Benighted (4 page)
“You say you know my client.”
She shrugs. “We’ve met.” For all her wispy clothes, there’s a vibrancy about her voice, like Albin’s, that speaks of class.
“May I ask when?”
“Once when Lewis and he were doing the deal.”
“Is that relevant?” Albin puts in.
I fold my hands in my lap. “Only so far as I’m defending him. Character witnesses might help.”
“But I’ve told you we spoke on the phone. Doesn’t that give you an alibi?”
“Yes. But I’ve still got to defend him for the assault.”
He bends his hands around his cup. “As I’ve said, I don’t know him very well.”
I take another sip of the delicious coffee, and keep my eyes on him. He meets them for several moments. I keep the gaze up; when he starts talking, he doesn’t look away. “Ms. Galley, I don’t think I could stand as a character witness for him. I’d have to testify to his prudence or his responsibility, or to other qualities that in truth I don’t think he possesses. I’m unwilling to perjure myself, and from your point of view, I don’t think I’d make a very convincing witness. You’d be better served by somebody else.”
A drip of coffee runs down the side of my cup, and I stop it with my finger. “You don’t like him?”
“I don’t dislike him. But if you want me to testify that I don’t think the incident was his fault, I can’t.” He turns his head away from me. It’s just a fraction of a turn, but it’s enough to signal that he considers the matter closed.
There is a silence. Sarah keeps looking at me, the neutral stare of one who can look as long as she likes. A cat may look at a king, my mother used to say, but it’s easier for a king to look at a cat. I look back through my whiskers and let the silence hang. I’m getting more and more uncomfortable, but I will not break it first.
Albin leans forward; then he picks up the coffeepot, comes over to my chair, and pours me another cup. It’s an oddly gentle gesture.
“How long have you been working in DORLA, Ms. Galley?” he says.
The cup warms in my hands and I set it down. “Since I was eighteen. With training and preparation for it beforehand at school. Same as everyone else.”
“Do you like working there?”
I open my mouth to say Yes, thank you, translating as, Why would I answer a personal question? Once I get there, though, I find I don’t feel like it. If he’s smart, let him hear a straighter answer. “It’s not a question of like or dislike. I could dislike it all my life and still have to go into work the next day.” This is truthful, though it’s not the only truth; it’s as close to it as I’m getting with some stranger lyco.
“It doesn’t sound like you work for the love of it.”
“That’s luxury thinking. I work. No one else would be allowed to employ me.” He raises his eyebrows, and I find I’m annoyed that I’m talking this way to him. “I like it like I like having a trank gun, because it keeps people off my back.”
As soon as I hear myself say this, I regret it. I turn into a child scuffing my heels against the elegant sofa, and he’s sitting there, smooth as ever and giving nothing away. The look on his face is one of puzzlement and sympathy, and I do not want that.
I tuck Ellaway’s alibi under my arm and leave.
As I’m heading for the bus stop, something strikes me. The rundown area to the south of here is Johnny’s part of town. I could go and visit his family. Johnny married a lyco, a woman called Susan who always showed up to non gatherings and made conversation. They used to have me over for dinner. I’m not sure I can bear it if she’s grieving, but she was always nice to me.
When I knock on the door, it’s their eldest, Debbie, who answers. She’s quite thick-set for her twelve years; that’s how I thought of her anyway. Today, something has shrunk her. Adolescence is just kicking in, and it looks like it’s going to keep kicking: her skin is starting to blur, her teeth and elbows are way ahead of her. She’s still wide-shouldered and thick-wristed, but I’m starting to notice that she only comes up to my chest.
“Hey, Debbie.” I have an urge to crouch down to talk to her, and stop myself. She’s too old for that.
She smears her fingers across her face. “Hi, Lola.”
“How are you doing?”
“All right, I guess.” Her head hangs down; she doesn’t bother to shrug.
“Yeah?”
“I’m cooking for everyone. I cooked spaghetti last night. And I tidied the living room.”
I can’t smile. “I bet your mom was grateful.”
“I dunno.” She tugs the door back a bit. “You want to come in?”
“Thanks, Debbie.” I touch her arm as I walk into the hall, and she flinches away. I squash down the impulse to pick her up; she can’t go on coping unless I let her.
Susan is sitting in the living room. Debbie creeps in behind me and rights two chairs that lie on their sides next to Susan: the gesture is furtive, and I pretend not to notice.
Susan’s blond hair straggles across her face. Her hands have always been pink and battered; now they look bad. Her nails are bitten down to stubs. She turns her head with a slow gesture as I come in, as if she were underwater, and her expression doesn’t change.
“Lola,” she says.
