Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘Which one gets to keep all of her damages?’

  ‘Carla.’

  ‘Why Carla? She seems to be none too fond of you. I would have guessed one of the others.’

  ‘A good lawyer doesn’t guess.’

  ‘I never said I was a good lawyer. I’m just the one you’ve got here on the other side of this table.’

  ‘Look, don’t undersell yourself, Maserov,’ said Betga. ‘You’re only a Second Year, you were scheduled for execution and yet somehow, against Hamilton’s wishes, you’ve bought yourself time and a certain security from within the very jaws of the lion. That’s not too shabby. Anyone who can do all that from a position of absolutely no power gets my respect.’

  ‘Thank you, Betga,’ said Maserov. ‘Which reminds me, what the hell did Hamilton do to screw you? You were the guy most likely to go places.’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything but first let’s settle these cases. I’ve got four very deserving women as clients. Now, starting with Carla —’

  ‘Okay then, back to Carla. Why aren’t you also getting a cut from Carla, assuming she could be prevailed upon to settle?’ Betga sat there looking at Maserov like he was trying to decide whether or not to answer his question.

  ‘Would you like another beer?’ Betga asked solicitously.

  ‘You’re trying to get me drunk so I’ll negotiate at a disadvantage,’ objected Maserov.

  ‘But you are still sober now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Okay, let me ask you this and please use all your currently accessible neurons. Don’t hold back.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Maserov, do you have any authority to settle any of these cases right here, right now in this bar?’

  ‘None,’ answered Maserov.

  ‘So how would it benefit me to compromise your negotiating capacity even further than you yourself have compromised it so far this evening?’

  Maserov pondered the question. ‘I’m not sufficiently sober to answer that to my own current satisfaction. Perhaps you’re trying to distract me from my last question. You’re charging your clients fees and getting a cut of any settlement but only from three of them. Why aren’t you also getting a cut from Carla, assuming she settles?’

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you.’

  ‘Why not? You just told me I had your respect.’

  ‘Do you have your wife’s respect?’

  ‘Not anymore. What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing, I was checking your cognitive agility. You passed.’

  ‘You’re stalling,’ pressed Maserov.

  ‘Now you passed with honours,’ confirmed Betga. ‘You want to play on for the car?’

  VIII

  ‘Come on,’ Maserov persisted, ‘what’s different about Carla? Why are you treating her differently?’

  After a deep breath and a passing glance at the ceiling Betga told him. ‘Three reasons, I guess. But with respect, why should this apparent distinction in my financial relationships with various clients be any of your business?’

  ‘I don’t know, let’s say curiosity. Three reasons; what are they?’ asked Maserov, ploughing on undeterred.

  ‘Okay, first of all, I’m in love with her.’

  ‘You’re in love with her?’ Maserov repeated unbelievingly.

  ‘I know, it’s a disappointingly conventional answer.’

  ‘You’re in love with her?’

  ‘I love her romantically, platonically, diatonically, catatonically, domestically, if I had a more substantial line of credit I’d love her internationally, and perhaps most distractingly of all, I love her carnally. Don’t get me started, Maserov. I’m not proud of it. I feel compromised by these emotions, all this caring, all this longing. It’s an unusual sensation for me and, to be candid, quite out of character. Love gets in the way of things and ultimately makes you unhappier than you were when you weren’t in love.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, however slowly. You’re thinking, “If this Betga, such a charming, erudite and handsome man, is in love with Carla, why does she insist on not having anything to do with him?”’

  ‘It’s a good question,’ offered Maserov.

  ‘It’s yours,’ said Betga without missing a beat. ‘I met Carla while working on a Torrent Industries file when I was still at Freely Savage. I asked her out to lunch, then for a drink, we talked on the phone a lot, initially legitimately, and one thing led to another. And then another thing led to the one thing. And before either of us knew it, we were in exactly the kind of committed exclusive romantic relationship so unrelentingly celebrated by popular culture.’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until she discovered it wasn’t exclusive. I mean, it was emotionally.’

  ‘Not sexually?’

  ‘No, a distinction she wasn’t prepared to recognise let alone accept.’

  ‘How could you fuck it up if you love her so much?’

  ‘Listen, Maserov, many people enjoy being judgmental. But it could have happened even to you. After Hamilton got rid of me I went to a legal recruitment agency.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I slept with the legal recruitment agent. It’s a tight job market.’

  ‘And now Carla doesn’t want to have anything to do with you,’ Maserov added.

  ‘Although she’s remained my client.’

  ‘So you’re in love with her; that’s one reason you’re treating her differently to the others.’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I would have said so but you mentioned three reasons. What are the other two?’

  ‘Okay, the second reason? Read her affidavit, her case is different to the others. I can’t talk about it now. It makes me too upset, too angry. Read her affidavit.’

  ‘I have read hers. I’m embarrassed that I haven’t yet read all the affidavits.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Betga, stretching. ‘You probably should be.’

  ‘What’s the third reason?’

  ‘You went to her house, you saw her and the maladroit policeman, right?’

