by Mark Tiro
I will always fight back.
I didn’t give another thought to that still, small voice of peace. An instant later, I’d completely forgotten I’d ever heard it. And then… it was done.
I opened my eyes and stood up now.
Like the lion in all its majesty, rising on the plateau to survey its vast, uncharted kingdom, I stood there a moment. In silence, I surveyed everything around me as the world grew quiet and still at my feet.
As I did, a roar echoed through my mind.
I knew now, this roar—my power—it was the only strength I would ever depend upon again.
As I beheld all that I had created, I remembered back to that little girl—the one who’d walked into this room. I looked across the room and noticed she was still there. She was curled up in a ball in the corner. I wondered who she was. I wondered what had happened to her. This little girl was still clutching her knees tightly to her chest. She was sitting motionless, but for her slow rocking motion back and forth.
And she was sobbing quietly to herself.
With a weakened, barely-there glance, she tried to plead to me. “Wait for me, Maya, please. Don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone. Please…”
I hardly noticed her.
With barely another thought, I looked out, towards the door. Then I turned away from her. Without a glance or even a thought, I turned my back on her and walked out the door, and out of my childhood forever.
The End.
ALL THESE THINGS: Maya Invictus
Book Two
Prologue
Freeway Accident Kills Child Forcing Freeway Shutdown; Father to be Charged with Murder
A small child died after an accident while riding in a car with her father, leading to a six hour freeway closure. The father was arrested, and police say he will be charged with murder
Staff writer
LOS ANGELES – A driver was arrested Thursday morning after an accident in which his young daughter was killed. According to police, a man whose identity has not yet been released, was driving around 8:00 a.m. with his daughter in the rear seat when he apparently swerved into the retaining wall. The freeway was shutdown, and paramedics responded. The girl was transported to a hospital where she later died. Although it appears that the child was properly strapped into her car seat, a police spokesperson stated that the man was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder in connection with the death. All further questions regarding the prosecution were referred to the District Attorney’s Office.
1
It was the kind of thing she would miss, most days.
Most people would.
Picking up takeout that afternoon, Maya glanced over at the TV sitting in a corner by the cash register. On mute, there were just images. A news anchor talking. The aftermath of a car crash. A person being led away in handcuffs. Firefighters prying a door open. Drivers stopped in traffic, waiting for the freeway to reopen.
Maya pulled out her phone to check how much time she had before happy hour. Not much, she thought. She looked up at the screen just long enough to see the words “five year old dead, father arrested” flash across the bottom of the screen.
Fuck, she thought. That’s all I need now, a murder case. Better land on someone else’s desk.
She’d been visiting a client up at Northside jail that afternoon, but had finished up early. Figuring she’d have just enough time, Maya decided to run home and pick up something to eat on the way. She’d be able to drop off her file and change out of the clothes she’d worn for the jail visit before she headed off to the happy hour.
Twenty minutes later, Maya got back to her condo. She sat down, unwrapped her dinner and ate it quickly—all without looking up. Then she changed her clothes, and rushed back out the door.
Maya got on the freeway and drove off towards the bar in the Little Tokyo section of town, where these work happy hours tended to take place. As she drove, her mind wandered, and she remembered back to one February day, in college…
Maya had just started working at a bookstore/coffeehouse. A mid-twenties something man who looked like a graduate student, wearing a turtleneck with a European-style man-scarf draped over it, stopped Maya, and asked her, “You got rid of the Bukowski to make room for Tom Robbins? What’s up with that?” Like most of the customers, the one currently complaining to Maya had paid for his coffee, but other than that was just sitting at a table, with an assortment of the store’s books spread out in front of him. Part of Maya’s job, of course, would be to re-shelve them all when he was done.
A couple weeks before, Maya had taken the job. The small bookstore sat just past the edge of campus, which helped her get back and forth to the few classes she made a point of attending in person.
“Did you come for the literary conversation, or was it more for the coffee, do you think? You do know, the coffee’s Folger’s right?” Maya had asked him. “It’s our secret sauce. Now try not to spill that coffee on that book you’re never going to buy, okay?”
A few times an hour during the time she had worked at the place, Maya had found herself trying to answer questions like this one. And almost as soon as she heard the words, Maya had known, as with so many other questions just like it—she had absolutely no clue what the guy was talking about. She took a shot at answering him anyway.
“I’m with you there. Still, it’s good to cycle in some new ideas here, right?” she had answered—confidently, and despite her utter lack of any actual basis for her response. “Not an easy read though. Anyway, sorry but if you want something we don’t have, we can get it for you but we’ll have to special order it. There’s a very small fee. Do you want us to do that?”
The answer—which in one form or another, Maya would hear almost daily—came in the form of a long pause, and then a wistful look at the coffee cup in front of him. ‘The small fee’ Maya had mentioned seemed to turn most of the store’s ‘customers’ from outspoken literary critics back into Folger’s-drinking introverts. “Well,” Maya’s now-sheepish customer had told her, “let me think about it. Can I get back to you next time?”