I clench and unclench my hands. “I was in the area,” I say. “How are you doing, Sue?”
Her eyes go back into space. “I don’t know.”
“Susan, I’m so sorry.”
“Yes.”
Sue was always a brave woman. It’s brave to marry a non, and braver to stick with him. No non earns a good living. Mixed marriages are rare: even liberal lycos don’t usually meet nons; we work together, socialize together, carry scars that few lycos would want to deal with, not when there are so many people in the world with smooth, unscored flesh and everything before them to choose from. People treat her differently. She must have thought he was worth it. I see her sitting in her cramped, unkempt room, scrawny and exhausted, and I want to tell her she’s brave, I want to remind her she’s brave so she can start being so again. I don’t know how.
“Look, you know where I live. Anything I can do…”
“Thank you.” She stares at her hands.
“Would you like me to stick around, help out for a few days?” I pray as I say this that she won’t accept, but if she does then I’ll do it.
“No thanks.” She lifts up her head. “Would you like some coffee?”
I don’t want any, but it’ll get her out of the chair. “Yes please. Thanks.”
She stands up with the same underwater weight, and I see that it’s worse than I’d thought. Because she’s pregnant. It doesn’t show much on her little hips, but she’s pregnant.
“Sue? How many months till the baby comes?”
“Four.” Her voice is dull. “We weren’t going to tell people till a few weeks from now, I’ve had stillbirths. We thought it’d be okay.”
She’s stopped in the middle of the room. I go over to her and put an arm around her. She stays weighted to the spot, staring at the wall.
THREE
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Jerry Farnham
Dear Lola Galley,
Hello. I’m Jerry Farnham’s new social worker, and I see from his records that you’re his legal adviser at DORLA. And that he’s up for moon loitering—which isn’t such good news.
Anyway, I hear you’re in favor of putting him back on the AA program? I’m with you on that one if you are—in any case, we should get in touch, see what we can do about it. Drop me a byte and let me know.
Best wishes,
Paul Kelsey
I
frown at my computer screen. This is Jerry the wino, my old friend. If he’s got a new social worker, it’s news to me—although it would also have been news to me if his old one had got in touch with me; she was the invisible woman. No one in the social service wants to work with us. So now I’ve got a mainstream guy on my back, someone else to deal with. Wonderful.
Mind you, I reflect, the e-mail itself isn’t too bad. In fact, by lyco standards it’s pretty courteous. Best wishes, indeed. Thinking of how to answer it, I go to my pigeonhole and pick up my mail. There’s a heavy, smooth envelope waiting for me, and when I open it, I find something that takes my mind off Jerry.
This is very bad news. I’ve discovered who Ellaway’s lawyer is. The envelope discloses a creamy, headed, embossed letter, asking for an appointment, and I read the signature three times before I take it in. His name is Adnan Franklin, a man I never thought I’d meet. People who have legal training know him, at least by reputation. You can read about him in the newspapers several times a year—although you didn’t see him on television, he’s too refined or something. Some of his defense cases are seminal, others merely exemplary. He costs more per case than I make in a year, and if he’s against you, there’s nothing you can do. Nothing.
I have a forlorn hope that it might turn out all right; after all, we are representing the same client. When I remember Ellaway’s face, though, the way he looked at me, the hope turns into a wish, and the wish into a plaintive murmur that sits at the back of the class and knows its place. Ellaway hates me. I sat back and watched my colleagues hit him. I held him in detention and refused to allow him to call his regular lawyer. Never mind a bad lawyer, to Ellaway I’m practically a criminal. That I haven’t done anything unusual by DORLA standards is not something Franklin is going to see.
I fold the letter with a sigh and rub my forehead, cradling my temples. In the old days, Aegidians didn’t let suspects have outside lawyers. There was a manual for witch hunters, the
Malleus Maleficarum,
that insisted on it. Witches’ lawyers couldn’t be told who the accusers were in case their clients decided to witch them. It must have been easier to pursue cases. We kept it to ourselves, we dealt with it on our own terms. We’re too enlightened to take that line in public now. I’m going to have a bad time with this one.
I shake my head, try hard not to dwell on it. Instead, I type a reply to the new social worker, typing fast without really thinking about it.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Re: Jerry Farnham
Dear Paul Kelsey,
Yes, I’m trying to make Jerry take the pledge. If you’ve met him, you’ll probably have a sense of how likely that is, if not then the answer is—not very. He’s a hopeless drinker and has been since I’ve known him. He’s been on the wagon five times, and fallen off each time. He’s like a walking ad for Prohibition. But I agree with you, prison is only going to make him worse, he drinks more when he’s depressed—though so do I and everybody else, too—and if we lock him up he’ll just get depressed and be that much more of a pest. So mostly it comes down to you putting him in a program and me trying to sweet-talk the judge into thinking that he means it this time. Sound fun? He’s still in our cells, by the way, have you been to see him?
