No Legal Grounds (6 page)

One clamp was Heather. The other was what Nicky Oberlin had just laid on him.
Sam’s child. His mistake. His shame.
How had Nicky found out? Sam had buried this secret long ago, even though jabs of inner pain would recur periodically, like an unwanted guest pounding on the door. He’d try to ignore them and usually they would go away. But every now and then the pounding got louder.
He once asked his pastor about this, shortly after becoming a Chris tian. Didn’t Christ take away all that? Wasn’t he forgiven? Weren’t his sins washed away?
Yes, Pastor Lyle explained, but there are always consequences for sin, and one of those is the stain. We are forgiven, yes, but our souls are affected. Sometimes Satan likes to bring the past to mind, to keep us down.
Now, prompted afresh by what Nicky had threatened, Sam couldn’t help thinking back to what he’d done.
Her name was Mary and he’d met her at a party in Isla Vista during his freshman year. It was a typical Isla Vista party with a couple kegs and a generous sharing of bongs. Sam was on the scope that night, trolling for a date, having broken up a few weeks ago with another girl.
His memory of the party was fuzzed by the brain cloud he’d created in himself that night with the combination of items he ingested. Was Nicky even there? He couldn’t remember that, because he’d not thought of Nicky at all since leaving the dorm.
But he did remember Mary.
She was a good-looking blonde, slight in a way that made him think of Tinker Bell. They did that mutual looking across the room at each other. In the overstuffed apartment, the stereo was blaring Beach Boys and Elton and Chicago and Stones. People were gyrating in what some would call dance, but Mary was standing by the wall, looking lost.
Sam made a beeline.
“How you doin’?” His well-thought-out opening line.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said.
“Here I am.”
That made her smile.
“Sam Trask.” He shook her hand.
“Mary Delano.”
“From?”
“Austin.”
“Texas?”
“You’re sharp.”
He liked her instantly. At least he thought he did, sotted as he was. They spent the next two hours talking, dancing, walking to Del Playa to look at the ocean and the sky. They ended up back at her dorm. Her roommate was gone for the weekend. They had the room all to themselves.
And so began a two-week romance, cut off by Sam when Mary started to get a little too serious. He put off the inevitable talk as long as he could, but eventually it had to be done. Mary did not take it well. At last it was over.
But it wasn’t.
It was during a history lecture — Professor Marston on the Peloponnesian War, he would never forget — that Mary motioned for him to come outside the lecture hall.
“I’m pregnant,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.
In the Chinese restaurant, Sam rubbed his eyes at the memory, seeing Mary’s tormented face, remembering the guilt. Now it was all coming back at him, courtesy of —
“Hey, buddy!”
Nicky Oberlin was standing at his elbow, smiling down at him.

“This is it,” Sam said. “You’re not going to contact me anymore.” “You want some orange chicken? This place has orange chicken
to die for, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, okay? That’s obvious.”
Nicky slid into the booth like some long-lost relative. “I think
you’re misreading this whole thing, Sammy.”
“Misreading? You threaten to tell my wife something from my
past? And by the way, she would support me.”
“Sure, she would. She’s a great lady.”
Sam felt a current shoot through his body. “You don’t even know
her.”
“I know so much more than I used to.” Nicky leaned over the
table. “You sure about the orange chicken? Because — ” “What do you want from me?”
“Friendship, Sammy.”
“Don’t call me Sammy.”
“A sort of you scratch my back, I scratch yours sort of thing.” “I told you, that’s not going to happen. I don’t want to have anything to do with you, especially after you threaten me.” “Threat? The sharing of information? That’s the new currency,
Sammy — Sam.”
Nothing could sway this guy. It was like Nicky was on another
channel. Sam had been reading a lot lately about the negative side
of the information techno-explosion. Studies documented the definite harm done by too much time with computers, games, iPods,
whatever. They isolated people, kept them from the counterbalance of family and community.
And if a person was a loner to begin with — like Nicky appeared
to be — the results could be a skewed mind that cooked bizarre
thoughts.
“Nicky, let me ask you something.”
Nicky shrugged.
“You have any family, anyone close?”
“That’s very nice of you to ask, Sam. Thank you very much. But
I’d rather talk about your family, Sam.”
Undeterred, Sam kept his voice even. “What about a church
family? You have a church, Nicky?”
In Nicky’s eyes Sam saw the slightest flicker of something coiled
and hot.
“Not a churchgoer, Sammy. I prefer to make my way on my
own.”
“That doesn’t work.”
“And you know all about what works, don’t you? You have the
perfect life, am I right?”
“Nothing’s perfect. But I do have a family, and I have a faith I
hang onto. My church is very important to me.”
“What church is that again, Sam? The one where the preacher
talked at you?”
“Solid Rock Community, here in the valley — ” Sam stopped
on the verge of an invitation. What would Jesus do? Invite. Would
he? Would he invite a peculiar guy who made veiled threats? What
better action? Church was where transformation happened. It had
happened to Sam, so it could happen to anyone.
Yet . . . Nicky gave off seriously creepy vibes. What if he actually
said,
Sure, I’ll come. Can I sit with you and your family?
Sam found
the thought repellant and knew at once his faith was weak.

