by Paul Levine
She could dance. She moved smoothly to the music, closing her eyes, which he knew was a no-no. It occurred to Max that he knew more about her business than she did.
You’re supposed to make eye contact, baby. You’re supposed to make every guy in the joint feel like you’ve got the hots just for him.
She was so young and so obviously new at this that Max felt a stirring. Not just to bag her. Hell, he’d bedded down half his company’s secretaries, more than a few strippers, plus his daughter’s fourth-grade teacher. This one was different. She looked like she didn’t belong here.
What’s a nice girl like you…
The old male rescue fantasy took hold even before he talked to her. What he could do for her!
And vice versa.
The leopard dress was off now, and she was holding on to the brass pole, each leg astride it, grinding her hips in time with the music, humping that lucky pole, her firm ass moving rhythmically in time with his pulse. Her eyes wide open now, she looked at Max and seemed to blush.
Now there’s a first.
Then she smiled shyly at him, swung away from the pole, and drifted up to the edge of the stage. He slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her garter where it joined a number of singles. The garter was all she wore, other than the high-heeled shoes. Her strawberry nipples were erect, her mouth set in an innocent, yet seductive smile. She never said a word. She just turned around and bent over, putting her hands on her knees and arching her back. She wiggled her ass clockwise, as if on coasters, stopped and wiggled counterclockwise. With impressive muscle control, her buttocks quivered in time with the music, and he felt the contractions in his own loins.
Later, when her set was done, back in her slinky leopard dress and little leopard ears, Lisa wobbled up to him on six-inch heels and inquired with her whiskered smile and cat eyes if he’d like to buy her a drink.
“What’s your name?” he had asked, “Jellylorum or Mistoffelees,” for he had just taken his wife to see the musical Cats in London.
“Rumpleteazer,” she said without missing a beat.
“You’ve seen the show,” he said, surprised.
“No way! My boyfriend thinks live theater is watching three lesbians in leather and chains.”
“Then how-”
“When I was a kid, I read the Eliot poems. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. ”
“When you were a kid,” he repeated, smiling.
“Yeah. I thought the poems were silly. I think Eliot should have stuck to ‘The Waste Land.’“
“Really? You read a lot?”
“I’m taking classes. That’s all I do. Study by day, strip by night.”
He watched her size him up, noting the manicured, polished nails, the gold cuff links, the dark suit. She wasn’t even subtle about it just taking inventory, probably calculating her tip by the pedigree of his watch. Cocking her head the way the older girls must have shown her, she said, “So you want a private dance or what?”
He laughed. “You really are a rumpleteazer, aren’t you?
“I’m not J. Alfred Prufrock.”
“What’s your name? You never told me.”
“Angel,” she lied.
“Nah. I’m your angel.”
And he was. Max Wanaker, who at that time owned a Miami freight forwarding company and had just beaten back a Teamsters strike, rescued Lisa Fremont teenage runaway. He spirited her out of the Tenderloin and put her in an apartment on Nob Hill. It was there-where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars-that Max made an amazing discovery. Lisa wasn’t like the others, which is to say, she wasn’t after money. This brainy stripper read Dostoevsky in the dressing room between sets, picked up her high school degree in night school, and was about to enroll in community college when Max bulldozed his way into her life and suggested Berkeley instead.
“You’re smarter than I am,” he told her that first night. And then repeated it time and again until she believed it was true.
Lisa poured Max another stiff shot of Glenmorangie, the pricey single-malt Scotch he ordered by the case. He twirled the golden liquid in the glass, sniffed it took a sip. The ritual done, he turned to her. “So what’s the bottom line? Are we on the same page here?”
Speaking in corporate jargon when it’s my life!
“I can’t do it, Max. I can’t prostitute myself.”
Max’s face reddened. He stared at her in disbelief. “What!”
“I would do anything for you, but not this.”
“ This is the only thing I’ve ever asked.”
