Fin had been playing hide-and-seek with the LAPDicks while I was #livingthedream. The detectives “visited,” dropping at odd hours—early morning, late night, right when I had sat down on one of the fourteen (sixteen?) toilets. I stopped answering the gate intercom. I’d wave at our HDTV screens as they gazed stone-faced at our security cameras.
My theory was they didn’t have a warrant, and since Fin hadn’t officially violated parole, they couldn’t officially take her in for questioning. My theory was based entirely on those same guinea pig instincts that brought me to this point and not any semblance of knowledge of legal procedure.
Still, it sounded almost feasible.
Fin wasn’t taking any chances. My personal Cato would surprise me, hiding out in my office closet, sleeping in my car, setting up a tent outside the game room where no one played pool. She’d jump out at me at as I sat down to write, or turned a corner in the guesthouse, or started my car in the morning.
I would be dead of a heart attack before Fin ever got caught.
Petra had sold a picture of me holding the bed bat over my head in the middle of the night.
TREVOR NASH’S EX BATSH-T CRAZY was the headline.
“I love you, but I never thought you two were that interesting,” Liz said over the phone. “Not like the Jolie-Pitts or the Pittanistons or the Pittaltrows.”
“Brad Pitt has sprayed his seed all over the Hollywood pasture,” I said. “He’s Johnny Applesemen.”
“I can’t believe I’m being deposed,” she said. “How would I possibly help his case? Saying you were a bad wife and mother?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Exactly,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Even if it were true.”
“What?”
“When’s your deposition?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
“Are you ready? Have you been practicing? What does your coach say?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going for the big leagues of deposing.”
“I’ll be right over.” She sighed.
* * *
Liz sat me down in my office with as serious (and bruised) an expression she could muster (given that she’d seen Dr. Braden for a “liquid facelift”).
“There are four answers you need to give in a deposition,” she said as I stared at her swollen lips.
“Four answers,” I repeated.
“The answers are: ‘Yes’, ‘No,’ ‘I don’t remember,’ and ‘Would you like me to guess?’ Your lawyer hasn’t told you this?”
“No,” I said. “She advised me to be honest.”
“She what?” Liz struggled with her alarmed face.
“She what?” Fin popped up from behind the couch.
“Jesus Christ! What are you doing here?” I asked my sister.
“I’m not here.” Fin disappeared behind the couch again.
“Are you trying to be poor?” Liz asked.
“She can’t afford to be poor!” Fin said.
“Shut up, couch!” I said. “I’m trying to be fair and get this over quickly and without bloodshed.”
Liz looked at me with an expression close to pity. I wish people would stop doing Botox long enough to get their expressions in order.
“Repeat those four answers back to me,” she said.
“‘Yes’ . . . ‘No’ . . . ‘I don’t recall’ . . . and ‘Would you like me to guess?’”
“Stick to those answers. Do not elaborate. Whatever you do, do not write out loud!”
“I can’t use just those answers for an all-day deposition,” I said.
“Actually,” Fin said, popping up again. “It’s sort of expected.”
“You can,” Liz said, “and you will.”
“Drop of mercury in his tennis shoe,” Fin said. “No one will ever know.”
“Let’s take this a bit further,” I said in my closet, staring at a row of black pants I’d never worn. What to wear for my debut, er, deposition? I snapped a pair of Theory from 2011. I could sell these pants. That’s twenty, thirty bucks right there. “How do you get the mercury?”
Fin slipped into a flocked red velvet Dolce & Gabbana, an old premiere dress. Another definite sell. My premiere days were over. My debt days? Just beginning.
“Break open a thermometer,” her eyes flashed. “You’ve never heard of quiet kills? How dumb are you?”
“Smart enough to avoid murder.”
“Silent blow to the back of the head,” she said, holding up two fingers. “People slip and fall getting out of the bathtub all the time.”
“Trevor doesn’t take baths,” I’d said.
“Never trust a person who doesn’t take baths,” Fin said. “Maybe you have to go to prison before you appreciate a good bath.”
