by Elle Casey
“Oh, God... Jesus, what’s that smell?” I look down at my shoes and lift one of them up. If I stepped in dog shit on my way here, I’m going to throw these goddamn shoes in the fountain and go to the meeting barefoot. I might as well. I look like I’ve been swimming in the damn thing already, thanks to this crazy person.
The girl glances over her shoulder.
A security guard is making his way through the crowd, headed in our direction.
“Screw you,” she says, shoving past me, managing to knock my coffee cup out of my hand.
“Is this water?!” I yell after her
“No, it’s sweat!” She yells back.
I roll my eyes to the sky and let my arms drop to my sides. “Fucking perfect.” So much for the sacrifice made to the fountain gods. Maybe I should have pissed in it like Jeremy said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I’M TEN MINUTES LATE TO the lawyer’s office. If I weren’t such a good client and friend of his, I’d probably get a scowl from the receptionist, but she’s professional enough to keep her opinions about me to herself.
“Sorry for being late. Film crews.” I give her what Jana calls my panty-melting smile before continuing. “Could you let Robinson know I’m here, please? I have a full day ahead of me.”
Yeah, I’m that kind of dick. Being the top plastic surgeon in Manhattan gives me a lot of leeway in other people’s offices and I’m not too proud to use it. I can’t be late to work. My life is fucked up enough as it is; I don’t need to add pissed-off celebrities and socialites to the mix.
“Sure, no problem. Please have a seat. He should be right with you.”
I pick up a magazine and look at one page before I’m rescued by my former college roommate, Robinson T. Arnold, Esquire, attorney at law.
“James, how’re things?” he asks, extending his hand.
We shake with a grip that belies our casual exteriors. I’m going to leave with a sore hand today. This is my punishment for being late, but I’m not going down without a fight.
“Great. Dandy. That’s why I’m here.” I squeeze a little harder.
He laughs, knowing all too well that my visits here are never for pleasant things. He’s not only my ex-girlfriend-extricator, he’s also my malpractice attorney. Not that I ever make mistakes — knock wood — but there are some patients who will threaten to sue when they don’t wake up after a facelift surgery looking like Julia Roberts in her twenties. I’m damn good at what I do, but I’m no miracle worker, even if some might like to call me that.
“Come on back. I have forty-five minutes for you.”
“That’s probably perfect.”
“I’m charging you time and a half.”
“Try it and next time you come in for dermabrasion, I’ll give you a nose job and make it bigger than it already is.”
He laughs. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your will to live over this breakup.”
I cough out something that sounds like a pig snort. “Not likely.”
We enter his office and he shuts the door behind him. As I’m about to sit, he puts his hand on my shoulder. “You okay? Really?”
I nod, my voice going lower. “Yeah, I’m fine. This has been a long time coming.”
“Don’t I know it.” He moves around his desk to take the comfortably worn leather chair on the other side. “Thank God, too, man. I was starting to think we were going to have to stage an intervention.”
“Was it that obvious?”
He picks up a pen and starts wiggling it in his fingers. “Yeah. And it was bad. Was she as much a bitch in the bedroom as she was everywhere else?”
A flash of memory overtakes me, her yelling to bring down the walls. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I don’t like to fuck and tell, even around guys who are as close to me as brothers, so I keep my comments to that.
He grabs a legal pad from a wood tray on the corner of his desk and drops it in front of him. “Okay, so tell me what we’re looking at. What assets do you hold jointly?”
I think about it for a second and then shake my head. “Nothing, really. I bought her the BMW, but I put it in her name. The condo’s in my name entirely. She didn’t officially live there, but a lot of her clothes are still there.”
“She kept her place in Soho?”
“Yeah.”
“Excellent.” He wipes his forehead and then scribbles some things down. “I thought this was going to be a nightmare.”
“I do listen to some of the things you tell me.”
He laughs. “Since when?”
“Since I paid that huge settlement out to my last secretary.”
He stops writing for a minute and grimaces. “Yeah, that wasn’t pretty, was it?”
“No. Not pretty at all.”
I used to think of myself as worldly. Sophisticated. Street-smart. That opinion changed after I got conned by a cute girl with a devious plan. Never again will I trust a woman when she comes at me with wide eyes and a sob story.
I lean forward and try to interpret his writing. Impossible. “Anyone ever tell you that you should have been a doctor?”
“Yeah. My mother. But I’m not that stupid.” He winks at me and then writes some more things down.
“What are you putting on there?”
“It’s my grocery list,” he says without hesitating.
“Asshole.” I chuckle and let out a long sigh as I sit back. Although all his diplomas say he’s an attorney at law, he is a doctor of sorts, more psychologist than anything else. I already feel better just being here in his office.
He stops, puts down his pen, and holds up the pad, reading through what he wrote. “Okay, so you want to give her a call and tell her she can keep the car, the clothes, and the jewelry, but she needs to vacate by the 15th?
“That’s a week from now.”
“Yeah, so? You want to give her more time?”
“Hell no. I was thinking less.”