Invite him anyway.
Sam said nothing.
“Not that I’m not open-minded,” Nicky said, “but religion just

doesn’t do it for me. It’s all based on fear, and I think fear’s for wimps.”
“Fear?”
“Yeah, haven’t you read Bertrand Russell? Oh no, you didn’t major in philosophy. You were poli-sci.”
Was there anything about college this guy didn’t remember?
“It’s clear that religion started with fear. Early man was afraid of the lightning and thunder, of the storms and the winds. What caused it? Must be some powerful god out there in the sky. All fear, right?”
“That’s what you philosophy majors would call a non sequitur.” Nicky flinched and Sam congratulated himself on a point scored. “Fear may indeed be a motivator to seek God, but it doesn’t mean the reality of God is proven false.”
Flashing a smile Nicky said, “By golly, you
are
a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“Speaking of which, I’ve got to get back to the office. I think you need help, Nicky, and I would just encourage you to keep an open mind about God, and — ”
“Sam, do I look unreasonable to you?”
“I wish you all the best.” Sam stood up, hoping this was all finally going to be behind him. He offered his hand to Nicky.
Nicky just looked at it. “You’re going to be sorry.”
Sam froze, his hand hanging stupidly in the air.
Then Nicky grabbed Sam’s hand and smiled. “Because the orange chicken is really, really good here.”
Sam allowed himself a nervous laugh.
“Later,” Nicky said, then let go of Sam’s hand.

The smell of freshly cut onions filled the kitchen. Linda looked up from the cutting board, knife in hand. “So talk.”
“I need your undivided attention.”
She turned to him. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” “Hold it. There’s nothing wrong.” He hoped. “Can we just go

