“There’s no better time, really. I’ll give you half the credit for all the work.”
“It’s not about that. It’s not always about money.”
“I’ll overlook the fact that you said that.” Max hesitates for a moment and puts a finger to his lips in concentration. “Hmm. Nope. Sorry. Can’t overlook it. Of course it’s always about the money, you moron. This amount of new business will give you real power to control your life. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Always’ seems kind of stale to me right now.”
“It’ll be a nice fresh start for you. New memories on new cases.”
“Max…”
“At least just meet with him.”
David closes his eyes and bangs his head against the headrest of his chair. “Okay. If you leave me alone, I’ll meet him.”
“Great. Paris will be cold, so dress warm.”
“Paris?”
“Simon had a stroke several years back. Didn’t I tell you? He’s in a wheelchair. Obviously it’s very difficult for him to travel here.” Max quickly heads for the office door before David can argue.
David is on his feet. “You really suck. I have responsibilities now. I can’t just drop everything. And Paris of all places? You know better!”
Max turns at the door. The look on his face confuses me. For just one moment, I think he’s going to say something meaningful, something understanding. He opens his mouth and I want to smack myself for being so foolish. “A lot of people have honeymooned in Paris. But it’s just another city—a city with business.”
Max departs, shutting the door behind him. David throws the Scotch tape dispenser at the door where it leaves a small dent before dropping uselessly to the floor.
At the animal hospital, Joshua gingerly removes a bandaged cat from one of the cages lining the back room as Sally looks on, sipping tea from an old cracked mug.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” Joshua says. “It’s nice to have the company of a human.”
Sally smiles as she rubs the cat on the ears. “And what’s the story with this one?”
“Stray,” Joshua answers. “Probably a fight with a dog or another cat.”
“So who pays for the care?”
“If someone adopts her, they’ll probably offer me something toward it. Otherwise, it’s just the cost of doing business.”
Sally looks at all the cages, each with a dog or a cat receiving some type of medical attention. Many of the cages are marked FOR ADOPTION. Sally notices Tiny Pete and a few of his brothers and sisters in two of the cages.
“From the looks of things,” Sally says, “I’m guessing you haven’t paid off that X-ray machine yet.”
“Are you kidding? We’ve got money rolling in.”
“Well, that explains the fancy car you picked me up in. The ’96 Honda Civic is a classic.”
Joshua returns the cat to the cage and opens another. A small mutt runs out onto the floor. Joshua and Sally play with the dog as they talk about Clifford, David, me, Joshua’s plans to close the practice, and the passage of time.
Finally, Joshua asks the question that I can tell has long been on his mind. “What really happened with us? At first we were pretty good.”
“Are you using your three minutes?”
“If I need to.”
“That one’s easy. I don’t know. It just started feeling like we were two raw wounds rubbing together.”
“But what changed?”
“Nothing did. I think that was the problem. We both have a couple of long stories in us. They define who we are, but we never spoke about them. In the end, we couldn’t get past them or through them.”
“I’m tired of being afraid,” Joshua says quietly.
“Me, too. I assume there are worse things, but I’m not aware of them at the moment.”
“At some point you’ve got to say ‘what the hell’ and take the chance, don’t you?”
“Otherwise nothing ever changes,” Sally agrees. “We can’t keep blaming our silence on the absence of an understanding ear.”
“So, whatever the other person does with it—”
“Right, that’s just about them.”
They let the silence between them grow for a few seconds. Then, finally, Joshua says, “I once had a son.”
“I’d like to hear about him.”
Joshua swallows hard. “He was sick. Near the end he was in excruciating pain. I needed to stop that for him. No one else was going to do it, so I made that decision for my little boy. After we buried him and I had to go back into the world, I did some awful things to people who cared about me.”
“Do you still love him?” Sally whispers.
Joshua can hold back his tears no longer and nods. “He was the last, best of me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
And so, Sally and Joshua pass part of their evening together in the telling of stories. To themselves their stories, once spoken aloud, are shameful if not completely beyond the realm of human forgiveness. But to each other, the tales—told tentatively at first and then in the rush of a completely unexpected unburdening—are far too familiar in tone to permit judgment.
I choose to honor their confidences in each other. My discretion is really the only gift I’ve left to give them.
Later that night, when Joshua drives Sally back to her house, there is a troubled silence between them that comes from their vulnerability. The evening has had too much intimacy shared between two people who’ve not yet laid the supporting foundation of trust.
Joshua pulls the car in front of Sally’s apartment complex. He glances over at her as he begins the same sentence for the second time, “I want to thank you for…,” and then stops.
Sally waits a few seconds for him to continue. When it is clear that Joshua is paralyzed by his own thoughts, Sally leans over to him, says, “What the hell,” and kisses him full on the mouth. Joshua, unprepared at first, quickly recovers and gently holds her face in his two hands.
