I Take You Page 21

  “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!”

  There’s a sudden silence. I look up.

  The sidewalk ahead of me is blocked by about a dozen toddlers. They’re wearing name tags and matching green shirts. Holding hands in an adorable little chain.

  I know those shirts. I know the middle-aged woman leading them. It takes me about three seconds to place her.

  “Mrs. Carter?”

  My preschool teacher shakes her head. “Lily Wilder. Your language.”

  I close my eyes. “Sorry. I’m just … sorry.” I turn and walk in the other direction.

  “So it’s a coincidence?” Lyle says. “You would have slept with Philip even if it didn’t help your career, even if you wouldn’t get anything out of it? That’s what you expect me to believe?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything, Lyle. But think about what you’re saying, and compare it to reality. You review my hours. You see how much I bill. You know that I work as hard as you do, and that I get my share of shit assignments. Right?”

  He’s silent.

  “I have some news for you, Lyle. When a woman chooses to have sex, there’s not always some ulterior motive. We’re not necessarily seeking power, or procreation, or relationship security, or career advancement. Sometimes, we just want sex. I’ve gotten one thing out of sleeping with Philip. I’ve gotten sex out of it. This is probably hard for you to understand. It’s probably a little scary, because it doesn’t align with your extremely limited understanding of how women work. It doesn’t cohere with the message you’ve heard all your life.”

  Whoa. The message? I need to be careful. I’m starting to sound like Ian.

  “Look, Wilder,” Lyle says. “I don’t care—”

  I cut him off. “You do care. Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be jeopardizing a twenty-billion-dollar lawsuit just to fuck me over. You care, and so I’m explaining this to you, in the hope that you will see how wrong you are. Here’s the basic point, Lyle. There is no capital-W woman. No standard model who explains us all.”

  My voice is rising now, and I’m gesturing wildly with my free hand. An elderly couple approaching on the sidewalk gives me a wide berth. Can’t say I blame them.

  “You want to know why I slept with Philip? Because I felt like it, Lyle. Maybe I gravitate toward older men because I have a thing for grey hair, or because most men my age are boring, or because I have some serious, serious daddy issues. But you know what? Actually, I don’t gravitate toward older men. I like younger men, too. I like all sorts of men. And I will continue to like them, and sleep with them—or not like them, and not sleep with them—based on my preferences, and not the preferences of presumptuous, narrow-minded people like you. Bottom line, Lyle? You’re wrong. About me, and about everything else. Is that clear? Any questions? No? Good. Then why don’t you and your puny, tyrannical, terrified little penis go fuck yourselves, okay? Because nobody else ever will.”

  I hang up. I’m breathing heavily.

  So this is what ease, contentment and happiness feel like.

  Awesome.

  I check the time and run to the Green Parrot.

  20

  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, in the middle of a work cri
sis, two days before my wedding, meeting Teddy at a dive bar on Whitehead Street. But here I am, and there he is, a beer in front of him, looking guarded and bored and restless and irritated.

  I sit down across from him. He glances at my elaborate hair, and I immediately feel self-conscious. A stray curl grazes my cheek, and I hurriedly tuck it behind my ear.

  “I thought you couldn’t drink on duty,” I say.

  He picks up his beer and takes a sip. “I’m not on duty.”

  He gives me a patient smile that doesn’t extend to his eyes.

  “I just ran into our old preschool teacher,” I say.

  “Mrs. Carter?”

  “She’s still not a fan.”

  “Surprise, surprise.” He glances around like he’s checking for the nearest exit.

  “Gran told me you joined the army.”

  He nods.

  “Why?”

  He takes another sip of his beer. “Love of country.”

  “Come on.”

  No answer.

  “Did you go overseas?”

  He sets his beer down. “Is this really why you asked me here, Lily?”

  “I wanted to see you,” I say. “To catch up.”

  I cringe. That was completely the wrong tone. Teddy knows it, too. He spreads his arms wide like, Here I am.

  “Why are you mad at me, Teddy?”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  He’s acting so cool and collected. He’s doing it to irritate me, like he always did. And it’s working. So I start needling him, like I always did.

  “You’ve been mad at me since we saw each other on Monday. Don’t lie. I still know when you’re lying.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he says.

  The bartender comes over. I ask for a glass of water. I turn back to Teddy. “Why are you mad at me?”

  “I’m not.” He won’t look me in the eye.

  I try a different tack. “Do you like your job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you good at it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Melody your girlfriend?”

  “Melanie,” he says. “And yes.”

  “Do you love her?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Why are you mad at me, Teddy?”

  “I’m not.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  “Fine.”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  “Because you left!” he shouts, slamming his hand down on the table. I jump. His beer tips over and crashes to the floor. The bartender looks over. A few people glance up from their drinks.

  “Happy now?” he says.

  “They made me leave,” I say quietly. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “I wrote to you,” he says in a low, angry voice, “over and over and over. You never wrote back. You never called me. You were supposed to come back. You promised.”

  It was always this way with him—he’d hold it in and hold it in, and then the dam would burst.

  “Things got complicated,” I say.

  “No shit things got complicated, Lily! But you got to leave. I went to prison.”

  “It wasn’t prison,” I say, instantly regretting it.

  He laughs in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just—I don’t know, Teddy. I was fourteen. I freaked out. I didn’t know how to deal. Lee was—”

  “This is not about Lee.”

  “Of course it is! If I hadn’t acted the way I did, he’d still be alive.”

  Teddy leans across the table toward me. “Lily, this is not about Lee. Lee was fucked up long before you got to him. This is about you and me. How you loved me, and I loved you, and you abandoned me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You got to start over up north with your rich dad. And I went to jail. Sorry,” he raises his hands in mock surrender. “Let me correct that. I was involuntarily enrolled in the Avon Park Youth Academy. Funny, though. It didn’t seem like much of an academy at the time, what with the gangs, and the drug dealers. The frequency with which I got the shit kicked out of me. The way my mom couldn’t stop crying every time she visited. But yeah, that was high school. Go Raiders.”

