Paul Levine - Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

“Rumpleteazer,” she said without missing a beat.

“You’ve seen the show,” he said, surprised.

“No way! My boyfriend thinks live theater is watching three lesbians in leather and chains.”

“Then how-”

“When I was a kid, I read the Eliot poems. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. ”

“When you were a kid,” he repeated, smiling.

“Yeah. I thought the poems were silly. I think Eliot should have stuck to ‘The Waste Land.’“

“Really? You read a lot?”

“I’m taking classes. That’s all I do. Study by day, strip by night.”

He watched her size him up, noting the manicured, polished nails, the gold cuff links, the dark suit. She wasn’t even subtle about it just taking inventory, probably calculating her tip by the pedigree of his watch. Cocking her head the way the older girls must have shown her, she said, “So you want a private dance or what?”

He laughed. “You really are a rumpleteazer, aren’t you?

“I’m not J. Alfred Prufrock.”

“What’s your name? You never told me.”

“Angel,” she lied.

“Nah. I’m your angel.”

And he was. Max Wanaker, who at that time owned a Miami freight forwarding company and had just beaten back a Teamsters strike, rescued Lisa Fremont teenage runaway. He spirited her out of the Tenderloin and put her in an apartment on Nob Hill. It was there-where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars-that Max made an amazing discovery. Lisa wasn’t like the others, which is to say, she wasn’t after money. This brainy stripper read Dostoevsky in the dressing room between sets, picked up her high school degree in night school, and was about to enroll in community college when Max bulldozed his way into her life and suggested Berkeley instead.

“You’re smarter than I am,” he told her that first night. And then repeated it time and again until she believed it was true.

Lisa poured Max another stiff shot of Glenmorangie, the pricey single-malt Scotch he ordered by the case. He twirled the golden liquid in the glass, sniffed it took a sip. The ritual done, he turned to her. “So what’s the bottom line? Are we on the same page here?”

Speaking in corporate jargon when it’s my life!

“I can’t do it, Max. I can’t prostitute myself.”

Max’s face reddened. He stared at her in disbelief. “What!”

“I would do anything for you, but not this.”

“ This is the only thing I’ve ever asked.”

“I’m sorry. I want to help, but…”

Max had been wonderful. If it weren’t for him, where would she be now? But what he had given her-the education, the belief in herself-had changed her. She didn’t know precisely when she had rejected Max’s way of life, but somewhere between the Tiki Club and the Supreme Court, she had moved on. “You’re asking too much, Max.”

“After all I’ve done for you,” Max said, his voice a razor despite the mellow whiskey, “don’t you think you owe me this?”

He’d never said that before, not even close. Anger boiled up inside her. Her look was lethal, her voice icy. “Why not just total up my bill, and I’ll pay you back with interest. What’s the prime rate these days, Max?”

“It’s not the money and you know it. I just resent this attitude of yours, like you’re looking down at me.”

Lisa padded barefoot to the bar and dumped her drink into the sink. “From the curb to the gutter, Max. It’s not that far.”

Max looked wounded, like it was his blood going down the drain. “You stopped smoking. You’re not drinking. Is there anything else you’re not going to do, anything I ought to know about?”

She didn’t answer, just stood there, stone-faced.

“The new, improved Lisa Fremont,” he said, sarcastically.

“Don’t you like me this way?”

No, Max Wanaker thought. He didn’t like her this way at all. Christ who had she become? Maybe it served him right. He had wanted Lisa to grow, had encouraged her independence, but look what happened. The roses still bloomed, but they’d grown thorns. He liked Lisa the girl, not Lisa Fremont, Esq., the woman, the goddam lawyer. She’s been a tough kid. Hell, she had to be to survive. Now she gets misty eyed looking at statues and books. How long until she learns that her precious oaths and credos are just fade J ink on rotting paper?

Max struggled to control his anger and mask his desperation. He wanted to tell her just how important the case was to him. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t just about money or even the survival of the company. He wanted to tell her the truth.

If we don’t win, I’m a dead man.

No, if he told her that, she would want to know everything. And if he laid it all out, what would she think of him? If he told her the crash had been his fault, that he had ordered the maintenance records falsified, that he had perjured himself before the NTSB, that blood was on his hands, would she help him? Maybe, if he told her the spot he was in.

Oh, he could rationalize it. Every airline cuts corners. It didn’t take Mary Schiavo, the big-mouth blonde from the Department of Transportation, to tell him that airlines would rather have their insurers pay off wrongful death verdicts than spend the money to fix known dangers. Simple cost-benefit economics, babe.

He just never thought it would happen to him, to his airline. And he never expected the guilt, the nightmares, the pills, the late-night sweats.

No, he could never tell Lisa the truth. He tried a different approach. “Why do you think we’ve been together so long?”

“Inertia, Max. We’re used to each other.”

“No. Because deep down inside, we’re alike,” he said.

“If that’s supposed to be a compliment-”

“We both see things the way they really are. We take the cards we’re dealt, and if it means sliding an extra ace up the sleeve to get what we want, then damn it, we do it. We don’t play by somebody else’s rules.”

“That’s not the way I see myself,” she said, sounding defensive, a measure of doubt creeping into her voice.

“A leopard can’t change her spots,” he said with a smirk.

“I didn’t cheat in college or law school,” she said angrily. “I worked like hell in the appellate clerkship. I’m proud of my accomplishments. I’m proud of who I am.”

“Dean’s list doesn’t mean shit in the real world, Lisa. You got good grades? Big fucking deal. I got MBAs from Harvard making my coffee. Sometimes I wonder where you get off. I mean, Christ, I remember where you came from. I remember the bartender. I remember the bruises.”

She remembered, too. Crockett was the day-shift bouncer and occasional bartender, a ponytailed bodybuilder with a hot temper and delusions that he was the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. She’d moved in with him a week after the one-way journey south from Bodega Bay, and he’d gotten her the phony ID and the job at the Tiki Club. She gave Crockett her tips, but they were never enough to pay for his hash and steroids.

“Some guys I know are having a party tonight,” he told her one day as she was leaving for the club.

“What guys?” she asked.

“Businessmen from out of town. They got a room at the Ramada by the airport.”

“So you want to go?”

“Not me! Ain’t my ass they wanna see.”

“I don’t do private parties. Sheila told me-”

“Sheila don’t know shit. Who’d pay to see her saggy tits? This is four hundred plus tips.”

Lisa was shaking her head when he grabbed her, his huge hands digging into the flesh of her upper arms. She tried to twist away, but he held on, pressing harder, slamming her into the wall but never letting go, using his size and strength just as her father had done to imprison her and break her will.