Red Hot Lies. Laura Caldwell

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СКАЧАТЬ that Sam was gone, I started to doubt my memories of that day, the beauty of it, the beauty of us. Were Sam and I who I thought we were? Was Sam the man I knew? And without Sam, was I the same person I thought I was? I looked out the window into the rainy day and got no answers.

      Grady Fisher pulled me out of my reverie when he stuck his head in my office. “Where have you been?”

      I shot a look into the hallway. “Close the door, will you?”

      Grady pushed the door closed and leaned back against it. His tie was loose, his shirtsleeves rolled high on his arms. “You all right?”

      “I assume you’ve heard.”

      “Yeah. Everyone has heard, or at least heard the gossip.” He paused. “I just want to know if you’re all right. Give me a yes or no. You don’t have to talk about it. You know that.”

      “I do know that. Thank you.”

      Grady and I had been buddies since graduation from law school. Professionally, we had been raised as brother and sister by our parents, the law firm of Baltimore & Brown. Grady was the sweetest guy—the kind who cleaned the firm kitchen when people left their microwave-popcorn bags out, the kind who bought a Streetwise newspaper from every homeless guy he saw, even though he already had a copy. When Grady and I were together, we didn’t get deep with each other on a regular basis. We talked about the law firm and general stuff about our dating lives. We bailed out one another by covering court calls and depositions, but emotionally we never pushed too hard.

      “So, are you all right?” Grady asked. He looked worried.

      I blinked. “I don’t know.”

      He moved into the office and sat down. “I can’t believe Forester is …”

      “Dead.”

      He winced.

      “Yeah.”

      Everyone at the firm knew I was Forester’s girl. People had been malicious at first. After that initial case he had sent me I’d gotten more and more of his work. Then the rumors started that I was sleeping with him. Such talk rattled me. I tried to point out to everyone that Forester hadn’t even met me in person when he sent me the first case. No one cared. The talk continued.

      It was only Grady who stuck up for me. I’d heard him once in a conference room, muttering, “Fuck you, dude, she’s a great lawyer,” to a clerk who had made a snide, sexual comment. It wasn’t exactly true—I wasn’t a great lawyer yet. The more I handled my own cases, the more I realized it took years, maybe even decades, to be a truly great attorney—but I appreciated Grady for saying it.

      And it was also Grady who eventually told me, in his brief I-don’t-want-to-discuss-this-much way, to get over it.

      Lots of Forester’s work was coming to me then. I’d gotten a huge bonus and a big office with a window and I got a portion of every new case I brought in. But I still was troubled about the way people were viewing me, and the pressure of the job was mounting.

      “Izzy, enough bitching,” Grady said one day over a beer. “You’ve got it better than any other associate at this firm. Better than any other associate in the city probably. You need to work hard and make a ton of cash and just let all those dickheads root around in their jealousy. Shut up and enjoy it, okay?”

      It was a radical instruction. Enjoy it. There isn’t a lot of talk about enjoyment in the law. Some attorneys love the law and some put up with it for the salary and the prestige, but rarely did you hear someone speak about deriving actual pleasure from the whole experience.

      I made a conscious decision to ignore the gossip and sink myself deeper into the work. I got to know Forester better, and I both adored and respected him. I wore suits that were sexy, not caring if such attire led to discussions about how I’d used my looks to get ahead. Soon after, I found Q, who made the work all the more fun. I sometimes missed the fraternitylike camaraderie that other associates experienced. But I had Forester, and I had Q, and I had Grady, and when I needed a little less testosterone in my legal world, I had Maggie, and then eventually, to flesh out my personal life, I had Sam.

      But now, two of those pieces were missing.

      “So, what have you heard?” I asked.

      “Sam is gone and so is fifty million worth of some kind of corporate shares.”

      “Thirty million.”

      Grady blinked.

      “Allegedly, it’s thirty million,” I said, channeling Maggie. I rubbed my forehead, wanting desperately, even for a moment, to be away from all this. “Look, for just a second, can we pretend it’s yesterday. Before all this happened?”

      “Sure.” Grady sat back in his chair.

      “So.” What would Grady and I usually talk about?

      “Got any trials coming up?” Grady asked. “I have to make sure I’m there to mop up the flop sweat.”

      “Fuck you,” I said, feeling the relief of using curse words knowing we were about to talk about something that normally embarrassed the hell out of me.

      Like siblings, we knew the other’s weaknesses. Grady’s was billing. And like the brother figure he was, Grady saw it as his job to ridicule me about mine—acute nervousness I occasionally experienced at the start of a trial that resulted in extreme perspiration.

      The first time it happened was during my very first trial for Pickett Enterprises under the most mortifying of conditions—as if the devil had taken a coal straight from the furnace of hell and plopped it onto my body. The results were worse than Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl. Panicked, I asked the judge for a recess, locked myself in a bathroom stall and, using a nail file and my teeth, I cut the shoulder pads free from my suit. I put the suit back on and kept the shoulder pads tucked under my arms for the rest of the morning. My hand gestures were probably a bit mechanical, but it did the trick.

      The upside of my little dilemma was that it had happened only a few times, only under severe stress, and it seemed to last just a few hours.

      “Okay, new topic,” I said. “Dating anybody?”

      Grady was a catch—dark-brown hair (most of it still there), a charming, wide grin and a great intellect that never made anyone else feel small.

      “Ellen,” he answered.

      “Ellen is back?”

      “Ellen is definitely back.”

      “Great.” I liked Ellen. “Does she want a ring?”

      “Yes.”

      “Are you going to give it to her this time?”

      “I might.”

      Grady had told me over and over, I don’t want to be with the same person all the time. Plus, Ellen and I aren’t like you and Sam. We’re not in love like that.

      “So this thing with Sam.” Grady trailed off.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