All the Beautiful People We Once Knew

by Edward Carlson

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said I had a contract and I wasn’t allowed to leave for another six months and if I did leave I would forfeit my bonus and half of my salary.”

  So that was it, I thought.

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I hopped a private flight to Turkey and then from Turkey home to the States and I haven’t been back since. And when I asked FreedomQuest for my bonus and the rest of my salary they refused to pay me. Not even a prorated sum. On account of me leaving Afghanistan without their permission. So they punished me.”

  Thomas stood to stretch his legs and his back. His forehead, nose, temples, and chin glistened. He gestured that he needed to take another pill, the yellow one, and again he sipped it down with black coffee. He retook his seat as Lazlis stared out the window.

  “Mr. Thomas, can you explain for me how one individual’s insurance claim for work-related injuries can result in this much paperwork?” I asked, pointing at the dozen boxes. “I get that Mr. Lazlis may find it tactically advantageous to try and bury us in paper. And he’s not alone in that, others do it as well. But I’ve been doing this type of legal work for almost eight years and I have never seen this much paper for one claim. Can you understand, objectively, why we question the veracity of your allegations?”

  He took his seat, looked at his hands, which remained strong, and placed them, folded, on the table. Then he leaned a couple of inches toward me.

  “You ever been in a situation, Mr. Harker, where you’ve been given five things but you really needed six? Because your survival depended on having two sets of three each? But because you didn’t have six now you’re stuck with an impossible choice between one and two? A and B? Because all you have is five? But you need six to survive? Because your survival depends on having both?”

  “I don’t follow, Mr. Thomas.”

  “What is there not to follow?” he asked.

  I avoided the distraction. It was my deposition, not his.

  “We’ll come back to it,” I said. “Now can you explain something else for me Mr. Thomas?”

  “What else do you want to know, sir?”

  “Are you subject to any court orders with respect to members of your family?”

  “Objection,” Lazlis interjected. “Irrelevant.”

  “I mean, are you prohibited from being alone with any members of your family. Particularly with your daughter?”

  “Objection again, Mr. Harker. That is totally irrelevant.”

  I doubted whether to do this now to this man here in this room. I had no choice. I did have a choice. I chose to follow through.

  “Who currently has custody of your daughter?”

  “Objection again. Mr. Harker if you continue with this line of questioning I will call the judge and have him rule on this objection. Don’t answer him, Mr. Thomas.”

  “It’s a reasonable question, Jim. It goes to your client’s current mental state and his mental state is at play here because you put it in play. But I’ll rephrase the question. Mr. Thomas, are there any court orders you must comply with regarding your daughter?”

  Thomas stood again and shuffled to the window and looked down.

  “I have a court order here in my hand, Mr. Thomas,” I said. “Reporter, I would like to enter this as an exhibit.”

  “Objection again, Stephen. You were obligated to produce anything you had on this prior to the deposition. You didn’t. And therefore you are precluded from using it now. You can’t ambush my client like this.”

  The reporter fastened a yellow sticker to the exhibit and returned it to me. I handed it to Lazlis, who reviewed the document and passed it to Thomas as Thomas again lowered himself into his seat.

  “I’m producing it now.”

  “But this isn’t relevant, Stephen,” Lazlis objected.

  “Mr. Thomas,” I continued. “This is an order from a Pennsylvania court prohibiting you from being alone with your daughter. Do you see that?”

  “Major, don’t answer that,” Lazlis continued. His blood pressure rising through the crackled capillaries of his chubby, crimsoning cheeks. “Stephen, I will move the court to strike this whole deposition if you continue with this.”

  Thomas scanned the exhibit.

  “This was my ex-wife’s fault,” he said. “She filed this thing against me when I was overseas.”

  “But it does contain that prohibition, correct?”

  “But it was blackmail.”

  “Have you been staying home alone with your daughter in violation of this order?”

  “Negative.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Mr. Harker?”

  “Remember, it’s my deposition, Mr. Thomas,” I said. “I ask the questions. You sure you didn’t violate this order?”

  He stood. I thought he was going to remove a handgun from behind his back brace. I stared at him. The warrior had returned.

  “Sir, what would you do if I choked you with that fancy purple-and-blue tie of yours?”

  The stenographer stopped typing.

  “Keep typing,” I commanded her. But my dormant fear began to trickle and pool, beyond my control, summoned by an event that I had put into motion. We could return to the order, I told myself. For now I wanted him calm.

  “I smell fear on you, boy,” Thomas said.

  My hands began to shake. I hid them beneath the table.

  “The hit on the head, the dizzy spells, the anxiety, the panic attacks, the headaches, the backaches, the torn rotator cuff, the orthopedic injuries, the tent pole, the mortar fire, the alleged PTSD, the totally irrelevant bladder surgery, the lack of any objective evidence at all to substantiate your allegations.” My voice quailed. With a shaky hand I gestured toward the boxes on the windowsill. “Do you see why we have a hard time accepting the veracity of your allegations, Mr. Thomas? Why we can’t just pay you what you are demanding? Because ultimately you’re fine. I know you’re fine and you know you’re fine and WorldScore knows you’re fine. It’s all in your head, man. You need to get over whatever this is and move on.”

