The Bluffing Game

by Verona Vale

  The cab waited for me at the street, and I got in. I told the driver where to go, sipped my coffee, and felt again that cloud of familiar guilt inside me. It took a second of leaning back with my eyes closed, letting my mind settle, before the dead memories floated to the surface. The midnight flights. One of the things Nick and I had not agreed on when we’d been together before. Not a deal-breaker, but a stressor for certain, and one he’d be starkly reminded of when he woke up. The guilt hurt, but I also knew that such a test on our new trial togetherness might as well come sooner rather than later. If he couldn’t deal, it was best to know now, before we got in too deep.

  I shook my head at my rationalizing, my defensiveness. I was already building a wall to protect myself from the argument I knew this would lead to. Maybe instead I simply needed to apologize, admit that maybe I could do this less often, and actually arrange things to make that happen—we’d said we would both have to work on ourselves, after all. This was as much a test of my dedication as his. The way we both responded was the key, not the way one of us responded.

  I let that notion glide around on the wind of my tired thoughts. It was a good place to switch over and let my subconscious work on the matter, and focus my conscious attention instead on preparing for what lay ahead of me at the island. That was one thing you could be sure of whenever something was drop-everything urgent: it was never good news.

  ~

  When I sat down in the seat of Sterling’s chartered jet, literally the only passenger, I reclined it and tried to get some sleep. I couldn’t, and finally I texted Andrea back and asked for some details.

  She wrote back promptly. “Hearing date moved up. Tomorrow.”

  That settled it. This was going to be a sleepless night henceforth. I asked the flight attendant for another cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and got up from the recliner and went to one of the desk seats. It was like my own miniature version of Air Force One: truly excessive, and yet precisely what I needed to do the best job I could—a private, indulgently furnished office with a private, staffed kitchen and an open phone line to my client everywhere I could turn.

  I drafted a statement for the hearing as best I could on as little sleep as I’d gotten, and from there my thoughts turned to my next conversation with Sterling, and how I would reassure him that the situation had improved, not worsened. Midway through this line of thought, I put my coffee on the desk, and leaned back in exhaustion.

  I woke what must have been several hours later, and found the attendant had put a blanket on me, taken away my cold coffee, and chosen a place to stand nearby like a member of the Royal Guard in some European monarchy, ready to provide whatever I needed upon my awakening.

  Out the window, a green tropical coastline slid past under the pre-dawn light, the air silent but for the steady drone of the plane’s engines. A few more minutes would bring sunrise.

  “How long until we land?” I asked the attendant.

  “About forty minutes. You can get breakfast for another half hour.”

  I felt like I’d just eaten, so deep and invisible had been my sleep, but these were likely to be the last quiet minutes of the day.

  “All right, what’s on the menu?”

  After a sumptuous breakfast eaten while looking out at the sunrise, we landed. I had thought the walk to the Sterling House would be less breathtaking the second time, but in the few days I’d been back home the memory of it had receded into the fog of dreams and fantasies, and the sudden realness of it—here it was again, still as mind-bogglingly real—reminded me how much none of this was a fantasy, and how for Sterling all of it was at risk.

  I rounded the bend in the path and arrived once again at the bottom of the grassy hill below Sterling House, and instead of Andrea, Victor himself stood waiting for me at the archway, picture-perfect but for the fatigue in his face.

  “I have a draft for the hearing statement,” I said, all business. “Any update since the middle of the night?”

  “We’re trying to set up a meeting this afternoon to convince them to drop the charges,” he said, turning to walk with me as I passed him. We continued toward the house.

  “Why? You don’t want to look desperate. You want to look like the sooner date is good news. Because it is. They should be the ones to call you.”

  “Well, they haven’t. And I can’t risk waiting. Not if there’s even the smallest chance that we don’t get the case thrown out.”

  I stopped walking. “Oh for God’s Sake, Victor. Have you forgotten every word I said before we left? Are you still not trusting me on this?”

  He stopped too, and turned to me. “The hearing went to a sympathetic judge.”

  I processed that for a second. Could it change everything? “How sympathetic?”

  “She has a history of ruling against people like me.”

  “At trials, probably. Not at a hearing.”

  “No, but she might send the case along to trial just to make a statement, to drag out the bad press.”

  “Even if they don’t have a case and the trial is sure to go our way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if they don’t have the slightest ghost of a chance.”

  “It’s possible the judge could ignore that.”

  “According to whom?”

  He was silent.

  “According to the opposition?”

  “We’ve kept close tabs on them. They’re through the roof about this judge.”

  “But do they have a credible reason to be? Does this judge have a history of sending hopeless cases to trial in addition to ruling against billionaires?”

  “Not that we can find.”

  “Then this is another bluff. It’s one more calculated move in this absurd poker game. What makes you think they know something we don’t?”