Lola Galley
About three seconds after I’ve clicked on Send, I realize what kind of letter I’ve just sent to a total stranger. A lyco total stranger. A lyco total stranger from social services whose interests are going to be focused on protecting his client, and if he’s anything like some of the social workers I’ve met, then the only thing to do now is shoot myself.
Becca sits with her baby cradled to her, swathed in a woolly blue blanket, and gives me a cautious look. I sit opposite, carefully not looking at the mess that surrounds us. Some medic I was whiling away a moon-night watch with once told me that’s a good sign, it means she’s spending her time bonding rather than cleaning. She certainly has a good grip on the infant. Leo. She holds him as if he was the last piece of the world.
“How are you feeling?”
She glances down at him. “A bit tired. All right. The doctor said it was a healthy birth.”
“What, that very elegant one I met?”
“Dr. Parkinson. Yes. He’s supposed to be very good.”
“He certainly thought so.”
A little smile flickers on Becca’s face, then she checks it. “I thought you’d be more approving.”
“Approving?” She can’t have said approving. My approval has never been something she even wondered about. I must have misheard.
“Didn’t you fix him for me?”
Leo struggles in his blanket, and she turns her attention to resettling him, which gives me time to think. It must be that someone arranged it for her, someone in DORLA hired a high-caliber doctor in exchange for losing her husband. Now I think of it, it fits in with DORLA’s general habit of compensating you in kind rather than parting with any of its finite stock of pennies and actually making reparation. Oh, God. Does she think I organized this?
“Me DORLA or me me?”
“I—I don’t know. Never mind.” This translates as me DORLA, I think. Nice to know where my identity lies.
I change the subject. “How’s the baby getting along?”
“He’s fine. He only wakes up once each night,” says Becca, and goes into some details about what proportion of time he spends asleep, which doesn’t mean much to me as I haven’t been around enough babies. Her face is quite relaxed as she tells me. Though I’m not sure what she’s on about, it’s a relief to me to see her that way: her eyes are on the bundle in her arms, it absorbs all her attention, and it seems to be keeping her content. She tells me about feeding and weighing, and it sounds like a very peaceful life.
“Do you want to hold him?” she concludes. She gathers him up and carries him over. I’m not sure how to arrange my arms. Becca lowers him to me, watching me out of one eye in the wary certainty that I’ll let his head fall back, or drop him, or drown him in my cup of tea. This is a little unjust, and to prove it, I fix my arms in a good stable position, brace myself, and take his head in my hand. The little skull rolls in my palm like an orange. I take a good hold on him, and then have a look.
The crumpled face I saw in the hospital has unfolded, the scarlet forehead has settled into pink. In the center of his top lip there’s a round blister from sucking. I touch his face, which is smoother than anything I’ve ever felt, and he opens one eye to wheeze at me. His mouth is working, so I offer him a finger and he seizes on it in great good faith. I am very interested to know whether he’ll cry when he finds that no milk comes out of it, in which case I’ll return him straight to his mother and apologize to him. He doesn’t. Instead, he sets about flaying my fingertip, grinding it against his palate and sucking the skin off with unrelenting determination. His eyes are open, crossed, they’re smudgy blue like most white babies’; later on, I think, they’re going to go brown, like Becca’s, like mine, and they look straight at me, they don’t flicker at all. He’s hurting my finger. He’s the best baby I’ve ever seen.
“He’s lovely,” I say.
Becca smiles. There’s weariness in her face.
“Are you okay?”
She tidies her hair. “I’m all right. Just a little worn out. He’s quite a handful.”
I try to pitch my voice, but there’s no tactful way of saying this. “Has Lionel been in touch?”
She shakes her head, her eyes looking out of the window.
“Does he know the baby’s born?” Or that you named him Leo? That’s a question I don’t have the courage to ask. When Becca told me she was calling him Leo, all I said was, that’s a nice name. Not, are you naming him after his father.
“Would you like some more tea, May?” Becca picks up my cup and takes it into the kitchen. There’s neither anger nor sorrow in her voice: it’s polite, distant, and dead.
She goes into the kitchen; from the sound of it, she’s unpacking the groceries I brought for her by way of a care package. Looking through the door, I can see how little there is in the fridge. I wonder if she’s even been outside since the birth.
Leo stirs, and proves himself an intelligent boy by figuring out that I’m not his mother. He opens his mouth and yells, his face going redder with each breath. I can see his point. He’s working on very little information here; for all he knows, she might never be coming back.
