-aged women who filled the casinos and tennis clubs, unable to find fruitful employment, shell-shocked survivors who had lost twenty years of work experience as well as the relationship.

  She was angry at Lindy for being such an idiot, and at herself for not asking right away about the date of marriage.

  The worst thing about the whole situation was Riesner. She couldn’t take the case now, even with all the other problems, because she couldn’t take on Riesner and the team he would assemble without at least a fifty-fifty chance. He was too smart and too pit-bull ferocious. She wouldn’t have the resources or the law on her side. She would lose. She would be humiliated. This would be his chance to drive her law practice right into the ground.

  Admit it, Nina, she told herself, you’re afraid of him and you don’t want to go up against him unle
ss you’re pretty sure you can beat him. He’s too mean.

  The other lawyers in town feared him, too. Lindy wouldn’t find a champion at Tahoe; no one would want to take on Riesner. The only lawyer he never fazed was Collier Hallowell, a deputy DA in town, who had referred to Riesner as their “resident dickhead,” she remembered. And even if Collier had not taken a leave of absence, as a prosecutor he would be useless to Lindy in this case.

  Giving up on the unruly brown mop that blew in all directions around her head, Nina washed her hands, then pumped lotion from a dispenser and rubbed it in. It was so damn discouraging to see another good woman go down, though. Damn discouraging.

  She went back down the hall trying to harden her heart. Lindy, sitting where she had left her, looked a little better. What had Nina been saying before she left? Oh, yes. Something along the lines of, you’re well protected, no problemo. Nina fell back into her chair. “Why didn’t you get married?” she asked.

  “He had one nasty divorce already. That made him reluctant. He said we were married in every way that counts.”

  “And you?”

  “I wanted to marry him, and we did go through a ceremony in a church at the beginning, just privately, without any papers or anything…” Her eyes teared up. “But remember, Mike and I met in the seventies. Plenty of girls my age were not getting married. And my own divorce had been painful. At one point years ago, we came very close to getting married. Mike seemed ready. Then he was called out of town for two weeks. When he came back, he started making excuses.

  “As time passed, I think the iron wasn’t hot enough. There was no urgent reason to get married. And he told me a million times that we shared everything, work, home, love. We had nothing to gain from making it legal.”

  “You mentioned a ceremony?”

  “We just kneeled in a church together, and promised to love and cherish each other forever. To share our lives.”

  “No priest or pastor?”

  “No.”

  “But you have the same last name.”

  “I started using the name Markov within a few months of moving in with Mike. We were trying to start the business in Texas and dealing with all these bankers. Everyone thought we were… you know. People still do.”

  “Did he introduce you to other people as his wife?”

  “Of course he does. I am his wife.”

  “Lindy. Listen closely. This is important.”

  “I’m listening.” Lindy’s fingers tightened on the desk.

  “Forget what I said before. Your situation is a very difficult one.”

  “He’s not himself at the moment. He’s acting crazy. This will all blow over,” Lindy said.

  “Listen to me. Mike’s left you. He’s fired you, and he’s about to throw you out of your home. Do you honestly think it’s going to blow over?”

  “He won’t do that. He can’t.”

  “I think he can,” Nina said. “Unless you have a letter, a contract, something in writing, or some very credible witnesses who will swear that Mike told you half of everything was yours.” She waited, crossing her fingers mentally.

  In vain. Lindy coughed, then adjusted herself in the chair, looking troubled. “I don’t have anything like that. But he always called me his wife. We were married in the eyes of-”

  “Not in the eyes of the State of California. California doesn’t recognize common-law marriages. You have to go through the process and get a marriage certificate.”

  Something must have penetrated the fog of Lindy’s denial. Every jittery line of her body registered alarm. “Do you mean-could I really lose everything?”

  “The burden would be on you to prove that you and Mike had such an agreement. It’s difficult, because there’s a presumption that the assets in his name are his property.”

  “But Mike wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “I imagine he’ll offer you something,” Nina said. “What we have here is often called a palimony case, though you won’t find that word in any statute. It’s not unusual in this country for a woman to live with a man without being married, and it isn’t even so unusual anymore for her to go after some assets after termination of the relationship.

  “But I can think of a long list of people who have sued the rich and famous and come out of the litigation feeling like Titanic survivors, only poorer. In general, they lose. I happen to have done some work on a similar case a while back and I still remember some of the defendants in other cases.” She named a few of the many that came immediately to mind: Lee Marvin, Rod Stewart, Merv Griffin, Martina Navratilova, Clint Eastwood, William Hurt, Joan Collins, Bob Dylan, Alfred Bloomingdale and Van Cliburn. “Jerry Garcia’s estate was sued after he died.”

