by Larry Hill
“I already have a pacemaker, goddam it. And, I already had a heart attack. I know what a heart attack feels like and, this, young lady, is no heart attack.” He didn't point out that he had no pain at the time of his myocardial infarction in the bar, at least no pain that he could remember.
“Again, Mr. Klein, we better take you over to General Hospital just to be safe. You could die.” Her partner had learned his identify from one of the 911 callers and passed it on.
“Look around you, my dear, at all these old bastards. Any of them could die in the next ten minutes, too. The only difference between them and me is that I just fainted and they didn't and that I have a pacemaker and they don't, or at least some of them don't. Forget about putting me in your fucking ambulance.” Jennifer and Jason were incredulous at the clarity of his words. Rebecca continued to stand well away from the action.
The two EMTs simultaneously shrugged their shoulders, picked up their paraphernalia and left, the elder one explaining to the Kleins on her way out that they weren't responsible for anything that happened to him. The comment was ignored as Fred and his entourage sauntered toward the Prius parked in the handicapped spot across from the temple.
“Looking good, Fred.” “Atta boy!” “Go for it Klein!'' Departing members of the congregation saluted him as if he were in the final stages of a marathon.
A VENEZUELAN
The sun shone dazzlingly, unusual for Pacific Heights. Jennifer basked in the rays atop the rarely used chaise lounge, protected from view by high hedge rows. She was attired only in Ray Bans, a floppy Digger hat and the lower portion of her purple bikini, the top half tossed randomly aside. She was reading something risqué. She had inhaled a few tokes of marijuana and was feeling just right. She heard the sliding glass door open, looked over and saw her stepson, Jason, wearing his business suit with a bright floral tie. More handsome than she remembered. He walked slowly and silently toward her, looking, as best she could tell, only at her eyes. She did nothing to find and replace the top half of her outfit. He reached the chaise and spoke. “Bend your knees, Jen.”
She did.
He deftly slipped off the bottom of her bathing suit and tossed it in the general direction of its mate.
The mild breeze felt good between her legs.
He took off his navy blue suit jacket, let it drop to the grass, and began removing his tie.
“Jennifer!” The voice was from inside the house, clearly that of her husband.
She awakened in her bed, covered in sweat. She looked at the LED of the alarm clock - 2:46. Fred was asleep three feet away. He was snoring as was his custom, but the grunts were barely audible over the white noise machine that Jen always had turned on high.
She very much wished that she could have a man inside of her right then. Fred was not a candidate as evidenced by their attempt a couple of months before. She hadn’t owned a vibrator since she married him and wished that she found masturbation more satisfactory. Better than nothing, but not much. Oh, how she wished she could get back into the dream and follow it to its logical conclusion. But the partner in the fantasy was her husband’s first-born son. And, he’s with someone else. Jesus, what am I thinking about?
The following morning that dream, unlike so many others she had, was remembered in every detail, including the color and pattern of the tie and the specific location of the bikini top. She had just sat down for breakfast with her usual bowl of Cheerios with blueberries and coffee when Jason walked into the kitchen, poured himself grapefruit juice and toasted half a bagel. He had given up coffee when his family and he had split.
“I didn’t know you were here last night. Problems?” she asked.
“No problems. Becca’s in Denver investigating something and I’d just as soon stay with you guys, if that’s not a burden. Not only do I get to see you, it’s a lot closer to the office so I can sleep a little more.
“No burden at all. We love to have you. It’s really good for your Dad to have you around. By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, we really like Rebecca. You gonna marry her?”
“Not so fast! I’ve only known her for about three months. I like her too, but I’m, shall we say, gun-shy after my first attempt at marital bliss. Stay tuned.”
“Sorry for the forwardness. You know, you were in my dream last night.”
“No, didn’t know that. I hope I wasn’t a serial killer or a mad rapist.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.”
“So, was it a good dream? Tell me more.”
“Actually, I don’t remember much about it,” she lied. “But I don’t think you committed any capital offenses. Jase, I gotta go. Big day of shopping ahead.”
“See ya. Let me know if you remember anything more about the dream. It’s not too often that a good looking woman tells me that she dreamed about me.” His eyes remained connected to hers just a bit longer than she would have expected.
Jennifer’s love life was nothing worth writing a novel about. She could count on two hands the number of men with whom she’d gone to bed. The younger of two daughters of Graham Kesselheim, a non-tenured professor of statistics at Princeton, she’d done OK in school and was universally agreed to be one of the two or three best looking girls at the public high school in the town that may have more PhDs per capita than any other in the world. During her junior year, she scored a prom invitation from the power forward on the basketball team, a tall white guy who had already committed to some midwestern college – she couldn’t remember which. He, as did she, bore academic genes, being the off-spring of a biology professor mother and classicist father, both Princeton professors. He excelled in the art of persuasion, convincing the young Jennifer that full-bore sex at sixteen was a pretty good idea, as a way to understand her own psychology and physiology. “And, oh, by the way, my team will be playing here in Princeton next year so we can hook up again soon.” She didn’t have the sports savvy to ask whether it was fairly certain that he would be on the traveling squad of the team. After a pair of couplings that night, she did learn quite a bit about psychology and physiology.
