Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“And I doubt if you’ll believe this, but they’re authentic jaguar,” she says. “And sooo smooth.” This time she adds a little motion to the words, rubbing her bare thighs just below the hem of her shorts with the flat palms of her hands. Of course this requires her to stick her little tush out. It’s a kind of Marilyn move, which Dana has so perfected that she now owns it.

None of this is wasted on Fittipaldi as his eyes suck up the full motion.

“Not everyone could do this,” she says. “But Nathan had it special ordered through a dealer in Manhattan. He had the interior redone by them.”

She turns to look at him, dropping the dark glasses into her purse. “Where are they, darling? A block from your gallery back there?”

“Two blocks,” he says.

“Really? I can’t imagine a car dealership springing for the square footage in Manhattan. To say nothing of bagging jaguars to line their seats.”

“Well, they’re just down the street from Nathan’s gallery.”

He clears his throat a little. “The jaguars were killed and skinned near the Guatemalan border.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think they had any in New York,” I tell him.

“They were taken by Mexican poachers,” he says. “The government caught them.”

“Lucky for you,” I say.

“They’re not usually sold.” I assume he’s talking about the skins, not the Mexicans. “But these were auctioned off for a good cause.”

“Of course. To cover your seats.”

He laughs, though I can tell by his look he’s not amused. “To expand wildlife habitat,” he says.

“And you should see how he did the dash,” says Dana.

“I don’t think Mr. Madriani would be interested,” he says.

I have seen Dana enough times to know that she can project a dozen different personalities. She can change these with the frequency of her wardrobe and usually does. I have seen her do nothing but shrug a bare shoulder in a crowded restaurant and watch as a hundred guys run for sweaters.

Today she knows I have something more serious than insurance to discuss. So she has turned on just enough of the helpless bubblehead, probably hoping it will soften the delivery of any bad news and perhaps bring me riding on my steed to the rescue.

She gushes over the car for a few more seconds until she finally runs out of breath and is forced to confront the fact that this is not the reason I called and asked her to come in.

“Oh, listen to me going on,” she says. “I suppose you want to talk about the insurance. This is about the insurance, isn’t it?” Dana’s life is one long quest in pursuit of gratification. Give me the good news first. Don’t give me the bad news at all.

She drops into one of my client chairs, puts her tennis hat on top of her purse near her feet, then looks at her watch. Cocktail hour in Del Mar.

I glance toward Fittipaldi.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about Nathan,” she says. “He knows all about it. I mean he’s the only one I’ve been able to talk to. Besides you.” She adds this as an afterthought.

“Wonderful.” I smile

“I don’t know what I would have done without him,” she says. “I mean without the two of you, I’d be lost. You two do know each other?” Furrowed brows over her big blue eyes.

“We’ve met,” I say.

“Sure.” Fittipaldi offers me his hand and a smile. Welcome to Club Dana.

We shake.

“Well, what kind of an offer did they make?” she says. She is fishing through her purse, comes up with some lip gloss, and before I can answer turns to Nathan again. “Have a seat.” She pats the arm of the chair next to her.

As he sits down, she turns back to me. “They did make an offer, didn’t they? You said this was about the insurance.”

“Only in part.”

“What then?”

“I think it would be best if we discussed it in private,” I tell her.

“I can just wait outside,” he says.

“No.” She says this in an emphatic way. It catches him starting to boost himself out of a chair that hasn’t even gotten warm yet.

She’s glossing her lips, holding up a little hand mirror. “Anything you can tell me, you can tell Nathan,” she says as if it is a point of principle. She interrupts the glossing. “After all, he’s been the only one who’s stood by me through all of this. I can’t tell you how many friends, or maybe I should say people I thought were friends, have deserted me since Nick died. You never know people until something like this happens. I mean they see me coming in a store, they ignore me. No. I want Nathan to be here, to hear whatever it is you have to tell me.” She’s back to the lip gloss now.

He looks at me, tilts his head and smiles as if to say, “her call.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I tell her.

“Why not?”

“To tell you that, I’d have to tell you what it was, in front of Nathan.”

This has her thinking. She looks at me, trying to read my mind. Then she guesses wrong.

“They turned us down, didn’t they?” All of a sudden the bubble and fizz are gone. She stops glossing her lips and puts the mirror and gloss on the edge of my desk.

“If it’s bad news,” she says, “just tell me.” But she doesn’t wait for an answer. “I get it. They don’t want to pay.” She looks away, having made up her mind that this is it. The sparkle in her eyes is replaced by a look of determination. “I knew it,” she says. “I told you, didn’t I?” This is directed at Fittipaldi.

She is up out of her chair now. He stays seated, looking at me with a painful expression, like “How did I get in the middle of this?”

“Didn’t I tell you, Nathan?” Before he can answer, she turns back to me. “I told him yesterday the insurance company would screw me over. I knew it when I first saw that man. That… that Luther guy. What’s his name?”

“Conover?” I say, “Yes. Conover,” she says. “I knew when he looked at me that he didn’t like me.” The bubbly little pixie is gone. To Dana it is now personal. She starts pacing the office just behind the two chairs.

“The way he kept looking at me. Eyeing me up and down,” she says. “I knew what he was thinking.”

“And what was that?” I ask.

She looks at me. “You know as well as I do.”

When I give her an expression like I don’t, she says: “He was…” Now she has trouble saying it. “He was wondering why someone like me would be married to someone like Nick.”

I give her another dense look, a little shake of the head, like I don’t get it. I’m curious. I want to hear what comes out of her mouth.

“I think what Dana means is that the insurance company was critical because of their age difference.” Nathan saves her.

“That’s it,” she says. “I know that’s what he was thinking. That I was some tawdry gold digger,” she says.

I’m thinking to myself that I would never use the word “tawdry” to describe Dana.

“Can you imagine how hurtful that is?” she says. I expect her at any moment to be reaching for the Kleenex.

Instead she says: “Fine, if they want to play hardball, we’ll accommodate them. Those damages you told them about. The punitive ones. How much do you think we could get?”

Dana may know nothing about sports cars, but instincts of reprisal and vendetta seem to come naturally. “We can take them to the cleaners,” she tells me. “We’ll sue the hell out of them. Think they can screw with me.” She’s talking to herself now, pacing again-her right forefinger to her bottom lip, the long nail touching a lower front tooth and smearing the red lip gloss a little-contemplating just how far she should have me turn the wheel on the rack once I get the insurance company stretched out.