Solomon Vs. Lord Part 18

"That's all."

"Good, then it's mutual," Victoria said.

Ten minutes later, Steve parked the car in an open lot, and they walked along Ocean Drive past the usual collection of sunburned tourists and skateboarding teens. It was a sunny day, with a steady breeze off the Atlantic. As they headed to his office, Steve tried to figure out what had just happened. Why had he taken those cheap shots? Why couldn't he just say what he felt?

Because you don't tell another man's fiancee that the air sizzles when she walks into the room and fizzles when she leaves.

Now, there was the painful truth. Even though he knew he was lousy at introspection, he dug deeper. Ever since learning Victoria was engaged, he'd been trying to convince himself that he wasn't attracted to her. Now he was going out of his way to p.i.s.s her off. He felt like the awkward sixth grader, who, unable to talk to the prettiest girl in cla.s.s, yanks her pigtails instead. And she'd just busted him on it.

"Be honest, Solomon. Do you have a thing for me?"

Nolo contendere. He would cop a plea, but only to himself. To Victoria, he would keep up the front, pretending he could barely tolerate her. He would never mention his feelings, and he surely wouldn't act on them. First, because it would be damaging to their working together. And second, because in an uncertain world, he was quite certain of one thing: Whatever he felt for Victoria Lord, she did not feel for him.

5. I will never compromise my ideals to achieve someone else's definition of success.

Fourteen.

SUCCESS VERSUS EXCELLENCE.

"Me first," Bobby shouted, running ahead and ducking into a pink, two-story stucco building. It had been built in the 1930's but had none of the charm of Art Deco. No graceful curves or ornamental friezes. No oak floors or cathedral ceilings. The walls were made of plaster mixed with beach sand, and the caustic effect of the salt corroded the plumbing and wiring. As a result, the building was subject to power outages and overflowing toilets. A sign on the exterior read, "Les Mannequins."

Three young women, impossibly tall, impossibly thin, high-stepped out the front door. All three wore short shorts, cropped tees, and open-toed sandals with four-inch heels. "Hi, Steve," they cooed.

"Let me guess," Victoria said. "Your law clerks?"

"It's a modeling agency," Steve admitted.

"Really? And I thought it was the Supreme Court."

"All right, listen up, Lord. Getting to my office is like walking over hot coals. So whatever happens, just keep moving."

"Why?"

"You'll see." Steve took Victoria by the arm and hurried her through the door. In the lobby, two more young women-six-foot-tall twins with long, flaxen hair-stood at a counter studying contact sheets of headshots.

"Hey, Steve," they said in unison. "When are you-"

"Lexy. Rexy," Steve said, still on the move. "Not now."

"But you promised," Lexy said. Or maybe it was Rexy.

"You owe us," the other one said. "Remember?"

"I'm busy." He tried to hustle past them, but the two women, slender as straws, spun gracefully, despite their high-heeled slingbacks, and blocked his path. In spandex tube minidresses, one Day-Glo red, the other Day-Glo green, with long legs spread, the pair looked like twin Eiffel Towers decorated for Christmas.

"Do you know what parking's like on Ocean Drive?" Lexy asked.

"I know, I know," Steve said.

"So where are our handicap stickers?" Lexy asked.

"We had to walk three blocks today," Rexy said.

"In our Jimmy Choos," Lexy said.

"You're not handicapped." Steve pushed past the two women.

"Anorexia doesn't count?" Victoria said.

"Come on. My office-our office-is on the second floor." Steve tried to hurry her along. Bobby was already at the stairs.

"The penthouse," Victoria said. "I remember."

"Don't bust my chops, okay? I get free rent in exchange for handling the agency's legal problems. Gotta do some work for the models, too. The trick is to get upstairs before they-"

"Steve, wait up!" A suntanned young woman in Lycra bicycle shorts and a sport bra approached.

"Later, Gina," Steve said. "I've got law business."

"So do I." Pouty-lipped and big-busted-Rudnicks, Victoria guessed-Gina had a China chop of coppery hair as bright as a new penny. She stuck out her left hand and showed off a diamond the size of an eyeball. "Paco asked me to marry him."

"Looks like you accepted," Steve said.

"For one night. Then I changed my mind. He's just another Euro-rich model-humper. Now the creep wants the ring back."

"Imagine the nerve."

"I don't have to give it back, do I?"

"How should I know?" Steve said.

Victoria interceded. "The general rule is that an engagement ring is a gift. So, even if there's no wedding, the woman keeps the ring."

"Look who got the book award in Contracts One," Steve said with mock admiration. "Gina, this is Victoria, my new law partner."

"Great," Gina said. "Will you be my lawyer if the p.r.i.c.k sues me?"

"I should caution you, Gina," Victoria said in her lawyerly voice, "if you intended to break up ab initio, your fiance could claim fraud and get the ring back."

"Ab what?" Gina asked.

Bobby said: "Ab initio. From the beginning. Like, did you always plan to rip off the guy like you did the fertilizer salesman who paid for your b.o.o.bs?"

"You have a big mouth, Bobby," Gina said. Then she let out a little gasp and grabbed Victoria's left hand. "OmiG.o.d! Look at yours. It's gorgeous." She practically drooled on Victoria's emerald-cut diamond, propped up on four pedestals, with smaller diamonds running up two side channels. "I love the design. The baguettes are, like, I don't know, a shiny staircase, a pathway to heaven."

