Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  With that I backed into my office, hoping Miguel would follow and Angus would stay behind, but both dutifully followed me.

  “Sit,” I said, and waved my arms in a general sweep of my office. “Let’s get acquainted first. Please, tell me about yourself.”

  I looked right at Miguel, but Angus started talking.

  “I wash sailboats for a living, but mostly I fight phosphate. I was born in Mulberry, near Bartow, and I’ve seen what those phosphate mines do to a community, to the land, the water.”

  “You wash sailboats for a living?” I said, roughly translating that into the fact that he’d never be able to pay my hourly rate.

  “Not much money in it, but the work’s steady, and nobody asks my politics.”

  Yeah, okay, you can’t pay me and I don’t want to date you. “So,” I said, and turned my face and whole body toward Miguel, beaming my best smile at him. “And you?”

  “My mother is Cuban, my father is a Seminole Indian, and I’ve lived all my life in Florida. We lived in the Everglades until the sugar people drove us out. Now my folks live in Chokoloskee and I move around, setting up shop where I’m needed.”

  “Uh-huh.” It’s hard to be articulate when you’re resisting the urge to pounce on somebody.

  “Tell her what you do for a living,” Angus the ignored said.

  “Yes, oh, yes,” I said and hoped it would be something that didn’t involve a lot of women but did actually earn money.

  “I’m a certified Rolfer.”

  “A what?”

  “He’s like a fancy masseuse.”

  “It’s a bit more complex than that, but I’d be glad to explain it to you. In detail. But another time.” Miguel smiled at me and my heart leaped up.

  “Date,” I said. “I mean, deal.”

  “Let’s talk about this lawsuit,” Angus the not to be ignored said. “The media wouldn’t give us the time of day. I mean, they were dumping enough toxic gyp waste on those groves to turn it into a Superfund site, and then thinking it was all right for folks to eat those oranges. And you think the newspapers would run a story? Hell no.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  “And another thing, all this was a year and a half, almost two years ago. So far as we could tell, they weren’t dumping the gyp out there this year.”

  Nodding, I scribbled a note to check the statute of limitations for fruit-libel lawsuits. “We’ll need to schedule an appointment to discuss the merits of your case next week. This is just our introductory meeting, to make sure we want to formally enter an attorney-client relationship.”

  “So, okay, why would we want to hire you?” Angus asked.

  Thus queried, I went through my standard introduction to litigation and what a lawyer does and why I was a great lawyer and why they should hire me to defend them. I figured the fact that neither could pay my standard hourly fee pretty much balanced out the fact that I didn’t know jack about defending First Amendment, fruit-defamation cases, and so I didn’t mention my lack of expertise on the subject matter of their particular lawsuit. When I was done with my spiel, they both nodded.

  “Olivia recommended you, and that’s good enough for me,” Miguel said.

  Angus grunted.

  “Fine, I’ll have Bonita draft a retainer agreement, and I’ll file a notice of appearance for both of you first thing Monday, and we’ll spend some time going over the facts early next week, then I’ll file an answer on your behalf.”

  “So, you are officially our attorney now, right?” Miguel asked.

  “Yes. You can tell me all your secrets now and I’m ethically bound to keep them.” I held my breath so I wouldn’t pant.

  “Cool,” Angus said.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Miguel said, and stood up.

  The word touch hung in the air until I saw little flames around it, and I nodded, and watched them walk out of my office, concentrating on the way Miguel’s butt muscles moved in his worn jeans.

  Oh, boy, I thought.

  But before I could work myself up too much further, Bonita and Olivia bounded into my office.

  “You will take their case, right,” Olivia said, and I registered the fact that she hadn’t said it as a question. Besides being my friend, Olivia’s status as the wife of Fred O’Leary, as in Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, pretty much guaranteed I’d take on anyone she wanted me to defend. A barely mid-tier partner like me knows to jump when a Smith or an O’Leary says to, and wives counted the same as the actual partner. Stanley, as in Ashton Stanley the maniac, partner number three, was still in California, where I’d last heard from him when he called from a hot tub he was sharing with a starlet, and the power vacuum created by his extended leave had pretty much been filled by Smith and O’Leary themselves.

