All the Beautiful People We Once Knew

by Edward Carlson

  I thanked her.

  “Protein is actually the next big commodity,” Hemmings explained to Nelson as he capitulated to the reality that his only remaining viable option was the empty seat next to me. “What they do is they fish farm out in the Gulf in these big cages, tilapia mostly, and then process the fish into protein bricks at sea, which they then sell to the UN for feeding refugees. They’re making a killing.”

  “Really,” Tucker said, with pure interest. “You know the biggest money maker in the London insurance market has been the refugee crisis? You know how much it costs to insure the logistics for shipping food to Syria?”

  Hemmings, more interested in tilapia than refugees, let Nelson’s efforts to engage in polite professional conversation dangle while watching Celeste pivot between the tables.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “You should have seen her twenty years ago.”

  “I didn’t peg you as someone into foreign women.”

  “She’s not foreign, son. She’s English.” He forked salad into his small, lipless mouth. “Ever since my wife died I have this insatiable desire for dark-haired women. South Asian. Middle Eastern. Latina. English. I don’t care where they’re from, so long as their hair is black and they’re in their early forties. You can just pluck them off the vine.” He popped his fingers. “It’s a beautiful thing. You know where I can find some of them?”

  I lacked all empathy for the man, even if he was a widower. His frat boy performance at the cash bar had incinerated the already-miniscule possibility I was capable of such.

  “I don’t,” I said. But delighted myself with the thought of giving him Soncha’s number. Just to see how that would play out.

  We sat around the table eating and drinking almost in silence. Red-veined chard speckled with dried cranberries and almonds. Phyllo dough–wrapped chicken and butter-soaked baby carrots and string beans. Pastries constructed around balls of vanilla ice cream. Hemmings tried again to speak with Nelson. Nelson tried again to speak with Attika. Attika tried again to speak with a thin man seated next to her who specialized in legal seminars. I tried again to speak with Hemmings. It was impossible. I couldn’t fathom why he would agree to send me cases per Fleeger’s instructions when we lacked a common anatomy necessary to communicate over dinner.

  The lights above the dining room dimmed and the white gloves cleared the plates before us and topped off the wine glasses, red or white. A projector screen descended from the ceiling above the banquet table at the front of the room. It was followed by that voice of long and short risk and cowbells and bulls over bears, greeting us tonight via satellite from Palm Springs, like a banker playing God in a Hamptons production of The Ten Commandments.

  “Of course I wish I could be there with you fine folks tonight as we celebrate one of the great unsung heroes of this economy.” Money Man paused. “Lawyers.”

  The crowd laughed.

  “In particular, tonight we celebrate the important work of frontline insurance defense lawyers. Whereas once there were masters of the universe, now there are masters of risk. For instance, we know there will be car accidents. We know some of our fellow Americans returning home from working in war zones will file spurious insurance claims for injuries with no discernible pathology. We know that electronics will occasionally start fires and burn down houses and medicine will occasionally be tainted and cause illness, sometimes severe. Such are the risks inherent to our mechanized, industrial, consumerist society. And we know that stocks will rise and fall based on events beyond anyone’s control. But what we don’t know is the financial value of those occurrences. How much those occurrences will cost us as individuals, the company, and ultimately the shareholders. That’s the rub. And that’s where insurance steps in. To close that gap. And who does the actual work closing that gap? Frontline attorneys. Lawyers. Trusted counsel. That is why we are here tonight. To celebrate those at the vanguard of ensuring this vital industry’s maximum efficacy.”

  A picture of Fleeger appeared above the crowd, looking over his shoulder and smiling for the camera, like a photograph his mother would hang from her living room wall in homage to her successful, adorable son.

  “Over the past four years, one New York law firm has really stood out when it comes to representing the interests of the insurance industry. Whether it’s keeping a tight rein on PTSD claims, or defeating plaintiffs’ efforts to develop new injuries with no detectable pathology, one law firm has routinely been voted above the rest. And that firm, which we recognize tonight, is Kilgore. Particularly the team led by Robert Fleeger. Robert, you and your team have been …”

  “First Class” the crowd chimed in upon the prompt of Money Man’s upturned thumb.

