by Sonia Taitz
“Not supposed to be here anyway,” she said, as she sat down next to him.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he whispered into her ear. She kept drinking the beer. He impulsively took her earlobe in his mouth and gave it a little nip.
“No one going to fire you,” she said, not smiling and not moving. “‘Cept your wife.”
“Oh, no, I’m not married,” he said hastily. “I’m divorced, in fact. A failure. Essentially unlovable, you could say.”
“Who’s that woman I seen you with, then?” she said.
“Oh, you saw her?”
“I watch all the people.”
“Oh, I do that a lot, too,” said Tim. “Well, my situation with this woman, it’s hard to explain,” he sighed, falling down flat on the bed. “Even to myself. She booked me a separate room, so you figure it out.”
“Well, that cost more money, anyway,” said his companion, draining her Heineken. She stood up to go. “Two rooms and all.”
“I wanted to make her happy, but if she needs her, what’s it called, space … Oh—speaking of money—here.”
Tim scrabbled into his pockets, then handed a bunch of bills out at the drinks girl. She tucked the money away in her pocket, and left.
And now, alone again, Tim found that he couldn’t sleep. Abigail would be back soon to look for him, he realized. Had he gone too far with that drinks girl? Maybe so. Probably. But it was really Abigail’s time to show him how she felt, because he’d waited long enough. No other man would tolerate her maddening coyness. He’d had it with being humiliated.
Lying back as the world spun, Tim now graphically imagined Abigail on top of him, clinging to him with all fours. Soon—he knew it would happen soon, if not before the baby, then after. He’d make up for lost time, spin her around, pin her, ravage her. He couldn’t wait for that moment to finally arrive. It would be worth it, a payback for all that ambiguity and so often feeling shunted, to finally feel that luscious body wrapping around his. Even after the birth and her inevitable, futile diets, Tim sensed that Abigail would always be shaped like an odalisque, a harem girl in a frankincense lair, lying on satin pillows. That low center of gravity, shortish legs and broadish hips—that draw to the hot horizontal—had always beguiled him.
He relaxed into a comfortable sense of desire. Abigail always tried too hard, something a Meredith or Kristin simply wouldn’t do. Dogged self-improvement was not on their privileged roster. But this one, this poor girl, was clearly trying to better herself (she felt she needed bettering). But didn’t she know her tactics were obvious? Didn’t she know that the WASPs she emulated didn’t try that hard or worry that much? That to be like them, she’d have to be the opposite of her noble, striving, meaning-seeking self? He could tell, looking at her almost-Hermes-but-not briefcase, that she had all the rote bourgeois aspirations: money, power, status. She wanted to “arrive” somewhere, to prove some impossible theorem—and only then would she feel legitimate.
Tim was different from most men in his circle. His friends, schoolmates mostly, confined themselves to magazine, television, and computer images. In their world, women were tall, featureless, hairless, muscular, and reed thin. They tended to favor the leggy blonds and sporty redheads found conveniently around them in Connecticut, thighs taut with tennis muscles, calves triangular. The boobs they dreamed of were either sporty little A-Bs or the occasional pointed, rock-hard silicone missiles.
Tim, on the other hand, had spent his early years in the Caribbean, where nature was allowed to flourish and tendrils to wrap luxuriously around trees. His personality-free father had worked for Barclays in Barbados, and his frigid mother had found it necessary to find amusement in cocktails and elaborate dinner parties. (He remembered her mostly receiving guests, hair long and scarf streaming, torches standing by the entryway, tabletop tapers flickering in the wind.)
He had been brought up first on that English island, and later in the Dominican Republic, by beautiful servants, and always felt a sensual resonance with women who had that softness. Mixed with their gentle subservience was passion—the way they kissed him, chastised him, fretted over him (what he ate, how he slept, whether or not he played outdoors) in ways his parents never had. Tim grew up favoring the tawny, the ripe, the languid, the outraged, the wild. In his teen years, he had spent hours gazing at loose Polynesian breasts in his father’s collection of National Geographics. Some of the boys at boarding school had better pictures—smoother women with heartless smiles. But these nature-touched women were his favorites.