  Now I’m the one who can’t look him in the eye.

  “You want to know why I joined the army? I had no fucking choice, Lily! And boy, was that a fun four years. Afterwards, I came back and joined the FDLE—not an easy task, thanks to my juvenile record, but having almost been killed twice in Afghanistan, and having collected a few wounds and a few medals, I was lucky enough to impress people in high places.”

  I feel a tear roll down my cheek. I wipe it away.

  “So, Lily, old friend, that’s what I’ve been up to,” he continues relentlessly. “It sure is nice to catch up with you after all this time. Now it’s your turn. Remind me—how long were you in that fancy hospital?”

  “Nine weeks,” I say in a small voice.

  “Nine weeks. And then on to boarding school, right? And college. And law school. Where do you work now? Some big firm in New York City, right? Sweet. How’s your office? Got a nice view of the park?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Teddy, I’m so sorry.”

  “You. Deserted. Me. You didn’t write to me once. To hear from you would have meant the world to me. Because you meant the world to me. But you were gone. And you’ve always been gone. But now you’re back, to get married. And I’m supposed to be happy about that. Happy to see you.”

  “You hate me,” I say.

  He sits back in his chair, suddenly deflated. All the anger gone. We look at each other across the table. “If it’s any consolation,” I say, “you couldn’t possibly judge me as harshly as I judge myself.”

  He leans forward, furious all over again. “Oh no? Guess what, Lily. Judging yourself—knowing you’re doing something wrong but doing shit about it? That doesn’t make everything okay.”

  I hold up my hands. “Fine, Teddy, you win. You don’t want to hear it. So what’s the point of all this?”

  “You’re the one who wanted to see me! Let’s have a drink, like old friends, right? I never wanted to see you again! Monday night, okay, that was me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I heard you were back, and I acted on impulse. I’m so sorry I did. Because I saw what you were doing. You looked at me, and you decided to play it like nothing ever happened between us. Like we were just two old friends, two pals, just palling around. I saw you make that decision. I saw it in your eyes. And that means you know. You know what you did. And don’t tell me you don’t, because I always know when you’re lying, too.”

  I’ve been looking down, but now I look at him, and suddenly he’s a boy again, with a boy’s hurt, angry face.

  “I loved you,” he says. “I loved you, and you threw it away.”

  I reach across the table for his hand, but he pulls back.

  “No way. You’re too late.” He stands up and walks out of the bar.

  I watch him go. Then I put my head down on my arms.

  He’s right, of course. I abandoned my best friend in the whole world. My best friend, and my first love. I ran away because it was easier to run than deal. I left a trail of destruction in my wake and pretended not to notice. Then I acted like I could charm my way back here, into his life, and everything would be fine between us. I could tell him my problems, and he could help me.

  Will’s mom nailed it. I haven’t just changed—I’ve gotten worse.

  I think about work. How I love to mock and criticize my terrible client, distance myself from it in my head. Attack it as a purely selfish organism that’s using one crime to perpetrate another, doing whatever it can to promote itself and its own interests above all else.

  Sounds familiar.

  I finally realized this morning that I love Will. That I want to get married. And I managed to beat his mom at her own game, clearing the way for my own happiness.

  But what did I win, exac
tly? The opportunity to keep lying. And lying and lying and lying. To the one person in this situation who hasn’t lied. The one person who has always told the truth.

  “Excuse me?”

  I lift my head. The bartender has come over to sweep up Teddy’s broken glass. “You can’t sleep in here,” he says, smiling apologetically.

  “I’m not sleeping, Lloyd. I’m marshaling my extremely limited resources.”

  “Would you like a drink?” he asks.

  “No thanks,” I say. “I have to go.”

  21

  I leave the bar and go back to the hotel. I have a little time before the big family dinner, so I sit out on the balcony, thinking. Then I take a long shower. I put on makeup and adjust my hair. I iron my favorite dress. I’m suiting up, putting on my armor. Only I’m not sure who I’ll be fighting. Maybe just myself.

  When I get to the restaurant, I linger for a moment in the doorway of our private dining room. They’re all in there, arranged around the table like a painting. It’s not a staid family portrait this time, though, but one of those big, splashy scenes by Caravaggio or some other Baroque artist. You know the ones—set in a gambling den or tavern, filled with color and movement, capturing an assortment of thieves, brigands and loose women in the moment right before the knives come out.

  Dad is at the head of the table, consulting the wine list with a baronial air, pausing from time to time to smile at the waitress fawning over his shoulder. Ana is to his left, scowling and muttering to herself as her thumbs fly rapidly over her phone. On her other side, Will’s dad is desperately trying to impress Jane by relating some convoluted legal anecdote. She’s nodding politely and playing with a large sapphire ring on her right hand, clearly wishing it was filled with poison. Mom is next to Jane—or would be, except that she’s on her knees, hair in her face, trying to stop the table from wobbling. Across from them, Gran is holding forth about the colossal stupidity of the Supreme Court while Anita is tapping her fingernails impatiently on the table, trying to get a word in edgewise.

  And there’s Will, glancing at his phone, looking around anxiously. Waiting for me.

  It’s so easy to see how this night could have unfolded. After the first rush of introductions and hasty conversations, everybody would relax. Settle in. Wine and food would loosen us up. Dad would charm Will’s parents. Ana would fascinate us with political gossip. Gran and Anita would manage to find common ground. Harry would tell funny stories about Will as a kid. We would begin the slow, rocky process of getting to know one another, of forging the big, messy, fractious union that surrounds every marriage.