“Still fighting the good fight, Olivia?” Warren said.
“I guess so.”
“What was it this time? The World Trade Organization? Sweatshops?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Did you chain yourself to an ancient redwood?”
She looked over at her mother, who blushed and shrugged her shoulders.
“Something like that,” Olivia said.
Warren put her purchases into a paper bag. “That’ll be fifteen twenty-six. Should I put that on your account, Elaine?” he asked.
Olivia and Elaine answered simultaneously.
“No,” said Olivia.
“Yes,” said Elaine.
“I can pay for it myself, Mom.” Olivia pulled her wallet out of her pocket. “Shit,” she whispered, staring into the empty billfold.
“I’ll take care of it,” Elaine said.
“Thanks.” Olivia took the bag Warren held out for her.
“Here! Don’t forget the key,” Elaine reached over the counter, and handed Olivia a key to the house. “I’ll be home at about seven o’clock or so. Arthur should be back before then.”
Elaine watched as Olivia walked out of the store. “Warren, why don’t you go finish your lunch.”
“That’s okay. I’m basically done.”
“No, really. Go on.”
The young man looked at her, puzzled, and then disappeared into the back. Elaine walked quickly out from behind the counter and to the center aisle of the store. She found the empty EPT box and brought it back to the register. She rang it up, and then shoved the box down into the trash. She took the receipt from Olivia’s purchase and the receipt from the EPT and scrupulously entered them under her name in the ledger where she kept the employee accounts.
***
Olivia sat on the toilet, the pregnancy-test kit in her hand. She ripped the foil wrapper with her teeth, took out the white plastic wand, and peed a long stream over the absorbent tip. Once she’d replaced the cap, she placed the wand gently on the windowsill and turned on the water in the shower to hot. After a few moments, the room filled with steam. Only then did Olivia strip off her clothes and get in the shower. She stood there, eyes closed against the cleansing stream that coursed over her head, fighting the nausea that seemed never to lose its grip on her, until the water began to cool. Then she took the bar of soap and scrubbed herself until her body shone pink and raw. The tap squeaked under her hand as she wrenched it shut. She stepped out into the foggy room and picked up the pregnancy test. Two dark pink lines stared back at her.
“Fuck,” she said, and threw the test into the trash. Grabbing a towel off the rack, she rubbed herself dry. She reached into the garbage can, retrieved the test, and took it with her into her bedroom. For a long while, Olivia sat on the bed, staring at the pregnancy test. She didn’t feel pregnant, only nauseated and exhausted. And she could not get Treyvon’s cousin out of her mind. How could she be pregnant if there was even the slightest chance she’d be going to jail? Saliva pooled in the corners of her mouth. Leaping to her feet, Olivia ran, naked, to the bathroom. She made it just in time. For long minutes she spat and heaved into the toilet and cried. Finally, the spasms in her belly stopped, and she wiped the noxious combination of tears, mucus, sweat, and vomit from her face.
Olivia laid her head down on the bathroom floor, the tile cool against her flushed cheek. What had she done to deserve this particular conflagration of misery? To find herself pregnant, now, on top of everything else, was simply unbearable. It was especially grotesque to have a piece of Jorge growing inside her when, she suddenly realized, she hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her life. She hated him for being so fucking stupid, for getting involved in a drug deal, and for being so inept as to get himself caught. She hated him for putting her at risk, and she hated him for failing to explain her innocence. While she knew, of course, that he couldn’t have done anything else, she despised him for sitting in the courtroom like some mute imbecile. Why hadn’t he stood up and insisted to the judge that she was entirely uninvolved and should be let go?
Now, as if his betrayal were not enough, as if three days in jail were not sufficient punishment for the mistake of loving him, he had gone and gotten her pregnant. She placed her hand on her belly, palpating the intangible bulge. Perhaps, Olivia thought, she was being punished not for loving Jorge too much, but rather for failing to love him at all. God, that ultimate ironist, had seen what she had been too afraid to admit to herself, let alone to Jorge: she didn’t love him and she never had. They were together merely because she could not figure out how to extricate herself from his embrace.
Pregnant, she was locked behind the bars of their union tighter than ever. But of course, she did not need to stay in this particular prison. Unlike the rest of the nightmare that her relationship had become, she could choose to end this. She could get an abortion.
Olivia couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t pro-choice. Growing up in Berkeley, supporting the right to abortion was not only acceptable but obligatory, and a “Pro-choice Pro-family” button a required fashion accessory. Olivia and her friends had all participated in clinic counter-demonstrations, shouting down the pro-life fanatics with their pictures of bloody baby parts. Now, when faced with the decision she had always assumed would be so easy to make, Olivia longed for the youthful certainty that allowed her to adorn her car with “Get Your Laws Off My Body” bumper stickers.