"Why would a man give a woman a ring like that," Steve asked, "when for a fraction of the money, he could buy a plasma TV?"

"Don't listen to him," Gina said. "He's the least romantic man I've ever slept with. And I've s.h.a.gged some real turkeys."

"But look who's the biggest giblet of them all." Victoria's smile was as shiny as her diamond.

"Victoria, if you broke up with your fiance, would you give the ring back?" Gina asked.

"I'm definitely going to marry Bruce, so it's a moot question."

"But what if something happened," Gina persisted, following them halfway up the stairs. "What if you caught him cheating?"

"I can't imagine Bruce doing anything like that," Victoria said.

"I can," Steve said. "In flagrante delicto with a curvaceous avocado."

"Or what if you got tired of him or found someone else?" Gina said.

"That," Victoria said, sounding profoundly confident, "would never, ever happen."

Victoria checked out Steve's waiting room like a detective at a crime scene. Faded plaster walls and flickering fluorescent lights. Client chairs covered in cracked vinyl but missing clients. A receptionist sat at her desk, and it was a good thing the phone wasn't ringing, because she wouldn't have answered it. The receptionist was a life-size inflatable doll that bore a striking resemblance to Pamela Anderson in a bikini. Her desk was littered with empty cartons of Chinese takeout and stacks of unopened mail. Most looked like bills.

Victoria had never seen a law office-or any office-quite like it. The carpet, which must have been an industrial gray when new, was spotted with coffee stains, and the few clean spots were threadbare. The air smelled of dust and mildew.

Okay, so she hadn't expected teak wainscoting, but this . . .

What a dump.

She tried to suppress what she was feeling. That she'd been conned. That Solomon was a small-time shyster, a low-rent-strike that-a no-rent, flimflam man.

Steve tried to look at his waiting room through Victoria's eyes. He had always thought of his office as understated, but now it seemed downright shabby. But dammit, material things weren't important to him. How could he explain that without sounding like a total loser? He wanted to tell her about his pro bono cases-clients with just causes and thin wallets-but it would sound so self-serving, so defensive, he just kept quiet.

From somewhere Victoria heard a grunt, then the clang of metal on metal.

"That you, Cece?" Steve asked.

A woman's voice rose from behind Pamela Anderson. "No, jefe, it's Sandra Day O'Connor."

In the s.p.a.ce between Pamela Anderson's chair and the wall, a thickset woman in her early twenties lay flat on her back on a workout bench. As she raised a barbell, straining against the weight, cursing in Spanish-"Ay, mierda!"-the tattoo of a cobra on her beefy upper arm coiled and uncoiled.

She wore a sleeveless cropped tee and low-slung tattered jeans and had a cream-of-caramel complexion. Her neck seemed to be connected to her shoulders with thick steel cables, and her shoulders rippled with muscles. Her eyebrows had been plucked into diagonal slashes, one pierced by three metal studs, and she had a crown of curly, reddish-brown hair.

"Maldito!" the woman exhaled as she lowered the bar. "Who's gonna spot me?" Her accent was pure Little Havana.

Bobby hustled over to her. "Me, Cece."

"Gracias, brainiac."

Bobby kept his hands on the bar as the woman did two more reps, then, with a grunt, eased the bar down into its brackets. Still on her back, Cece looked up at Victoria and said: "El Jefe's got no manners. I'm Cecilia Santiago."

"My personal a.s.sistant," Steve said.

"Personal slave is more like it. You that persecutor?"

"Ex-persecutor," she said. "Victoria Lord. h.e.l.lo, Cecilia."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Hey, Cece," Steve said, "when you're done working on your pecs, could you schedule a press conference on the Barksdale case?"

"Is that ethical?" Victoria asked.

"Would F. Lee Bailey ask that question?"

"Probably not. He's been disbarred."

Cece vaulted to her feet. A printed message was visible on her cropped tee: "All Men Are Animals. Some Just Make Better Pets." She had a second tattoo, a green sailfish, which seemed to burst from the top of her low-slung jeans and leap over her navel. "Yo, Lord. King Solomon tell you anything about me?"

"Not in any detail," Victoria replied, diplomatically.

"What I done was no big deal. Sort of like choplifting."

"Right," Steve said. "You choplifted Enrique's Toyota."

"My boyfriend. He was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my cousin, Lourdes, behind my back. So I borrowed his car."

"You beat him up, then you drove his car off the boat ramp at Matheson Hammock."

"Not gonna 'criminate myself." Cece looked at Victoria with suspicion. "So now I gotta slave for two of you?"

"I'm sure we'll all get along fine," Victoria said, not believing it for a moment.

Cece ran her bloodred fingernails over her abs, contracted and relaxed the muscles. The sailfish wagged its tail. "Look, Lord, I don't make coffee. I don't take your Needless Markup designer s.h.i.t to the cleaners, and I don't type. We cool?"

"Cece types," Steve contributed. "She just can't spell."

"It's my lexus," Gina said. "You fire me, I'll sue your a.s.s off."

"You don't have dyslexia. You're just too lazy to use the spell check."

"Hey, Lord, hear that? He's saying Hispanics are lazy. I'm calling the EEOC."

"And I'm calling your probation officer," Steve said.

Victoria watched in amazement. She'd never seen such a lack of professionalism. How could she work in a place like this?

Cece laughed. "Good one, jefe."