  “So, yes, of course,” I said.

  Olivia gave me a little hug, and said to come and visit anytime, and she left.

  Bonita gave me that what-have-you-done-now look, and I beamed. “Olivia the rainmaker,” I said, though I generally prefer clients with large trust funds or liability policies that will pay my standard fees. “You know the drill. Let’s do the notices of appearances for Monday filing.”

  “He’s not your type,” Bonita said. She has a tendency to mother me, this, no doubt, is an overflow of her maternal instincts not fully exhausted by her five kids.

  “Part Cuban, part Seminole, and totally gorgeous,” I said. “Why is he not my type?”

  Bonita sighed, and went back to her computer.

  Okay, okay, as it turned out, she was totally right about that, but a man like Miguel makes one look past common sense.

  Chapter 4

  Oh, great, now what?

  Jimmie Rodgers was parked in a dilapidated Oldsmobile, waiting for me, in my driveway, in front of my own house, blocking my way inside my own carport.

  Being that it was now officially late, i.e., past quitting time at Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, I wanted to go inside my home and be quiet. Not that I had earned that right, per se, given the lagging last hours I’d put in after Miguel and Angus left. No, I’d spent what was left of the afternoon doing billable work that didn’t require me to actually think—laypeople would be amazed by how much of lawyers’ work meets this definition.

  By dark, I’d charted enough hours on my time sheet to rival the firm’s average daily billings, and so I had sprinted out the door after a good-bye-good-weekend-call-me-if-any-of-your-kids-do-anything-that-needs-a-lawyer to Bonita, and driven home to my modest little Florida ranch in Southgate.

  Where Jimmie was waiting for me.

  I parked behind Jimmie’s ratty vehicle, and got out of my own just as he pushed himself out of his front seat and into open air. Before Jimmie or I could speak, my neighbor, the Hall Monitor of the Universe, opened her front door and came out, with Bearess, my former rottweiler, beside her.

  “I was about to call the police on that car,” Dolly shouted. “Do you know this man?”

  “I do. Thank you. We’re fine,” I said, and waved, hoping to head her off.

  But no, of course not. Dolly was not to be headed off. Now that Dolly was officially my grandmother-by-proxy, we spent way more time than necessary chatting about my shortcomings, and having an old car with a strange man in it in my driveway would count as a transgression against good neighborliness. This from a woman who had stolen the affections of my own dog. She and Bearess ambled over toward us. Bearess woofed, jumped on me, and licked my chin, like she was saying, you know, no hard feelings, and then dashed back to sit beside her new momma.

  Dolly squinted at Jimmie. “You sure you know him?”

  “Yes, Dolly, I’m sure. I know him.”

  “Jimmie Rodgers,” Jimmie said, and stuck out his hand. Bearess, never known for her guard-dog talents, licked his hand as it passed under her nose. Dolly squinted at him again.

  “Yes, that’s right, I remember you. You spent a summer fixing her porch after that storm. You left trash on the front lawn.”

 
“Dolly Gorman, this is Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie, this is Dolly.”

  Now, I wanted everybody to go home and leave me alone, but I stood a moment waiting to see who would leave first.

  Dolly shot a last hostile glare at Jimmie and his car, and said, “Well, dear, call me if you need me. Oh, and Bearess is about out of that food from that health food store that you feed her.”

  Despite the fact that Bearess had moved in with Dolly, I still had to buy her food, take her to the vet, and pay for her expenses. All this because Dolly’s official stance was that she just baby-sat for Bearess while I was gone, and I was gone most of the time, so Bearess was still officially my dog, she just didn’t live with me anymore, and I was lucky Dolly didn’t charge me for dog-sitting. Bearess woofed good-bye at me and bounced off with Dolly.

  When they were gone, Jimmie looked at me and grinned. “I’s wondering if I might borrow your second bath and take me a shower?”

  “Why can’t you shower at your place?”

  “Ah, I got me some plumbing problems. Serious plumbing problems. Gonna take me a while to get it all fixed up.”