“For argument’s sake, how do you not get mercury on you?” I asked. “If you crack open a thermometer?”
“Is this seriously your first rodeo, sister?” She stared at me.
“How do I break this to you, Fin?” I asked. “No, I’ve never actually killed another human being.”
“So you just quit, you just stop trying, is that it?”
The other morning, she’d awakened me as the sun was rising to tell me a dream in which she’d slipped a desert scorpion into Trevor’s bed.
“I have a scorpion at my friend’s trailer in the desert—don’t ask his name,” she’d whispered. “Little shit bit me; my hand swelled so big, almost had to amputate.”
“I’m not really comfortable with this kind of talk,” I said and rolled over.
“You’re not part of the solution, Aggie; that’s your problem,” Fin said, nudging me. “You gotta be part of the solution.”
I picked out a forgotten jersey dress as Fin traded the premiere dress for a pair of lime-green Lululemon tights that I bought and never wore because did I say lime green? I’m sorry to report she didn’t look like a balloon animal.
“I can get in and out anywhere with these things on,” Fin said, turning in the mirror. “Like climbing out of windows and such.”
“Does this say, ‘I ain’t afraid of no attorneys’?” Gray Armani suit I hadn’t worn in years. Fin pantomimed vomiting. Detailed and protracted vomiting, and I had to get moving.
“How about this one?” Simple black dress, white collar.
“Save it for the funeral.”
“This?” White poplin skirt, ruffle-collared shirt.
She laughed.
I sank to the floor. Fin stepped over me and fanned through my dresses. She picked out a purple skirt-and-blouse pairing, an ecstatic choice for a happy occasion.
“I’m not going to a party,” I said.
“Exactly. It’ll throw them off. You’re heading from deposition to like, I don’t know, one of those ladies who lunch things. Or a tryst.”
“You know ‘tryst’?”
“Fuck yeah, I know tryst—why wouldn’t I know tryst? I went to the same schools as you! I got straight As!” She pressed the purple dress on me.
“By flirting with the teachers,” I said.
“I should’ve married Mr. Palmetto when he asked me,” she said, a pensive look crossing her face.
“Our Spanish teacher.”
“He was very sensitive,” she said.
“He was sixty years old and three feet tall!”
“I know,” she said with a sigh as she grabbed a pair of my high, strappy heels. “Put these on, too.”
“Thank you,” I said, and, boom, I had to choke back tears. I’d never be able to handle this lawyer day.
“No puddling today,” Fin said, play-punching my arm.
“Ow!” I rubbed my arm. “Damn it!”
“Stopped crying, right?”
The front gate buzzed. A moment later, we heard a deep engine growl and the boom of a backfire.
“What the—”
“Oh, good; he’s here.” Fin ran outside and through the kitchen.
I followed, stepped out into the courtyard, t
eetering on fuck-me heels, or, in this case, fuck-you heels. Fuck me? Fuck you!
“Who?” I yelled over the noise.
“Your driver!” Fin yelled back as a plume of smoke blew from the carburetor. A mountain in a suit jacket emerged from the smoke.
“Girl, this is Edmund,” Fin said, beaming. “He’s taking you to your depo; he’ll wait for you in the lobby.”
Edmund extended his hand, which could cover half a continent.
“Edmund, this is so nice of you,” I said, shaking his hand, “but I really don’t need—”
“You remember him from the motorcyclist team?” Fin cut me off.
Edmund’s smile filled up the entire Palisades.
“Edmund, wait here for a sec,” Fin said, taking me aside. “I paid him, if you know what I mean. And yes, the hands match the gearshift.”
I stole another look at Edmund’s hands. He waved, blocking the sun.
“Fin, I can’t bring him to a lawyer’s office; they’ll freak out.”
“Are you, like, trying to be dim? They. Will. Freak. Out.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“If his asshole lawyers get a load of Edmund,” Fin said, “they’ll think twice before they rip you a new one, much like the old one.”
