Fatal Flaw Part 4

No matter where I was, at a bar or a ball game, whenever my profession was discovered, the inevitable question was raised. And never yet had I found an adequate answer.

Oh, I knew the Const.i.tution, I could cite the Sixth Amendment backward and forward, the case law, too, but still the question always gave me pause. Where in the Const.i.tution did it provide that every partic.i.p.ant in a criminal trial was duty bound to seek the ends of justice with the sole exception of the attorney for the defense? Where in the Const.i.tution did it say that a.s.sistance of counsel meant a.s.sistance in escaping the just consequences of your merciless crime? I had been asked the question dozens of times, and now, here, with my lover dead on a mattress on the floor, I finally had my answer: I can't, I won't. And it wasn't enough to refuse the case, let someone else do the dirty work. This was no time to punt. A decision had been made to discover the truth and be certain it was served. A decision had been made, and I would follow it through. I had discovered the truth that very night, in my apartment when Guy lied so shamelessly and later, on the street, when he whacked me with his suitcase as he was about to make good his escape from justice. The second part, I was sure, would be a snap.

Yes indeed, I'd represent that son of a b.i.t.c.h. What better way to keep my pledge? What better way to remember Hailey Prouix?

6.

SHE SITS across from me, leaning away from me, arms crossed, legs crossed. She leans away from me, but her bright red lips are curved and challenging. She raises her cigarette to her mouth. Her blue eyes, framed dramatically by the dark rails of her gla.s.ses, squint from the smoke. Her narrowed gaze rakes across my face, down my throat. I look at her and forget to breathe. across from me, leaning away from me, arms crossed, legs crossed. She leans away from me, but her bright red lips are curved and challenging. She raises her cigarette to her mouth. Her blue eyes, framed dramatically by the dark rails of her gla.s.ses, squint from the smoke. Her narrowed gaze rakes across my face, down my throat. I look at her and forget to breathe.

"Victor," says Guy Forrest, sitting beside her at the table, "I'd like to you to meet Hailey Prouix."

"So pleased," I say, and I am.

We are in a Spanish restaurant on Twelfth Street, modern, cruelly lit, cold stone tables for the hot paella. You want comfort, stay in bed. Guy had called and asked me to meet him, and here I am, forgetting to breathe, and I feel a love surging inside me. Love, not for her, because she is nothing yet but possibilities, instead love for my dear friend Guy, who thought well enough of me to introduce me to her, to set up this setup. Was ever a friend dearer?

But they are sitting side by side. That should have been my clue.

We order drinks, we chat. I smile and do my best to be charming. I am jolly, I am self-deprecating, I am wry. Oh, am I wry. Guy tells me Hailey is also a lawyer. I make a joke. He tells Hailey that he and I went to law school together. She asks what kind of law I do.

"Mostly criminal defense, but I also pursue the intentional torts that flow out of crime. Fraud, a.s.sault, the occasional wrongful death."

"Lucrative?"

"Sometimes, sometimes not, but it keeps me busy. Though not as busy as they keep Guy at Dawson, Cricket. How's the sweatshop, Guy?"

"Fine, I suppose, but I'm not going to be there much longer."

I stare at him blankly. I hadn't heard through the legal grapevine that he had been in trouble at his firm.

"I'm taking a page from your book," says Guy. "I'm going to try it on my own."

"You're six months from partnership."

"I want something new."

"What does Leila say?"

"She doesn't have a say," he says as he puts an arm around Hailey. "I'm leaving her, too."

Ah, so there it is. My charming smile freezes on my face, the love I had felt for a loyal friend withers. This isn't a setup, this is an announcement. I turn my head to look at her. Her lovely lips are pursed, as if she were examining me for some reason, as if there were something she might want from me. She smashes out her cigarette and excuses herself. Guy scrambles to stand as she slides out of her seat, and we both watch while she walks down the aisle. She walks as if she knows what she is doing, as if she has been walking near all her life.

"You look happy," I say to Guy, even though he suddenly looks positively miserable.

