Against the Wind (2 page)

“What exactly are we talking about?” I ask. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

Andy sits next to me, leans in close. He’s a bear, this guy, a big warm bear, I love him, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had in my entire life.

“You’re no good to anybody right now, Will, especially yourself.”

“Hey I’m having some problems okay? It’s not the end of the world.”

“We want you to take a leave of absence,” he tells me out of left field.

I’ve been sucker-punched before; it always takes your breath away even when you should see it coming. I breathe deeply; I look at him, at Fred. Give them credit: they hold my look. It can’t be easy.

I finish the rest of my coffee in a swallow. “I can’t. Not now. You know I can’t now.” Then it hits me: my partners, my best friends, are kicking me out of my own firm. Alexander, Hite, and Portillo. It’s my goddam name that’s first on the door. I explode.

“What is this shit!” I yell. I’m up, pacing, getting the old courtroom adrenaline flowing. I always think better on my feet.

“Calm down Will,” Fred says. “You want the whole building to hear you?”

“Fuck the building,” I tell him, “and fuck you. Both of you.” I’m pacing, I’m sweating, I’m cooking, but I’m scared, too. “I’m going through the worst goddam time of my life right now, I’ve got a divorce settlement coming up with Holly that’s going to wipe out my assets, I’ve got a daughter who needs three grand worth of orthodontia, that’s the tip of the iceberg, there’s a million other important things on my mind, and you’re telling me because I miss one lousy meeting you want to kick me out. Thanks, guys. I need your support and instead you turn your back on me.”

I slump in a chair. Jane, the Michigan Law Review editor we hired as our latest associate last year right out from under the noses of two major Wall Street firms, sticks a quizzical head in the door. Andy waves her out impatiently. She jumps; that’s not at all like him. The entire office must be feeling the tension.

They turn to me. They are my friends, and they’re concerned. And I’m not helping them. I can’t. If I lose the firm I lose the only anchor I’ve got left.

Fred speaks first: we don’t call him ‘The Knife’ for nothing.

“You’re hurting the firm.” Simple, direct, and lethal.

“It’s out in the open,” Andy adds. “People are talking.”

“So let ’em. So what? I do the job don’t I?”

They don’t answer.

“Okay …” Carefully now, these are your friends, and partners, a lot’s at stake, don’t push them into something we’ll all regret later. “I’ve fucked up, maybe more than once, definitely more than once, but that’s behind me, on my word, I’m lining up my priorities, I’m going to take care of business. It’s going to be strictly business, I’m not drinking, I haven’t had a drink for a week (okay, one white lie, I’ll fix it retroactively) …”

“You were drinking last night,” Andy informs me coldly, catching me in my lie immediately. He leans away from me; not so much the big, friendly bear now. “You were drinking with Buck Burgess at the Longhorn during happy hour. Now cut the bullshit and get straight with us or I am personally going to throw you out this window.”

“That was beer, for Christsakes, one lousy beer.” I almost shit with relief; for a moment I thought I’d done real damage, somebody’d seen me in a forty-five-degree weave with the lady from Truchas. “Okay, to be technical it was two beers but they were light beers,” I point out quickly, a lawyer’s mind is never at rest, “beer isn’t drinking. Hell,” I add, trying on a grin, “I get higher drinking iced tea.”

“Then you’d better add iced tea to your list of don’t-dos,” Fred says. “Look, Will,” he continues, “you’ve got a choice: take a leave and work out your problems …”

He pauses. Even for him, a guy who relishes a confrontation, this is painful. I don’t help; they’re going to have to play this hand out, I want them to show me what they’re holding.

Andy doesn’t blink. He’s a killer poker-player.

“We don’t want to buy you out, Will. But we will if we have to, if it’s the only way. But we don’t want to. For sure that’s not what we want to do.”

We have this clause in our original partnership language: if any two of the original three partners feel the third is harming the firm to the point where he’s causing irreparable damage they have the right to buy him out at current book value plus work in progress. It’s a lot of money; none of us ever wanted it before. Now it’s in front of us. We sit in putrefactive silence.

I blink first.

“For how long?”

Fred shrugs.

“A week? A month?” I ask.