Jennifer had neither the interest nor the GPA to attend Princeton U or any other big- ticket institution of higher learning. She at least surpassed the educational exploits of her older sister who married right out of Princeton High. Jennifer got a bachelor’s degree, majoring in psychology with a minor in physiology, from a combination of a junior college, a southern party place, and San Francisco State University. At each stop, there were men in her life with whom she shared sexual experiences, but she reacted to most of the encounters as she did to the lectures in her courses, as educational episodes. The pain from her initial experience did not regularly reappear, but the pleasure that she expected, and was a given in several of her psych lectures, was slow in developing. It was not until she had graduated and entered into a lengthy affair with a married policeman did she accept that there really were joys of sex. There were two or three other satisfactory, albeit brief, matches after the dispiriting breakup with the cop, with good mating playing the central role in each. Then she met and married Mr. Taylor, the franchisee, and found sex with him to be abhorrent. She knew it going into the marriage but figured the security of marrying a rich man was more important than physical fulfillment and that she, now not only a fan of intercourse but well educated in its psychological and physiological underpinnings, would be able to change him. She had too high an opinion of her skill set. The sex act was as unpleasant and unfulfilling during the middle of the marriage as at its beginning and end. During the latter half of the Taylor era, Ernesto Contreras made his entry into her life, and sex became for the first time a really big deal. Frequency was not essential. They generally bedded monthly, occasionally more, almost never less. Quality was more important than quantity and the quality was top grade. During the gap between Taylor and Klein, she stepped out with a handful of other men, mainly those with whom she felt there was at least a slight chance that she’d want to enter into matrimony. With
some, sex was good, others, not so good. None was as breathtaking as Contreras or as atrocious as Taylor. None passed the marriage eligibility requirements until she met Fred Klein walking his dog. Copulation with him was OK – orgasms were rare but she was not entirely dissatisfied, especially knowing that the nuptials did not signal the end of the dalliances with Ernesto. All was acceptable until the fall and resultant brain injury. She had had sex only once since, that in the disorder of Ernesto’s house in the Excelsior. It looked like there was little if any chance of a change on the home front and there were no likely candidates amongst those men that she had enough contact with to logically make a move. It had been many months since she sat with Ernesto in the Botanical Garden. She picked up the phone.
Ernesto answered after the second ring. “Hola, mi amor.”
“How did you know it was me?” asked Jennifer, assuming correctly that he had not figured out how to identify a caller on his cell phone.
“Oh. Is that you, Jen? I’m so sorry. I thought it was somebody else. It’s great hearing from you. How are you?”
“I’m OK. What do you mean somebody else?”
“Come on Jen. We’ve been apart a long time. You don’t think I was just sitting around waiting for you to call, do you?”
“No, of course not. But ‘mi amor.’ That’s me, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sure. But there is someone else. Jennifer, I’m getting married. Next month.”
She said nothing. He said nothing. After an exceedingly long pause, he said, “Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. I don’t know what to say. Who is she?”
“Nobody you know. Her name is Margarita. She’s Venezuelan.”
“Oh. Venezuelan, that’s nice.”
“Yes, she’s very nice. She is much younger than me – just 28. Her father left Caracas when Chavez took over. He had been a minister in the previous government. He was frightened that he’d lose everything that he had made.”
“I see. How long have you known her?”
“Just a few months. I didn’t know her when I saw you last.”
“That’s nice to hear, I guess. What else?”
“I met her at the restaurant. She came in with her mother and brother and we just started talking. She’s smart, like you. Went to college and has a job as an interpreter with the Gap. And Jennifer, I am going to be a father.”
Another pause in the conversation. “That’s great news, Ernesto. Congratulations. But aren’t you more careful than that? You know, since you knocked me up?”
“Come on, don’t talk like that. Yeah, I should have been more careful, but she doesn’t seem to be too upset. Her parents aren’t happy, but I guess they like me OK and are going to throw a big wedding for us. And they are buying us a house – nothing big, but in San Francisco, anything is great.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Do you want to be invited to the wedding? Her father said we can invite anyone we know.”
“Jesus Christ! What an incredibly stupid idea! No, I don’t want to be invited.”
“I guess that was stupid. Sorry. By the way, why did you call?”
“Oh, no reason. I just wanted to see how you were doing. Our last time together wasn’t the best. I hated to see what we had end like that.”
“True. But I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to see each other again.”
“You’re a genius. Ernesto. Incidentally, does she know about me?”
“No, she doesn’t. She knows that there have been a few women in my life, but she doesn’t ask questions.”
“A few women in your life.”
“Oh, guess where we are going on our honeymoon.”
“I don’t know. Uruguay?”
“Close. We’re going to South America - Chile and Argentina. I always wanted to go to South America.”
“Yeah, I know. Have a great life.”
