I Take You (25 page)

“It does have a certain poetic justice to it,” she agrees.

Call-waiting beeps. It must be my one o’clock with Philip and Lyle. “I’ve got to go, Freddy. I’ll call you back.”

Everything is so perfect right now! I’m going to get married. I saved my job. I’ll have this call with Philip and Lyle to find out what interesting new case awaits me on my return, then enjoy to the utmost the last two days before my amazing, fun, Popsicle-strewn wedding to the man I love.

It’s been a difficult few days. Or months. I wish I’d conducted myself a little differently with respect to … well, pretty much everything.

But I didn’t know I loved Will! It makes all the difference.

Everything is going to work out. A life of ease, contentment and happiness awaits me.

I click over to the other line. “Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

“Wilder?” Philip says. “We have a problem.”

“Problem? What problem?”

“The settlement fell through,” Lyle says.

“The EnerGreen settlement? Why?”

“Because our client refuses to listen to reason,” Philip says irritably.

I turn onto Duval Street as Philip explains that EnerGreen’s board is balking over the proposed method for distributing the settlement to the plaintiffs. Everything sounded so certain on Tuesday. The deposition canceled, the papers all but signed. And now they’re hung up on some trivial procedural point. Ridiculous.

“I take it the deposition is on for tomorrow?”

“It’s on,” Lyle confirms. “I’ve already called Hoffman. He’s ready to go.”

“Wait until you meet this guy, Philip. He’s a real piece of work.”

“I’m not coming,” Philip replies. “You’ll be handling this one on your own.”

I stop walking. A woman bumps into me from behind—at least, I think it’s a woman. I’m too focused on what Philip just said to know for sure.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the storm, Wilder. The entire city is shutting down.”

“What storm?”

“You really are in vacation mode, aren’t you?” Lyle says. “There’s a blizzard bearing down on the East Coast. They say it’s going to be the biggest in years. The airports are closing as we speak.”

A blizzard? A little snow and ice? So what? Our firm is famous for the insane lengths its lawyers go to in order to help their clients when
the stakes are high. Working for days without sleep. Ignoring serious illnesses. Risking jail time. Bad weather has never stopped us before. What is Philip thinking?

“You need to be here,” I tell him. “There’s no way I can defend this deposition by myself.” Someone else bumps into me. I start walking again, turning onto a side street.

“What do you mean?” Lyle says, his voice dripping with fake big-brother cheer. “You’re going to be great!”

“You can handle Hoffman’s e-mails,” Philip says. “I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

“It’s not just the e-mails I’m worried about, Philip. It’s what he has to say about the financial statements. If he starts testifying about the fraud it’s all over for EnerGreen.”

“The alleged fraud,” Philip corrects me.

“Not alleged,” I say. “Actual. The actual fraud.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Wilder?”

“Didn’t Lyle tell you?”

Silence on the line.

“Tell him what?” Lyle says innocently.

For an instant, my mind goes blank. I stop and lean against a storefront. I can’t quite take in the magnitude of what’s happening.

“Lyle,” I say. “Oh, Lyle. You useless, useless piece of shit.”

“Wilder, please,” Philip chides me.

“She’s hysterical,” Lyle says to Philip. “I told you she wasn’t ready.”

“One of you needs to tell me what is going on,” Philip says. “Immediately.”

So I sit down on a curb, in the shade of a banyan tree, and I start talking. I describe Pete’s prep. I explain that the wild allegations in the complaint, the overheated stuff we thought was just rhetoric, is, in fact, true. That EnerGreen lost billions and billions of dollars in bad trades and used the oil spill to try to cover it up. I tell him how Pete will fall apart if questioned about it. I say that not only will EnerGreen lose the case, but because of the size of the fraud, the company could very well go under.

Then I finish talking, and I wait.

There’s a long silence. Philip clears his throat. “Explain something to
me, one of you, please,” he says. His voice is calm, level. Extremely ominous. “Explain to me how it is that I, the partner in charge of this case, am learning this information now. Today, one day before the deposition of this witness. How is that possible?”

“This is the first I’m hearing about it, too,” Lyle announces.

“He’s lying, Philip.”