Andy shakes his head. “A month won’t do it, Will.” He leans back towards me, the conciliator again. “It’s not just you, although,” he says diplomatically, albeit a shade too facilely, Andy’s not good at being slick, his bedrock honesty is his calling-card, “your well-being is the most important thing to us.”

“You’re talking about the integrity of the firm,” I finish for him.

They exhale; I’m not going to be a hard-case.

“’Cause that’s where the money is,” I continue. They’re wrong; I’m going to make it miserable for them. “Can you even afford to buy me out?”

“It’ll be a bitch,” Fred says. “But if we have to—if that’s what it comes to: yes.”

I’m the buccaneer in the group; if they say they can it means they’ve already worked it out.

“So what’re we talking about? Three months? Four?” I’m sweating freely now.

“At least,” Andy answers, on sure ground again. “You need to cool out, Will. You’re burnt out.”

There it is.

“How do we work out the money?” I ask. “We can’t afford to pay me if I’m not bringing in business; not for that long.”

They stare at me. Jesus, I’m slow this morning.

“You fuckers.”

“You just said it,” Fred answers in a tone that implies he’s the wounded party. “You take a big hit, bro. No way we could carry that. We’d want it the same way if it was one of us,” he adds unctuously.

“We’ll find a month,” Andy says. “Maybe two.” At least he’s having a harder time than Fred. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever deep-down liked Fred. I don’t think so.

“What if I flat-out say no?” My back is up, these miserable two-faced sons-of-bitches, what kind of bullshit is this, we’ve been partners, friends, out of the blue they’re putting a loaded gun to my head?

“Don’t.” Andy’s tough now, his voice flat, emotionless.

I sag; they see it, I can’t hide it, not in the condition I’m in this morning. It’s a palace coup, bloodless, over before it’s started.

“How do we work it? I’m not going to take any public humiliation,” I tell them. “I’ll bring the firm down first,” I add, staring defiantly back at them.

“You’ve asked for an extended leave,” Fred informs me. They’ve worked it all out, the pricks, they’ve probably got papers for me to sign. “You’ve been under intense emotional pressure with the divorce, you’ve been a lawyer almost your entire adult life, you need to step back and look at the big picture. We’re reluctant to do it but in the long-range interests of the firm, and for your own well-being, we’re going along with your desires. We wish you the best of luck, hope the trout are biting or whatever it is you’ll be doing, and eagerly await your return to the firm of which you were an original founder.”

I breathe an audible sigh of relief; the door isn’t completely closed. Maybe they’re right, maybe I should take some time off. So what if it’s a rationalization; rationalizations have a kernel of truth.

“How do we know when it’s time for me to come back?”

“We’ll play it by ear,” Andy says. “No guarantees.”

“So there’s a chance I’ll never come back.” Great, I think, forty years old and starting over in a town where there are no secrets. This whole sorry mess’ll be on the streets by tomorrow.

“Let’s don’t think negatively, man,” Andy says, “we really don’t want this. We need you, Will, you’re our star, we’re going to lose half our trial business right off the top, some of it we’ll never get back.”

“Then why the goddam draconian measures?”

“You’ve forced them on us, Will. We don’t think the firm can survive otherwise.”

Jesus, has it really come to that? I close my eyes, take a deep breath, exhale. Should I apologize? No; if I’m going out I’m going out in style, my style. Of course, if I were to apologize, they’d really feel like turds.

“I’m sorry. I don’t see the gravity of it but I’ve obviously hurt everybody pretty badly.”

Bull’s-eye. The grief on their faces is genuine. Fred puts an uncharacteristic hand on mine, an oddly inappropriate yet touching, old-fashioned gesture.

“You’ll be back,” he soberly informs me.

I nod equally soberly.

“What about Susan?”

“We’re taking care of her,” Andy says, quick on the draw. “We’ve already spoken to her …” his voice suddenly falters as he picks up on the fuckup, but he catches himself adroitly, presses on, no looking back now: “informally, of course, we mentioned you might want to take a leave, let it fly as if it was your own idea. She’ll be a rover, we’ll keep her busy. She agrees,” he adds. “She’s been concerned about you for some time.”

That’s probably true. Susan’s the cliché secretary in all the best senses. Thank God I was never drunk enough during office hours to make a pass at her.

“Who gets my office?” I’ve got the primo office, the corner with great views out of two sides.

I thought I’d catch them but they don’t bite. I wonder if they rehearsed this.