into the living room for a minute?”
“You want dinner? I’ve got sauce simmering. I don’t want it to
burn.”
“Just a couple of minutes.” He hoped again, heading into the living room. His throat was already constricting. This was going to be
harder than he thought.
“So?” Linda was behind him.
“Let’s sit.”
“This is starting to sound serious.”
“Linda, you remember when we got married, and — ” “Yes, I was there.”
“ — a week before the wedding I asked you if you had any
doubts?”
“I remember. And I didn’t.”
“And I asked you once more if there was anything you wanted
to know about my past.”
Linda looked at her hands. “I do remember that. I asked you the
same thing.”
“We decided we weren’t going to go into it. We both know we
had other people in our lives before we met each other. And we
were very different then. We were completely worldly.” “So what’s this mean? You have some dark secret you have to
tell me now?”
“Good guess.”
She gave him a long, hard look. “Do I need to know this?” Sam nodded.
“Why now?”
“It’s come up,” Sam said.
“What’s come up?”
Taking a deep breath, Sam began. “When I was a freshman I got
involved with a girl. And she got pregnant.”
Linda didn’t move.
“I offered to marry her, which was kind of old-fashioned even
back then. I didn’t even consider asking her to have an abortion. She didn’t want one either. She was willing to marry me. But her father came out from Texas and talked her out of it. He was a big, tough guy. I thought he was going to rip my head off. He took his daughter back home with him. Later I got some papers from a lawyer. I gave up all rights to the baby. She waived child support. And
that’s the last I ever heard.”
For a long moment Linda was silent, looking away. Not a good
sign. When he upset her, hurt her feelings with an untoward comment, she would look away from him, slightly and quietly. And it
would take a lot of apologizing to set things straight.
He decided to start. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before, but
we said we wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, little things,” Linda said, her eyes still averted. “But this.”
She shook her head.
“This isn’t any different. It’s a part of my past I really regret. I
thought about telling you early on, but I just kept putting it off, and
finally it seemed like the best thing was to let it go.”
“Until now.”
“Yes, until now.”
“Why?”
“It just — ” He stopped himself as he was about to go on a roundabout linguistic tangent, a lawyerly avoidance. He thought better of
it. “A guy I used to know back in college, his name’s Nicky Oberlin,
he got in touch with me.”
“How?”
“He just did. Tracked me through the Internet. Said he wanted
to get together with me. I ignored him, but he kept emailing. Finally
I met with him.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know, a week ago maybe.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
“It didn’t occur to me that there was anything to tell.” “Oh, not much.”
“Linda, you’re being a little unfair, aren’t you?”
“Where are they?”
“Who?”
“Your former lover and child.”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I have no idea. Oberlin tracked
her down and said they’re living in Southern Cal.”
“You’ve thought about them a lot, haven’t you?”
Her barb stung. “No.”
“Come on.”
“What do you want me to say? That I stay up nights thinking of
what might have been?”
“Do you?”
“No!”
Linda opened her mouth halfway, but words seemed to stick
behind her teeth. She held like that for a moment, then buried her
head in her hands.
That’s when Sam saw the smoke in the kitchen signaling an
early end to dinner.

Sam opened his eyes. His head was humming.
The digital clock read 3:43
A
.
M
.
He knew he would not be sleeping anytime soon.
Usually he’d jolt awake the night before a trial. This felt different, like he was the conductor of not just one runaway train, but several. He was simultaneously outside the trains and inside, and he could only ride in one for a few moments before shooting to another. He couldn’t get his hands on any controls.

His chest tightened.
All right, dude, don’t have a heart attack.
Slipping out of bed, he heard Linda murmur his name. “Go back

to sleep,” he whispered. They’d managed to call enough of a truce to go to bed. But much more would have to be said. Sam was not looking forward to that.

He’d been unfair to Linda. He hated being unfair, because it went against the entire grain of his life. Law was about fairness, ultimately.
Fundamental fairness
was the legal term of art.

Count your blessings, he reminded himself. Meeting Linda had been his greatest blessing, and he knew it. They’d met at a little coffee house in North Hollywood. Sam was pursuing his dream of being an underappreciated poet, and succeeding. Even then he knew he’d be going back to school someday. He just wanted to give the artist thing a flier.

He lived in a studio apartment off Vineland and supported himself waiting tables at a steak house in Toluca Lake. During the day he wrote his poetry, sending it off to underground mags and getting three free issues when something got published.

And he did readings at local venues. The Ginkgo Leaf was a place that gave homegrown poets a place to do the open-mic thing. Sam showed up one night with a couple of poems and a flask of bourbon. His writing fantasy included bouts of hard drinking. Later he’d call it his Dylan Thomas phase, in reference to the Welsh poet who died drunk at age thirty-nine.