Sally finally pulls away and searches his eyes. “The most I can tell you is that I really will try not to do anything to hurt you. Hope you’ll do the same for me.”
He smiles his answer. In that instant, I can imagine what Joshua looked like when he was thirty or perhaps younger, before death forced him to learn about true sadness.
Sally reaches into the backseat and takes hold of a small portable kennel with two little kittens inside. One of these is Tiny Pete.
“Let me help you with those,” Joshua offers.
Sally playfully smacks his hand away. “Don’t you touch my kittens.”
“May I walk you to your door?”
“I think we should end the night on a high note before one of us screws it up.” After Sally exits the car with the portable kennel, she sticks her head through the car window. “You can think of me, though.” Sally jogs up the steps, quickly unlocks the front door, and vanishes into the house without a backward glance.
14
I’m disappointed but not surprised to see that the house is devoid of my usual Christmas decorations even though the holiday is only a week away. There is no evergreen roping around the horse fencing, no wreath on Collette’s house, no candles above the fireplace, no Christmas cards on display in the dining room. David appears to have either forgotten about or purposefully ignored the year’s end on the calendar.
He’s in our bedroom now, attempting to pack a small suitcase while several cats watch from the bed. His resistance to this Paris trip is evident in his apparent inability to find anything—and I do mean anything—that he claims he needs.
“Sally,” David yells, “have you seen my passport?” This is his fifth request to Sally and his second for the passport—a document that she has never seen (as she told him just moments ago) and that sits in the top drawer of his dresser.
“Nope,” Sally calls back. “I’ll help you look—”
The doorbell cuts her off. Sally breaks into a smile and
quickly heads for the door, quieting the barking dogs along the way. She must expect that it is another surprise visit from Joshua—the third for the week.
Sally opens the door not to Joshua, but to Jaycee. Jaycee is bundled against the cold and stamps the snow off her feet. She looks awful.
“Can I help you?” Sally asks while holding Bernie back by his collar.
“Yes. I’m looking for David Colden. Is this the right address?”
“Who shall I say is asking?” Sally’s tone is polite, but cold.
“Jane Cassidy—Jaycee.”
“Regarding?”
Jaycee clears her throat. “Regarding trying to keep me out of prison.”
Sally raises an eyebrow at this response, but doesn’t comment. “Please wait here for a moment,” she says and then abruptly closes the door on Jaycee.
She finds David still in the bedroom. “Was that the UPS guy with my documents?”
“No, it’s a woman,” Sally says with a hint of suspicion. “She says she wants you to keep her out of prison.”
This gets David’s attention. “What? Did she give you a name?”
“Jane Cassidy.”
“Jaycee?”
“Should I let her in?”
“You left her out on the steps?”
David heads to the front door, and Sally follows him. He opens the door and steps aside to let Jaycee in. “Sorry about keeping you out there.”
Chip and Bernie sniff Jaycee for a moment and then, finding the situation of little interest, return to their resting spots. Skippy, however, watches the scene warily from a place next to Sally’s shoe. “Sally said you mentioned something about prison. I’m assuming that’s a joke?” David takes her coat, but she clings to the backpack she carries.
“It’s no joke. I’m in real trouble.” She sounds weak, like she’s been awake for days.
David walks Jaycee to the dining room and puts her in a chair. Sally scoops up Skippy in her arms. “I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
David takes the chair next to Jaycee. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t get anyone to take my case,” she says.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I couldn’t let it just happen. I needed to do something.”
“So you…?”
“I tried another way.”
I can see David’s mind at work, thinking through the range of possible actions that could have gone bad and brought Jaycee to his door—she launched a sit-in at CAPS, she refused to leave her congressman’s office until he saw her, she posted something defamatory on the Internet. “What do you mean by ‘another way’ exactly?” he asks.
Jaycee takes a breath and then drops the bomb. “I bribed a custodian to leave a window unlocked and I broke in and tried to free Cindy.”
“You what?” David stares at Jaycee in disbelief.
“I tried to free Cindy.”
“By breaking into a federal facility? That’s a federal crime. A felony.”
“I know that.”
“And of course you got caught.”
“On the way out, with Cindy in my arms.”
“Are they pressing charges? Maybe they don’t want the publicity, or—”
“They did and they are. Apparently, I’m to be made an example of the NIS ‘zero tolerance’ policy for criminal trespass. I was arrested at the facility and then booked and processed for, let’s see”—Jaycee counts on her fingers—“breaking and entering a federal facility, breaking and entering with the intent to steal federal property, theft of federal property, and criminal trespass. I went before a judge and now I’m out on bail.”
“What about the bribery? Did they charge you with conspiracy?”
“No. They don’t know about the custodian.”
“Good. Maybe you can give him up for a deal,” David says, thinking through the options. “Please tell me you didn’t enter a plea yet?”
“Not guilty, of course.”
“Damn. Why didn’t you call?” David answers his own question. “You tried, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes. You and several other lawyers.”
