Laura Caldwell - False Impressions

Maggie was eight months pregnant, but as I walked toward her, I noticed that she barely looked as if she was nearing childbirth. She had a round bump, but she was still tiny everywhere else.

“Great cross,” I heard Maggie say to one of the guys. “Really. And that shit you pulled with Officer Cooper? Hysterical.”

Maggie was complimenting the state’s attorneys, which could only mean one thing—the jury was out. I took a breath, waved and walked toward her.

Ah, the sweet, sweet—sweet—time between when a jury is sent to deliberate and when they return with a verdict. The law, which has names for nearly everything—voir dire, res ipsa loquitur and so forth—has no name for this odd bit of time. It’s not exactly purgatory. It’s not limbo, either. It’s something much more…hopeful. When a jury is out to consider the verdict—to mentally duke it out in an airless back room when the attorneys’ jobs are over—anything is possible.

Which meant it was a good time to ask my boss for time to work a new job. I couldn’t really explain too much. Mayburn had a strict policy that I not talk to anyone about my private investigative jobs with him. I’d been forced to tell Maggie once before. But now, I planned to simply mention I had a gig with Mayburn, say little else and hope for the best.

If I thought Maggie would have an issue with my time out of the office, I was wrong.

“Oh, thank God.” She clapped. We were seated at her counsel’s table now, the state’s attorneys having gone to their lair in the other part of the building. “I’d love for you to work outside the firm for a bit.”

“Really? You told me I needed to take more responsibility, and I know we don’t have a lot of time to spare....”

“No, we do!” Maggie said. “What I meant when we talked was that eventually—like, when I go into labor—you’ll need to take more responsibility, but in the meantime, have at it. Enjoy yourself.”

“Really?” This was the second time in the last year that one of my lawyer friends had suggested enjoying my professional life. Not everyone in the law enjoyed it, not even close, so I liked the reminder.

“Absolutely,” Maggie said. “I need you to take time off and do whatever you want because when I have this baby—” she gestured toward her belly “—I need you to essentially manage the firm. Marty is going to come in for a while.” Marty was Martin Bristol, Maggie’s partner and grandfather. “But he’s pretty much retired, and you know more about our cases now than he does.”

I nodded fast and swallowed hard now that she was getting specific about my upcoming responsibilities. A mood passed over me, almost a sense of dread.

“You’re nervous,” Maggie said.

“I guess I’m overwhelmed by the thought of managing a firm. One that I didn’t even work at a year ago. Not to mention the fact that I haven’t been practicing criminal law even a year.” I heard the anxious tone in my voice. “But I want to help, too. In any way. So I’m in.” Maggie and I had been there for each other since we met in law school.

“You have been contributing,” Maggie said. “You’ve been great.”

“But since I’m not a mom myself, there’s no advice I can give you.” Truth was, I still didn’t know if having kids would ever be for me.

Maggie rolled her eyes again. “Thank God. Because I am so sick of mommy advice. It’s overwhelming.” She put her hand on her pregnant belly, draped in an empire-waist black dress. “But it’s reassuring to know you’re going to be at the office when I’m not.”

“Are you just trying to make me feel better?”

“Hell, no. I would be a nut job if it weren’t for you.” She paused, her eyes looked directly into mine. “So take the time you need. Now.”

“Okay, good,” I said. “Thanks.” I nodded at the bench. “How was your judge for the case?”

“Good. But if we lose we are so screwed. You know what they call him?”

“What?”

“Father Time.”

“Long sentences if there’s a guilty verdict?”

“Yep. Looonnnng.” She sighed. “So, since you’re not going to be at the firm much in the meantime, where are you going to be?”

“Michigan Avenue. That’s about all I can tell you.”

“When do you start?”

“Tonight, if it’s cool with you.”

“Go get ’em, Iz.”

3

Much had been made of typography, but Madeline Saga had always viewed such art from a bit of a distance, never able to get too attached to an image comprised of letters or words. She usually felt that either the words selected or the final images were weak. She recalled a piece she’d seen in a Chelsea gallery, where one word appeared across the top of the canvas—FIRE. Throughout the rest of the canvas, the same word was turned over and over, sometimes right side up, other times facing backward. The repeated word formed a bloodred rose. Madeline supposed she understood the juxtaposition between the vaguely alarming word and the sweet flower. A rose was sometimes a sign of love, and love could be very electric and volatile—like fire. Madeline knew that well enough. But still, the result was too feeble for her. She’d often thought that maybe she wasn’t a literary person, maybe words just weren’t her thing.

But now, sitting in her office behind the gallery, it was different.

She looked at her computer screen, at her own gallery’s website and an image she had placed there—a photo of Dudlin’s Eight Days, a sketch she’d sold after she moved to this new gallery space.

Eight Days was displayed on the gallery’s Past Works page. She liked to visit all the works she’d once owned, liked to see the comments below them, to behold what the world was saying about the pieces she’d sold or collected.

But not now. She’d read these particular comments too many times.

The words blurred until she forced herself to slow the panicked movement of her eyes and read one word at a time—each word, in black, appearing in a separate horizontal row. They were just words, just comments, but they struck her as a kind of typographic art. Perhaps she finally understood the power of that type of work.

Madeline dialed up the brightness on her computer, alternately gazing at the image of Eight Days and the comments under it, the white spaces littered with terrifying insinuations. Some targeted the artist, and those angered her. But what scared her were the ones pointed toward her.

The computer screen seemed to pulse as she stared at it. The screen seemed to gain heat. Finally, she hit the print button and waited for the two pages to come out of the printer—one showing the Dudlin piece that she’d sold, the other the comments beneath it.

She stared cautiously, suspiciously, at the printer. Recently, she’d come into her office in the morning and found pages waiting in the printer tray. Always they were pages she’d viewed before—art from some of the artists she’d worked with, pieces sold by other galleries—and yet she didn’t recall printing them.

Startled. Haunted. That was how she felt when she saw the pages waiting for her. She’d mentioned this to a few people, who’d suggested perhaps she’d had a glass of wine too many or smoked too much pot. But although Madeline did drink and sometimes smoked, she never did so to excess. Spirits and drugs didn’t ignite her like they did other people.

Now, not wanting to think about the mystery of finding those pages, needing to get away from her office, she took the pages she’d printed and walked into the main space of the gallery. On a far wall hung a massive canvas, depicting a woman at two different times of the day and in two different eras.

The first was a morning image harkening back to the early 1900s. The background was painted the pink-grapefruit color of morning and showed the woman in a cream-colored nightgown, thick and comforting. The second image was of a blue-black contemporary evening, the woman now wearing a white negligee, her skin golden against the sheer white fabric, her nipples black beneath it.