  ‘The older guy who lives with her, yeah.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t live with her. He’d like to live with her.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw them and their little girl.’

  ‘It’s not his little girl. Her name’s Marietta.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw them and Carla’s little girl. Marietta?’

  ‘Well, reason number three: Marietta is my daughter. She’s my little girl too.’

  ‘You do have a problem.’

  ‘Even more than you know. Marietta is my daughter but Carla disputes this. She won’t let me see her.’

  ‘Who does Carla claim is the father?’

  ‘She’s not saying, or at least, not to me.’

  ‘But you want to be in Marietta’s life?’

  ‘Of course I want to be in her life. I want to reconcile with Carla and be my daughter’s father. Don’t you want to be in your children’s lives?’

  ‘More than I am currently, yes.’

  Betga looked over at Maserov, his new friend. ‘You are reasonable, aren’t you . . . for a desperate man. You want my clients to settle?’

  ‘I think they should.’

  ‘Okay, Maserov, here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ll try to convince them it’s in their best interests to settle. But first you’ve got to get Eleanor to make a play date for your kids with Carla and Marietta. You go with her and you get an ice-cream stick or a lollipop or something and you give it to Marietta to suck on. Then, when Carla’s not looking, you take the item with my daughter’s saliva on it and hide it in a ziploc bag. You give it to me and I prove my paternity.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Eleanor will never agree to come.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, first, they’ve only just met and under awkward, artificially contrived circumstances
. She didn’t come willingly, let me assure you. And even if she comes,’ Maserov continued, ‘she won’t want to get involved in your family disputes and she definitely won’t want to trick Carla like that.’

  ‘Are you really saying she won’t want to help reunite a little girl with her father?’

  ‘You’re really the father?’

  ‘I most certainly am. Have a look at her. She looks like me. And she’s got that certain Betga style. You can’t fake that. Besides, I’m almost certain Carla hasn’t been with anybody since she found out I’d been unfaithful.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘Long story but the legal recruitment agent told her . . . over the phone. You get me some DNA for a paternity test and I’ll do what I can to have my clients settle posthaste . . . quickly even. So will you try to pitch it to her?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Maserov, not quite believing what he was agreeing to. ‘Wait a second!’ he continued hopefully after considering this for a moment. ‘I don’t need to do this. You can get a court order to compel Carla to allow a paternity test.’

  ‘No,’ coughed Betga, shaking his head, ‘No, no, no. I can’t do that. A court order would only infuriate her even more. We need your wife.’

  ‘To trick the woman you love, mother of your daughter.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Maserov glumly.

  ‘That’s the Maserov I’ve come to know these last two drunken evenings! Oh, there’s one other thing. Even if we’re able to get this done, I’ll also require a face-to-face with Malcolm Torrent.’

  ‘What?’ said Maserov, astounded.

  ‘I want to meet with Malcolm Torrent.’

  ‘Why, what do you want to say to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t figured that out yet. But I’m definitely going to need to talk to him.’

  part four

  I

  He thought a few glasses of wine once the children had gone to bed could perhaps improve his chances of getting Eleanor to help him. In a state bordering on delusional hope, one from which he would inexorably lurch after a short time to a kind of numb fatalism, Maserov walked himself through a list of the tasks confronting him.

  Tonight’s strategy, one born of desperation, was to pour Eleanor a glass of wine and then begin the kitchen-cleaning ritual by going down on his knees and vigorously scouring the floor under the kitchen table with damp paper towels.

  ‘You want me to what?’ Eleanor’s disbelief was palpable.

  Maserov had asked her to help him get a swab of Carla Monterosso’s infant daughter’s saliva for the purpose of proving that A.A. Betga was the little girl’s father.

  ‘I know it sounds appalling —’

  ‘It’s child molestation. It’s a violation of the person,’ interrupted Eleanor.

  ‘Yeah, sure, I agree it looks like that but it’s actually a highly moral thing to be doing,’ Maserov countered from the floor underneath the kitchen table. ‘We’d be reuniting a little girl with her father.’

  ‘You want me to trick Carla into enabling you to get a paternity test done to determine whether the lawyer representing the victim can have all the rights of a father to her infant daughter. Establishing his paternity has become some kind of bargaining chip. It’s wrong and I’m not going to do it. How do you expect her to trust you?’

  ‘I don’t expect her to trust me. I expect her to trust her own lawyer.’

  ‘Yeah, but he started sleeping with her and then screwed around behind her back.’

  ‘He wasn’t merely sleeping with her, they were in a committed relationship.’

  ‘That makes it worse, don’t you see that? She was committed to him and he was committed to his own immediate gratification.’

  ‘He slipped up, I’ll grant you, and he’s desperately sorry. He wants to be a father to her daughter, his daughter.’

  ‘He says she’s his daughter,’ countered Eleanor.

  ‘Yes, but isn’t that better than getting Carla pregnant and then denying paternity? That would make him a deadbeat dad. But this, wanting to be in both their lives, it’s kind of noble.’