They always had seemed free of hypocrisy, honestly exposed, real in an almost animal way. Pregnancy seemed that way, too. What testimony it was to the sex act: the mark left on the woman to carry around for nine months, for a lifetime. While males walked away, unscathed.
Abigail would never walk away unscathed. She was aspirationally corporate, yes, and maybe one day she’d have enough money to buy the look of lazy privilege. But right now, to Tim’s eyes, she looked frankly post-coital. Not just her tummy—which was more than a giveaway—but the flush and the sweat. Her hair sticking to her sweet little neck. And how her legs had buckled when she fell.
He was so glad he had caught her that day. Whatever had happened to her before, she’d been safe in his arms. Strong as she thought she was, he’d protected her. Just the way that he’d felt protected as a child, for that brief island of security.
And now he was surprised to find himself weeping.…
I’m thinking of Milagros, Tim realized. That cocktail waitress had brought her vividly back to mind. Milly, he had called his favorite nanny. “Mi amor,” she had called him, and the words had seemed so true. A tear trickled out of his left eye. He let it skate to his mouth, where he licked it, sniffling once, with a quick shudder. He was a grown man, after all. He had no need of the woman who had raised him, during his years in Santo Domingo. It was so long ago that it no longer seemed real anyway. His father was running the branch of his bank, and his mother had always been busy, dashing off in her white sandals, her blond hair glinting in the heat. It was Milagros who had busied herself with him, worn herself out on him. Then she disappeared, as all maids eventually do.
Tim hummed a little song, “Y por eso los grandes amores, de muchos colores, me gustan a mi…”
Milly had come into his life when he was a toddler. She was probably in her late sixties now, unrecognizable to him. He thought of her chasing him around the tall, dry grasses, catching him, holding him high in the air, nibbling his feet. He would kiss her feet, now, if he could, for her loyal service. Knowing his parents and knowing the world, he knew they had probably paid her pennies for her loving service, better and more intimate than his own mum could ever, ever give.
And that was the problem, in a nutshell, with the world of cold commerce.
13
Abigail returned to her room after her nice long swim. As she showered and changed for lunch, she pondered a work-related conundrum.
Dave Biddle-Kammerman’s e-mail had clearly instructed her to find some unforeseeable flaw in the Cessna, but Jay’s research had turned up none beyond a loose rivet in the wing. The fact that these small planes often crashed made the whole thing cut both ways.
On the one hand, pilots ought to know better than to fly them too near residences; on the other, didn’t the frequency of accident (and ground accident) prove, paradoxically, that the craft itself was unpredictable? And if the craft were inherently to blame, why not assign culpability to the relevant corporation—and not her client? (Of course, they could argue that, as with cars, the cost of making small craft accident-proof would be prohibitive, outweighing the benefit—however large—of getting everywhere in a hurry.)
Abigail tried to factor in Mrs. MacAdam’s contribution to the accident. The plane, she knew, might have been perfectly good, but MacAdam’s alleged mad circuit in her Jaguar certainly could have contributed to the tragedy. In fact, not only was Fletcher on solid ground vis-à-vis MacAdam, but they really ough
t to advise their client to countersue for reckless disregard for human life. With nothing wrong with the craft, and Kiki properly licensed (if inexperienced), they could hold MacAdam up by her one good leg, turn her upside down, and shake her out.
There was just one problem. The camera. Still, no one knew about it but her and Jackson Moss. Should she ask him to just “lose” it? Wasn’t that the opposite of what good investigators do? Still, her firm had retained him. Maybe he would do it for her if she asked him to. But she just couldn’t ask him.
Abigail’s conscience was getting in the way, a vestigial organ when it came to litigation. Where had it come from, and why was it blocking her path? Hadn’t she spent three years at law school, and seven at the firm, learning to temper her own personal qualms? Right and wrong were amateurish terms, she now knew, not practical, legal ones. After all, she was a professional.
