Читать книгу Bluff Walk - Charles R. Crawford - Страница 11

5 _____________________

By the time I got back to the office, it was after four. I put in a call to an acquaintance at the DA’s office, but didn’t get anything but her voice mail. I decided to wrap it up for the day.

I put on my workout clothes and ran over to the Y. I did weights and then stayed on the treadmill too long trying to impress the twenty five-year-old aerobics instructor who was on the stationary bike next to me. Just when I knew I couldn’t go on, she got off and left with some guy even younger than she was with tattoos and an earring. I walked home slowly, and decided right before I got there that I probably wasn’t going to puke.

I showered and drank a beer, and then made a sandwich, my second nutritious meal of the day. After I ate, I cleaned up and made a pot of decaffeinated coffee. I got a light blanket and took a cup out on the balcony.

The air was at least ten degrees cooler than when I had come in an hour before, and a strong breeze from the north added to the chill. Despite the city glow, the stars were out in a navy blue sky. Reflections from the lights on the M-shaped Hernando DeSoto bridge shimmered and danced on the black, shifting surface of the river. Interstate 40, from Los Angeles to the Carolina coast, and Interstate 55, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chicago, both crossed that bridge. On the river, barges cruised up and down, south towards Natchez and New Orleans, north towards St. Louis. Despite all the traffic, I was far enough removed that the noise was only a distant rumble.

I sat down on a reclining lawn chair covered with a plastic and foam pad, and pulled the blanket over me. I sipped my coffee and let my mind wander over the day. I tried to think about the Tuggle case, but my inclination for analytical thought was non-existent.

Despite a half-hearted effort not to let them go there, my thoughts drifted to my ex-wife. She was in business school at Vanderbilt when I was in law school. Mutual friends had fixed us up, knowing that I was from Memphis and that she had accepted an offer from Federal Express. She was from Michigan, short, vivacious and brunette, with a direct way about her that was new and different for a southern boy. There was never any doubt in my mind that I loved her more than she loved me.

Neither one of us had much money, but she was determined to get as much as she could, and made no apologies for her attitude. It was the go-go eighties, and she could have joined an investment banking firm in New York or a Silicon Valley company, but she thought an established but innovative company like FedEx fit in better with her life plan. I wasn’t established or innovative, but I must have fit in somewhere, so we got married two weeks after graduation.

We moved into a one-bedroom apartment in midtown, and I took the bar exam and then started as an associate with the Lipscomb Riley firm. It wasn’t the largest firm in the city, but it was one of the oldest and most prestigious. Kathleen started immediately at FedEx.

I went straight to the commercial litigation team at Lipscomb Riley, working on commercial disputes between Fortune 500 companies that generated rooms full of documents and shelves of deposition transcripts. The name of the game was wearing down the other side and evaluating your chances before trial with endless discovery requests and pre-trial motions on every conceivable issue. In the eight years I was at the firm, every major case I worked on but two settled before trial, and one of those settled immediately after closing arguments to the jury. The party on the other side got nervous and made a settlement offer, but our client almost beat him to it. We won the other case at the trial level, but the last I heard it was still on appeal.

Toughness, and even meanness, were virtues, and I aspired to both. By my fourth year, I was traveling around the country taking depositions and interviewing witnesses while bolstering my billable hours with time in cabs and on airplanes. I was making money for myself and even more for the firm, and I was determined to be a partner.

Looking back, I can’t logically explain my determination. It had a lot to do with trying to live up to Kathleen’s expectations, but it was also just a matter of getting caught up in the race. There was a seven-year partnership track, but I realized early on that making partner didn’t mean you stopped working. The partners, especially those in their thirties and forties, worked just as hard as the associates. They had nicer cars and bigger houses, but they were fatter and balder. All I knew was that I was going to win the race. I didn’t question whether it was worth running.

Kathleen was running the same race in the corporate world. She quickly became a favorite of her boss, and traveled the world, making presentations and gathering and analyzing data. We had part of most weekends together, but little time else except when we were asleep. Still, I was in love and couldn’t imagine being without her.

When Kathleen’s boss, a guy in his early forties, was relocated to Los Angeles to head up a Pacific Rim project, we had even less time. The company leased an apartment for her in LA, and she started staying there during the week if she wasn’t traveling to Asia or Australia. At first, she came home most weekends, but pretty soon it was every other weekend at best. I went out there as much as I could, but that wasn’t much.

On a Thursday morning in early December, three members of the firm’s management committee came into my office and shut the door. It was a year before I was due to make partner, so I thought there wasn’t any reason for them to be there except to fire me. I was wrong. I had made partner a year early, only the second person to fast track in the history of the firm.

After they left my office, I picked up the phone and started to dial Kathleen. I was full of pride and success, and I couldn’t wait to share it. But then I decided to surprise her. I was supposed to fly out to LA for the weekend on Friday anyway, so I changed my ticket and left that afternoon.

It was a clear, cool night in California. The taxi dropped me at her place about nine. Her car was out front, so I knew she was home. I used my key and let myself in.

The front room was dark, but there was a diffused light from a glow in the bedroom. I was halfway across the room before it registered on me that the light was from the candles that Kathleen liked to light before making love.

Then I heard her voice, saying things she hadn’t said to me in years.

I should have left then, but I couldn’t help myself. I edged up to the door of the bedroom, and saw her astride her boss, her head thrown back and her breasts in his hands. It was an image I knew I would never get out of my head, but it was what she was saying that tore my heart out.

They never saw me. I left quietly and took a redeye back to Memphis. I called the next day and said that work would keep me from coming out for the weekend. I never told her I had been there that night. A month later, she asked for a divorce.

I fell asleep in my chair sometime before midnight, and woke up chilled and shivering at two a.m. I went inside and got in bed without really waking up.