When Maya had taken the job, she figured she’d be able to study for exams most of her time at work. And for the most part, that was how it had worked out for her. Occasionally, there were annoyances (like the one in front of her just then), but overall she enjoyed her time there.
On top of that, after she’d taken the job, Maya had discovered two things about herself she had not expected. First, she’d discovered that she had an uncanny talent for organization. In contrast to most of the other students who filled the ranks of the part-time workers at the bookstore, Maya found that the bigger the stress—or the mess—she walked into, the calmer she became.
Logistics, as it turns out, came easy to her.
Second, Maya was having more fun than she ever would have imagined dealing with the customers, answering questions. Most of the time, like now, she didn’t have an answer, or even faintest idea what the person was talking about.
And she didn’t care.
She was thriving on the challenge of sounding professional, of thinking and talking on her feet. She had figured out how to turn any stress of working at that bookstore into pure joy. Maya grew into herself there; she became stronger, more confident, during the time she worked there.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” she smiled slightly at the turtleneck-wearing customer as she cleared away his now empty coffee cup. She hoped her smile was just enough to conceal her derision. Any normal person, Maya thought, would know it’s time to leave.
“No,” the now hapless patron muttered awkwardly, as he shuffled off and out the door.
Two weeks after that, Maya had found the book the guy had been looking for hidden away in a back corner. That night, she had taken it home and read it. The next day, she had brought it back and tucked it safely back in its rightful place on the shelf.
For the next two years until her graduation, Maya helped herself to whatever book she wa
nted. Which is how a promising, smart math major ended up a closet book reader. And also how she found herself, most of the time, frustrated as hell when she tried to carry on a conversation with most anyone in the math department.
“Whiskey, neat. And double….”
This was Maya’s go to happy hour drink. Any other time, too.
“I loved your closing today in front of the jury!”
Maya had made it to her happy hour. She looked up and across the bar, to see one of the eager new law clerks walking over to her, drink in hand. Different law clerks seemed to filter through the office every few months. Long enough to get invited to happy hour; not quite long enough to get anyone in serious trouble. Maya didn’t know his name, and had no plans on learning it.
“Thanks for the wine,” Maya said, taking one of the glasses the law clerk thrust in her direction. Wine is for suckers, she thought. He’ll come around to whiskey, if he sticks with the office. Everyone here comes around. Still, she wasn’t going to pass up the free drink, if the price was just a little insignificant flirting…
Maya had found an outlet for her competitiveness in the City Public Defender’s Office. Her windowless office more resembled a bunker than it did a respectable law firm. And she had loved it. During those early years, she had relished nothing more than the thrill of harnessing her new skills in trial, giving form to her unformed anger, unleashing it on hapless baby prosecutors.
Just then Michelle made a v-line for Maya. Michelle shouted, “motorboat!” as she made her way forward. Maya looked up towards Michelle, who, with arms spread wide, had made it just about halfway over.
Michelle was a good lawyer, and a good friend to Maya as well. Like many of the other young attorneys who had passed up lucrative careers in civil litigation in order to join up with the outgunned City Public Defender’s Office, Michelle’s main character flaw was her inability to stop internalizing her client’s troubled cases. Or their troubled lives. Michelle had started out with a real case of true-believerism, fighting for poor people who didn’t have the means or the ability to fight for themselves. But it had been difficult for her to watch the human carnage day-in, day-out, up close and personal. At some point, Michelle had passed through her own baptism of fire of sorts. And while she seemed to come out the other side, a reinvigorated, tenacious courtroom brawler, the way she would decompress outside the courtroom revealed a darker truth. When she tried to sleep at night, Michelle had a hard time unseeing everything she had seen. And so she dealt with it the best way she could. Which was to act out at these office happy hours as far as she could push it, while still avoiding accusations of sexual battery.
And she was about the only person who could make Maya blush. What would otherwise be a friendly hug, Michelle seemed to turn into a public conquest with a back and forth rubbing motion….
Motorboat? Maya thought. These PD happy hours give everyone a license to do whatever the hell they want. It’s like Mardi fucking Gras every Thursday now.
But then, one more mischievous thought came to her mind. Maybe I’ll just step out of the way right when she gets over here. If Michelle’s still doing that ridiculous thing, she’ll fall chest-first straight into this law clerk. Maya grinned to herself. She decided that it’d probably be the most exciting part of his entire summer clerking stint with the PD’s office.
At the last minute, Maya thought better of her idea. So when Michelle finally did break through the crowd to reach her, Maya stood up, threw her arms wide open and took her motorboat like a woman.
“We’d make a good recruiting team for the office,” Michelle said, just after Maya came up for air.
“You do know Michelle, you’re probably going to have to register as a sex offender someday if you keep doing that, right?” At that, they both threw their heads back and burst out laughing.