  ‘Noble! You’re good.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And did you say he wants to be in both their lives?’ Eleanor asked, sipping the pinot grigio he’d poured her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he wants to reconcile with Carla as well as be a father to Marietta?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maserov, sensing that he was making some headway. ‘And he only slipped up once,’ he went on, which he recognised was counter-productive when the amount of blood flowing to Eleanor’s face increased perceptibly.

  ‘How many times is it acceptable to cheat on your partner?’

  ‘None,’ Maserov shot back. ‘No times.’

  ‘Right,’ snapped Eleanor.

  ‘I’m just saying, as wrong as once is, surely once is much better than many times.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘Listen.’ Maserov was not giving up. ‘Let me take you through a few propositions and you tell me if you agree with them or not.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Every child deserves the opportunity to have a relationship with his or her father.’

  At this Eleanor looked up at him and he could see that this was really perhaps the only point worth making, that this was what made getting a paternity test right.

  ‘Agreed,’ Eleanor responded reluctantly.

  ‘So don’t see it as doing a favour for Betga but rather as giving a little girl another chance to have her father in her life.’ Maserov could see that Eleanor momentarily looked at him with the tenderness she used to bestow on him before he’d embarked on a legal career.

  ‘But why do we have to deceive her, to go around there with the pretext of a play date for the children and slip an ice-cream stick in her daughter’s mouth when she’s not looking? It feels so dishonest. Why can’t we just tell her the truth?’

  ‘It’s just that if she knows in advance that you want to talk about Betga’s putative paternity of Marietta she may not agree to the play date.’

  ‘You realise you’re pimping out your children now? You do realise that?’

  ‘Do you realise,’ Maserov countered, ‘that you’re scanning, ransacking your mind for reasons to not help me?’

  ‘Why do you need your wife and children to prop up your career?’

  ‘Eleanor, can we separate this . . . this suggested course of action, which is admittedly for my career but also for the house, the mortgage, for our family, from —’

  ‘Now he talks about the good of the family,’ she said to an invisible audience. ‘I’m bringing up two kids on my own while you swan around the city in a suit with all those other corporate lawyers.’

  ‘I don’t swan, I flap, I flounder. I’m just trying to stay employed. It’s not just for me, it’s for all of us. And as for helping out more with the kids, you kicked me out!’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ she said, almost with pride. ‘You never thought I’d actually go through with it. You thought I was too scared to live without you, didn’t have the guts.’

  ‘Not because you didn’t have the guts but because when your transient discontent with this or that subsided you’d realise that we love each other, that we’re good together —’

  ‘We were never together . . . well, not for years.’

  ‘— that it’s good for the kids. I’m a good father.’

  ‘You are a good father,’ she conceded.

  ‘Maybe Betga would be a good father.’

  That made her stop and think. ‘Okay, I’ll call Carla and see if I can set up a play date.’

  ‘Great, it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘But I’m not going to take any ice-cream sticks or plastic bags. I’m going to tell her the truth.’

  ‘You’ve got to do whatever you’re comfortable doing,’ he said, knowing this was the best he could do.

 
‘I think she liked me. I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got a time and date.’

  ‘She definitely responded to you . . . I could see that.’

  ‘I simply chose to be honest. And I’m going to be honest with her again.’

  ‘Yep. Sure. Go with your instincts,’ Maserov agreed. ‘But don’t tell her why you’re there until you’re inside and she’s closed the door.’

  II

  ‘Fuck off, Maserov.’

  That was the way Maserov had expected a very high proportion of the subjects to respond and that would have been the first response to the questions that HR had mandated he put to his colleagues had he approached anyone but the closest thing he had to a friend at Freely Savage.

  Emery gazed up at Maserov with a look that was equal parts relief – because a non-threatening person who somewhat understood him was about to engage with and possibly even converse with him inside the building – and disbelief, tinged with the preter-rational fear that Maserov, who he thought had been killed by Hamilton, was now shuffling back onto this mortal coil forty-eight flights up, against very the laws of nature.

  ‘It’s okay,’ whispered Maserov, crouching beside Emery’s black plastic waste-paper basket. ‘I’m meant to be here talking to you. In fact, I’ve been told to.’

  ‘Been told to?’ Emery whispered fearfully. ‘Are you firing me?’

  ‘What? No, of course not! How can I be firing you? I’m a Second Year, like you,’ Maserov reminded him. But Emery’s vulnerability was ready for that.

  ‘Maybe they sent you, an advance guard sort of thing . . . I don’t know how it happens. You can’t know. A Fourth Year got walked out last week. Nobody knows . . . except them,’ Emery replied. Just imagining the trauma of getting fired was more than he could cope with.

  ‘Emery, that doesn’t make any sense at all.’

  ‘No but . . . you said they’re culling Second Years.’

  ‘They are but they’re not going to get me to do it. How does that make sense?’

  ‘I don’t know. How can you be here? That doesn’t make any sense either. How can you still be here? Hamilton’s out to get you. You know that,’ Emery replied. ‘Aren’t you on secondment to Torrent Industries anymore?’