"Oh, I am. Like I've never been before."

"Where are you going to live?"

"She has a small house. Nothing fancy. A sofa, a table, a mattress on the floor."

"A mattress on the floor?"

He gives a boyish half grin that makes me want to smash him in the face. He reads my expression, and the grin dies. "You don't approve," he says.

"It's not up to me to approve or disapprove, is it? I'm only trying to understand what you're doing."

"I've decided to change my life."

I snap my fingers. "Just like that."

"I don't have a choice. I love her, Victor. What else is there to understand? I'm sick in love with her."

And just then he looks it, sick in love, as if love were an illness that he has caught, an exotic virus that was biding its time in the nuclei of his cells until it burst forth to ravage him.

"Well, that's great, Guy," I say, "just great. I'm glad for you. Really."

I take a sip of my Sea Breeze and I am suffused with the bitter aftertaste of disappointment. But is it with Guy, with what he is going to do to his wife and his children and the image I had held of his happy, happy family, or is it because he hasn't brought her to this restaurant for me?

When she returns, the conversation is awkward, charmless, wryless. There is no longer flirtation in the air. Guy talks, I listen, Hailey smokes. But at the end, as we part and say our good-byes, in a moment while Guy looks away, I am staring once again at her lips when they silently mouth "Call me," and I do.

WE MEET for a drink after work. Nothing secret or surrept.i.tious, we are in the open, in a public place, the bar of a famous restaurant where Guy could march in at any time, but he won't. Even so, he is with us, as real a presence as the man with the toupee and the flowered tie sitting two stools down. Hailey drinks an Absolut martini, I drink my usual Sea Breeze. The man with the toupee drinks Scotch. Hailey's eyes are bluer than I remember, her lips freshly lacquered and in constant motion, hovering uneasily just beneath a smile. I can't take my eyes off them, they are devouring. for a drink after work. Nothing secret or surrept.i.tious, we are in the open, in a public place, the bar of a famous restaurant where Guy could march in at any time, but he won't. Even so, he is with us, as real a presence as the man with the toupee and the flowered tie sitting two stools down. Hailey drinks an Absolut martini, I drink my usual Sea Breeze. The man with the toupee drinks Scotch. Hailey's eyes are bluer than I remember, her lips freshly lacquered and in constant motion, hovering uneasily just beneath a smile. I can't take my eyes off them, they are devouring.

"I have a client that might be facing criminal charges," she says. "I wondered if you wanted to handle the case."

"So this is a business meeting."

"What did you think it was?" Her words are accusatory, but her smile is anything but. It feels like a seduction, but I wonder who is seducing whom.

"I thought we were going to talk about Guy," I say.

"No we weren't."

"You're going to destroy him, aren't you?"

"And that would concern you?"

"He's my friend."

"And that's why you're here, having a drink with me, because he's your friend?"

"You phrase questions like a psychiatrist, not a lawyer."

"Objection noted. Answer the question."

"There you go. Fine deposition form."

"You're not here having a drink with me because Guy is your friend, are you, Mr. Carl?"

"No."

"Good. At least that's settled."

"Is it so easy?"

"Yes, yes it is."

And she is right.

WE COURT like Victorians, slowly, chastely. The strange omnipresence of Guy is our chaperon. He is always there, the guy with the afro, the guy in the tweed suit, the guy cross-dressing who thinks we can't tell. He is always there, and his presence lets us pretend that we want only to be friends. Merely friends. That is all. Isn't it obvious? like Victorians, slowly, chastely. The strange omnipresence of Guy is our chaperon. He is always there, the guy with the afro, the guy in the tweed suit, the guy cross-dressing who thinks we can't tell. He is always there, and his presence lets us pretend that we want only to be friends. Merely friends. That is all. Isn't it obvious?

There are more drinks in the twilight. She crosses her legs and we b.u.mp knees. Just the thought of her turns me blue, but she won't let me kiss her. She says that nothing can ever happen, that she is devoted to Guy. Her admonitions allow me to a.s.suage any guilt that our meetings are other than innocent, but when she crosses her legs, we b.u.mp knees.

