“Thank you. I’m fine now,” I said, trying not to drool the melting chocolate down my front. My throat was so clamped I could barely get air down it, much less this waxy candy. He nodded, but he didn’t leave. The kid’s accent was light, but he was definitely southern; there was no stopping him from doing chivalry.
According to Google, I was supposed to go lie down someplace quiet, do the breathing thing, and imagine sunrise or a beach. I didn’t have time right now; an A-list client was quitting us. Nick had sent a frantic text a good half hour ago, asking me why the hell I wasn’t in the meeting.
I’d forgotten. I’d gone haring off instead to the DeKalb County Jail, chasing yet another pro bono criminal case. The potential client was female, very young, and guilty mostly of falling in love with a felon. Now she wouldn’t testify against him, and the DA was going to nail her to the wall. I’d been helping girls like this, two a year, ever since I’d passed the bar. Now I’d done five since February, back to back, neglecting my own practice. They were practically the only things I had been doing. There was no way I could take this new case on, but I’d texted the potential client’s name to Birdwine anyway, asking him to dig up info on my own dime.
I’d availed myself of plenty of free therapy back when I was in school at Notre Dame and Emory, so I didn’t need to peruse the stack of old Psychology Todays at my dentist’s office to know why I was doing it. These girls were living incarnations of my mother. Too bad understanding the roots of my compulsion didn’t stop me from having it, or from taking an early lunch hour and driving off to meet with yet another one. I’d forgotten my promise to sit in on Nick’s meeting. I’d parked by the jail, checked my phone, and seen the string of panicked texts he’d sent me while I was in transit.
I’d roared back toward midtown, tearing a hole in Atlanta traffic and almost murdering a tottery pedestrian, yelling at my phone to dial Nick. He’d answered, leaving the client in Catherine’s soothing hands long enough to give me a fraught, unhappy update.
Last quarter had been low, mostly thanks to me, since Nick and Catherine were billing as reliably as ever. This client we were losing was a BANK case. If the BANK walked, this quarter would dip even lower. I didn’t have time for another pro bono, much less a haunting or a breakdown or any other flavor of dead-mother BS.
Now the kid sank down beside me on the bench, waiting for me to either need an ambulance or be fine. His cheap pants and generic navy sports coat were out of place in our upscale lobby, but his body language was right. His spine was hunched, his brow was furrowed, and he worried a blue folder back and forth between his hands. Our small midtown building housed mostly dentists, therapists, and lawyers, so everyone who came here looked about this happy. Maybe his diabetic mom had good insurance, the kind that let him pay midtown prices to fix his cavities or his depression.
I tried another Google-approved deep breath, mentally consigning the kid to the void, along with pro bono cases and all damnable silk skirts. I had to focus. I needed to butter and bedazzle our BANK client back into our stable. I had to explain the missed meeting without admitting I’d wasted yet another billable hour driving toward yet another destitute criminal. Then, assuming I got to six P.M. without running into a henna tattoo or a beaded headband and freaking out, I’d go home. I’d scrub this day off my hide in a boiling shower. Maybe work some sudoku with Henry trying to lie down across my puzzle book.
Those images worked for me better than the recommended beaches. The worst of it seemed over. My heart was banging away, but I could no longer feel it in my eyeballs, and the dizziness was gone. I even got the candy to go down, though it left my mouth feeling dingy and coated.
I stood up, and the kid rose, too, turning to face me. His eyes dropped in that young man’s way that seemed almost inadvertent, sneaking a fast glance down my body. He immediately straightened his spine, making himself taller than me, and when his disconcerting eyes came back to my face, damned if he didn’t smile at me all hopeful. It was adorable, how fast he moved me out of the diabetic-mother category once I was on my feet. I had to smile back, though I’d pretty much been dead from the neck down for the last five months. Even if I had been on my game, this kid wasn’t in my league. He was cute, but he was practically a fetus. Also, it was a sucker bet that my suit was worth more than his car.