Fin opened her stringy arms and hugged me. I almost cried. Again.
I took a deep breath and stepped into Edmund’s muscle car, the dizzying smell of gas permeating the interior. I’d be high on fumes by the time I arrived. Which, you know, perfect.
Edmund and I squeezed into the elevator at Blecks Holstein . . . Etcetera. Anne was waiting in the lobby, documents in her lap, her hair back in a neat ponytail, briefcase at her feet. She looked so studious, I wanted to give her an A for effort and call it a day.
I introduced Edmund to Anne, and she smiled and shook his hand, not even raising an eyebrow. Edmund sank onto the lobby couch with a People magazine (Reba McEntire on the cover), his massive knees almost to his shoulders. Anne and I were led down a long hallway, past landscape and nature photos. Snowcapped mountains, shimmering streams, a moose staring into the camera.
Dead Wife Walking.
The receptionist opened the conference room, asked if we needed anything, then pointed at the twenty water bottles already crowding the table.
“I’d like those rice noodles from Mr. Chow,” I said.
“We’re fine,” Anne said.
A thin, wiry man in jeans and thick, black-rimmed glasses stood across the table, a tiny microphone in his hand.
“Do you mind if I secure this?” he asked.
“Anne?”
“They’re filming,” she said.
“Is this an audition?” I asked. “I thought I got the part already.”
I focused. Cameras were already set up against a blue screen. My divorce had high production value.
“This would make a great Netflix show.”
“Not quite,” Anne said. “This shouldn’t go more than two, three episodes.”
“I’m so glad I wore purple,” I said. “It’s a good color on me. Does this firm provide hair and makeup?”
Anne patted my hand. The sound guy hooked the microphone on my blouse. I fluffed my hair, then fished through my purse to get my lip gloss.
“Do you think they’ll give me a copy afterward?” I asked. “Maybe I could use it as a sizzle reel. Divorced Housewives of the Armpit of the Valley.”
The door opened with a bang, and the march of heavy feet as several men entered—one gaunt with an electrocuted thatch of silver hair, the next had greased-back hair and nervous eyes, then an older gentleman (using the term very lightly) packed into expensive Italian silk, belly hanging over his Ferragamo belt, who pounded his cane. My eyes met his—shiny, greedy eyes in a walnut shell face. Ulger Blecks, ladies and gentlemen.
“Grimm’s fairy tales,” I whispered to Anne.
Anne greeted the attorneys, and the men muttered their hellos, maintaining their deliberate seriousness.
“Nuremberg trials or Hollywood divorce?” I asked Anne.
“What’s that bouncer doing in your lobby?” Trevor traipsed in, dressed in a suit, no tie, collar open. Not a care in the world.
“Apparently, he entered with Ms. Murphy,” Ulger Blecks intoned, staring down at me over his reading glasses. His voice exactly how I’d imagined. In a world where . . .
I almost smiled.
“I assume he’s an integral part of her entourage,” Blecks said. “Perhaps another boyfriend.”
“He’s my driver,” I said. Gasps. “Wait. Not my driver, more like a friend.”
The three lawyers of the apocalypse melded their misshapen heads together in an unholy triangle as they murmured.
Anne put her hand on mine, then said, “We’re ready to start when you are.”
No, I wanted to scream. No, we’re not.
Blecks squeezed beside the camera setup into the chair opposite mine and raised a wild, unrepentant eyebrow. You could lose your keys in those brows.
“Agnes,” Mr. Blecks said in his deepest baritone. I waited for the movie trailer to materialize. “May I call you Agnes?” He smiled, his teeth yellowed and sharpened by years of separating children from their mothers.
“Sure,” I said. “Ulger.” I smiled. He scowled. Trevor scowled. The room group-scowled except for Anne and the camera operator.
“I’m going to read to you a passage from this book,” Blecks said. “Do you recognize this book? Exhibit A?”
He tossed the book on the table, then shoved it toward me with a broad, manicured fingertip as though it was coated in dog shit.