Becca hurries out of the kitchen, stops in the doorway. “Is he all right?” she says, breathless.
“He’s fine.” I lay him over my shoulder and walk to and fro. “Shush, little cub,” I say, soft enough that Becca doesn’t hear me. “Shh…I know I’m not your mom, but I haven’t stolen her, she’ll be back. She’ll be back. Oh, that’s a big noise. It’s no good, you don’t fool me, I’m not going to get all worried. We’re just going to be nice and calm…” My training, I think it’s my training, is coming to the fore. Babies, like other animals, can sense fear. Leo cries for a bit, and then, when he realizes I’m not going to get agitated, calms down.
Becca returns with a cup of tea. I don’t rub it in that I’ve proved her wrong and that I can handle a baby without killing him. Instead, I sit, and play with Leo’s fingers.
Becca brushes her bangs out of her eyes. It’s an old gesture that she’s used all her life; I haven’t seen it for a while. “How are things with you, May?” she manages to say. She’s now letting herself in for the risk of my talking about DORLA. I can see she’s going to be polite about it.
“Not much. Lots of work, that’s really about it.”
“That’s all?”
I look down at Leo. I think he’s fallen asleep. A little crust sits on his eyelids, and he lies quite peaceful, not criticizing me.
Possibilities open. I could visit him a lot, I could play with him and give him attention and spoil him. The vision lasts for a brief moment. I look up and see Becca watching me with that held-back look. Perhaps she just doesn’t believe that my life could contain nothing but work, that I’m hiding something. Perhaps she thinks I’m holding back on her. Leo wakes again. I look away from his mother down to my nephew. His eyes are unfocused. He can’t see me. I stroke the side of his face, and his fist unbends and relaxes. This makes me so happy for a second that when I remember reality again it bites so deep and cold that I know it isn’t letting me go.
Leo is all right with me now. If I’m nice to him, he’ll like me when he’s one, when he’s two. He will. He’ll love me until the day he gets old enough to ask my sister, What’s wrong with Auntie May?
Why does Auntie May work when the moon’s full? Why does Auntie May work for a bad place? Mommy, what does “bareback” mean? I can hear it now. And I can’t feel safe, I can’t place any trust in what Becca’s going to say.
Normally I like them a little older before they start breaking my heart. But this one’s going to do it at four or five, and it’s going to be worse than anything before.
I tighten my grip on him and lay his face against mine.
I worry and worry about Franklin.
I worry about Jerry’s new social worker, too, and it’s a surprise when he replies.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: reality bites
Dear Lola,
Yep, you’re right. I met him before he got arrested, and he’s unpromising, to say the least. Burn this letter. Though I did like him. I guess if I pick on him enough, I can keep him on the dry for a while at least, and who knows—hope springs eternal in the human breast…Short term, though, do you know what judge he’ll be up against? And if so, do you think the judge’s innocence can be preserved?
Anyway, I know a good AA group for him, so you don’t have to worry about that end of it. Let me know when the trial date is, and I’ll see what I can do about character references and so on.
Thanks for your e-mail.
Paul
It doesn’t make sense. By all accounts, he should have sent me a stiff lecture, maybe even lodged a complaint with my superiors about my unprofessional attitude. Instead—“thanks for your e-mail”?
It’s a piece of good fortune I dwell on, to distract myself from the thought of Franklin coming to get me.
The appointed hour comes sooner than I expect; time flies by while I worry about it. Then, right on schedule, there’s a knock on my door, and I rise to meet my fate. The door opens, and ushers in Adnan Franklin, the man who’s going to crush me. There’s been no communication between us since the appointment was made. A few times, I’ve caught myself scanning the paper for mentions of his name; on the whole, I’ve been trying not to think about it. Now, finally, my hour has come. The door closes behind him with a respectful click, and I shake the great man’s hand, trying to take in as much as I can.
He’s smaller than I’d expected, though I ought to have allowed for the shock that goes with meeting a famous man in the flesh; there’s no way he could have been as big as his reputation. He’s under average height for a man, though still taller than me, and slenderly built; something about his movements suggests compactness of muscle, rather than slightness of bone. His dark hair is glossy and well cut, his tan skin doesn’t bear signs of aging—he must be fifteen years older than me at the very least, but it doesn’t really show. His suit is made of a gray fabric that almost glows, it’s so well woven. The hand that shakes mine has a light, steady grip, and he nods to me, swift, courteous, and assured.
I gesture him into a chair and get back to my desk as fast as possible, hiding my cheap knock-off pantsuit and worn shoes behind it. “I’m glad you could come to see me,” I say, telling myself that it’s true in a way—I might have had to brave his offices.