by Norman Crane
the front windshield at the firm’s building instead. I have a good view. I watch the lawyers park their cars and enter a place I no longer work at, and only gradually do I realise how hard my heart is beating. My pulse isn’t high, just powerful. I punch the clock on the dashboard to its beat until the LCD display shuts off and no longer comes back to life. If someone looks my way, I sink in my seat and pretend not to exist. Who cares if they see me or not, I think. But if that was true, I wouldn’t be sinking down in the first place. I cannot refute my own argument. I win, I lose. I couldn’t feel any worse. I see Boris’ car stop on the street, put on its blinker and wait for opposing traffic to clear before pulling into the parking lot. I watch its spinning, sparkling hubcaps, its cheaply tinted windows, through which I see the outlines of two figures, and take note of where they park. Boris gets out of the driver’s side. Oliver steps out of the passenger’s side. He’s laughing. Boris is talking. I can’t hear his words, just a faint, monotonous drone peppered with nasally chortles. In one angry motion, I stab the ignition with my car key, turn the engine, and shoot out of the parking lot in the direction of Rosie’s apartment building.
A car honks—
And I punch the break with my foot.
That’s the extent of my pissed off, who-dares-wins attempt at reckless driving. With the Winterson & Partners sign still in my rear-view, I exhale and merge politely with traffic.
I’m so disoriented, I mess up a route I’ve taken almost every day for over six months.
Approaching intersections, I say the colour of the light out loud because otherwise I’m afraid I’ll drive straight through a red.
In the apartment building’s parking lot, I park across two spaces, leave the car door open and run up the stairs, slipping twice to my knees, because I can’t stand waiting for an elevator. I have no plan. I’m just mad, hurt, confused, and with no place else to go.
I sprint the length of the hall to our door.
But it’s locked.
I unlock it.
I turn the knob, and push—
Right into a deadbolt.
“Rosie!”
No answer.
I rattle the door.
“Rosie! Let me in, please. I know you’re inside. I know you are.”
I bang the door open as far as the deadbolt allows and peek inside, contorting my body and craning my neck to get all the possible angles of sight.
“I’m sorry,” Rosie says.
I can’t see her but I back away, leaving the door open.
“Let me come in.”
“No.”
“Come on. Are you afraid?”
No answer.
“You’re afraid I’ll do something? Seriously, you’re out of your mind.”
Now I see her. She’s standing a dozen feet away, in the living room. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else inside. “It sounds like you’re out of yours, Charlie.”
I ignore that. “Why’d you do it?” I ask.
She returns my ignoration.
I try a different tack. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Nothing.
I inhale, and scream “I love you!” at the opening in the doorway: through which I spy Rosie’s posture wilt.
“You don’t,” she says.
“I want to have kids with you, a family…”
She steps closer. I press my face nearer the door. We’re maybe three feet away from each other. At any moment, I expect her to slide the deadbolt out and let me into our apartment.
But she doesn’t. “You’re a fool.”
Now it’s my turn to be silent. She continues, “And if you ever thought we’d have that, you’ve no business being in a courtroom or representing a client, because you’d only be a gullible liability to them. I’m thirty-seven years old, Charlie. Do I have to spell it out for you? If I wanted kids, I would have had kids by now.” Each of her words is a vice, every pause a pair of jaws. “You asked me why I did it. I’ll spell that out, too. I’m a good lawyer. I care about my career. I can’t have the kind of relationship you want because I don’t care about the things you care about. Our priorities are vastly different.”
She keeps talking, but I no longer listen. It’s not that I doubt her sincerity—I know she’s being painfully honest—but the entirety of the conspiracy has thrust itself over my head like a burlap sack, dulling my senses. I fall against the wall, and drip to the floor. Rosie wanted to work at Stephenson Ashford but there wasn’t a spot. Oliver was working there but wanted to work elsewhere, in civil practice. I was working in civil practice at Winterson’s. Winterson couldn’t be bought, hence my spot couldn’t be got by money. However, it could be gained by reputation. By destroying mine, I vacated what was wanted by Oliver, who vacated what was wanted by Rosie, who traded me for the advancement of her career. Cold, efficient, professional.
“Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t personal. An opportunity presented itself and I took it.”
“At my cost.”
“I didn’t upload the video,” she says.
I rip the metaphorical burlap sack off my head. These attempts at legalistic justification are where I draw the line. “Maybe you didn’t upload it, but you manipulated me and you embarrassed me, and you did it knowing the video would get uploaded.”
“You willingly gave me your phone. You saw I was recording.”
“I trusted you!”
Two people down the hall are staring at me. A middle-aged man and a little girl. He’s holding a black garbage bag. She’s holding his free hand. I suppose I am making a scene in an apartment building where rent’s expensive and few scenes play out. Let them watch me:
Pound on the apartment door with my palm—
Bang!
Rosie instinctively jumps back.
“I loved you,” I say.
She brushes locks of hair out of her eyes. “In which case you made an elementary mistake,” she responds. “You became emotionally involved in a practical matter.”
“I’m not talking careers.”
“There’s nothing else to talk about.”
The man with the garbage bag takes two steps forward and asks if everything is OK.
“Everything’s alright,” I say, and ask Rosie, “So now what?”
“Now you leave.”
“I’ve got no place to stay.”
She sighs. “Surely if you graduated from law school you’re capable of paying for a hotel room and finding your own apartment. If not, stay with a friend. Email me the address and I’ll have your things delivered.”
I have no friends. I had Rosie, I knew Boris. I gave my phone willingly to him, too. He uploaded the video, sure, but he didn’t take it. Oliver only smiled and tossed me a beer. Winterson fired me. A convenient division of guilt made possible by a worldview saturated by theories of liability. I don’t want to be alone, not tonight.
“That’s it?” I ask.
I slap the door again. Harder this time.
“Don’t be pitiful, Charlie.”
“I’m sorry.”
For a second, I think the words are mine, but actually they belong to the man with the garbage bag. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, “but I do believe the woman wants to be left alone. I don’t know where you’re from, but around here we find this type of loud and violent behaviour unwelcome and upsetting.” The little girl holding his hand has brown eyes the size of mini-CDs. “If you don’t leave, I will make a call to the police.”
“I am leaving,” I say rather ostentatiously to Rosie.
I remember last Christmas, how magical it was, how delighted and welcome I felt, and I want those feelings back. There’s even a cancerous part of me that still desires nothing more than to make Rosie smile. I observe her face through the space between the door frame and the door. Then I reach deep inside myself and cut that cancerous part out. I throw it on the floor. I stomp on it. “I don’t hate you,” Rosie whispers. “I know you must think I do, but I don’t. Do som
ething with your life. Find what you love and make it great.”
“Goodbye, Rosie.”
Passing the man holding the garbage bag, I feint and he drops his garbage to cover his face in anticipation of a blow that never comes. The garbage spills onto the floor. I hope the guy’s married. I hope his wife is cheating on him. “Fucking Chink.”
Before I get to my car, my phone rings.
I accept the connection, ready to explode at whoever has the indecency to call me at a time like this, when I hear: “Morning, dude. How’s my favourite lawyer doing today?”
It’s Frank Delaney. “I… uh…”
“You ‘uh?’ Well, that’s boring. Better spill the beans about that big settlement meeting you had on Friday. Did you kill ‘em? Did you grab ‘em by their throats, electrocute their balls, rub their snotty noses in their own senses of entitlement and force them to sign on the dotted line?” He clears his throat. “Or whatever it is that goes down during these fucking things.”
“I got the settlement,” I say.
“That’s ace!”
“And how’s your hand, Mr. Delaney?”
“Bloody, painful, still attached to my arm. It’s healing.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Charlie, be honest. Are you really glad? Because you sure as shit don’t sound like it.”
I reach my car. Nobody stole anything despite the door I left open. Not that I any longer have anything worth stealing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Delaney, but I have to go.”
“Spot a juicy ambulance?”
“I…” I jump up on the hood of my car, recline, and with a burst of outraged brevity usually reserved for my best Statements of Claim, I tell Frank Delaney everything. I lay it out bare. It’s not a confession, but it sure feels like one, and when I’m done I feel