  “We can’t be sure either way.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re playing right into their hands, and we’re having the exact same conversation we had before. Try to take a step back—I know, it’s hard, but please: if you were in their shoes, a hopeless situation, utterly hopeless, and you saw a piece of news come out that you could spin in such a way as to appear less hopeless to your opponent, wouldn’t you do exactly what they’re doing? Celebrate, pretend you’ve won, in the hopes your opponent buys it and gives up a sure win because he believes he’s already lost?”

  Victor knew I was right—I could see it in his face—but he dismissed it. “As you said, we’ve had this argument before.”

  “And I won it, remember? You decided to trust me.”

  He put his hands in his pockets, as he always did when he had something he ought to say but wouldn’t.

  I toned down my severity a bit, tried to play it more gently. “Look, here’s what’s really going on. They’re playing this case like a poker game, like they could potentially have been dealt some winning card you can’t see, and you’re playing along. But it’s all misdirection—we’re not actually playing poker. We’re playing chess. Nothing is hidden. There’s nothing on the board you can’t see. If you follow the lines of possible response to every one of their possible moves, you can evaluate every possible outcome. And we are one move—one move—away from checkmate. This is literally their last play.”

  He stood there and shook his head. “That’s what you said when they filed formal charges. But now they’ve come up with something else.”

  “I know. I promised this case would never go to trial, and yes, depending on how the meeting goes today, it still may not have to. But since you called it, not them, you’re going to look like the desperate one. All you have to do is move your queen to the winning square by letting me take this case to the hearing tomorrow. That’s it. We win. If you make a different move, if you don’t ignore them, if you meet with them on the defensive, you’re adding in a whole other set of completely unnecessary moves that may involve completely unnecessary sacrifice.”

  “The risk is higher in not meeting with them.”

 
“I disagree. This hearing is not only a win for us, it’s a double win—the fact that it’s this much sooner means there’s even less time for bad PR to take off any further. It’s effectively eliminating the opposition’s biggest strength. They are not celebrating right now, trust me. They are crushed. They are absolutely terrified you’re going to ignore them and go ahead to the hearing. Since the last time I was here, not one thing has changed except for the better.”

  Victor stared off toward the ocean as I spoke.

  I opened my briefcase and took out a few pages. “Here’s the draft of my statement for the hearing tomorrow. I’m going to keep working on it, but I think it should convince you pretty thoroughly that you have nothing to worry about. Not even an unreasonably sympathetic judge.”

  He looked at it for a second, then at me, and then took it, but said nothing.

  “Call me when you need me.” I left him there on the path as I went into the house. If he gave in and decided to waste enormous money on these completely ridiculous plaintiffs, that was his choice. I was his attorney, nothing more, and I had done my job advising him. His stubborn fear of imaginary risk had begun to sour his attractiveness.

  ~

  Sometime around lunch I got a text from Nick. Before I read it I had a feeling I knew what it said, but I went into my ostentatious bedroom to read it anyway.

  “I can’t go back to the old us,” it said. “We talked about doing this as a new us, didn’t we?”

  I texted back, “We did. That won’t happen overnight, though. It may take time, for both of us.”

  A few minutes later, more agonizing minutes that I wished they would be, he wrote, “How much time?”

  I had no answer to that, and the question itself carried a very clear message that there was such a thing as too much, as a transition too long to be worthwhile. I agreed with that. The question was whether we were already so quickly at the point of diminishing returns—whether we were compatible in more than the short term, and how willing each of us was to do whatever was necessary for the long haul.

  I finally wrote back, “If you’re willing to do whatever it takes, so am I. But if you’re not, then this probably won’t work.” It was an ultimatum of sorts, but an inevitable one. I had to be honest, brutally or otherwise, because my time was too valuable for a losing venture, even one as painfully lovable and often heavenly as Nick. I would go all in if he would, but if he was going to back out at some point, I needed to know what his limits were. We had talked about that, hadn’t we? It was possible he didn’t know what his limits were—to be fair, I didn’t either. But I was willing to say the hell with my limits and to be willing to change and grow despite frustration and discomfort. I needed at least an equal level of commitment from him. Changing and growing couldn’t be one-sided. Not with me.

  He wrote back: “It was easy when you were here. Now it’s already stressful. If it’s going to be like this for a while, I don’t think it’s worth it. I want to be happy together from the beginning, not constantly compromising in the hope of someday being happy.”

  I wrote, “That does sound miserable. I thought we were happy yesterday, though.”

  “We were. But a roller coaster is not what I need right now.”

  He was pulling away already, after one midnight flight. To be fair, it was the first night. I couldn’t deny that. But he was acting as though he’d already made a decision, already passed judgment.

  I wrote back: “I’m willing to be there more. I’m willing to cut back on clients like this, where I have to leave suddenly.”

  That little icon that showed he was typing but didn’t let me see the message yet was the more stressful part of the whole exchange.