“I’m sorry. I want to help, but…”
Max had been wonderful. If it weren’t for him, where would she be now? But what he had given her-the education, the belief in herself-had changed her. She didn’t know precisely when she had rejected Max’s way of life, but somewhere between the Tiki Club and the Supreme Court, she had moved on. “You’re asking too much, Max.”
“After all I’ve done for you,” Max said, his voice a razor despite the mellow whiskey, “don’t you think you owe me this?”
He’d never said that before, not even close. Anger boiled up inside her. Her look was lethal, her voice icy. “Why not just total up my bill, and I’ll pay you back with interest. What’s the prime rate these days, Max?”
“It’s not the money and you know it. I just resent this attitude of yours, like you’re looking down at me.”
Lisa padded barefoot to the bar and dumped her drink into the sink. “From the curb to the gutter, Max. It’s not that far.”
Max looked wounded, like it was his blood going down the drain. “You stopped smoking. You’re not drinking. Is there anything else you’re not going to do, anything I ought to know about?”
She didn’t answer, just stood there, stone-faced.
“The new, improved Lisa Fremont,” he said, sarcastically.
“Don’t you like me this way?”
***
No, Max Wanaker thought. He didn’t like her this way at all. Christ who had she become? Maybe it served him right. He had wanted Lisa to grow, had encouraged her independence, but look what happened. The roses still bloomed, but they’d grown thorns. He liked Lisa the girl, not Lisa Fremont, Esq., the woman, the goddam lawyer. She’s been a tough kid. Hell, she had to be to survive. Now she gets misty eyed looking at statues and books. How long until she learns that her precious oaths and credos are just fade J ink on rotting paper?
Max struggled to control his anger and mask his desperation. He wanted to tell her just how important the case was to him. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t just about money or even the survival of the company. He wanted to tell her the truth.
If we don’t win, I’m a dead man.
No, if he told her that, she would want to know everything. And if he laid it all out, what would she think of him? If he told her the crash had been his fault, that he had ordered the maintenance records falsified, that he had perjured himself before the NTSB, that blood was on his hands, would she help him? Maybe, if he told her the spot he was in.
Oh, he could rationalize it. Every airline cuts corners. It didn’t take Mary Schiavo, the big-mouth blonde from the Department of Transportation, to tell him that airlines would rather have their insurers pay off wrongful death verdicts than spend the money to fix known dangers. Simple cost-benefit economics, babe.
He just never thought it would happen to him, to his airline. And he never expected the guilt, the nightmares, the pills, the late-night sweats.
No, he could never tell Lisa the truth. He tried a different approach. “Why do you think we’ve been together so long?”
“Inertia, Max. We’re used to each other.”
“No. Because deep down inside, we’re alike,” he said.
“If that’s supposed to be a compliment-”
“We both see things the way they really are. We take the cards we’re dealt, and if it means sliding an extra ace up the sleeve to get what we want, then damn it, we do it. We don’t play by som
ebody else’s rules.”
“That’s not the way I see myself,” she said, sounding defensive, a measure of doubt creeping into her voice.
“A leopard can’t change her spots,” he said with a smirk.
“I didn’t cheat in college or law school,” she said angrily. “I worked like hell in the appellate clerkship. I’m proud of my accomplishments. I’m proud of who I am.”
“Dean’s list doesn’t mean shit in the real world, Lisa. You got good grades? Big fucking deal. I got MBAs from Harvard making my coffee. Sometimes I wonder where you get off. I mean, Christ, I remember where you came from. I remember the bartender. I remember the bruises.”
***
She remembered, too. Crockett was the day-shift bouncer and occasional bartender, a ponytailed bodybuilder with a hot temper and delusions that he was the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. She’d moved in with him a week after the one-way journey south from Bodega Bay, and he’d gotten her the phony ID and the job at the Tiki Club. She gave Crockett her tips, but they were never enough to pay for his hash and steroids.