Yet now, for some inexplicable reason, the contemplation of an abortion made her shoulders shake with sobs. If she ended the pregnancy, it would not be because her life was too full of other, wonderful things to complicate it with a child. She was not in school, or starting a new job, or enjoying her lack of responsibility. If she terminated this pregnancy, it would be because she might be going to prison. Almost to spite herself, she imagined keeping the baby. She saw her belly swell, her skin glow with the radiance of pregnancy. She saw a little dark-haired bundle—black eyes, pink pursed lips, miniature star-fish hands. She was startled to find herself smiling. She leaned back against the bathroom wall and let the fantasy continue. Amidst the daydreams of prenatal yoga, tiny pairs of overalls, and co-op nursery schools, a thought crossed her mind—a thought so coldly pragmatic that it frightened her. Olivia wondered if being pregnant might work in her favor—if the fact of her impending motherhood might influence the prosecutor’s decision regarding the dismissal of her case.
Olivia rose to her feet, splashed cold water on her face, and rinsed her mouth. She went back to her room, pulled on some clean clothes, and stretched out on her bed. Something poked her in the back, and she reached under and pulled out the pregnancy test. She rolled onto her side and stood up. Holding the test loosely in one hand, she pulled open the drawer of her nightstand and began poking through the remnants of her girlhood. There was a bit of sheep’s wool, oily and sharp-smelling, from a fourth grade field trip to a West Marin farm; a baby food jar full of bright and smooth beach glass collected in the sand at the edge of the Santa Cruz boardwalk on one of the few vacations Elaine and Olivia had taken together; a bag of dusty Valentine’s Day heart candies from a boy whose name she’d long forgotten. From the time Olivia was a little girl, she had filled this drawer with things she could not bear to throw away. She dropped the plastic wand into the drawer and then slammed it shut with a rattle of bits of colored glass.
***
As Izaya Feingold-Upchurch bounded across the plaza of the Federal Building, he caught sight of Amanda Steele walking briskly a few yards ahead of him. Her back was to him, and he took advantage of that fact to give his opposing counsel the once over. He shook his head. Objectively, he supposed, she was attractive, but she was not his style at all. He couldn’t abide that skinny, flat-assed white-girl look. Anyway, he had been white-girl-free for almost ten years—ofay clean and sober. Yes, his mother was a white woman, and he loved her
ferociously, but he had long ago vowed not to make the same mistake his father had. Izaya was determined to find himself a beautiful black woman, a partner in his life, goals, and identity. A woman, he supposed, like the wife on whom his father had cheated when he’d conceived his son, and to whom he returned once the attractions of paler princesses had flagged.
“Amanda!” he called, catching her just as she was about to pass through the great revolving doors of the Federal Building.
She turned around, her face frozen in a polite mask, but when she saw him, she smiled slightly.
“Looks like we’ve got another case together,” he said, returning her smile with his own broad, charming grin.
“Do we?” she said, and knit her eyebrows together in a confusion that he could not help but feel was contrived.
He raised a slightly sardonic eyebrow. “Goodman? Metham-
phetamine? We had a bail hearing last week?”
“Oh, right,” she said. “I’m taking that to the grand jury this afternoon.”
“This afternoon?” he said, taken aback. He should have made more of an effort to reach her right after he had picked up the case. He had left a message, which she had not returned—the prosecutors rarely felt obliged to return the defenders’ calls, although he generally had some success convincing the women to pay him the attention he felt he deserved. Izaya had not really noticed when his opposing counsel had not called him back—he had put aside Olivia’s case to draft a sentencing memorandum for a client facing a possible twenty years under the career criminal statute—and after that first call, he hadn’t bothered to try Amanda Steele again. It was a stroke of luck that he had even run into her this morning.
“Well then, my timing couldn’t be more fortuitous,” he said smoothly, not letting his voice belie his shiver of anxiety at how close he had cut it.
“How so?” she said, glancing at her watch. She wore the face on the inside of her wrist and had to turn her arm to see it. Coffee splashed from the paper cup she was holding. “Shit!” She passed the cup to her other hand and shook her wrist.
“Here,” Izaya said, pulling an ironed white handkerchief out of his pocket.
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Please.” He reached out and, ignoring her startled flinch, dabbed at the liquid on her cuff.
She blushed, began to smile, and then caught herself. “I’m fine,” she said, taking a step away from him.
“Suit yourself,” Izaya said. He folded the handkerchief, taking care to tuck it into his pocket so that the stained part didn’t show.
“I’ve got a meeting,” she said, turning back toward the doors to the building.
“Two minutes,” he said. “Okay? Come on, Ms. Steele. I left you a message, but you didn’t call me back. Not one little, tiny phone call.” Izaya put just a touch of his father’s smooth Mississippi tone in his voice. That dulcet drawl, combined with the sharp glimmer of the silk-shot wool of his suits, invariably set the white girls atremble. Amanda Steele was no exception.
Slowly she turned back, almost despite herself. She checked her watch again, this time being careful not to tip her cup. “Two minutes.”
He smiled. “Great, thanks, Amanda. Now, we both know you don’t want to indict on the Goodman case.”
“Excuse me?”
“Olivia wasn’t involved. This was her boyfriend’s thing. She’s just an innocent bystander.”
Amanda Steele raised her eyebrows almost imperceptibly. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really. She’s a good kid. She’s just got a lousy boyfriend.”
The prosecutor frowned at him, and there was something almost like pity in her expression. “You might want to take a look at the discovery before you talk to me about a plea.”