“Be reasonable. She’s going to need time to bitch about you with her girlfriends, maybe trash your car, show up at your office drunk. It’s a process.”
I shake my head and stare at the ceiling. I sincerely hope he’s wrong about all that but something tells me he won’t be.
“Fine.”
An uncomfortable feeling settles into my chest. I sit up straighter and try to get comfortable again, but it’s impossible.
“What? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. Something I said triggered something. Was it the clothes?”
“No.”
“Car?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“Jewelry?”
I try to say no, but the word won’t come out. My face gets hot.
“What the fuck, man. Just tell me. I’m your friend.”
“I bought her a ring.” I have a hangnail on my thumb and right now, it gets all my attention.
“A ring? What kind of ring?”
“Diamond.”
“You want it back?”
My head shoots up and the hangnail is forgotten. “Hell no.”
“Then it’s no big deal. I’ll put it on the list of things she can keep.” He lifts up his pen.
“No!” I say much too loudly.
“So you do want it back?”
I drop my forehead into my hand. “This is so fucked up.”
His chair squeaks as he leans back really far in it. I look up to see him folding his hands across his belly, as if he has one there to hold them up. Maybe one day he’ll look like his father, but today, he looks like the athlete he was in college with a washboard stomach and shoulders the world could rest on.
“Talk to me, Goose. Tell me what’s going on with the ring.”
I grab the arms of the chair and hold them to keep from punching anything. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“You have thirty minutes. Use it all if you need to. Remember …,” he smiles, “…time and a half.”
“Dick.”
His sm
ile disappears from his mouth but I still see it in his eyes.
“Fine. I bought her this ring…”
“How big?”
“Big.”
“How big?”
“Seven carats.”
His sharp intake of breath tells me all I need to know about how stupid I am.
“Anyway, I bought it for her because she was always bitching that I couldn’t make that commitment.”
“You showed her.”
“Fuck off, Robinson, seriously.”
He holds up a hand. “Okay, all right, I’m sorry. Continue.”
“So I bought the ring and then after I went to a bar.”
“Smart move.”
“I had a drink or two and was working up the courage to go see her.”
Robinson tips his chair forward. “Yeah?”
“And then just as I was about to leave, my brother calls.”
“Jeremy? What’s he got to do with the ring?”
“He doesn’t. Well, he does. But … just shut up and let me tell the story.”
He makes a motion like he’s zipping his lips.
“So Jeremy calls and he’s wasted off his ass, as usual, but he’s crying and apologizing.”
“What’d he do?”
“He didn’t do anything. It’s what Hillary did.”
Robinson leans toward me with his forearms on the desk. “Oh no.”
“Oh, yeah. Jeremy tells me Hillary made a move on him. Touched his dick.”
“Fuck me.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Did he? Did he … go through with it, I mean?”
“Hell no, he didn’t go through with it.”
Robinson’s eyebrow goes up.
“Listen, man, you and I both know under normal circumstances she might have been able to make that happen, but not with Jeremy. Not now. Anytime he looks at another woman, all he sees is Laura.”
Robinson’s gaze drops to his desk and he nods knowingly. “Yeah. Right. Fuck.”
“So I get the hell out of the bar and go driving around looking for him. I find him in our dad’s old brownstone. He’s lying on the floor, wasted out of his mind.”
“Poor asshole.”
“I have to drag him down the stairs and out to the cab. And then halfway to my place, he opens the door and jumps out!” I’m getting amped up just telling the story. My stupid fucking brother. He could have died that night and it would’ve been my fault. I remind myself to punch him really hard the next time I see him. Sober or not, he’s going to get nailed.
“He jumped out? Holy shit.” Robinson’s half serious, half laughing.
“It’s not funny, man. He could have died that night.”
“What a dick.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me.”
“So what happened next?”
“He starts talking about Laura’s fountain.” I pause at his confused expression. “You know, the one outside the Apple store.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Anyway, he and Laura used to go there a lot or whatever. He said he had to go there.”
“He didn’t get in, did he?”
“No. But this is where the ring comes in.”
Robinson frowns. “I don’t follow.”
“He’s feeling like shit because of what Hillary did on top of what happened to Laura, and that fucking ring was in my pocket. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed it to be gone from my life. It was a big fucking mistake.”
“Don’t tell me…”
I nod. “Yeah. I gave it to Jeremy and he chucked it into the fountain.”
“Tell me you went in and got it.”
I shake my head. “Nope. Left it there. And good riddance, too. That thing is seriously bad luck.”
“And that bad luck charm cost you how much?”
“About four hundred large. I got a discount.”
Robinson runs his hand through his hair. First he’s shaking his head and then he’s laughing.
“It’s not that funny.”
“Yeah, dude. It is that funny.” He has his eyes squeezed closed as he continues to laugh. His shoulders are quaking with his mirth.
“Fuck you.”
He makes efforts to control himself and look professional, only partially pulling it off.
“Okay, so is that the end of the story?” he asks.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What does this have to do with Hillary?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “What if she finds out I bought it? Will she insist I give it to her?”