“I’m not lying! She never told me any of this.”

“He’s lying through his teeth.”

“Stop,” Philip says. “Both of you. Stop.”

There’s a long pause. Lyle starts to say something, but Philip must gesture to him to be quiet. Finally, he says, “I am going to make some calls. We’ll get back to you shortly, Wilder.”

We hang up. I pace around for a little bit, marveling at Lyle’s treachery. This is a new low, even for him. I should be enraged, beyond irate, but I can’t muster anything more than mild annoyance. Why bother? There’s no way Philip is going to let me fly solo here. He’ll solve the problem, one way or another.

My phone pings with a text from Teddy:

—I can meet you at 3. Green Parrot.

I’m responding when Philip and Lyle call back. I can tell right away that the news is not good. Philip sounds agitated, distracted. Unlike himself.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Daniel Kostova,” Philip says. Kostova is the plaintiffs’ lead counsel. “He is refusing to postpone the deposition. Kostova is—he claimed that he is already in transit to the Keys. And if—he stated that if we try to delay, he will file an emergency motion with the court—a motion for sanctions—attaching Hoffman’s e-mails as evidence of our supposed bad faith.”

“Then it’s simple,” I say. “We don’t show up. No witness, no deposition.”

“That won’t work,” Lyle says. “Kostova will still move to have us sanctioned, and it gives him an even better excuse to put the e-mails in front of the judge.”

“I have been unable to—to reach Urs,” Philip continues. “I will keep trying, but I don’t think we can depend on EnerGreen acceding to the
settlement, not even if we—if they—if we can impress upon them the urgency of the situation.” He exhales heavily. “Wilder is right. I need to be there.”

He continues talking, reeling off to Lyle a whole bunch of instructions about documents he needs, transcripts of other depositions, copies of court orders. I’ve never heard him so rattled before. The seriousness of the situation has sunk in. If EnerGreen goes down because of a bad deposition, the firm’s reputation will take a serious hit. As will his.

“Betty will make my travel arrangements,” he says. “She will—I will have her call you with the details, Wilder. Lyle, I want you to reach out to Hoffman and tell him to be ready to meet with me first thing in the morning.” He pauses again. “Try to convey the message correctly this time.”

Lyle protests, “Philip, I didn’t—”

“Shut up,” Philip says. “Not another word out of your mouth.”

Lyle and I are both shocked into silence. At a firm with some real screamers, Philip is famous for his courtesy. I’ve never heard him raise his voice or utter an angry word to anyone. He is the epitome of gentlemanly detachment. Breaking through that façade is part of what makes sleeping with him so much fun.

Was.
Was
part of what
made
sleeping with him so much fun.

We finally wrap it up. I check my messages. Nothing from Will. I have a little time to kill before meeting Teddy, so I decide to get my hair done. Do a dry run for Saturday. I find a salon, and soon a nice gay man is doing all the complicated and painful things I’ve always wanted done to my hair. I sit back in the chair and relax.

It’s kind of a bummer that I’ll have to spend most of tomorrow working. But second-chairing this particular deposition will be unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Professionally, I mean. Philip is amazing at this sort of thing, and from what I’ve heard, Kostova is no slouch, either. There should be lots of fireworks.

Then I think about my upcoming honeymoon with Will. We’re going to have so much fun. I’ll make sure that we get to the bottom of this sex business. Really hash it all out. I’ll open up and be honest with him—you know, within reason—and we can start our married life with a clean slate.

It feels stupid to keep repeating it, but I really am so happy right now.

Bliss!

I leave the salon about an hour later, stopping to admire my reflection in a shop window. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. A guy stops behind me, watching me.

I turn and smile at him, touching my hair. “You like?”

He smiles back. “I like. A lot.”

What the hell am I doing? I turn and hurry away. I can’t flirt like that anymore—I’m taken!

But you know what? It’s not a big deal. I caught myself. It’s just a habit I have to break.

My phone rings. It’s my good buddy Lyle!

“Hey, loser! Did he fire your ass yet?”

“I think I’m safe for the time being,” Lyle replies. “Philip isn’t going to be firing anybody for a while.”

Something in his tone stops me.