“No one,” Andy answers. “It’s yours until we all come to a final decision.”

“Good,” I say. “I might want to use it from time to time … for personal business,” I add with a defiant twist.

They glance at each other.

“Sure.” Fred nods approbation. “Just don’t camp out okay?” He winks; it’s a big joke, a chummy conspiracy, we’re all in on it together. I just happen to be the butt.

Andy doesn’t smile; he’s taking it harder, I knew he would. He steps forward, offers his hand.

“Not too many hard feelings?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answer. “Probably.”

His hand drops. “If it’s any consolation this wasn’t easy … for either of us.”

“You’re right. It’s no consolation.”

“If you need money I want to be the first one to hear from you,” he offers. I know he’s sincere.

Fuck them and their feelings. “If I do I sure as hell won’t come to either of you.”

We look bleakly at one another. By one of those foreordained coincidences we’re standing on opposite sides of the conference table: the two of them solid on their side, me fighting to hold it together on mine.

“I’ll clear my personal things out of the office by the end of the week.”

“No hurry,” Fred says, magnanimous now; I didn’t throw an embarrassing tantrum. Civilization as we know it has been preserved. “Susan’ll take your messages.”

“I guess that’s about it, then,” I tell them. “I’ll spend the rest of the week clearing my calendar.”

“Keep in touch, Will,” Andy says. Without realizing it he’s already regarding me in the past tense. Fred’s preoccupied with the view outside.

There’s nothing more to say; they leave the room. I slump into a chair. My head’s really killing me now and I can’t rationalize that it’s a hangover anymore.

The bikers should be high, stoned, blown away. They’ve been doing tequila shooters since they came in three hours ago. Before that, before they rode down from Taos, they’d had a taste of crack, some Maui Wowwee mixed with hash, bootleg quaaludes somebody’d stashed years ago and brought out to impress them (and keep them on the good side), as well as a handful of designer drugs rumored to be 3,000 times the potency of morphine, stolen from a local anesthesiologist. Any normal human being would be wasted beyond oblivion; these four are still on their feet, sliding through the scene.

The patrons in this low-rent bar are your basic kickers, lean mean bastards, but even the toughest of them gives the bikers a wide berth, ’cause everyone knows these dudes are crazy, Jack. So it’s a couple hours of drinking and eyeballing and listening to the house band recycle Bob Seger and Willie Nelson before it mellows out, before some of the boys mosey over and starting talking bikes (which means Harleys of course, none of this rice-burner shit), panheads and knuckles and suicide shifters and if you never rode an old Indian, man, you don’t know what it is to get your kidneys scrambled permanent, and then some of the ladies start hovering (all the world knows ladies love outlaws), rubbing their nipples through the tank-tops up against those outrageous tattoos, playful grab-assing, shit these guys’re just good ol’ boys, fucking aye, straight society can’t handle the truth they lay on the world so they’ve got to cut them down, categorize them, call them outlaws. Anyway so what if they are outlaws, that’s the American way, who would you rather fuck darlin’ (this is Lone Wolf, the leader of the bikers, talking), Jesse James or Dan Quayle? Short-dicked little faggot.

It’s getting late now, playing out the night. The girls are going home with their husbands and boy-friends, “No shit, darlin’,” this 38-D cup is overheard telling one of the outlaws, “I wish like hell I could ride out of here with you right now but tomorrow you’re a memory and he’s nasty-jealous.” It’s fun to shuck and jive with friends around for protection but taking off with these dudes? They’ve heard the stories about how bikers initiate mamas, real horror shows, they don’t need this ticket to ride.

Last call, triple shooters of Commemorativa, lots of money floating around, money’s never the problem, what we’re talking is pussy and the lack of it.

“Anybody need a ride?” Lone Wolf asks. Almost plaintive, soft, no threat.

“Me. I do.” From the back of the room, behind the pool table where the light drops off.

“What’s your name?”

“Rita. Gomez.”

“Step out here where I can see you, girl,” Lone Wolf asks. By nature it’s a command performance. She walks into the center of the room, where the light’s better. Some of the other women instinctively back off; this girl is too dumb and too drunk.

The bikers check her out. About twenty-one, twenty-two, dark, not bad once you get past the pockmarks, good firm little tits through her T-shirt, nice tight ass.