Robinson waves his hand in front of his face. “Meh, doesn’t matter. She has no claim to it. Engagement rings are conditional on a marriage actually taking place. No marriage, no ring. It’s a special kind of contract in the eyes of the law.”
He pushes his pad and pen to the corner of his desk. “So how do you want to play this? You want to give her a call or you want me to do the dirty work?”
“I’ll call her.”
Robinson pushes the phone over to me. “Go for it. Our lines are recorded. Tell her that before you start talking.”
“This is going to piss her off.”
“Good point. Before you call her, call your doorman and tell him to cut her off.”
“Already did that.”
“Good man.” He gestures to the phone and sits back.
Chapter Thirty-Three
FINDING PARKING NEAR MY SISTER’S place is usually no picnic, but I opt to leave the cabs behind and drive over there in my own car anyway.
A parking space on the street opens up two blocks from her place and I take it, feeling like a lucky man. Maybe the dark cloud over my head is finally going to dissipate. The growl of my Porsche Carrera GT always puts me in a good mood.
The odor of garlic overwhelms me as I walk in the front door. “Smells good!” I yell toward the kitchen. Glancing at the stairs, I see a trail of clothing that starts at the bottom and goes all the way to the top. Almost every step has some item of baby paraphernalia on it.
“Come on back to the kitchen!” my sister yells. “You can rescue Cassie from her seat!”
Long strides have me there in two seconds, but I soon realize there’s no need to panic. Cassie’s in a pumpkin seat on the kitchen table, wrapped up like a baby burrito and strapped in like she’s about to go on a space launch. My sister is stirring sauce at the stove.
For a split second I see Laura standing there at the stove and not Jana, and it chokes me up. This house had been Jeremy’s haven for the year he’d been remodeling it with his new wife, a place we all liked to gather for Sunday dinners, even when there was construction debris everywhere. Now that it’s finished, it’s a place he can’t stand to be in. He hasn’t been here since the memorial three months ago, and when he was here for that, he was so wasted, I’m sure he doesn’t remember a thing. Jana took over the place when she realized Jeremy’s small apartment held too many bad memories for them all to be there. The last fixtures were installed last week by guys I hired to finish the job.
Cassie has that slightly absent, distracted look of a three-month-old. I pick her pliable body up out of the seat and rest her against my chest, mindful of her still floppy head. The thicker blanket that surrounded her falls away, and I catch it before it hits the floor and throw it over the back of a chair. The two of us walk over to Jana, and I kiss the back of her head. “What’s up, sis? What’s for dinner?”
“Nothing fancy. Spaghetti and meatballs.”
“My favorite. Has Cassie eaten yet?”
Jana laughs. “When hasn’t she eaten? She’s a piglet. Every two hours she’s ordering up again.”
I pull the baby away from my chest and hold her in the crook of my arm. “Are you being bossy again?” I ask her. “Who said you could be the boss, huh? You’re supposed to let your Auntie Jana be the boss.”
“That’ll be the day,” Jana says, but she doesn’t sound mad about it.
There’s this giant elephant in the ro
om that neither of us ever acknowledges, and it’s staring me down right now. I’m antsy to get it out in the open, exorcised out of our lives like I did with Hilary’s presence in my life today at the lawyer’s office.
Jana moved in here the day after Laura died, ostensibly to help Jeremy transition into full-time single-parenthood. Now, three months later, she’s the only adult who lives here, and Jeremy is conspicuously absent. He’s no more capable of caring for a baby than he is himself, and we all know it, but the situation is seriously fucked up. Something needs to be done. That’s why I suggested this dinner. It’s time to clean out the closets. I dealt with Hilary today, and we need to deal with Jeremy tonight.
“Should I set the table?” I ask.
“Have at it.” Jana opens up the oven, and I turn away, making sure none of the heat hits little Cassie.
“Sooo, heard from Jeremy?” I ask casually.
“No, of course not. Have you?”
“Yeah, kind of. I found him the other night as you know.”
“Thanks for texting me, by the way. I was worried.”
“You’re welcome. I had him with me that night, but he took off before I woke up the next morning. I don’t know where he is now.”
“We’re not supposed to know where he is.”
I hesitate while putting forks down. “What’s that mean?”
“It means, he’s hiding from us. From everyone. From everything. From life.” She stirs the sauce in rhythm with her sorrow. “Life without Laura isn’t worth living.”
“But he has Cassie.” I stare down into her tiny face.
“Cassie is a reminder of Laura, and he can’t deal with that. I don’t agree with it, but it’s not my place to tell him how to feel.”
I nod. She’s right. It sucks, but she’s right. I’ve never had to manage pain like my brother is trying to right now. I pray I’ll never be in his situation.
“What are we going to do?” I ask quietly.
Jana sighs heavily. “With what?”
She and I both know what I’m talking about, but this conversation is even more difficult than the things we had to deal with after Laura’s death, like her funeral and inheritance issues.
“With Cassie,” I explain. “We need to make things more official. More permanent. I talked to my lawyer today.”