So she tried to shove her conscience back. Logic was a good tool for that. Thinking clearly, methodically, dispassionately. First of all, MacAdam seemed bent on self-destruction, so what would be the harm in suing her? Secondly, suggesting countersuit to Fudim (and tidying up the bit with the camera) might just push her over the line and into partnership. A trip well spent, he’d think. Perhaps he’d even use his legendary word of praise: “Kudos.” “Kudos, Abigail,” he’d say, raising her up to the inner sanctum. “You think like a lawyer at last.” Her father used to say, “You think like a man,” and she’d be flattered.
This was much the same thing, she thought, drying herself and putting on her espadrilles. These were the type with ribbons wrapping around the lower leg—and in her case, this part of her anatomy, especially the ankles, was swollen. Men didn’t have these hormonal problems and sudden body bloats, but she could think as lucidly as they did, even with such disadvantages. Making her even stronger than a man, she concluded with a bit of satisfaction, tying double knots to secure her bows.
Speaking of men, where was Tim? Here she had gone to the trouble of putting on a nice outfit for lunch together. As the time neared one thirty, Abigail called his room. The phone rang nearly a dozen times, and she was on the verge of hanging up when Tim answered drowsily.
“Hu—hullo?”
“The sun made you tired, huh?” she said, her heart suddenly fond. He was tired because he’d flown all the way down to see her. Here was a man she didn’t have to chase.
“Abigail?” His voice was friendly. “I thought you forgot all about me.”
“No, I thought you were going to get me.”
“Little mother?” said a gravelly voice in the corridor.
“Hang on a sec, Tim, someone might be talking to me from outside my room.”
“Weird. Maybe a maid?”
“Maybe—I asked for more towels. But it doesn’t sound like one. Hang on.”
Abigail went to her door and opened it. In sailed Mrs. Evelyn MacAdam herself on her motorized wheelchair.
“Who’re you on the phone with, little mother?” she said. “Tried to call you, used the house phone, line was tied up. Speaking of which, you should loosen those laces.”
“No, it’s fine, I’m just a little waterlogged.”
“Well, don’t get gangrene, all right?”
“I won’t. Listen, I’m on the phone.”
“YES I KNOW! I told you I tried to call you. Who’re you talking to?”
“Oh, it’s just my—my new boyfriend, he’s just across the hallway,” said Abigail. She said “new” because she really couldn’t stand the thought of Tim being taken for the baby’s father.
“Your new boyfriend, the one who’s shagging the tawny maids? Saw her leave the floor a few minutes ago, thought I detected a trace of a post-coital limp along with a knowing smile. They’re all like Jock, I tell you. Jock the roving cock o’ the walk. She was counting the money with a gleam in her eye. Jock was a good tipper, too.”
Abigail, dismissing the information, cupped the phone and spoke to Tim: “Could you meet me in the dining room in about fifteen minutes?”
“Sure, I’ll just lie back down for another minute here.”
Tim hung up and promptly fell asleep. In his dream, the drinks girl—he’d noticed her name tag; her name was Harriet—was pregnant. She was carrying his child. Unlike Abigail, Harriet was nimble and lithe in her pregnancy; she had been born for it. And she was weightless; Tim could raise her in the air like a tray full of drinks. Despite the fact that she was pregnant, she liked to have sex with him all the time. She thought he was the best lover in the world, and she adored him. He felt the same way about her.
To show his devotion, he had got her a servant. Her maid looked like Tim’s mother, Mary-Ellen, ash blond with pink lipstick, white sandals, and a martini in her hand. Mary-Ellen was sort of lazy and sour, but they kept her anyway. Harriet was too great with child to sink to the level of floor-scrubbing, and Mary-Ellen needed the money to support her own family. In time, Mary-Ellen would learn to scrub the floor, and like it.
When the dream child was born, Mary-Ellen not only scrubbed all the grime away, she grew to love the child and raised it as if it were her own (far more lovingly than Tim’s real mother had raised him; this was the most beautiful part).
As Tim dozed, Abigail continued to converse with Mrs. MacAdam.