  He wrote: “But could you say this is your last one? Could you have warned me this might happen? You’re willing to change a little, but I can’t ask you to change altogether. It was worth a try, but I think our needs might be beyond reconciliation. I still love you, but I don’t think that’s enough to make this good for us.”

  Thanks, Nick, for sounding so honest, caring, and reasonable while you stab me repeatedly in the heart. Thanks for making this a Shakespearean tragedy instead of a footnote in the ledger of my life. At least you know yourself well enough to see when you’re not up to a particular challenge.

  I put the phone away, my head swimming now, and devoid of any good response to his sudden reversal and rejection. I was still dead tired from the overnight flight, worn out from arguing with Sterling first thing, and just about ready to collapse after this texted train wreck with Nick.

  I wanted to fall asleep again, but I still had to convince Sterling to cancel his meeting with the opposition as a show of confidence to let them know he’d called their last bluff. That was the only way they’d ever drop the charges before the hearing, but I had run out of things to say. If he wasn’t convinced already, what more could be done?

  I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window of the bedroom and looked out at the beach and the ocean. Sterling was out on one of the stone footpaths near the sand, talking to Andrea. He moved his hands a lot as he spoke, and after a second I realized they were arguing. Even if I went out to the balcony they’d be too far off for me to hear, but I wondered what they could be so heated about. Sterling was so on edge it wouldn’t surprise me if it was something as trivial as what he wanted for lunch.

  Andrea left his side and came back toward the house. I decided I shouldn’t wait any longer before trying to convince him one more time to cancel the meeting. I went out to the balcony and down the stone steps, and before I could get to the beach I met Andrea on the path.

  She said nothing, but shot me a glance of such piercing hatred that I nearly stepped back from her. Maybe she was just in a bad mood, but the duration of the look suggested otherwise. It made little sense to me, given that the two of us, as I perceived it, has ceased all possible avenues of competition. It set my mental gears turning, but they didn’t get far because Sterling came down the path next.

  “If you cancel the meeting, it will be a show of strength,” I said.

  Hands in his pockets. It had become his defensive gesture. “It’s too late for that. They’re already on their way here.”

  “I saw you and Andrea from the window. Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine. She’s afraid if we lose this, she’ll be laid off.”

  I frowned. “Really. What did she have to say about that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He continued back toward the house.

  I followed. “Yes it does. This case is none of her business. What exactly did she have to say?”

  “She just wanted me to reassure her everything was fine.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, June, I didn’t. I told her there’s a chance we go to trial and the bad PR sinks me. Doesn’t she have a right to know if her job is in jeopardy?”

  “But it’s not.” That face she’d given me wouldn’t go away. It made sense if she was afraid I was steering Victor in the wrong direction and costing her her job. But how could she possibly know my advice was ostensibly making things risky?

  “How much have you confided in her?”

  “Are you asking me that as my lawyer?”

  “What else am I? Yes, I’m asking as your lawyer.”

  He stopped walking and looked at the ground for a second, then said, “She’s been in on everything from the beginning. I needed someone besides my lawyers to vent to.”

  “So she’s been aware of all your doubts, all your uncertainties from the beginning?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  Pieces started to fall into place in my head. “You do realize that makes her a liability. If any of the opposition has any kind of access to her, they could potentially know your weaknesses.”

  He looked at me now. “Are you accusing her of something?” His expression warned me to pick my words carefully, as if accusing her meant accusing him, too. It was a delicate moment, requiring diplomatic t
act.

  I said, “I’m not necessarily accusing anyone. I’m just saying, every time these people come in, it does feel like they know how to make you sweat. Like they know you personally.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “They’ve seen a lot of me by this point.”

  “Even so. What gave them the confidence to bring this absurd claim forward? What chance could they have possibly expected to have without knowing you’d seek to settle out of court, that you’d be so afraid of bad PR that you’d entertain a completely nonsense money play? Do you know any of them personally?”

  “No.”

  “Well somehow, I don’t know how, I think they got the idea that you could be manipulated. And I find it very suspicious just how precisely on the mark they’ve been. I didn’t see it before, but now that I realize it’s possible, I’m betting you have a leak, whether it’s Andrea or someone else.”

  “You think someone’s feeding them information about how nervous I am.”

  “I do. Or at least, I think that someone was a leak at the beginning, or possible even before they came forward. Who would stand to gain the most from it? It could be gain by having a share in the settlement or gain by your stock plummeting from the bad press.”

  Sterling looked away as if I were inventing some wild flight of fancy. “The only ones who know me well enough are the executive board, my lawyers, and Andrea. Nobody else who works for me has ever seen me in doubt.”

  “And if I’m not mistaken, your lawyers and executive board have been unanimous in their support of this case being quickly ended before bad PR without a penny paid to these people.”

  “They have.”

  “What about people who don’t work for you?”

  “I keep my doubts private.”

  That certainly narrowed the field. Narrowed it to one prime suspect, as I thought. “Has Andrea ever encouraged you to pay out and settle with them?”