  Okay, that explained his less than daisy freshness earlier. “So, you’re the home handyman, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, and I’m fixing to fix it, but right now I needs a shower. Can I use yours or not?”

  “Of course. Come on in. You can shower,” I said, though I wanted Jimmie in my guest bathroom about as much as I wanted him to bring me another used poetry book full of gosh-knows-what germs and viruses. But it didn’t seem nice to send him out smelly in the world on a weekend. In other words, I didn’t see any other option—other than coldheartedness—and no way could I be coldhearted to Jimmie. But after his shower, I was going to run him off as fast as I could.

  Which I did, but not before he promised to return first thing in the morning and cut my grass.

  But the next morning, when Jimmie banged on my front door and wanted to know if I had any bacon, coldheartedness didn’t look so bad. Especially since my own beloved, Philip Cohen, the criminal-defense-attorney genius who had once rendered me nearly mute by touching the inside of my arm while talking in his Dean Martin voice, was sitting across the table from me when Jimmie barged into the kitchen. Philip, who had arrived before Jimmie had, came bearing gifts of organic, stone-ground, whole wheat muffins, organic fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a dozen red roses, lust on his agenda. He had been just about to remind me of why I was considering marrying him when Jimmie rang the doorbell.

  Having barged into my kitchen, Jimmie glared at Philip, then grinned and stuck out his hand. “I knows you. You got me out a the jail that time I’s in for driving drunk. The second time. Jimmie, Jimmie Rodgers. Good to see you.”

  Like this was his house, like Philip was his guest.

  “Lady, I’ll cook it myself, if you got any bacon,” Jimmie said, turning his attentions back to me. “Them plumbing problems done spread to my kitchen, and I can’t cook nothing right now.”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” I said, eyeing Philip, who, being Mr. Manners, had naturally stood up and taken Jimmie’s hand, and was waiting for Jimmie and me to shut up so he could speak.

  “Philip Cohen,” he said, and gestured toward a chair. “Join us?”

  “Thank you, thank you. I jes’ might at that,” Jimmie said, edging toward a chair, then veering off toward my French press. “That coffee?”

  “Help yourself,” I said, but Jimmie was already getting a cup from my cupboard.

  Jimmie poured, sipped, made a loud, “Ahh,” and then turned back to me. “You loan me the money and I’ll go and get us some bacon. It’d be real nice with those muffins.”

  “I’m a vegetarian. Vegetarians don’t eat bacon. Bacon is a dead pig with carcinogenic chemicals added for flavorings and I don’t eat dead pigs.”

  “And I’m Jewish and we don’t consume pork either,” Philip added.

  “Well, okay, but if you ask me, bacon don’t offend God. Why you think they’s about forty different kind a it for sale over to the Publix?” Jimmie sat down and took a muffin, slathered enough butter on it for an entire pound cake, and ate it—without a plate and dribbling crumbs everywhere.

  To my relief, Philip let the theological debate pass and sat back down, cast me a quizzical but not totally unfriendly look, and picked up another muffin.

  “At least get a plate,” I said to Jimmie as he splattered another round of crumbs on the table.

  “Two different drunk drivings, and I ain’t spent but six days in jail on any of ’em. But I durn learnt my lesson. Ain’t been driving while drinking in ages. Don’t want to hurt nobody,” Jimmie said as he helped himself to a plate from my cupboard, and returned to his muffin. “Maybe some ham? I gotta have meat with my breakfast.”

  “I’ll give you the money to go to a drive-through, and you can get some breakfast.” Normally I wouldn’t contribute to the delinquency of dead-pig eating, but I wanted Jimmie to be gone so Philip could continue with his post-breakfast seduction.

  “Aw, I reckon this is awright. Good company, anyways. Did I tell you, Lady, that this here man got me out of jail on my second driving while drunk?”

  Yeah, coldheartedness was looking better and better.

  “I finished a trial late yesterday evening,” Philip said. “Too late and too tired to entertain Lilly last night, but I was hoping to spend some quality time with her this morning. Before we both have to go into the office.” Philip looked at me with his bedroom eyes, and then he and I both looked at Jimmie with our “get out of here” eyes.