  “Jim, I don’t think I can answer any more of this man’s questions.”

  He stood and exited the conference room and walked to the elevators, without a limp, leaving behind his cane.

  “He’s going to have to come back here and resume the deposition. You know that, Jim.”

  Lazlis stood and released a long breath, almost like a whistle.

  “Jesus,” Lazlis said, pointing at the boxes. “This case is a fucking disaster. Have you ever seen so much paper? Can’t we just settle this, Stephen?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t.”

  I walked to Fleeger’s office. The door was closed. I pressed the handle. The door was locked.

  “Harker,” Fleeger said through the door. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we done?”

  “For now.”

  “Damn.”

  He was kidding.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Call Celeste.”

  “And tell her what?”

  “Figure it out.”

  I turned away from his door.

  “Hey, Stephen.”

  “Yeah, Robert.”

  “You know what the problem is with beautiful women?”

  He sounded happy. He was having a good time.

  “No, what?”

  “They’re needy.”

  A giggle wiggled its way beneath the door.

  “They’re weak and they require too much attention. Ow!”

  I returned to my office and phoned Celeste. She answered on one ring.

  “Tell me something good,” she said.

  “Thomas went AWOL during the deposition.”

  “Stephen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. I just assumed Robert would be the one calling me now.”

&nbs
p; “Fleeger’s busy.”

  “With what?”

  “With something more important,” I said.

  “What’s more important than Thomas?”

  “Something came up,” I said.

  “This is a catastrophe.”

  “I think we got him. And Lazlis knows his case sucks so I don’t expect we’ll see any unreasonable demands anytime soon. We’ll get Thomas back here for the rest of his deposition. Even if we need a court order. Then once we do we’ll tie him down until we’re finished.”

  “Stephen, please make it go away. This case is beginning to bore me.”

  “I think we’re almost there.”

  “Good.”

  She hung up the phone.

  I emailed Lazlis to paper the file, informing him we needed to resume the deposition that his client had prematurely aborted. Dictated a letter memorializing the day’s events. Called Lazlis and left a message on his voice mail asking him to call me back. Certain I could accomplish nothing else for the rest of the day, I sat at my desk, counted the hours, and billed the whole day to WorldScore. 444/15 RF/SH: In re deposition of claimant Major Mike “Bud” Thomas: 8.5 hrs.

  24

  I ARRIVED EARLY TO Kath’s presentation. After Thomas’s aborted deposition, I felt the pull of a strong drink, which meant ten. The Village bistro’s management prepared to host your private parts, read the marquis. Which was why I was here tonight, for Kath’s private parts. I entered the dry ice–motif cocktail lounge and ordered a Beefeater and tonic from a bartender who resembled Achilles, dipped at birth in a vat of Dolce & Gabbana. We would have to kill him by his ankles.

  You see there is a system, I should have chided Thomas. Except here it didn’t matter. Here there was a system different than the one in which I operated. What mattered here was knowing people who did things, disruptors and aggregators, who worked the interstices between concept and code, venture capital and launch. People who specialized in connecting talent to talent, and attaching talent to themselves, in pursuit of which they licensed themselves to walk away from you midconversation in search of the delicious gooey duck burrowed inside another’s wet sand hole.

  A clutch of Soncha’s forty braids, sans cute little red bows, swept my face as she kissed my cheeks, her eyes once again open, brown and white without the smoky, illusionary eyeliner. It was easier to communicate this way. Her eyes narrowed for a second, inquiring why was my hand still placed on her lower back. I caught myself.

  “I’m happy you could make it,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  I commanded myself not to talk about work. Work didn’t matter. Company mattered. Kath’s protest photographs mattered. I admonished myself to stop thinking so much. Because these people could sit for hours in a room without talking. Follow their example and don’t say anything stupid. Soncha extracted her phone from her square leather bag.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I offered to buy her a drink. She would take a whiskey and honey on the rocks with a lime. The bartender polished a large ice cube into a sphere and placed the drink before me on a bed of napkins.

  “Does that do something?” I asked.

  “Like what?” the bartender replied.

  “Does it do something to the drink when you do that to the ice?”

  “It gives it flavor and style.”

  Kath stepped through the crowd, her and Soncha now holding each other’s elbows and whispering into each other’s ears. Kath kissed my cheek and hooked her arm across my lumbar sacrum. Rubbed my cervical spine. After Thomas I had become part chiropractor. We felt like old friends.

  “Looking forward to tonight?” I asked.

  “I’m so nervous.”

  She laughed, waved at a well-wisher, cheeks scrunched like a filet of skate.

  “You’ll be great,” I said.

  More women crowded around Soncha, removing overcoats and scarves. They were slender, with straight backs, and wore blue-soled heels and black lace. Two tall Arab men wearing suits without ties escorted them, golden Arabic alphabet necklaces draped around their hairless chests. The Komodo dragon of jealousy, of Kath’s past lovers, appeared at my feet. Scratching my ankles with coarse claws and hissing for attention. One if not both of the men had been with her during the interregnum between me and Robert. I could just tell. Ali looked at me and smiled.

