Deathbed Dimes

by Naomi Elana Zener

  With no other choice, I sent Javier an email instructing him to copy the three letters and send them to Chip. I then emailed Esty about this wrinkle in the case but pledged that it wouldn’t hurt her chances of winning. I left Javier with the task of ferreting out our mole and turned my attention to the maelstrom that was Tanya. I sent Tanya an email advising her that we needed to meet. She informed me that she was in the office and needed to speak with me as well. I asked Coco to join me in the boardroom where we confronted Tanya about her recent behaviour.

  “Tanya, it has come to our attention that, despite a temporary reprieve, both your work and attitude have been slipping,” I said. “Your absence and sheer disregard for everything that Javier has been taking the time to teach you leads us to believe that you are not really serious about practicing law, here or anywhere else.”

  “Let’s not forget your brief foray into turning our law firm into your version of the dating game,” Coco added. “You’re not really a good fit with this practice.”

  “Like either of you should talk,” Tanya retorted. “Coco, you fight with Javier at every turn and treat him like he’s a sewer rat. And, Joely, you walk around here like you are the Queen of Sheba. You have Ethan twirled around your little finger and even though you don’t want him, you won’t let him be happy with anyone else.”

  “I’ve had enough of your mouth and your shitty work,” Coco said, slamming her palm on the table. “Just pack up your crap and get out of here. You’re fired.”

  “Fine by me because I was going to quit anyway,” she said sharply, her eyes angry slits. “I’ve been stuck working with Javier who knows even less than the two of you about estates law.” Tanya shouted, “You are just a jealous bitch, Joely, and that is why you have tried to keep Ethan and me apart.”

  “You are delusional and in need of a serious reality check,” I said, not even mustering the energy to care.

  “Ethan is not interested in you, no matter what you may think, and you should just move on,” Tanya spat.

  “Like Coco said, you’re just not a good fit for us,” I said as Coco slipped her hand under Tanya’s arm to guide her out of her chair and toward the front door. “I think you should just leave. Trevor will pack up your things and messenger them to you.”

  “Unhand me,” she demanded, flailing.

  Coco let go of her arm and Tanya hurried from the boardroom back to her cubicle where Janice and Trevor, having overheard our not-so-subtle conversation, stood blocking her from taking anything from her desk. Tanya managed to grab her attaché and purse, which Janice cleverly rifled through before Tanya came out of the boardroom so as to ensure that she would not try to steal anything that belonged to the firm.

  “Hey, one more thing before you go,” I called out to Tanya. “I know it was you who told Chip about my letters.” I took the gamble that Tanya was indeed the one who leaked our documents.

  “What are you talking about?” Tanya said, turning around to look at me. “What letters?”

  “The ones I was receiving on the Chalmers file from a mystery witness,” I said, starting to sweat. “It doesn’t matter though. Your little spy move only led Chip on a wild goose chase because there is no mystery witness. It was just a wasted exercise in forcing us to make unnecessary disclosures.”

  “How dare you accuse me of theft? I’ll sue you all for wrongful dismissal and defamation of character. This won’t be the last you hear of me,” Tanya declared, speeding out the front doors to the office, hair swinging with each step.

  “I just love saying goodbye to bad rubbish,” Janice said, pursing her lips comically. “It’s about time that you fired that little tart. Going after your man like that—”

  “Ethan is not my man,” I interrupted.

  “But he could be,” Trevor said.

  “Get back to work,” I ordered as Coco and I walked back to our respective offices.

  Immediately after Tanya left, we changed the locks to the office entrances and exits and all filing cabinets. All of the passwords on our computers and servers were changed and Tanya’s remote access to our computer systems was terminated. After Tanya’s exodus, we all took painstaking care to search the firm from top to bottom to ensure that not one file, not one card in our Rolodexes and not one legal text had been copied or stolen. Once we were satisfied that nothing was missing, we knew for certain that our practice was unharmed and that we were safe from any attempts at sabotage.

  While the entire office was preoccupied with the fallout from Tanya’s firing, Javier snuck off to speak with Ethan privately about whether or not he had disclosed the letters to Chip. I later received an email from Ethan in which he swore that he didn’t send them to Chip. Deep down, I knew that Ethan would not destroy our friendship or risk his career by giving anything to opposing counsel outside of the normal discovery and disclosure process. He said that we needed to determine whether we could resolve our trust issues before we could resume any friendship, let alone a working relationship. The biggest bombshell was that he informed me that for both of our sakes, he was taking his offer of a romantic future together off the table. As I read those words, I experienced a niggling sensation in the pit of my stomach. As much as I wanted to ignore it, I did not want Ethan to renege his vow to love me forever. Why wouldn’t I let myself fall in love with Ethan? I asked myself. Ethan was the total package of everything a woman could want in a man: his looks were fantastic, he had no discernible love handles, he still had a full head of hair, he was brilliant and successful, and by all of Coco’s accounts, he was phenomenal in bed. With his promise to put his womanizing past behind him in order to have a monogamous future with me, Ethan could easily have been the Prince Ranier to my Grace Kelly. At the same time, I was not ready to admit to having any reciprocal sentiments for him.