  “And Robert, in recognition of your achievements, we would like to present you tonight with a special award. In honor of your contributions to the insurance industry, the effectiveness of your insurance defense practice, and ultimately your steadfast commitment to the rule of law.”

  The crowd clapped, looking around itself, nodding in agreement, to the sound of a thousand upturned rainsticks cascading little shells and manmade thunder. Another moment belonging to Fleeger. Another speech, another res to place on his Kilgore bookshelf alongside the trophy sprites and Tiffany’s crystal apples and alma mater beer steins and all-Ivy commendations. Two women in black pantsuits and red lipstick escorted Fleeger from the banquet table to the podium, to where his honor awaited him, draped and hidden behind a small curtain of red silk. The presenter on Fleeger’s left untied a gold tassel and the slip dropped, and there it was. The awe-inspiring zenith of Fleeger’s superlawyerness.

  “Here’s to sticking it to plaintiffs for the past ten years, Robert,” Money Man said.

  Laughter arose from the front of the hall, growing louder now, forced backward through the room by identical fungible laughter, as people squinted, realized what it was, no, it can’t be, succumbed to the awkward communal pressure, well she’s doing it too, more guffaws and cackles, both upward and backward, sines and cosines of laughter moving through the room at the speed of Fleeger’s humiliation. Drunk female shrieks punctuated by fine fellow huzzahs! and hey-nows!

  “And here’s to sticking it to plaintiffs for twenty more,” Money Man yelled. “Job well done, Robert F. Fleeger.”

  Fleeger spun his thing on its pedestal to take a look. And there it was. A bronzed, King-Kong–sized tube of KY personal lubricant. Superimposed, embossed, possessing texture and heft and impaled on a pedestal by its anal fin. Money Man now summoning cloudbursts of audience laughter—you know you want to—and whistles and jeers from the tables of dark suits and almost empty dessert plates.

  “USA, USA,” the crowd chanted.

  Celeste turned and gave Judge McKenzie a high five. Everyone in the cavernous dining room laughing now, the girls with white gloves clearing the plates, the French parakeet bartender chuckling “you guys” as he continued dumping ice with a large silver scoop, the innumerable Tuckers and Celestes and Lazli and Hemmingses. The laughter’s pressure inflated the room, pressing against the banquet hall’s padded moveable walls and smothering the room with collective laughter, everyone except Fleeger, as the trophy presenters presented him his present, smirking “Oh, too bad—you don’t like it?” and synchronized-air-kissing his cheeks. Depositing him at the podium, alone in the hot white Kleig lights, where he now fumbled for something to say.

  “Come on, Robert. You can’t think on your feet?”

  It was Lazlis, dining tonight with the enemy to generate goodwill. He chuckled in his seat and leaned into the ear of someone sitting next to him. Both of them now pointed at Robert on the podium, taking full joy in the unexpected comeuppance.

  “Just a second,” Fleeger said into the microphone.

  The audience began to turn, from almost still good-natured to undoubtedly primal, like time-lapse photography, but reversed, as the men and women in the dining hall devolved in shape and form. Their skins toughened into sandpaper
. As they held their grimaces, their skulls narrowed into snouts, their mouths expanded into pink orifices ringed with rows of serrated, triangle teeth. Beneath the hems of their skirts and through the flies of their pants they popped dorsal and caudal fins, swinging atop their seats with jerky movements at the looming frenzy of Fleeger’s public humiliation.

  One drop of his pure Ivy League blood squirted from a shaving nick into the sea of sparkling wine glasses, the audience’s eyes now rolling behind nictitating membranes as they circled to take a chomp. Fleeger gripped the podium with fear as his shark cage dived into the perilous sea, cut loose from the deck above. The chair felt light in my grip as I stood and walked backward from the table.

  “Jesus, Robert, you’re fired,” Nelson yelled. Except it wasn’t Nelson, it was a hammerhead shark, wearing a suit, with Nelson’s slurring man tongue licking the insides of his slurry pink mouth.