He knew it, too. He turned pink all the way to his ear tips and grinned, busted. Then he ducked his head and lifted one shoulder in a “worth a shot” shrug I couldn’t help but find engaging.
“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I’m fine now.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
I headed for the elevator bay, and he followed in my wake. My heart was still jangling, but I was on the back side of it, and I had to get upstairs. The BANK client, Oakleigh Winkley, was fat with money, but she wasn’t fat with much else. The more money fat, the less fat clients have of any other kind. In particular, I would never say, Here comes Oakleigh Winkley, fat with patience.
I pressed the call button and the kid reached out and pressed it, too, three or four times.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just, it makes the elevator come faster, if you press it more,” he said, so earnest it took me a second to realize he was being funny. He didn’t talk like someone from Atlanta proper, though his southern accent was faint enough to peg him as suburban, not rural. “Hey, do you work here?” he asked, scanning the directory between the elevators. “Do you know where I can find Cartwright, Doyle, and Vauss?”
He said my last name wrong, as if it rhymed with house instead of loss.
“I own a good piece of it. You must be here to see one of my partners.” I’d already missed my only meeting today, unless I counted Birdwine. So there was that small mercy. The kid’s botched flirt had been charming, but I didn’t want to sit down and stare into his Kai-style crescent eyes across my desk.
“Oh, cool,” he said. “I’m Julian Bouchard?”
He said it like a question, as if he was wondering if I’d heard of him. I shook my head—I hadn’t—and was about to extend a hand and introduce myself when the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.
He stepped back, saying, “After you,” like a proper baby gentleman.
I got on and pressed the button, telling him, “We’re up on seven.”
Julian ducked his head in that engaging doglike way again and turned to face the closing doors. “Thank you.”
He looked too young to be married, much less divorcing, very much less able to pay our rates. His loafers had a man-made upper. We kicked kids like this gently down the food chain to cheaper lawyers, ones who specialized in dividing up hand-me-down furniture and debt.
The elevator dinged our floor, and as the doors slid open, I saw I’d caught our BANK, just barely. Oakleigh was in mid-storm-out. She clocked our human presence, but didn’t look up from her phone long enough to recognize me. She jabbed at the screen, her color very high, waiting for the breathing shapes in the elevator to get out of her way.
The very thought of dealing with this much pissed-off princess made me press my palm against my jangling heart again. I was filled with a sudden longing to let the doors slide closed between us before she saw me. I could ride back down to six. There was an office full of shrinks one floor down, the good kind that could write prescriptions. Surely there was a pill that could stop little pieces of dead mother from manifesting during work hours.
Julian waited for me to step out first, like a mannerly, pale duckling, fully imprinted and waiting to follow.
“This is my client,” I said to him, quick and sotto voce. “Head left, and we’re at the end.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but I was already stepping out, blocking Oakleigh’s path and readying a sharky smile. She tried to sidestep, still engrossed with her phone. I matched her, and her gaze finally fixed on me long enough to realize who I was.
“Hello, Mrs. Winkley,” I said. She flicked her hand, maybe waving hello, maybe shooing me aside. She angled
right and I matched her again, staying between her and the door. Behind me, Julian slipped out and headed toward our offices. “I understand we need to schedule a meeting?”
At last she spoke. “Do you? Because I understand that we should have met an hour ago. I don’t have time now. I’m not that interested in being shunted off on you, anyway.”
I remembered Oakleigh’s voice as high-pitched and kittenish. Not right now. She looked a little sweaty, a little pink, and her practiced lilt was bordering on screechy. In this morning’s deposition, Oakleigh had lost her crap. Nick’s panicked text had actually read, “she lops he crake,” but I was fluent in autofill. On the phone, he’d told me in a terse whisper that when Oakleigh’s fit was at its zenith, the husband muttered something Nick did not quite catch. Oakleigh understood it, though. She physically attacked her husband, leaping up and beating him about the head and shoulders with her outsize Hermès bag. The camera was rolling, and the husband cowered perfectly. His lawyer tried to look shocked and appalled instead of so thrilled he was practically having an orgasm. He was now threatening to take the case in front of a jury if negotiations didn’t turn his way.