  “Do they always lose?”

  “Not directly. Most cases end up settling out of court, being dropped, or lost on appeal,” said Nina. “The problem is that often the case boils down to her word against his, and that’s not enough to meet the burden of proof.”

  “I’ve slept with him all these years! I was his wife in every way. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “I hate to sound so blunt, but an agreement to provide money in return for sexual services is not compensable. A relationship like that is called a meretricious relationship.”

  “But he promised we would share everything. He promised he would marry me someday. I always operated based on that idea. It’s a breach of promise!”

  “Actually, if you sue Mike, you can’t sue for breach of promise.”

  “But that’s exactly what he did. He made promises and broke them.”

  “Unfortunately, California doesn’t permit a lawsuit to be based on a breach of promise of the type you’re talking about,” Nina said. The last series of questions and answers between her and Lindy had been rapid-fire, as Lindy’s distress grew more intense.

  “I don’t believe any of this is happening,” Lindy said. “We have always been so close. To quote John Lennon, which he used to do all the time, ’I am he.’ We’re practically one person. Anything that separates us is temporary,” she said stubbornly.

  “What you need to look at,” Nina said gently, “is what is happening right now. You may be right about Mike. People do change their minds. Meanwhile, you have to decide what you want to do, if anything.”

  “I can’t just sit back. If that means I have to fight him, I will,” she said. “I’ll fight for what’s right.” She looked at Nina. “There’s something else I should probably tell you. When I got in to work this morning, one of my friends there took me aside just long enough to tell me he suspects Mike’s moving company assets. I didn’t believe him, but if you’re right about him preparing for a lawsuit…”

  “That’s more evidence that he probably is.”

  Lindy seemed to make a decision. “Listen. I’ve got some money. I want you to get going on this. Get an associate. Get whatever you need.” She took a checkbook out of her pocket. “How’s a hundred grand as a retainer? I know you’ll need more as you hire people. Write up an agreement with a schedule of payments, and I’ll sign it.”

  Nina examined the check. A hundred thousand dollars. So much money. “Lindy, I…”

  “Please, Nina. To tell you the truth, I don’t think this thing will go very far before he comes back to me. He needs me. Once he comes to his senses, he’ll remember that. But I can’t sit back and let his momentary insanity ruin my life. It’s not right for him to take everything. It’s not right for me to have to beg for crumbs. And remember, this is not just about me. I’ll bet there are a lot of women in this boat.”

  “I’m sorry, Lindy,” Nina said as gently as she could. “But this kind of case costs a fortune. And unfortunately, you can’t use your old business accounts.” She handed the check back.

  Lindy’s face turned gray. She couldn’t just throw her checkbook at Nina and get what she wanted. Everything in her life had changed in an instant.

  “Where will you find that kind of money?” Nina asked.

&nb
sp; “Hold on,” Lindy said, pulling out another checkbook. “I have about twenty thousand in my personal account. Take that.”

  “I can’t do that. You’ll need it to live on.”

  “Please.”

  “I have to do some research,” Nina said, “and some thinking before I can give you a decision.” She couldn’t take the case, but Lindy needed some time to adjust herself to her new situation. “I realize you have to respond to these papers right away. I’ll call you tonight or at latest tomorrow morning.” She stood up, averting her eyes.

  Lindy sat there, as deflated as the red party balloons back on the boat must be now. “Okay. If you have to,” she said. Reluctant to end an argument she had not entirely won, she took a long time to gather her things and leave. Sandy, who had been hovering at the door, showed her out.

  Then Sandy came into Nina’s office and sat down in the chair just vacated by Lindy, turning two dark pebble eyes on Nina, her broad face smooth and unwrinkled as Truckee River rock. Today, her single long braid of black hair was laced with a strip of leather. In the outer office the phone rang but she gave no sign of hearing it.

  “Well?” she said. “Good party? Does she have some work for us?”

  “I knew that party was a mistake,” Nina said. “And don’t pretend you weren’t listening.”

  A minute stiffening of Sandy’s shoulders signaled Nina that she had guessed correctly. “I missed a lot, although I caught the shattering climax,” Sandy said. “What happens now? You can’t exactly divorce a man you never married.”

  “Eight letters,” said Nina. “Starts with a p.”

  “Paranoia?”

  “You’re good. But let’s hope not.”

  “Hmmm. Give me a minute.”

  “I’ve got court at ten. I’ve got to get going.”

  “I’ve got it,” she announced as Nina put her hand on the doorknob. “Paramour. She takes a lover and shows him what he’s missing.”

  “Well, not exactly what I had in mind, but that’s a possibility.”