Maya first met Michelle the week both of them had been hired into the office. Maya had gotten her law degree from one of the best schools in the country on the westside of town where she still lived. Michelle, in contrast, had worked her way through, at a somewhat less prestigious night law school not too far from downtown. They had bonded that first week when Michelle had jumped in, on the record, to support Maya who had been getting verbally abused and insulted by a tag-team judge/City Attorney on her first day working in misdemeanor arraignment court. Maya had recognized in Michelle some of the same fight, propelled by some of the same anger she had even-then recognized in herself.
Michelle was an ethnic amalgamation of the office itself. Part African-American, part Korean, part Hispanic, Michelle had been raised on three continents by parents who were both Navy officers. She had grown up speaking Korean and German before picking up Japanese, and Spanish (“and my English isn’t bad either,” she’d point out from time to time).
As the two talked, Sebastian walked over towards Maya. “Wait, let me get my drink first, and I’ll be right back,” Maya told him, hoping to extract herself from the entanglement with the nameless law clerk and her looming entanglement with Sebastian at the same time. She’d need another drink if she had any hope avoiding getting sucked in. Sebastian was a suave, dark haired man a few years younger than her. He had grown up with divorced parents, bouncing back and forth between Columbia and Los Angeles before he finally settled on law school and Los Angeles. They had both worked as young trial lawyers together, in their first downtown trial assignment, and gotten on well enough. But Maya had made the mistake of sleeping with him. One too many times. On the couch in her office.
“I came by your office twice this week, but you weren’t there,” Sebastian told her. Over a year removed now from their last conversation, and many years removed from the last time they had slept together, Sebastian had still not seemed to pick up on Maya’s none-too-subtle ‘leave me the hell alone’ vibe.
“I work for a living, you know. I was probably at jail, visiting clients. You should try it sometime,” Maya told him, smiling as she said the words.
But silently she chastised herself. That’s not fair. She knew it wasn’t fair. Sebastian was a credible lawyer, if somewhat less-than-creative in his thinking and approach to problem-solving. He’s solid enough in the courtroom, though. It’s just that he’s so desperate, Maya thought. And clingy, she added silently. Maya did not do clingy. At least, not well.
2
“Morning. Coffee?” Donald asked the following Monday morning as Maya rounded the corner into the office.
Maya opened her mouth, reflexively, to respond when Donald cut her off.
“For me, I meant. And not too much sugar this time please…” Donald couldn’t even finish the sentence before he heard…
“Fuck you! Oh, and good morning!” It was Maya, but despite the words, she was smiling broadly. “Your wife deserves a goddamn medal…”
They both burst out laughing. “Now maybe if you’re buying…” Maya started. Donald finished, “I’ll boil the water. How’s that?”
Donald and his wife were both from the Midwest, and had both managed to get themselves through the rarefied halls of Harvard Law before moving across the country together. His wife could see the Criminal Courts Building, and in it, her husband’s office, from her window in the business development section of her large firm on the other side of downtown.
In contrast, Donald shared his office with Maya. It sat almost at the end of a long corridor, under a yellowing handwritten sign that read “Hallway of Compassion.” The sign had probably been scribbled by some long ago Public Defender in a manic moment of optimism. It hung on the wall as an aspirational counterbalance to the District Attorney’s marble-covered “Hall of Justice” building. Those hallowed words were actually chiseled in stone, above the granite columns on the DA’s headquarters building that every Public Defender had to walk past in order to get into the courthouse. The Public Defender sign, in contrast, had clung to the wall for years—obstinately, if not precariously—just one janitorial decision away from disappearing forever into the city-issued w
aste bin of history.
“Can you come talk to me when you get a chance Maya?” her boss asked as he walked by her office. He didn’t stop to wait for a response.
Too early, she thought as she followed him over.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” Maya’s boss asked her once they got to his office.
He had a wry smile on his face, like he was waiting for her to answer, so that he could deliver his punch line for the who-knows-what’th time.
“I give. Maybe the good news today?” Maya replied.
“Ha, well, there’s no good news. Can’t believe you fell for that one. Anyway, I think I’m going to give you a murder case, but I want to make sure you have time and aren’t overwhelmed with your caseload. What are you up to Maya?”
“What am I up to? About 5 feet 6, maybe 5’7 in heels.”
“Got it. Funny. It’s yours then,” he told her. “If you want it. Anyway, you earned it. You’re very good at what you do. Wasn’t always like that, of course.”
She cringed, thinking back. He kept right on talking, seemingly oblivious.
“I remember years ago, you were a young lawyer here. You came to my office just like…what was that, your first trial?”
“Second. It was my second trial.”
“Second. Ah, that’s right. You won your first trial, if I remember.”
“‘Beginner’s luck’ I think is what you called it,” Maya responded.
“Listen,” he said, “I was as surprised as anyone that you won it, and even more when you were able to win a few more trials after that.”
Anyone else. Anyone else! Maya thought. But I guess I could do worse for a boss, she concluded, as she waited for him to finish up with his shtick, which meant listening to…