A CAN OF 7 Up
Two weeks to go before the trial was to begin, Greenberg had decided that his only rational defense was to try to convince the jury that his client didn't know that he had hit anybody. Pretty far-fetched he knew, what with the aborted attempts to cover up things like the dented car. But on the witness stand, the proper presentations of the poker players, Dr. Jameson and maybe Jennifer, he might be able to sow the seed of doubt. Furthermore, it was an easy call to put Fred himself on the stand, more as a sympathy-seeking move than a source of meaningful and exonerating evidence. The odds were that there’d be a guilty verdict, putting the sentencing in the lap of Judge Dadekian. Greenberg did not remember a case he had taken to trial in which a guilty verdict could be considered a victory -- a victory because the sentence, turned down in negotiations by the prosecutor, was acceptable to the convicted. House arrest – good for the convict as he didn’t go to prison and, at his age and state of health, he wasn’t likely to be doing much out of the house anyway except going to doctors. Good for the taxpayers as he wouldn’t cost anything to house and feed, and he’d be financially responsible for his own medical care, not the case were he to be incarcerated. Not good for the DA as it would offer grist for TV spots to any competition he might have in future political races. Soft on Crime! Rich Guy Who Killed Young Mother Serves Sentence in Luxury!
The civil case had received little attention, except in the Spencer home, the office of Spencer’s personal injury attorney and, more recently in the office of Klein’s new lawyer, PI defense attorney Garth Gladstone, USC Law School ‘97. The case had been filed a few months after the crime but was back-burnered in anticipation of the criminal case and the information that would surface in the interim. Gladstone had heard from unknown sources about Klein’s admission of guilt at his birthday bash. He knew that there would have to be a settlement; Art Schofield couldn’t take the case to trial. The lawyers had run some numbers. Gladstone/Spencer wanted thirty-million, Schofield/Klein/Insurers offered ten. Counter offers were put on hold pending criminal developments.
One week before the trial was to begin, the Kleins were called into Greenberg’s office for coaching. Jennifer’s testimony initially seemed pretty straight forward. The lawyer had pointed out to her that she had the right to refuse to testify as she was the wife. But if she testified at all, she’d have to answer all questions that the judge deemed appropriate.
“No problem. There was nothing he told me that made me worried that he had done something wrong.”
“So what happened that night?”
“He came home from the poker game and told me that he lost fifty dollars. Nothing more.”
“How about the next morning?”
“He was in the kitchen when I got up, reading the paper.”
“Anything unusual about that?”
“Nope. He always read the paper in the morning.”
“Then what?”
“That was my volunteer day. I volunteered at the airport – Traveler’s Aid. So I left. I think he said something about taking his car in.”
“Why was he going to do that?”
“I don’t remember. Some mechanical thing, I think.”
“Do you remember why you were going to take the car to the shop, Fred?” asked Greenberg.
“I don’t remember anything.”
“So, what else, Jennifer?”
“Nothing. Next time I saw him was when he told me that he might have hit the woman. And then the police came and took him away.”
“He told you that he hit the woman the same day that you saw him at breakfast and everything was OK?”
“Right.”
“You know, that doesn’t look too good for our side if we are going to try and sell the idea to the jury that he didn’t remember anything. Maybe we better invoke the spousal privilege and keep you off the stand.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You OK with that Fred?”
“Sure, why not.”
“So,” said Greenberg, “it looks like you’ll be our only witness, except for Dr. Jameson and one or two of
the poker players who will say that you seemed normal when you played that night.”
“Yeah, right, I was normal ‘cause I didn’t think I hurt anyone.”
“Let’s go over some of that, Fred. What do you remember about that night?”
“Nothing. What I know now is what they’ve told me since.”
“They?”
“Jennifer, Jason, Artie, and some others, I guess.”
“You don’t remember driving to the poker game?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember hitting anyone?”
“Huh-uh.”
“You don’t remember that you had a big tray of vegetables in the car but did a U turn to buy Doritos and dip at the 7-Eleven?”
“No, I don’t. I do remember doing that before – I always brought the dip and chips.”
“You didn’t buy any chips or dip that night?”
“So they tell me.”
“Do you remember coming home and telling your wife that you lost fifty dollars?”
“Nope, and I would normally remember that. I don’t think I ever lost that much at one of our games. I usually won.”
“And, do you remember getting arrested and spending a night in jail?”
“Sort of. Sort of like a dream. I couldn’t tell you anything specific about it. I just remember that I hated it.”
“You know what the prosecution is going to say, don’t you?”
“How would I know that?”
“They are going to say that you hit the lady and left the scene because you were afraid that you’d be arrested and accused of drunk driving. That you tried to hide your dented car, knowing that somebody had probably seen you hit her. That you knew full well that you had hit somebody, maybe causing a serious injury and that you committed a felony by leaving the scene of the accident.”
“But I didn’t know that I hit her, at least not enough to hurt her.”
“How do you know that if you don’t remember anything?”