“Some guys I know are having a party tonight,” he told her one day as she was leaving for the club.
“What guys?” she asked.
“Businessmen from out of town. They got a room at the Ramada by the airport.”
“So you want to go?”
“Not me! Ain’t my ass they wanna see.”
“I don’t do private parties. Sheila told me-”
“Sheila don’t know shit. Who’d pay to see her saggy tits? This is four hundred plus tips.”
Lisa was shaking her head when he grabbed her, his huge hands digging into the flesh of her upper arms. She tried to twist away, but he held on, pressing harder, slamming her into the wall but never letting go, using his size and strength just as her father had done to imprison her and break her will.
“I put a roof over your head,” Crockett said. “I get you a job. I protect your ass from guys who’d slice you up and eat you for breakfast. You fucking owe me!”
Thinking back now, here it was again.
Max, Crockett, dear old Dad. How many men do I owe?
She went to the motel that night, carrying a boom box, getting paid up front, then stripping for three drunken salesmen, all the time palming a miniature can of Mace, a trick Sheila had taught her. One of the scumbags, a paunchy forty-five-year-old wearing a wedding band, lunged for her. She sidestepped him, and when the other two tried to tackle her, she sprayed one squarely in his open, dumb mouth and kneed the other in the groin, a direct shot that sent him tumbling to the floor, vomiting.
The first man took a wild swing at her and missed. Lisa turned to run for the door, but he tripped her, then dragged her to the floor, clawing at her thong, drawing blood from her hip with his fingernails. He was about her father’s age, and those memories, so fresh then, came racing back, filling her with fear. She had vowed it would never happen again.
I’d kill a man before I’d let him…
She was on her back with the man above her when she worked an arm free and hit him with a blast of the Mace. He howled and toppled backward, his hands tearing at his eyes. Lisa scrambled to her feet, picked up a table lamp, and bashed it across his forehead, quieting him. Adrenaline pumping, she made it out of the motel room with her backpack and money but left the boom box behind.
“Dumb bitch!” Crockett yelled when she got home, backhanding her across the face, cursing her a second time when he counted the money, discovering the roll of bills was really a single twenty on top with nineteen two-dollar bills underneath. “Stupid jailbait bitch!”
Three nights later, Max Wanaker rode up to the Tiki on his white horse or was it a white limo? Whatever his flaws, Lisa now knew he had rescued her. She had been one step away from the streets. Cocktail waitress, stripper… hooker was not far behind. Max seemed to know everything in those days. He saw right through the Dermablend makeup she used to cover the bruises.
“Who did this to you?” he had asked.
“My boyfriend, but he didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“Where can I find him?” Max asked.
Even now, she could remember his voice. Grim and determined.
Where can I find him?
It would be that simple. No further explanation needed. She knew Max wouldn’t do it himself. The soft hands and manicured nails did not belong to a thug. But he knew people, had dealt with the Teamsters. In Max’s world, everything could be arranged. She saw the bartender only once more. He was trying to get up Russian Hill on crutches.
Yes, Max, I owe you, but maybe that makes me resent you even more.
“Sometimes you really piss me off,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, backing off, sounding sincere. “You know how I feel about you…”
How? Say it!
How many times had he said the three magic words? Twice, she recalled, once after too much champagne and once when he thought he’d lost her.
In fact, you did lose me, Max. I was tired of sneaking in and out of hotels.
She had just started law school and felt like she was getting somewhere. So why was she stuck in this nowhere relationship? She wanted her independence, and Max was surprisingly understanding. He gave her time and space. He was secure enough to let her go, telling her he hoped she would return.
It was the best time of her life. She found Tony Kingston, or rather, he had found her. Discovered the baby-sitter had grown up. Lisa had taken care of Greg, Tony’s son, since she was twelve, helping around the house, admiring the photos of the handsome naval aviator in his spiffy flightsuit. Tony had never been married, and when the child’s mother-Tony’s teenage girlfriend-took off, he was left with a son to raise. Lisa remembered her adolescent excitement when Tony came home on leave, duffel bag slung over a shoulder.