  I moved along the wall, up the metal stairs, confident in my kinesiology. Thinking that by thinking about tripping on the multiple cables traversing the stage I was bound to do so but by thinking about thinking about thinking about tripping I had protected myself from a stumble. I removed a folded pamphlet from my suit jacket pocket. The Arc of the Universe Bends Toward Justice. I handed the pamphlet to Fleeger. His pupils spun like yo-yos.

  “This room is full of people who want to destroy you,” I said.

  He stared at me. His eyes glistened. His pupils stilled and tightened. He got it. He was free from the fall. Whatever it was. I squeezed his shoulder and he squeezed mine.

  “Thanks, man,” he said.

  I nodded a silent it was nothing and exited the stage down the opposite stairs, working my way along the opposite wall and around the distant opposite corners of the dining hall. The diners perplexed but ultimately relieved as they reverted into quotidian form, again aware of themselves, examined their suits and dresses, at where the fins protruded from and disappeared to, as I worked my way back to the table.

  “First, I would like to thank my associate Stephen Harker, who just handed me the notes for tonight’s speech, which I apparently left on my desk.”

  I nodded to the polite applause, almost invisible in the back of the room.

  “And Attika Roberts. Where are you? Over there with the Kilgore crowd. Attika stand up for me please.”

  Another gracious round.

  “And second. I just want to go on the record as saying, Lazlis. Where are you? There you are. I just want to say, once and for all—I hate you.”

  Torrents of laughter. Buckets of the stuff. Steak choke worthy in napkins and baritone hey-nows and the tinkling of glasses with dessert forks and coffee spoons.

  “No, really, I do. I’m sure there are some good qualities there somewhere. But I have no idea what they are. Maybe I should ask Mrs. Lazlis?”

  Lazlis sat behind an empty dessert plate. Now silent like a Moai.

  “I mean, come on, has anyone ever had a better adversary than Lazlis? He makes everyone look good. Jesus. Talk about a lack of personality. Come on now, Jim. We all hate this job. But at least we try to hide it.”

  The diners laughed without care, clapping their hands between their legs and coughing up old cigarettes while letting Lazlis have it from all sides.

  “I don’t know who invited you tonight,” Fleeger continued, now hushing the testosterone-foam-supplemented roar, “but I hope to God they poison you. Garçon, fix Mr. Jim a round of drinks. Put it on Kilgore’s tab.”

  More laughter as Hemmings pushed back my chair and motioned for me to sit next to him despite the fact it was my seat, and Celeste watched me from across her dessert plate. I pretended to tie my shoe.

  “No, seriously,” Fleeger said. “It’s always an honor to dine with your competitors.” The crowd subsided. “Now Jim I hope you choke on your steak.” The laughter rose again and crashed over the rocks. Fleeger hoisted his bronze award like an Oscar, thanked the Risk Rewards panel and his team for making it happen, and returned to the banquet table, collecting handshakes and back pats as he worked himself behind his dinner plate and the next speaker took to the podium.

  “Talk about grace under pressure,” he informed the crowd. “I’m going to give Robert Fleeger every file I have.”

  15

  THE CEREMONY ENDED. FLEEGER and Hemmings walked toward the hotel elevators, arms gripped around each other’s lower backs, playing hot potato with the award. Celeste approached me, listing forward in heels.

  “Well played tonight, counselor,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She smiled. A dusting of foundation around her eyes shattered into a thousand barren tributaries.

  “Don’t be so coy, Stephen. I like a man who takes the initiative in a tight spot. How about I buy you a drink at the hotel bar? I could use some smart company. The only thing anyone talked about over dinner was their vitamin intake and what gluten does to their digestive tract. My God, do they not realize the implications of speaking about one’s intestines?”

  “It’s a classy crowd.”

  “Indeed. So? You’ll come have a drink with me.”

  I demurred. She looked disappointed.

  “Why are you always disobeying me, Stephen?”

  Attika and Tucker exited the dining hall and walked along a distant wall, again near the koi fish, returning to where the previous magic may have almost happened. He whispered in her ear, her long coat draped over his forearm, and she whispered into his and he dropped two steps behind her.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Stephen, nothing you have to do is more important than having a drink with us tonight. We’re your team. Now come on. Don’t make me force you. We’re celebrating.”