Girl Pimp. Exhibit A was the second book I’d written. I didn’t want to seem excited as I recalled Liz’s instructions: #yesnoIcantrecallwouldyoulikemetoguess.
“Would you like me to guess?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” His eyes almost popped out of their flesh crates.
“One moment,” I said, taking a deep breath. Remember, Agnes. You look good in purple. It’s a solid hair day. You are strong. You are invincible. You are woman . . . even if you feel like a gnat.
“Agnes?”
“Yes!” I said, my high pitch piercing the room.
Another scowl from Habeas Corpulent.
“I’ve marked Exhibit A,” Blecks said. “Can you please read this passage, Agnes?” I opened the book to a paragraph underlined and tagged with a yellow Post-it. Somewhere in Bleck’s vast offices, a newbie lawyer, whose parents had sent him or her to college, then law school at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, had been assigned to comb through my books. And mark inappropriate passages.
Kinda thrilling, I thought, suppressing a smile.
Would my writing pass muster? What is muster? Would it pass ketchup?
I side-glanced Anne, who nodded for me to go ahead.
I cleared my throat and read a passage. I’d repeat it here, but hey, buy the book. Suffice to say, the passage was titillating and a wee vulgar, and the words leaped off the page. Okay. Maybe not leaped. Bounced?
And maybe a wee more than a wee.
“Do you recognize the writing?” Blecks thundered.
I widened my eyes and looked at Anne for an answer. She nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s been a while, but—”
Wait. Wait! Yes, No, I don’t recall, Would you like me to—
“Do you remember writing that?”
“Well, no,” I said. “But it’s not bad.” My description of the lead character, a gold digger with a heart of gold and a diamond-encrusted vagina was, dare I say, spot-on.
“Not bad?” Blecks lunged from his seat, almost getting impaled on a water bottle. “You’re proud of this character? This harlot sets up an innocent man to steal his hard-earned money!”
I wrinkled my nose. Harlot.
“Well, as a writer, I can’t say I’m not proud. She’s not likeable, but she’s a well-defined character on a specific journey.”
No, Yes, Was I passing?
“Read the second paragraph, please,” Blecks said, smoothing his tie and sat back. “Page 103. Second from the top.”
I caught Anne out of the corner of my eye, chewing the inside of her cheek. I turned to page 103.
Oh, I liked this part.
I read and glanced up, smiling.
“How about that passage? Are you proud of your, quote, descriptive writing, unquote, there, as well?” He chuckled, then sneered, working his belittlement battery of effects.
“They’re not going to teach this at the Idaho Writers Workshop anytime soon,” I said. “But I did get a nice write-up in The Times.”
I read Anne’s expression.
I wasn’t passing Deposition 101.
“Hold on,” I said. “Would you like me to recall?”
“What are you trying to get at, Ulger?” Anne said. “Besides wasting time and our clients’ money.”
“What am I getting at?” Blecks’s face turned purple, adding to his appeal (sarcasm). “What am I getting at?” Spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth. If he had a stroke, I wondered if I would feel anything.
Nah.
“Your client,” he spat, “is a man-eater!”
The room went silent. I nibbled my lower lip.
Wait. What? I’m a man-eater! Me!
“That escalated quickly,” I said.
“I’m shutting down this deposition!” Anne yelled, which managed to sound melodic.
Go, Anne, it’s your birthday.
“You’ll be lucky if I don’t report your despicable behavior to the licensing board!” she added.
Oh no she din’t.
Oh yes, honey, she did.
Anne shoved the table away and grabbed her briefcase. The opposing trio followed suit, scraping their chairs against the floor, grunting and swearing under their breath, warthogs in thousand-dollar loafers.
Trevor stood and ran his hands through his hair. I had barely registered his presence. Trevor, the man, the myth, the reason we’d all been gathered in this unholy union. I’d been focused on surviving the deposition, not the raison d’être.
“So,” I said to Trevor, “been to any good depositions lately?”
He shook his head and walked out.
Been There, Married That (ARC) Page 20