It was while he was waiting his turn, and taking a nip, that Linda first spoke to him.
“That won’t bring better words,” she said.
She was holding a tray with coffee cups and cocking her head at him. It was a head with dancing hazel eyes and a cascade of long flaxen hair. She was not one of the reed-thin soap actresses that sprouted like ragweed in Los Angeles asphalt. He liked that. Her look was at once more intelligent and knowing than the glimmereyed expressions of the actresses in waiting.
“Booze has a long history with writers.” Sam winked. “Greases the wheels.”
Linda — he would learn her name two nights later — shook her head. “That’s a joke. Kerouac ruined himself. Dylan Thomas. Need I mention Capote?”
She knew her stuff. Fascinating. “You think Kerouac would have been Kerouac without the booze?”
“Kerouac was a tragic figure whose lifestyle is romanticized by the college sophomore. In truth, the booze killed his writing and then him.”
“Where you getting all this?”
“Thinking about it. Seeing guys come in here juiced and reading their stuff and botching it and thinking they’re great. Don’t you do it.”
“Thanks for the career advice.” Sam was starting to get annoyed. He could map his own path to literary oblivion, thank you very much and see you later.
“Just a word to the wise,” she said.
Sam figured he could do without her wisdom and said nothing more. Linda slipped away, but Sam kept checking on her throughout the evening. She had an athletic grace around the tables, self-possession. This only annoyed him more and he kept sipping bourbon as if to spite her until it was time for him to read. Botching it! He’d show her what real poetry was made of.
He botched it. He knew as soon as he started reading that he had overdone the drink. He’d gotten to the point where he could handle quite a bit, but in his arrogance he’d taken the proverbial one too many. There is a lag time between drink and drunkenness, just enough time for a pigheaded poet to make his way to the microphone, fumbling for his poems.
He lost his place several times. He tried to laugh it off. The audience was not amused.
When he staggered off the stage he found there was no back way out. He had to leave by the front door, so the patrons could look at him all the way. The one face he didn’t want to see was hers. But she was there at the bar, facing him full-on. Through his bloodshot eyes he thought he saw more pity than scorn in her look.
He had to work the next night, pushing steaks to the studio crowd and old Burbank money. The night after he got someone to cover his shift so he could go back to the Ginkgo Leaf and find the waitress and spoon a mouthful of crow in her presence.
She was returning a tray to the bar when he stepped in front of her. She looked startled.
“You were right,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“About drinking and poetry.”
“Ah.”
“So I’d like to pay you for the advice.”
“I don’t want any — ”
“By taking you to dinner.”
She smiled and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “What if I have a boyfriend?”
“Do you?”
She didn’t. They went out the next Saturday. Sam chose a restaurant by the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway. He couldn’t really afford it, but he was determined to pull out all the stops. There was something special about this woman.
Linda had grown up in Acton, a little burg about thirty miles east of Los Angeles proper, a desert town where people still lived close to the land. Sam’s impression of the place was that the people there were strong and guileless, hanging on to a bit of the Old West ethic. That was Linda, he decided.
A month later he asked her to marry him. She gave him a polite no. He asked her every week after that, accompanied by flowers — for which he spent half his food money. Persistence paid off. After five weeks she said yes, and he could eat again.
He gave up poetry as a profession. He felt the first real stirrings of true adult responsibility. He wanted to make a life for his wife. He wanted to make her proud.
He took the LSAT and aced it, got accepted at UCLA Law. Graduated top ten percent, went to work for the US attorney’s office downtown.
By then Heather had come along, and so had Lew Newman, with a proposal to open up a two-man firm. Sam had met Lew, a Brooklyn DA, on a big RICO case involving both coasts. The two hit it off and kept in touch.
And through it all, Linda stood by him, did charity work, mothered Heather and Max.
The firm of Newman & Trask started taking off. Sure, Sam had to work long hours, but there were benefits. He and Linda bought a nice big house in Encino, up in the hills.
It was the all-American dream.
Then Linda’s mother died in a car accident on Balboa Boulevard. A drag-racing kid hit her head-on. Both died instantly.
Linda went into a deep depression. It was not like her, she of the sunny optimism. Sam was concerned and almost ordered her to seek a doctor’s help.
Linda found Christ instead.
Sam couldn’t argue about the change. Linda started attending a small Bible study at her friend Melanie’s house. One night — as Linda told him later — she was filled with what she called the Holy Spirit, calling to her, and she made her confession of Christ. The Bible study leader took her out to Melanie’s swimming pool and baptized her.
All of it was a whirlwind of change in Linda, and Sam went along with it, because the depression was gone. Now he had a wife who was “on fire.”
She tried to get Sam to follow along. He resisted.
He kept resisting until the night he almost hit her and had to face his own demons, and Pastor Lyle showed him the only way to defeat them was through Christ.
And life was going to be perfect after that.
Now, lying in bed, he thought of all the ways life was not perfect, and how they seemed connected to this odd blast from the past named Nicky Oberlin. He couldn’t live in fear of odd people because the world was stuffed with them. But there was more to this Oberlin. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He knew he’d be hearing from Nicky again, and he dreaded it.
The dread kept him from sleep.