So strong and decent, so unlike my own father.
She learned enough psychology to know Tony was the father she had never had. But he was so much more, too. Tony didn’t rescue her as Max had done; he treated her as an equal, something Max never did. Tony was everything. And then, suddenly, he was gone.
Just as Max had hoped, she came back. He told her she had changed, that he liked the old Lisa better. The old Lisa is dead, she said. He didn’t ask who she had been with, and she never told. The past and the future both remained unspoken.
Now, pacing in the apartment overlooking the park, he said, “I’d leave Jill for you in a second if you’d ask me to…”
She let the bait dangle. Ten years ago, she prayed to hear those words. Now, they left her confused and troubled.
“God, Lisa, I love you. I always have.”
Whoa! What did he say? And why now?
“Do you love me, Max, or do you just need me more?”
“When the case is over, I’m going to ask Jill for a divorce and we can get married.”
“Max, please…”
“Okay, I won’t pressure you. But you’re right about one thing. I need your help. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t. Hell, I’m begging you. This is even more important than you know.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. Not now.”
She thought about it. Hard as it was for Max to say it, he did love her. She never doubted it. And he had helped her when no one else cared whether she slept under a bridge or went hungry. Now he was asking her to choose between him and some flowery notions of right and wrong.
No one would ever know. It was just one case.
But what about her beliefs? What about the new, improved Lisa Fremont, to use Max’s mocking phrase? Could she put her new ideals on the shelf just this once? And how deeply did she believe them anyway?
The marble statues and bronze doors notwithstanding, justice was an ethereal concept, a divine ideal, which like sainthood was rarely seen on earth. Justice was the pearl in the oyster. Keep on shuckin’ and good luck huntin’. Despite the lofty notions she’d learned from the law books, her views were shaped by her own experien
ces. Weren’t everyone’s? What was it Justice Cardozo had said? “Try as we might, we can never see with any eyes except our own.”
And what my eyes have seen.
Now, after four years at Berkeley, summa cum laude-thank you very much-three years at Stanford Law, magna cum laude with a prize-winning law review note, and one year clerking for a federal court of appeals judge in the D.C. Circuit, she had all the credentials. So why did she consider herself a fraud?
She wanted to believe, but damnit, Max had pressed the right buttons. She was a priest without faith, a pagan inside the holy tabernacle. To Lisa Fremont, the law was not majestic. The slogan carved into the pediment-equal justice under law-was a benediction for the Kodak-toting tourists. The law was as cold as the marble of its sanctuary.
Disregarding the lofty symbols and images, she thought of the legal system as a dingy factory with leaking boilers, broken sprockets, and rusted cogs. The law was bought and sold, swapped and hocked, bartered and auctioned, just like wheat, widgets… and girls who run away from home.
In the upcoming term, she knew the Court would be asked to consider nearly seven thousand cases but would issue fewer than one hundred rulings. Law clerks, whose first function was to summarize and analyze the petitions seeking review, frequently complained about the workload. No problem, Lisa thought.
If I get the job, I’ll read them all. I’ll plow through the research, draft the justice’s opinions, and make his coffee, if that’s what he wants me to do.
She’d know the legislative history of the statutes and the precedential value of the cases. She’d master the procedure and the substantive law. She’d write pithy footnotes and trace the source of a law back to Hammurabi. She’d prepare incisive pool memos for the judicial conferences and brilliant bench memos for her boss. She’d stay up all night with the death clerk on execution stays, and she’d be at work at 8 A.M. sharp.
She’d be prepared to search for the truth, to do justice.
She’d do all of those things in every case… except one.
The case of Laubach v. Atlantica Airlines, Inc., would be different. She already had read the file. She knew the issues and the arguments on both sides. Even more important, she knew who had to win.