  This woman pulverized my intentions. I capitulated. Told her just one drink at the hotel bar. She winked.

  “Good boy,” she said.

  Lazlis approached us, pride more than intact, as if empowered by the attention Fleeger had showered on him.

  “Can I speak with you, Stephen?”

  I told him sure.

  “You’re not going to discuss the Major now here, are you Jim?” Celeste asked. “After you practically crashed the dinner?”

  “We got something important we need to discuss,” Lazlis replied.

  “Is it absolutely necessary?” Celeste asked again.

  This was up to me. Otherwise we were trapped in a logjam of conflicting obligations. I told Celeste to give us a few minutes and I would meet her downstairs at the bar. To my surprise she capitulated, departed with a slightly intoxicated dismissive wave, and joined Hemmings and Fleeger as they entered a downward elevator capsule.

  Lazlis leaned into me. Breathing meat and wine.

  “I got a call today from my client,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Just messing with you, Jim.”

  He wasn’t having it.

  “Listen. He said he woke up the other day and discovered a yard full of footprints in the snow. You wouldn’t happen to be stupid enough to send Honda down there to film him while he’s in his house, would you? Filming him in public I can’t really do anything about, but in his house? Young man, that’s a gross violation of the rules of professional conduct. Subjecting you and Fleeger to sanctions under Rule 11.”

  I told him no, we would not be so stupid as to send Honda to film him in his house. The ease with which I lied surprised me.

  “I’m not so sure I believe you.”

  A smirk was all I could muster. There were no good answers.

  “Let’s talk about it Monday.”

  “I like you guys, Stephen. I know it may not seem like it, but I do. Even with Fleeger busting my balls. Because for the most part you guys are straight shooters. I get that you have WorldScore as your client and that you need to look and play tough, but at the end of the day I also know we’re both just trying to make a decent living within the four corners of the system. You b
ill the client. I chase your client. Pitch and catch. Now you’re on the mound and you can make this go away easy. Just recommend to Celeste that this case is getting too hot, with too big of an exposure, we do the dance back and forth, I start high, you start low, and we end up somewhere around the sweet spot of $250,000, and then it’s done. All gone. And then I don’t have to get into whether your investigator is illegally breaching my client’s right to privacy.”

  He had me. He knew it. My silence conveyed as much. My ability to lie and duck and weave still amateur. His eyes trained on me, from both sides of his blue-black nose.

  “We got a deposition next week,” Lazlis continued. “You want to play with the big boys? Then get this settled and I won’t have to bring any of this up before the judge. The last thing you want on your tender record are judicially prescribed sanctions for unethical conduct. We all have an obligation to police the profession. Don’t make me play bad cop, young man.”

  He walked away, taking with him all that remained of the fleeting buzz of my surprising act of pro-Fleeger heroism.

  A tear descended Hemmings’s cheek as he stomped the ground, cradling Fleeger’s award in his forearm like it was a swaddled newborn. Demanding to know when Fleeger became the voice of reason. Fleeger ignored him for a moment, looked at my empty hands.

  “Dude, where’s your drink?” he said.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “Of course we need to talk. We always need to talk. Communication is the key to every good relationship. What’s wrong?”

  “Lazlis threatened me upstairs with sanctions.”

  “When?

  “Right now.”

  “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” he shushed me. “Have another drink.”

  He summoned the bartender to pour me a second scotch. Two drinks at the hotel bar.

  “I think—”

  “Drink. Come on now. Drink.”

  I followed his prescription. The second scotch lacked the burn and twang of the first.

  “Come on, man. You can’t handle a couple of threats from Lazlis? Do I need to change your diaper? Jesus, if I had a dollar for every threat some plaintiff’s lawyer made against me for apparently acting contrary to the rules of professional conduct. What’s Lazlis gonna do? Tell me. Move to sanction you? If he does it’s career suicide for him and he knows it. We’ll never settle another case with him. So relax.”