Izaya narrowed his eyes, the softness momentarily abandoning his voice. “I’m not talking about a plea. I’m talking about not indicting her.” He paused and smiled again. “Come on, you know as well as I do that the girl had nothing to do with this. Hold off on the indictment. I’ll bring her in, and you can talk to her. I promise that once you hear what she has to say…”
“Oh, I’ve heard what she has to say.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve heard her on tape. And I’ve seen her in the photographs. All of which I’ll send you in the discovery packet.”
Izaya paused, wondering if there was something Olivia hadn’t told him. Was the girl sufficiently cunning to have fooled him so completely? He was not arrogant enough to believe that his judgment about his clients was unequivocally accurate, but nonetheless he felt confident that Olivia Goodman was not an artful criminal adept in the ways of deception.
“What can you possibly have her on tape saying? She wasn’t involved in the deal,” he said
The expression of pity on the face of his opposing counsel was now explicit, and he had to flex his fingers to resist the urge to reach out and wipe it off.
“Your client is at the center of the conspiracy. She introduced her boyfriend to the informant.”
“Oh, bullshit,” he said, louder and more aggressively than he’d intended.
The prosecutor’s eyes widened, and he caught her unmistakable expression of fear. The same look he got when he stepped into an elevator alone with a white woman; the stiffening of the back, the trembling of the shoulders whenever he passed someone in the dark of the evening. His lip curled in disgust. This was all it took, an exclamation from a black man, a loud voice, and the apprehension, the dread that was the true nature of this and every other white woman’s feelings about black men was on the surface, bubbling over.
“You take this case forward, and you’re going to end up losing, just like you did in Deakins.”
Her mouth formed an O of surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ll end up looking as bad as you did when Alvarez granted my suppression motion in the Deakins case.”
A red flush crept across her throat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Goodman will be dismissed, just like Deakins was. You mark my words.”
“Darnell Deakins was picked up by the LAPD two days after he was released from federal custody. The DA told me there’s no way a state judge will rule the same way as Alvarez. He also said they’re filing a three strikes case. Your client is going to end up spending the rest of his life in state prison.” Her heels clicked on the stone tiles as she walked across the plaza and into the building.
Izaya grit his teeth to keep himself from throwing his eight-hundred-dollar briefcase at the woman’s narrow, condescending ass. He had been so consumed with celebrating his victory in Deakins that he had never stopped to realize that they would never let his client walk away, that they would turn the case over to county. He despised losing, and the added humiliation of a loss of which he had been entirely unaware was almost more than he could stand. The consistency of defeat was the defining aspect of the job of a public defender. The U.S. Attorney’s office held all the cards, and too often it seemed to Izaya that his role was just to accompany his clients as they were sucked down the drain of the judicial system and spat out in some hellhole of federal prison. Occasionally, on his bleakest days, he wondered if the real torture of his chosen profession was being forced to play the sycophant to contemptuous and contemptible prigs like Amanda Steele. The power rested entirely with those who seemed to have the least compassion, and he was compelled to prostrate himself before them and hope that this supplication would result in a decent plea offer for his client.
Izaya felt a sudden stab of guilt. He had let his temper and his arrogance get the better of him. However personally repugnant he found genuflecting before the opposing counsel’s authority, he owed it to his client to do so. He took off across the plaza and bolted through the doors of the Federal Building, determined to catch the prosecutor, apologize, and try to convi
nce her of Olivia’s lack of culpability. He spotted Amanda Steele on the other side of the metal detector, waiting for the elevator.
“Amanda!” he shouted. “Amanda, wait a minute.”
She turned her head away.
He dumped his briefcase on the conveyor belt, and shot through the metal arch.
“Amanda!” he called again.
“Stop right there, sir,” a voice said. Izaya spun around. A uniformed court security officer held an arm out, barring his path. “I’m going to need to ask you to take off your shoes, sir.” There was an ostentatious formality to the final word, as if the officer were making it clear to Izaya that the word applied to him not at all.
“Excuse me?” Izaya said, in the booming voice with which he addressed recalcitrant witnesses. The officer was unimpressed and unperturbed.
“Your shoes. Sir.”
“I work here.” Izaya patted his pockets and pulled out his federal identification badge. “You know me. You see me every day.”
“This way, sir.” The officer said, motioning for Izaya to follow him to a cordoned-off area to the side of the front doors. Once again, Izaya was the only person the court security officer had stopped. The officers, most of whom were middle-aged ex-cops, and all of whom were white, seemed to reserve for him the zealous commitment to their jobs that post-9/11 security considerations had inspired. Izaya had once complained to his boss, the Federal Defender herself, about the heightened level of scrutiny he was subject to, but she had merely reassured him that he was not alone—the officers were not fond of any of the public defenders. Despite her words, Izaya could not help but notice that whatever they felt about the other attorneys, it was only he, the sole black man, who was routinely patted down on the way to work.
He clenched his jaw and toed off his Italian loafers, careful not to scuff the polished shoe backs. While the officer dug through his briefcase, looking for a weapon the metal detector might have missed, Izaya watched Amanda Steele step into the elevator and disappear.
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