“Who’s the assistant US attorney assigned to the case?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. We know people in that office. I’ll make some calls and get you a deal to avoid a trial and any jail time… maybe probation and community service.”
“I’m not doing that. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not pleading guilty.”
“Reality check, Jaycee. You broke into a federal facility in an attempt to steal federal property. The fact that the property is alive doesn’t matter. In the eyes of the law, what you did is no different than breaking into a post office to steal stamps.”
“But it is different. Cindy is different. I broke into a lab to save a sentient being from a life of torture.”
“We’ve been through this. It’s a great story for some mass mailing for one of the animal rights groups, but Cindy’s abilities are a complete irrelevancy under the law.”
“It shouldn’t be that way.”
“And Helena shouldn’t be dead. So what. ‘Shouldn’t be’ doesn’t change a damn thing.”
“You said the last time that there was no place to make the claim that Cindy is different from a chair. I’ve just given you a place—it will be at my trial; that Cindy is a being with the right to be free from torture will be my defense.”
“No judge is going to listen to that as a defense. No judge will let you present it to a jury.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter to the law you violated.”
“Necessity is a defense to unlawful entry,” Jaycee says with a law school professor’s assurance.
“What?”
“In New York, an action taken out of necessity to protect life is a defense to the crime of unlawful entry, including criminal trespass,” Jaycee recites confidently.
“How do you know that?”
She digs into her backpack, takes out a copy of New York Criminal Law in a Nutshell, and drops it onto the table between them.
I know from David’s law school days that the Nutshell books—an endless series covering virtually every law school subject—are a distillation of the so-called black letter law regarding the titled subject. Law school students use the books to prepare for finals, which cover half a year, sometimes even a full year, of material in one grueling four-hour exam.
“Page one sixty-seven,” Jaycee says.
“You can’t plan an entire defense around one sentence in a Nutshell. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know. I need a lawyer. I’d like it to be you.”
“You still don’t get it. The defense of necessity to save life applies to human life only. End of story.”
“What about Matthew Hiasl Pan?”
“I’ve never heard of him. Is that going to be your expert witness?”
Jaycee takes out another paper from her backpack, a Science News article, and hands it to David. “He is a twenty-six-year-old chimpanzee in Austria. The Association Against Animal Factories brought suit in Austria to have him declared a non-human person. They took the case all the way to the Austrian Supreme Court. What if we make the same argument—Cindy is a non-human person?”
David glances at the article. “Yeah, I remember this. And how did that all work out for Matthew?” David asks, but from his tone it is clear he knows the answer.
“They lost.”
David shoves the article back to Jaycee. “Of course they lost.”
“But at least they tried. And Matthew couldn’t even sign. Let me show a jury what Cindy can do.”
“The judge won’t let you try. And even if I thought this would have a chance—and I don’t—I don’t do criminal defense work. You need someone who specializes in that.”
“I’m willing to take my chances with you.”
“But I’m not. You’re not even making sense. Why
me?”
“Because Helena once said you were—”
“Don’t do that! Don’t use my wife in this.”
“I’m not. You asked me why—”
“Stop it.” David leans forward, his accusatory finger out and pointing. “Did you plan this whole thing? Break in, get caught, just to make your case that Cindy should be free? To argue that she’s a ‘non-human person’? Was this all just to further the cause?”
“I’m not here for a cause. They’re using my break-in to expedite the Department of Agriculture’s approval of Cindy’s transfer. I don’t really care about any other case or any other chimpanzee. This is about Cindy. I’ve raised her from a baby. I bottle-fed her. I taught her how to speak. She calls me by my name. Do you understand that? Even now she calls for me.” The raw emotion in Jaycee’s voice sends David back into his chair. “I’ve got the death of one chimpanzee on my hands. And now I’m going to have another.” Jaycee doesn’t even try to hold back her tears. “If I can get the jury to find my actions were justified, you know, get them to know Cindy as more than just a piece of property, then maybe I can make her too hot to transfer.”
David takes a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “I’m sorry. I really am,” he says quietly. “There are excellent criminal defense lawyers and I will get—”
Jaycee waves David’s offer away before he even makes it. “Did Helena ever tell you what it was like to watch Charlie die?”
No, Jaycee, don’t do this.
“The chimpanzee you and Helena worked with? What’s that got—”
“Right. Worked with and then killed.”
No, no, no.
“C’mon now,” David says. “Isn’t it time to get over that? Helena beat herself up about that damn chimp for a long time. And for what? You guys didn’t even know what that professor was doing. You were deceived by an egotistical jerk, okay? It’s time to let that one go. Find another demon.”
David’s answer stops Jaycee dead in her tracks. I know what’s coming and I can’t do anything to prevent it.
“Is that what you think? That we didn’t know?”
“Of course you guys didn’t know. That’s what Helena said. She’d never purposefully destroy a healthy animal. Did you even really know my wife?”
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