  “And how are you, Stephen? Everything is good?”

  “Everything is fine,” I said.

  “Still saving your clients from the great unwashed masses?”

  “Is that a dig, Ali?” I asked.

  Soncha looked up from her phone and Kath raised her eyebrows.

  “Not at all, Stephen,” he said. “I am very happy to see you. You are our brother.”

  Ali rubbed my shoulder. Good to see him as well, I said. I tolerated the social discomfort because of Kath, asked Ali as well if I could buy him a drink.

  “Club soda with a lime,” he said.

  “Come on man have a drink,” I said. “It ain’t Ramadan.”

  He pointed at my glass.

  “May I?” he asked.

  He took a long sip.

  “I would like one of those. What kind of gin is that?”

  “Beefeater. If it was good enough for the viceroy of Mumbai it’s good enough for me.”

  Ali smiled.

  “Tell that to the inhabitants of Kharg Island. They may disagree with your atavistic affinity for the glory days of English colonialism.”

  I smirked. Because I had no idea what he was talking about. Kath wanted a Diet Coke and bourbon and another honey drink for Soncha. I ordered the round. Two bronzed hands simultaneously deposited four cocktails on the bar. Form of a cube. I drank mine with angst, to hurry along their consumption. It was like offering Native Americans their first taste of whiskey. This wasn’t something they did. Except for maybe Kath. I would get them all drunk. Pick up the tab. They would love me for it. I ordered another round.

  “Really unnecessary, Stephen,” Ali said. He placed his half-finished drink on the bar and informed us that he wanted to check on the room’s preparations. Off he popped. I leaned into Kath and draped my arm around her shoulders. We were in neutral. The space between our stomachs vibrated. Like a small warming coil. I wanted to shield it from the elements. Man discover fire bush. Man carry fire home in small thing made from tree. Man protect fire from rain and wind. She touched my arm and walked away and the tall Arabs detached from their crowd and moved on her. Shoes polished like honed bones aglow in the almost darkness of the bistro. Laughing at what they simultaneously whispered in her ears, she pulled back her hair to hear all of what the men had to say.

  “How you doing, I’m Stephen,” I said. A traveler from another galaxy.

  Soncha introduced me to Hussein and Hassan. They nodded at me. I told myself to control the juniper berries; don’t let them control you. The DJ spun dirty southern rap and Hussein bent at the knees while Hassan moved in behind Kath. A big smile took over her face. Soncha touched my shoulder.

  “Be careful what you pine for, Stephen,” she said.

  I looked at her. She knew what I was feeling and acknowledged its legitimacy, thereby half-enabling me to do the same.

  “You want to help me get ready?” she asked.

  I told her no I would stay here spying on Kath but thank you. She nodded her head toward the back room to let me know she would be there if I wanted to join her. I ordered another gin and tonic, quinine an ineffective prophylaxis for Kath sandwiched between two Armani Arabs. To protect us all from me pressing the detonator. I walked away from their apparent position in the bottom of my glass.

  A horde of boys, Generation Axe, approached the dance floor and descended on the girls in black lace.

  “You’re from Egypt? Cool. Where shall I go in Egypt? I hear they have an awesome mall there.”

  “That’s Dubai.”

  “I hear you can ski in it.”

  “I hear the architecture is amazi
ng.”

  “Like the world’s tallest building.”

  The girls walked away.

  “Hey Kath, it looks like we’re boring your friends.”

  Kath ignored the boys, lost in the pleasure of the dance of Hussein and Hassan. I stepped outside but lurked near the bar’s open window doors. It was the first warm night in months. Together Hussein and Hassan and Kath walked toward the back room and Kath nodded for me to follow them.

  25

  ALI CROSSED NAMES FROM a printed list and Soncha assigned guests to their places at the U-shaped table. Attractive men donning too much designer clothing, the black lace girls, sisters and cousins in shearling tunics and leather boots suitable for playing polo.

  “Stephen, you’re over there,” Soncha said.

  She pointed to the back of the room and I took my seat as the table filled around me. A short man with curly hair opened his jacket to reveal a Mondale/Ferraro shirt. Salvaged, he explained, from a thrift store while covering the Iowa caucuses.

  “Always hand wash in cold water,” he explained to an admirer of his vintage shirt, “in order to keep the color.”

  I felt like I was sitting in the kids’ corner, pirouetted through the crowd to the open bar, ordered another gin and tonic, the Knicks four points behind on the bartender’s radio, didn’t know where else to be or what else to do, returned to my seat, pinched the lime into the boozy effervescence, and hooked the spent rind to the glass. I wondered if a rectangle cube is cubical or something else. Rectanglical. The rind hatched into a hungry green caterpillar as a gay man with a funny accent complimented my choice of beverages. He was full of statements and act.

  “I only drink organic mixers,” he said.

  He offered me a sip. We were all sipping one another’s drinks tonight. It tasted like tonic water.

  “You have to be exclusive,” he explained. “It’s the only way to truly set yourself apart.”

  He introduced himself as Alfredo. From Arhentina. Navy sport coat with gold buttons and a canary pocket square. He explained that he was both a tastemaker and a proud fiscal conservative.