  “Y’all got to go to the office today? It’s Saturday.” Jimmie buttered still another muffin. For a skinny man, he sure could eat.

  I sighed. If I’d only had enough sense not to have let Jimmie inside the door this morning, Philip would be just about to make me forget the good-looking Cuban who had caught my fancy yesterday. Instead, I found myself daydreaming about Miguel while Jimmie prattled on.

  After the coffee, the juice, and all but two of the muffins were gone, Jimmie said to me, “I’d offer to clean up the kitchen, but I knows how you get about that. So, I’ll get started on cutting the grass.”

  I bowed to the inevitable, but not before scrubbing down the kitchen—nobody, not even the meticulous Philip, cleans a kitchen good enough for me. But letting Jimmie cut the grass for me was okay. I’d tried that once and couldn’t get the lawn mower to start and figured that was a cosmic message that I needed to always make enough money to hire a lawn man. And since Benicio, Bonita’s sixteen-year-old son and my official yardman and unofficial godson, had gotten a driver’s license and discovered girls, he didn’t have much interest in cutting my grass. So, Jimmie was it, I figured, for my new yardman.

  Once Jimmie was straight on money for gas, and had a key to my house, I made him promise not to cut his foot off, or not to sue me if he did. Then, as the early morning and the romantic moment had passed, Philip walked me to my car.

  With what I took for a bemused smile, Philip asked, “Why is your yardman so personal with you?”

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I mean Jimmie and the interruption. I’ve known him for ages. He can talk the ears off a mule, but he’s a nice man, and my client, and he reminds me of my granddad. His bathroom is busted and he showered here last night, and, I guess he figured breakfast came with the hot water.”

  Philip leaned over and gave me a casual kiss on the cheek. “You are so sweet.”

  I jerked back my head from his lips. “I am not.” You can’t be sweet and be a tough-minded, tough-hearted Big-time Trial Lawyer at the same time.

  “Lillian, it’s not an insult.”

  I hated it when he called me Lillian. I hated that look on his face—the one that bordered on patronizing.

  “We’ll make up for it later,” Philip said, in that sensual, silky voice that used to literally make me weak in the knees. He ran a finger down my arm. But instead of the tingle that trailing touch used to give me, I suddenly wondered how M
iguel would have acted if Jimmie had interrupted his planned breakfast-and-bed routine. I bet I would have been happily bedded despite Jimmie. By the time I came out of that fantasy, I realized that Philip had moved on to new topics.

  “Why don’t you spend tonight with me? I’ll come over around six, we can go out for dinner, and then retire to my house.”

  I made a noncommittal noise.

  “We should definitely start planning the wedding tonight. I think we should consider a neutral spot to avoid any religious issues,” Philip said. “Perhaps Selby Gardens.”

  The word wedding made the muffins in my stomach pitch and swirl like I was on the downhill swing of a really high roller coaster. If that wasn’t bad enough, something like PMS times ten came over me. “You think maybe we should wait to plan the wedding until I’ve actually said yes?”

  “Lilly, we’ve talked about this.” Philip stopped using his sexy voice. He was using his Philip-in-charge voice. Which, I might add, did nothing to alleviate that PMS-times-ten feeling that was now reverberating behind my eyes in a sickening pulse.

  All the man had to do was say wedding and a baby migraine started.

  Not a good sign.

  When I didn’t speak, Philip said, “It’s time to stop being coy.”

  “I’m not being coy, I’m being indecisive.”

  “Lillian, you’ve just got bridal jitters. You’ll get over it.” With that, Philip opened my car door for me.

  But instead of getting in the car and driving away, I said, “Bud, don’t patronize me.”

  “Then, please, make up your mind and tell me tonight. And do not call me ‘bud.’ I’m not one of your good old boys. Shall I call for you at six?” This in a tone of pure patronizing. I mean, did this man even know me?

  “Don’t you dare come over here at six. I’m not going to be here, and if I am, I’m not going out with you.” With that I got into my car, slammed the door, and started the engine. Through my tinted window, I could see him standing there, looking a tad dazed and definitely befuddled, as I gunned my ancient Honda and sped away.