Most of our divorces settled in mediation. If mediation failed, we went before a judge. But in Georgia, either party could choose to let a jury decide who got the dogs and who got the silver spoons. It was risky, but a viable strategy, especially if the client was a long-suffering saint with a spouse who sinned spectacularly on YouTube.
Juries could be punishing, much more so than judges, and they came in with a host of biases. Now that there was video of our client beating her husband into jam with a handbag that cost more than the average Atlanta juror’s monthly income, a jury trial was a real threat.
Nick did a lot of things beautifully, including tennis, oral sex, and mediation, but he did not do juries. Neither did Catherine. My name attached to a case could often make opposing counsel feel re-interested in fair. They’d go right back to mediation. And if it didn’t? Fine with me.
Divorce by jury was all about which lawyer could spin a better tale, and I’d grown up with a woman who could make a heap of stolen parts sound truer than the truth. She could shade a story I’d heard a thousand times until all at once the meaning inverted and it became its own opposite. I was her kid. I operated inside the ethics of my profession, but I could spin like nobody’s business.
That made Winkley v. Winkley the exact type of case my partners tossed to me. I had not been there to catch it. Again. Dammit. I could feel a familiar post-freakout headache rising up behind my left eye.
“You’re not being shunted, Mrs. Winkley.” I spoke in my lowest register. I’d met Oakleigh only twice, but I knew her type well. She reminded me of a milky-colored Arab pony one of Kai’s old boyfriends had owned. She was a flirty, saucy piece of business, but if you turned your back, she’d sink her teeth deep into the meat of your shoulder. Oakleigh and the pony both responded better to an alto.
“Evans. I’m taking back my maiden name,” she snapped, tossing her head. “And now you’ve let my elevator get away.” She reached around me and pressed the call button.
I said, “Since we have a minute, you may as well explain what made you—” I caught myself about to say lose your shit to an already door-bound client. Damn Julian Bouchard and his familiar eyes. I edited on the fly. “—made you so unhappy at this morning’s meeting?”
Oakleigh twitched one shoulder in a furious, small shrug. “Clark robbed me.” She must have seen confusion flash on my face, because she said, “Clark? My husband?”
I hadn’t met the husband, and I wasn’t 100 percent sure who was repping him. Nick had said from the beginning that I should be sitting in on Winkley v. Winkley.
“He came to the house yesterday to get some clothes,” Oakleigh went on. “I was there, but I stayed downstairs while he packed. He left with a suit bag, and that’s all. But this morning, I was in the dressing room, and it didn’t look like he’d taken any suits. I started looking around, and you know what he really packed?” Her eyes squinched up, small and mean, and her lips made an ugly, angry bow. I would have to train this face out of her repertoire. No juror should ever see it. “Everything from the upstairs safe. We kept ten thousand in cash there, and some bearer bonds, and my Cartier watch. That was an engagement present, so it’s purely mine. Then at the deposition he looked right at me and said, ‘What watch?’ Smiling like a viper. I swear I can see his old nose when he makes that smile, and I invented his new one. It was my present to him, and he took my watch, so I should get that nose back. I should get to tear it right off his smug face.”
She stomped her foot. She was wearing this season’s clompy Balmain booties. They cost about nine hundred dollars, each, which meant one of her shoes was a fair trade for both of mine.
At least I had her in a conversation now. “Ms. Evans, if this goes to a jury, you need a lawyer who can put this morning’s depo tape into a context.”
She seemed to be listening, but all at once she sidestepped and went past me, saying, “Thank you. I’d best go find me one.”
A second later, the elevator dinged, arriving. She’d seen the call light go out and done a perfect end run. I shouldered forward to stop the doors from closing behind her. Her heels had a good two inches on mine, but I was tall, and she was tiny. I got a pretty good loom in.