“Abigail Thomas, Esquire,” Evelyn MacAdam was saying evenly. “I am going to level with you. For some reason, I like you. I don’t like many people. Let me just make that clear.”
“I can see that.”
“Yes. You can. And I think you like me. I can see that. Am I right? Don’t answer. I’m always right; that’s why everyone hates me.”
“I don’t hate you,” Abigail admitted.
They looked at each other.
“No, I know that,” said Evelyn MacAdam. “I can detect the strength of your emotions, and the fact that they’re completely uncorruptible. That’s another reason why I like you so much.”
“You like me so much?” Despite her legal training, and the utter incongruity of emotions in this context, that felt good, and fun, to say.
“If I had a daughter, I’d hope she was like you. Not necessarily the pregnant situation you currently find yourself in. Something about you yourself, not the bovine hanging-titty aspects. I mean any bitch can whelp; who knows that better than I? No, it’s not that, Abigail. It’s you yourself, my dear girl, without embellishment.”
Abigail, despite herself, wanted nothing more than to listen to this all day. But instead, she cleared her throat and looked at her watch.
Mrs. MacAdam took the hint. “Always in a hurry. Stab, grab, and go. That’s what they’re training you to do. To become. Well, you’ll grow out of it. I can see that, even if you can’t. Of course you can’t. You’re too busy being young and idiotic. Anyway—I’m not going to ask you to blow your side of the case. After all, you’re a legal beagle or whatever the current word is. And I know you need the money, even if those creeps you work for and represent don’t. Right? Still paying off the tuition?”
“Yes, and it’ll take forever, especially now that I’m—”
“Yes, babies cost a lot. Far too much, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
Evelyn laughed appreciatively. “Sassy-pants.”
Abigail couldn’t help cracking a little responsive smile. It was such a funny thing to be called. Sassy-pants.
“See, I know a little bit about who you are,” Evelyn continued. “And I know a lot about who they are. And for them, it’s all about power and pride and winning, Abigail, things you and I don’t begin to care about.”
Don’t I? thought Abigail. I think I have begun to care about those things a lot. More than ever, even. It was hard not to care when you’d worked seven years and were finally up for reward.
“It’s not too late to save yourself from being a soulless shark in a suit. You might want to take a different role model. Me, for example. I’m thinking about doing you a good turn and giving you some of the money I get�
�how does that sound, dear? Keep you out of the gutters of the law, you know.”
Abigail cleared her throat again and said, “It sounds like a bribe to make me throw the case your way. And that’s exactly how it’ll look to everyone in charge of me.”
“It does. It will. OK. Don’t worry. Do your worst. Hit me in the stump. Call me crazy. Countersue, sure, I know all the tricks, baby. Tit for tat. I know that one. Hurt me back so I never hurt you again. Go on, doesn’t that feel good?”
Abigail felt sick, listening.
“No, really, take my farming ideas, take my last nickel. But no matter what, remember: No one is in charge of you, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
“I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t knowingly hurt anyone,” stumbled Abigail, knowing that, as a lawyer, that was what she would do, if asked, and wondering how Evelyn MacAdam could already know about her idea of countersuit. She supposed that was an obvious tactic, the best defense being to behave as offensively as possible.
“Little mother, just remember one thing, though. It may give you some comfort on the days that your conscience works: Even if you do everything you, or is it they, can think of, I’m going to win anyway.”
“No one ever knows about the disposition of a case,” said Abigail, trying to displace Mrs. MacAdam’s sureness with legal rationality.
“No, I will win, because I’ll be right, and fair. I’ll be good to the people who did good for me. That’s how I’ll win, regardless of material outcome,” said Mrs. MacAdam. “I’ll win in the only way that matters.”
Abigail fell silent.
“You like that one? ‘I’ll win in the only way that matters?’ Yes, I can turn a phrase when I want to. Now, should I go to law school and exploit this talent of mine? I’m kidding—this mouth should not be monetized, isn’t that the word, ‘monetized’?”
“I’ve heard it,” said Abigail, although it was used more by the MBAs than the JDs.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in the rat race. Too many rotters gnawing the bone. I’d constantly be vomiting.”