On nights when Guy is busy, we have dinner. She orders fish but barely eats a thing. She drinks more than she ought and smokes when she drinks. Mostly what we do is talk. We talk of incidental things, our cases, our tastes in movies. She is not one for weepy chick flicks. She likes action-adventure, she likes explosions. Arnold. John Woo. She has a longing for Sylvester Stallone.

"Whatever happened to him?" I ask.

"He tried to get serious."

"Is that fatal?"

"Always."

"You've never been serious?" I say.

"I didn't say that. But whenever I've been serious, I've been seriously bad."

"You exaggerate."

"No, no I don't."

"Tell me about it, tell me the worst."

"Are you a priest? I could only tell a priest."

"I didn't know you were religious."

"I'm not, and that's why. So I never have to tell."

"It's not that bad, I'm sure."

"That's sweet of you. Or dim of you. One or the other. Which is it?"

"Sweet?"

"Too bad. There is nothing more appealing sometimes than an utter lack of imagination."

"Has Guy moved in yet?"

"Oh, yes. Yes he has."

"How is it, living with Guy?"

"Like a dream."

"You sound overwhelmed with joy."

"I never knew bliss could feel this way."

She has no sense of humor, but she laughs well. She is a grand audience, she is Ed McMahon if Ed McMahon wore a size four. I make wisecracks, and she pretends they are funnier than they really are, and I let her. We tell stories of our childhoods and treat them like revelations, when all they are are stories culled to hide the revelations. I tell her how my mother left when I was still in my boyhood, how she now lives with some alcoholic cowboy in Arizona. I tell her how my father still cuts lawns even with half a lung. She tells me of the tragic death of her father.

This is what I learn of her past, the bones of her life as she relates them to me. She was born in West Virginia, on the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Her daddy was a Cajun who came north looking for work in the lumber mills. They went to church every Sunday, had a house with a verandah on the high side of the river. She walked to school with her sister, came home to a plate of cookies and milk each afternoon, played in the park across from the courthouse. She was eight when a load of timber came loose during stacking and crushed her father to death.

There was no pension, no payout. He had been working all those years as an independent contractor. There was insurance, but barely enough for the burial. Her mother worked, but even so, things grew very hard very quickly and although she was still only a child at the time, in all her years after, she never forgot the bitter taste of financial desperation. In order to help out, her mother's brother moved in and joined his wages with his sister's. No family of his own, a drinker and gambler, her uncle settled down long enough to help raise the family. Eight years he lived with them, until the strain became too much and he disappeared, presumably to start again with the drinking and the gambling. But by then his job was complete, the girls were almost grown.

Hailey was popular, pretty, a prom queen who walked the high school halls arm in arm with the star halfback. Awarded a church scholarship, she left home to attend a small college in Maryland, and for the first time she concentrated more on her studies than on her social life. To her great surprise she discovered that she was good at academics. Dean's-list good. Good enough for the church scholarship to be extended to graduate school if she wanted to attend, and she did. She never forgot what had happened to her father and family, never forgot how an unfair contract and unsafe conditions had left her family on the brink. It was that experience, she told me, that had sent her into the law, and when she said it, there was none of the ironic tone that normally left you looking for the explanatory footnotes. A law school in New Jersey gave her enough aid so that with the scholarship and loans she could make a go of it. Three years later she landed an a.s.sociate's position with a small but profitable plaintiff's firm in Philadelphia. Four years after that, when an affair with the managing partner created a scandal, she took a stack of files and went out on her own.

"It all sounds so d.a.m.n inspiring," I say. "Rags to riches."

"Yes, I'm the American dream."

"How did you meet Guy?"

"At a seminar on proving and defending the medical malpractice case."

"I always knew CLE had to be good for something."

"That's what I get for trying to improve my mind."

"You think you deserve better?"

"I think I'm getting exactly what I deserve. Another martini, please."

"When do you have to get home?"

"After this drink."