“He was just admitted to the hospital,” Lyle adds.

I move closer to the curb, out of the main stream of pedestrians. “That’s not funny, Lyle.”

“Betty heard a crash in his office and found him lying behind his desk. Fortunately, the EMTs managed to stabilize him.”

“Watch out!” someone cries, grabbing my arm. I was about to walk into traffic. I turn onto a side street.

“Too early to say whether it’s a full-blown heart attack, but I saw him as they were wheeling him out.” Lyle whistles. “He was
not
looking good.”

It’s true. I can tell from his voice, his barely concealed glee. Philip isn’t coming. The deposition is going forward, and he won’t be here. I’ll be on my own.

And I
know
the professional significance of this should be sinking in for me right now, filling my soul with horror and fear and trepidation and all that. But honestly? All I can think about is how many times—and in how many ways—Philip and I have had sex. Intense, strenuous,
crazy
sex. In his office, in mine. At the Waldorf. On the—well, you get the point. Once he gets going, the guy is like a bull. All that, but present
him with a little staffing problem on a deposition and he keels over like some delicate flower?

Men.

I’ll never understand them.

“Needless to say, you’ll be defending the deposition,” Lyle says.

Of course it’s not just a little staffing problem. It’s a major crisis, with a major client, on a major case, with—most important—major repercussions for my life.

“Can’t the firm send someone else?”

“Nope.”

“We have eighty litigation partners.” I can hear the panic in my voice, but I can’t stop it. “You’re saying that every single one of them is busy with something more important?”

“I’m saying that none of them is particularly eager to get dragged into this shitshow,” Lyle retorts. “Philip did his best to rope somebody in, even as they were loading him onto the gurney. But nobody wants to slog through a blizzard, fly halfway across the country and defend a losing deposition in a doomed case. Philip asked me to go partner by partner until I found someone willing to take his place, but … I realized that I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“You … you … oh Lyle, you are one …” I can’t even come up with an adequate insult.

“Kostova’s going to crush you,” he continues helpfully. “He’s good, Wilder. Decades of experience. You’ll probably learn a lot from him. Not that it’ll do you any good.”

I hate having to do what I’m about to do, but the situation is truly desperate. “What about you, Lyle? Can’t you come?”

He’s silent for a moment. “I might consider it,” he replies. “But you’ll have to say please.”

I bite my lip, close my eyes and cross my fingers. “Please?”

“Please what?” he says.

“Please will you …” This is killing me. I try again. “Please will you come down here and help me?”

His laughter rings through the phone. “Not in a million years.”

“You asshole!” I shout. “This is going to be terrible for the firm. Doesn’t that bother you?”

He snorts contemptuously. “I’m not a partner. I’m getting paid either way. Our clients are scumbags—you said so yourself. Why should I stick my neck out for them? This humiliating loss will have no effect on my reputation.” He pauses. “Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for you.”

“This is all your fault!” I cry, in a helpless rage.

“Maybe,” he says. “But you’re the one who’s going to be blamed. When it’s all over, Philip might not actually fire you, but you’ll always be tainted by this. Inside the firm and out. You’ll be the lawyer who single-handedly lost the largest environmental class action in history.”

He’s right. As far as the legal profession is concerned, it won’t matter that EnerGreen committed the actual crimes, and not me. It will be my name, and my name alone, listed on the transcript as the attorney defending the deposition. My voice in the video recording, objecting in vain as Hoffman gets destroyed. The whole thing will probably end up getting a lot of media attention, not to mention interest from the government. Choice bits might show up on YouTube.

I’ll be famous. Infamous.

Sure, some people will understand it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could do. Some people will pity me.

But what they’ll never, ever do is hire me.

I’m gripping the phone so tightly my hand hurts. “You’re lucky I’m not standing in your office right now, Lyle.”

He ignores me. “But who knows? Maybe Philip will fire you outright. I guess it just goes to show you.”

“Show me what, Lyle?”

“That fucking the boss doesn’t always pay off,” he replies.

“Jesus Christ!” I shout, losing my temper at last. “I wasn’t fucking him because he was my boss! I was fucking him because I wanted to fuck him!”