John Grisham - The Associate

JUST MINUTES AFTER the markets opened Monday, Joey was chatting with a client who wanted to dump some more oil stocks when his second desk phone rang. He routinely carried on more than one phone conversation at the same time, but when the second caller said, “Hey, Joey, it’s Baxter. How are you?” Joey got rid of the client.

“Where are you?” Joey asked. Baxter had left Pittsburgh three years earlier, after they graduated from Duquesne, and he seldom returned. When he did, though, he rounded up the old gang, those who could not avoid him, and threw some wild drunken party that killed a weekend. The longer he stayed in L.A. and pursued his acting career, the more insufferable he became when he was back home.

“Here, in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Clean and sober for 160 days now.”

“That’s great, Baxter. Wonderful. I knew you were in rehab.”

“Yes, Uncle Wally again. God bless him. You got time for a quick lunch? I need to talk to you about something.”

They had never had lunch, not since college. Lunch was too civilized for Baxter. When he met friends, it was always at a bar with a long night ahead of them.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. Just want to say hello. Grab a sandwich and meet me down at Point State Park. I’d like to sit outdoors and watch the boats.”

“Sure, Baxter.” Since it was all so obviously planned, Joey was becoming suspicious.

“Noon okay?”

“See you then.”

At noon, Baxter showed up with nothing to eat, nothing but a bottle of water. He was thinner and dressed in old dungarees, a faded navy sweater, and a pair of black combat boots, all selected from the secondhand shop above Brother Manny’s shelter for the homeless. Long gone were the designer jeans, Armani jackets, and crocodile loafers. The old Baxter was history.

They embraced and swapped insults, and found an empty bench near the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers merge. A large fountain spewed water behind them.

“You’re not eating,” Joey said.

“Not hungry. Go ahead.”

Joey set aside his deli sandwich and studied the combat boots.

“You seen Kyle?” Baxter asked, and they spent a few minutes catching up about Kyle, Alan Strock, and a few of the other fraternity brothers. When Baxter spoke, he did so softly and slowly and he gazed across the rivers, as if his tongue were working but his mind were engaged elsewhere. When Joey spoke, Baxter listened but did not really hear.

“You seem detached,” Joey said, blunt as ever.

“It’s just weird being back, you know. Plus, it’s so different now that I’m sober. I’m an alcoholic, Joey, a full-blown raging alcoholic, and now that I’ve stopped drinking and all of that poison is out of my system, I look at things differently. I’m never going to drink again, Joey.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m no longer the Baxter Tate you once knew.”

“Good for you, but the old Baxter wasn’t such a bad guy.”

“The old Baxter was a selfish, pompous, egotistical, drunken pig, and you know it.”

“True.”

“He would’ve been dead in five years.”

An old barge inched along the river, and they watched it for a few minutes. Joey slowly unwrapped his turkey on rye and began eating.

“I’m working my way through recovery,” Baxter announced quietly. “Are you familiar with the process in Alcoholics Anonymous?”

“Sort of. I had an uncle who sobered up a few years ago and is still active in AA. It’s a great program.”

“My counselor and pastor is an ex-con known affectionately as Brother Manny. He found me in a bar in a Reno casino six hours after I left the rehab clinic.”

“Now that’s the old Baxter.”

“Indeed. He’s led me through the Twelve Steps recovery process. Under his direction, I’ve made a list of all the people I harmed along the way. Talk about frightening. I had to sit at a table and think of all the people I’ve hurt because I was drunk.”

“And I’m on the list?”

“No, you didn’t make it. Sorry.”

“Darn.”

“It’s mainly family members. They’re on my list, and I’d probably be on their lists if they ever got serious about life. Now that I’ve made the list, the next step is to make amends. That’s even more frightening. Brother Manny beat his first wife before he went to prison.

She divorced him, and years later when he sobered up, he tracked her down to say he was sorry. She had a scar above her lip, thanks to him, and when she finally agreed to meet with him, he begged for forgiveness. She kept pointing to the scar. She was crying, he was crying, sounds horrible, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“I assaulted a girl one time. She’s on my list.”

The turkey on rye froze halfway down the esophagus. Joey kept chewing, but the food wasn’t moving. “You don’t say.”

“Elaine Keenan, remember her? She claimed we raped her at a party in our apartment.”

“How could I forget?”

“Do you ever think about her, Joey? She went to the police. Scared the hell out of us. We almost hired lawyers. I tried my best to forget about it, and I almost did. But now that I’m sober and my mind is clear, I’m remembering things better. We took advantage of that girl, Joey.”

Joey placed the sandwich aside. “Maybe your memory is not as sharp as you think. What I remember is a wild girl who loved to party, loved to drink and snort coke, but what she loved the most was random sex. We did not take advantage of anyone. At least I did not. If you want to revise history, then go ahead, but don’t include me.”

“She passed out. I went first, and while I was doing it, I realized she’d blacked out. Then I remember you walked up to the sofa and you said something like ‘Is she awake?’ Do you remember any of this, Joey?”

“No.” Portions of it were familiar, but Joey wasn’t sure anymore. He’d worked so hard to forget the episode, then he’d been shocked back to reality when Kyle described the video.

“She claimed she was raped. Maybe she was right.”

“No way, Baxter. Allow me to refresh your memory. You and I had sex with her the night before. Evidently she liked it, because on the night in question we bumped into her again and she said, “Let’s go.” She consented before we got back to our apartment.”

Another long pause as each tried to anticipate what was next.

“You thinking about having a little chat with Elaine?” Joey asked.

“Maybe. I need to do something, Joey. I don’t feel right about what happened.”

“Come on, Baxter, we were all drunk out of our minds. The whole night was a blur.”

“Oh, the wonders of alcohol. We do things we don’t remember. We hurt others because of our selfishness. And when we finally sober up, we are compelled to at least apologize.”

“Apologize? Let me tell you a quick story, Brother Baxter. I bumped into Elaine a few weeks ago. She lives in Scranton. I was passing through on business, saw her in a deli during lunch. I tried to be civil, she freaked out on me, called me a rapist. I suggested we get together a few hours later for a polite cup of coffee. She showed up with her lawyer, a real tough broad who thinks all men are scum. So let’s say you go over to Scranton, find her, and tell her you’re sorry because there’s a good chance she was telling the truth after all, and you want to feel better about yourself because now you’re sober and you have this desire to be a good little alcoholic. Know what’ll happen, Baxter? Indictments, arrests, trials, lawsuits, prison — all of the above. And not just for you, Brother Baxter, but for some of your friends as well.”

A brief gap as Joey caught his breath. He had Baxter on the ropes, time to finish him off. “Her lawyer explained that the statute of limitations on rape is twelve years in Pennsylvania, so time has not expired. We got a long way to go. You get near her with some half-baked, feel-good apology and you’ll find out what rape is all about when they lock you away.”