Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

“So I’m told. I didn’t get it at first, but my lawyer says it’s the value of the business from the time we-”

“Yes. From the time we split up. Well, that’s awful news, Mike. I’m sorry.” She thought. “You’ll appeal the verdict then?”

“No. I’m done with courtrooms.”

“Mike, why’d you have to be so pigheaded-”

“Please, Lin. Not now.” Here was her chance to rub his nose in his failures, all of them, but how could she with him looking so collapsed and old in his defeat? She actually reached her hand out toward his hand, but thoughts sprang into her mind to arrest the gesture. On the witness stand he had barely admitted her role in the business. He had denigrated, insulted, cheated, and betrayed her… and all the while Rachel had whispered in his ear, touched his arm… she returned her hand to her side.

“Listen.” he went on obliviously, apparently too wrapped up in his own inner struggle to admit hers to his consciousness. “You want to know the worst thing? The worst thing is I don’t understand what happened to me. One day we were happy, and the next day I jumped into a bottomless pit.”

She bit her tongue, going back into the kitchen to get him another beer. When she returned, he had another stone between his fingers. He turned it back and forth in the light, his face intense and absorbed.

He set the stone back into the sack. “Rachel left me this morning,” he said, his eyes fixed on the sack, not her.

Lindy folded her arms. “The receiver’s report.”

“She read it. Then she set it down on the dining room table and she swung her purse onto her shoulder, and she said, ’Bye, Mike,’ and walked out the door. Went back to handsome Harry, is my guess.”

“And you came straight here to cry on my shoulder.”

“No, Lin, I…”

“You have some nerve,” Lindy said, unable to hide the anger vibrating in her voice.

“I came to tell you you were right. You’re smarter than me, Lindy. You’re smarter about living your life. I was too old for Rachel and she was in it for the money.”

“Now you figure that out?”

“I guess I knew, Lin, but I wanted her anyway. There’s no excuse, no explanation. I just lost my way.” He didn’t say anything more.

Lindy hadn’t seen Mike as rattled as this since the old days in the ring, after a few bad thumps on the head. “Well, I guess you loved her,” she said.

“For a month or two.”

“Was it all because we never had kids?”

“Only a little.”

“Still, too bad we didn’t. Then we’d have something more important than money to fight about.” She laughed slightly.

Mike was looking at her. “You let your hair go natural. And it’s longer than I remember. I like it. Goes great with your suntan. You look strong again. During the trial, I was worried about you.”

“Don’t you sweet-talk me.” She didn’t tell him she had worried about him, too. What would be the point?

Mike slid out from behind the table and came around behind her. Leaning his head down, he rested it on her shoulder. He stroked her hair, pulling it gently back, running his fingers through it. “I guess that’s all. I guess I should go.”

“Yes, you should go now.”

He pulled her up from her chair, and made her face him. He took both hands in his. “I apologize, Lin,” he said, putting his cheek against her cheek, “for ruining everything.”

“I don’t trust you anymore,” she said.

“I know.”

With her eyes closed, she tasted the salt of his sweat.

“You the public defender?” Sonny Ball sat in the glassed-in cage at the county jail talking through a telephone. He moved fast and jerky, like a man about to jump out of his skin.

“Sorry, no. I’m from Nina Reilly’s office. I’m talking with all the jurors in the Markov case.”

“I don’t have time for that. I’ve got my own trouble.” Sonny twiddled the phone, nodding his head rapidly to music only he could hear.

“Looks to me like you have time to burn, Sonny,” Paul said.

“Which explains why I need a lawyer.”

“If your lawyer comes in, I’ll leave.”

“Yeah, do that. So here we are. What you want to know? Your team won, didn’t it?”

“Well, we always want to do better,” Paul said. “It helps to interview jurors whether you win or lose. Find out what mistakes we made or what we did well.”

Sonny rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “What do I get out of it?”

“Well, I can’t pay you, but-”

“Make a phone call for me?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“Here’s the number.”

Paul wrote it down.

“Tell him to get down here and bail me the fuck out.”

“Will do.”

“All right, then.” Sonny assumed a hilariously serious expression, still drumming and twiddling and nodding all at once, and said, “Ain’t this a laugh? I do my civic duty, and they check my name out and find this stupid drug warrant. They arrested me the minute I walked out of the jury room that day. That’s the thanks I get.”

“Your service on the jury was greatly appreciated.”

“Think it might help get me outa here?”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“It’s not like I got caught doing a line in the jury bathroom.”

“I don’t want to hear about it if you were. I’d like to talk about the last day of the deliberations.”

“Sure, sure. Sure.”

“You ended up voting for Lindy Markov.”

“Right.”

“Mind if I ask what factors influenced you most?”

“I didn’t like Markov. He’s the kind of guy that always takes advantage and gets all the credit. A bastard pain in the ass. Also, the girlfriend was very uppity. She never even looked at me once. And I heard so much bullshit in that jury room, my brain ached. It was time to go. And then there were issues.”

Paul wrote it all down.

“Put down that I felt that an implied contract existed. And her old man made her sign that paper, so it didn’t count.”

“I understand that at one point, just before Mr. Wright collapsed, you were about to change your vote and vote for Mr. Markov.”

“Yeah. I just about did. Then Cliff went down. You should of seen his face. I’m thinking twice before I eat Chinese again.”

“Why were you about to change your vote, though?”

“Cliff went to work on me.”

“His arguments convinced you?”

Sonny stopped dancing with his head long enough to let out a snort. “He caught me at the morning break, said a few things that made me reconsider. I resisted as long as I did because I thought Markov just flat out lied on the stand. He had a shifty look I’ve seen a few times before. And were we supposed to believe the crud he said on the stand, about forgetting this and forgetting that?”

“What changed your mind?”

“Just before lunch Cliff started in on me in front of everybody else. Hey, he had a point about Lindy Markov. She was kinda pretty for such an old lady. Probably was messing around. He really needed my vote to win, and the three women weren’t about to shift over to Mike. So, I reminded myself how a guy like Cliff might turn out to be a better friend than enemy.”

“What did he say to you?”

Sonny looked irritated at the question. “Oh, maybe he’d get me a job or something.”

“He said that?”

“Let’s just leave it that he knew how to persuade people.”

“But after he, um, collapsed, you ended up voting for Mrs. Markov.”

“Well, old Cliff wasn’t in any position to help out anymore, was he? So I went back around to my original vote, like the judge said to do.”

“I’m curious,” Paul said. “Why would Cliff pressure people into his point of view? Do you think he had some special connection with Mr. Markov?”