I said, “There are a ton of lawyers in this town who can get you a fair settlement. But between you and me? I don’t think you’re interested in that. We’re past fair, here, aren’t we? He took us past fair when he stole your watch.” I racked my brain for any bit of info from her file that I could use. Her husband owned his own company, I thought. Consulting? I couldn’t remember, so I kept it vague. “You don’t want alimony trickling in for a few years. You want to take that company he’s so proud of, and hack it up, and set the bits on fire. Make him watch while we sell the burning pieces for a chunk of capital.”
Oakleigh’s eyes seemed to focus on me for the first time, so I kept going. “You want to raze his fields and salt his earth so nothing ever grows there again. You want to drag him through thorns until he’s throwing all your rightful money at you with a shovel just to make it stop.”
I’d given variations of this speech before. It was my standard BANK case speech, and I was good at it; I gave it all I had.
“You want his sins unearthed and dragged screaming into sunshine. You want your own small sins explained, so it’s clear you were driven to them. By him.” Oakleigh had stilled, and her neck had lengthened, her shoulders curling toward me as I spoke. I leaned in toward her another inch, let her feel how much taller I was. “That’s what I do. It’s what I do best, in fact. And all the things you want? Your husband wants them, too. He wants to go to a Denny’s one day and have you be his waitress. That’s what he’s telling his lawyer, right now. This morning, you gave him ammunition. What else does he have on you?” Her long lashes swept down, so thick they had to be extensions. When she looked back up, I smiled as coldly as I could. “You want me. Between him and you. Between you and his lawyer. Who’s he got?”
“Dean Macon?” she said. “Everyone says he’s really good.”
“I’m better,” I said. “I’ve eaten Macon from the ground up, more than once.” This was true on several levels, back before I’d traded in my libido for panic attacks.
I had her. I knew I had her, but before I could close, the elevator began making a loud, obnoxious beeping noise, complaining that I had held it for too long. The spell I’d cast on Oakleigh broke.
“Let’s schedule a meeting, Oakleigh,” I said, too loud and too late.
“I’ll think about it.” She waved a hand at the blaring doors. “Ugh, that sound!”
I pulled my card out of my bag and held it toward her, trying to recapture her. “You’re going to want this.”
I didn’t step back. Oakleigh compressed her plumped lips, as if I was handing her a dead bug. I stood my ground, though, ready to let the elevator shriek
until we both went deaf and died of old age.
Finally she snatched the card and stuffed it in her handbag. I smiled and stepped back. The doors closed, framing our BANK as she was going, going, gone.
The smile fell off my face, and I turned and leaned against the wall. They were such rare things. Our last true BANK had been Skopes v. Skopes, which felt so far away from where I was now that it was practically mythology. I was sick down in the pit of me, and it was more than the panic-attack hangover. I hated losing, and I hated letting down my partners, especially Nick. Oakleigh’s brand of ugly put him off his feed, and he counted on me to handle cases like this.
I pushed off the wall, checking my watch, though I wasn’t sure why. There was nothing left on today’s calendar but Birdwine. If the gods had any mercy, he would have brought me nine good reasons to take a pass on this pro bono.
When I opened our door, I saw Julian standing by the coffee table, looking ill at ease. Verona was away from her desk, but Julian wasn’t alone. Birdwine had arrived a little early. He sprawled on the sofa with both arms stretched along the back and his long legs stretched under the glass coffee table, taking up enough room for two of him.
He sat up and grinned as I came in, showing me the gap between his front teeth. I’d always liked that gap. When he first started working for me again, I’d gotten mostly the close-lipped smile he gave strangers. But now? I saw this one on the regular. Something about me screwing my life to the wall had made him comfortable. It wasn’t schadenfreude, though. It was more like one fuckup relaxing in the presence of another.
I smiled back, and then I said to Julian, “I’m sorry. It looks like our receptionist stepped away. Someone should come help you in a sec, okay?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Oh, sorry. I’m not in a hurry.” He seemed to preface a lot of his sentences with an Oh and an apology, like a verbal tic.
“You can sit down if you like,” I said.
He swallowed, eyeing the sofa. “I didn’t realize it would be so, um, fancy.”