  It seemed as though any way I examined the situation between us, our friendship would be lost. If I continued to work with him and date other men, it would eventually break Ethan’s heart, and I refused to do that to him. However, if we took the plunge and dated and the relationship tanked, I risked losing one of my best friends and surrogate family. Unfortunately, the purgatory in which we found ourselves was causing more harm than good and every option that stared me in the face seemed to lead to the end of my friendship with Ethan. For a fleeting moment, I stopped to consider a third possibility: the two of us falling in love and living happily ever after. If Ethan and I fell deeply in love, we would become partners in law and life and I would have everything I had ever dreamed of. Who was I kidding? No woman I knew had it all. Certainly not my mother, Coco, her mother or any female attorney I had ever worked with. I resigned myself to accepting the fact that I had to decide what was more important to me: my friendship with Ethan and future romantic happiness or having a thriving and successful career as a respected lawyer. I replied to Ethan’s email asking him to come back to the office to assist Coco and I now that Tanya had been dismissed. I let him know that I knew he didn’t give the letters to Chip and that, despite her assertions to the contrary, Tanya was the likely suspect. I finished my email to him with the promise that we would work things out between us, but that for now our commitments to the law firm had to come first.

  A few weeks passed since Tanya was fired, and Ethan and I had been able to remain civil to each other by not working together on the Chalmers file. In the meantime, we all watched from our ivory tower in Westwood as Chip built his own estates practice — somewhat successfully — to rival mine. His associate co-counsel from New York finally joined him in LA and Chip even sent me a snarky email about his plan to write the California bar exam. Despite my best efforts to prevent Chip’s endeavours from affecting me, I did take notice of the fact that, not only was Chip’s practice growing with clients, it was expanding with people who consulted me first but never returned. Making matters worse was the fact that, through his East Coast socialite network, Chip had managed to finagle his way into being invited to red carpet events around town with a number of
his celebrity clients, some of whom were friends with my mother. I even received a press release from Chip’s firm informing me in advance of the announcement that he had been named one of the top forty attorneys under forty in LA. Although he came from a connected family and had the backing of the boys at Mavis, I knew that there was no way that his career could enjoy such a fast and spectacular ascension. Still believing that Tanya was Chip’s spy, we wondered if she had taken Chip up on his earlier offer to work for him. I scoured the Mavis website, including their attorney listing and any press on Chip, as well as the State Bar of California’s website, to see if Tanya was in fact employed at Mavis or anywhere else. When I found nothing, I had one of Javier’s ‘associates’ try to find out and inform me of Tanya’s whereabouts. According to him, she had moved back home and was not working as a lawyer. Since Tanya had not followed through on her threat to sue us, we felt confident that she was no longer a variable with which we had to contend. Unfortunately, Chip remained a dangerous threat.

  Something unexpected happened when Blake returned from his seminar up north. Blake flat out told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. As soon as he uttered those words at 8:51 a.m. Tuesday morning, whilst sipping his grande non-fat latte, without presenting me with a sizeable diamond or even bringing me a morning coffee, I realized that I was no longer in love with him. Hell, I didn’t even like him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Blake said half-laughing. “How can you say you feel absolutely nothing for me anymore?”

  “Please don’t take this personally, Blake, but you are a narcissistic, self-obsessed dick and while that works for you, it just doesn’t work for me,” I said. “It was very attractive when I was a young naïve student who thought that I could tame the wild beast. I should’ve known better than to try to turn an Abercrombie sweatshirt into a Hugo Boss suit.”

  “Cut the crap, Joey,” he replied. “I know you felt something when I kissed you. I saw your face in the back of the cab. I also know that you would not have asked me to be here unless you felt something for me.”

  “Although that kiss was good and may have left me with some confusion, working together these past few months made me see that you and I could never work as a couple,” I said evenly. “I loved you way too much back then and you have never stopped loving yourself. What’s changed is that I’ve stopped loving you.”

  “Joey, when we kissed, there was a spark,” he argued, a puff of foam resting on his upper lip.

  “Listen, Blake, we have no future together. We can be colleagues, but not lovers,” I informed him.

  Blake sat in silence for several moments, having come to the realization that he was never going to win me back.

  “Joey, I respect your decision,” he advised. “I got your message loud and clear — there is no us.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  “However, I am at your service and willing to continue to work on Esty’s case until you’ve won the estate for her. But after it’s over, I’m going back to Stanford,” he advised.

  “I completely understand,” I said, meaning it. “While I don’t want to be selfish, your offer to stay on the case could not have come at a better time.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Esty’s case is not proceeding as well as it should. It seems like Chip is always ahead of me,” I advised. “I’m not sure how he knows what my strategy is.”

  “Well, you did work together for four years. He must have learned something by osmosis about how you prepare for a case,” Blake replied.

  “While that could be very true, my mistrustful mind thinks that something more devious is at play. He discovered my handwriting expert’s evidence,” I said, my mind still playing through theories.

  “You would have had to disclose that to him in any event,” Blake offered.

  “Yes, but that still doesn’t answer the question of how he got his hands on it. It gave him a pre-emptory opportunity to get his own expert to counter our expert’s findings” I replied. “I think that it may have been Tanya, but I have no proof.”

  “Why would she have given him that? She would know better than to do something that would risk her license to practice,” Blake replied.

  “Long story. I’m still determined to turn things around on the case, but I do need your help,” I said.

  “I’m here. Put me to work,” he said.

  “First I’ll need you to review Chip’s expert’s findings with a fine-tooth comb and figure out how we discredit Chip,” I instructed.

  “Aye, aye,” Blake said, taking the file from my hands.

  With Blake back and everyone busy with their own work, I had a few free hours to indulge myself in some much needed me time. I emailed Coco to let her know that I was going to work from home for the rest of the day. Rather than go home, I left the office in desperate need of some shoe therapy, seeking solace and comfort in the welcoming arms of the three sage wise men of Wilshire: Saks, Neiman Marcus and Barneys. After four glorious hours of buying shoes instead of eating my feelings, I returned to the pool house resuscitated and armed with eight new pairs of foot art. As I crossed the koi pond, I was confronted by Coco, my mother and Big J, who were laying in wait on the patio sipping mai tai’s. It looked as though I was about to enjoy a second intervention.

  “I’m happy to see that I have not missed out on happy hour,” I said, noticing a fourth mai tai sitting on the table waiting for me. “What are you all doing here?”

  “Well, we just thought we would sit down and catch up,” Sylvia said, channelling an episode of Friends. “What have you been up to?”

  “Getting friendly with stacks and stacks of Louboutins,” I replied.

  “How’s work?” Big J asked.

  “Fine,” I replied hesitantly. “Sylvia, what’s going on? This feels like an ambush.”

  “Nothing’s going on, honey,” Sylvia said, each word drawn out and dripping with bullshit.

  “Jesus Christ! We’re here to tell you that you need to figure things out with Ethan and fast,” Coco ordered.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You, Ethan, love, marriage, babies,” Big J said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Where would you get an idea like that from?” I asked.

  “Me,” Coco advised. “I told them that you two hooked up.”

  “And we couldn’t be more thrilled,” Sylvia said with a grin.

  “What hook up?” I asked, feigning confusion.

  “No one here is buying your act,” Coco advised. “Remember, everyone was in the office the day of your big blowout with Ethan. We all heard what you both said. Don’t even try to deny it.”

  “Also, the security guards showed me the tapes starting with Ethan sneaking on to the property and then your little tête-à-tête the next morning,” Sylvia notified me with childlike excitement.

  “I’m completely at a loss,” I said, setting the mai tai down.

  “Don’t be. Ethan is the missing piece in your life’s puzzle,” Big J said. “You have a chance for love. Real love. Why aren’t you jumping at it?”

  “It’s complicated. He’s my best friend. Sorry,” I said, looking at Coco who’d stopped mid-sip to glare at me, “best male friend. That night muddied the waters and now the line between friendship and lovers is blurry.”

  “Why does it have to be one or the other?” Sylvia asked. “Why can’t it be both?”

  “I thought you didn’t even like Ethan,” I retorted.

  “What’s not to like? He’s gorgeous, rich, smart and stands up for you! If he can stand up to me and my bullshit, then he can stand up to and for you, which is what you need,” Sylvia said, pointing at me emphatically.

  “If I let my heart speak to my head and I tell Ethan that I feel the same way, what happens if the relationship doesn’t work out? We work together, remember?” I asked, to myself more than anyone. “Then I’ll be out a friend, a partner and love — possibly th
e love of my life.”

  “Honey, I want you to be happy and I know he makes you happy. Juan shared with me all of your letters that you sent to him from your time in college and at law school,” Sylvia informed me. Big J looked over and nodded his head in agreement. “You loved him. You simply hadn’t figured it out. You’ve always been a little late to the party.”

  “While this revelation and lovefest is touching, can we please get back to how you will win Ethan over?” Coco asked. “You are going to have to do some heavy lifting to prove to him that you love him and that your fear of being hurt was what prevented you from following your heart for the past fifteen years.”

  Before I could reply, my iPhone buzzed with an urgent email. It was a fourth message from the mystery witness telling me that they could be contacted by way of email. I told everyone to wait while I texted the witness back, informing them that I had to disclose their letters to Mandy’s lawyers, so unless they really had evidence to give me and were willing to testify at trial, there was no point in continuing to write to me. I also advised Deep Throat that if they did have verification that the second will was in fact a fake, I could really use their help. Within seconds of hitting the send button, I received a reply in which they advised that they wanted to meet with me alone, face-to-face. We set up a time to meet on the condition that I would not disclose their identity until I called them as a surprise witness at trial. With the trial around the corner, I was willing to undertake the risky maneuver and submit to any slap on the wrist from the judge for doing so.

  “Listen, I will speak with Ethan, but I have to do it on my own terms,” I said, returning to face them on the patio. “Trust me. I will fix everything with Ethan.”

  “You can start tonight,” Sylvia said, lounging drunkenly. “I’ve invited him and Coco to a premiere for a movie by the director of my upcoming indie film. So you had better go and get ready.”