The Decent Proposal (2 page)

If that same supernatural creature from Richard Baumbach's apartment had shimmered into view right now and told Elizabeth she would bill exactly zero hours after her meeting today and no more than eight hours total for the rest of the week, she would first have insisted on knowing through what sleight of hand the shimmering effect had been achieved and, second, she would have ushered the poor deluded creature out of her office while placing a discreet call to security. But third, she would have cursed her weakness for secretly believing the creature had spoken the truth, because its prediction would have confirmed what she had suspected since yesterday: that some form of calamity awaited her at this meeting of a “personal nature,” something to derail the quiet, orderly life she'd worked so hard to build for herself.

Lunchtime was over. Elizabeth opened her door. She restarted the timer on her screen and immersed herself once more in the work at hand.

RICHARD SQUINTED THROUGH
the windshield of his used Toyota Corolla, notorious among his crew for being the only car they knew that still had manual locks and roll-up windows. His best friend Mike said it was like entering a time capsule whose contents no one wanted to remember. It was a little past 2 p.m., and still overcast: typical for an afternoon in L.A. in the beginning of June. Most other times of the year, the “marine layer” of clouds that blew in overnight from the coast would have burned off by now, if it existed at all, but anywhere from May to July, when the rest of the Northern Hemisphere was bursting into
the full bloom of summer, L.A. was often shrouded in “June gloom” until the late afternoon. Like many transplants, Richard still obsessed over the weather, disappointed every time it failed to match the stereotypical perfection of sunny warmth and azure heavens. If they were headed toward a post-apocalyptic,
Mad Max
–ian hellscape in a few years anyway (sporadic El Niño effect notwithstanding), it could at least be sunny all the time.

Turning onto Santa Monica Boulevard, he became mired suddenly in lunchtime traffic: a single false step sinking him helplessly, like quicksand. Rather than railing uselessly against the traffic, Richard forced himself to focus on his upcoming appointment, even though it was just a general, with a lawyer he couldn't even remember meeting. The guy had called him yesterday and asked for a face-to-face, something of a “personal nature,” which meant he had a nephew, or a neighbor, or a nephew's neighbor, or a neighbor's nephew who'd written a script. If he were busier, Richard would have insisted the lawyer spell it out over the phone and simply e-mail him whatever it was he wanted him to read. But what else did he have to do? Besides, you never knew where the next great script might come from. Heartened by this thought, he snagged a CD from among the debris on his passenger floor and slid it in the player (he had a tape deck too, not that he had any cassettes). It was a homemade mix and he skipped ahead to the eighth track, “Eye of the Tiger,” the vestiges of his
Rocky
montage still lingering inside his head, a happy dream half-remembered. He began shouting along:

“Rising up! Back on the street . . .”

The light ahead of him turned green and he lurched forward with the rest of the traffic, bleating the whole time. The light was faster than expected, however, and turned yellow while there was still one car ahead of him. Richard glanced at the intersection; it was clear, and he allowed his car to drift, head nod
ding along to the beat, assuming they would both keep moving forward:

“And he's watching us all with the eeeeeeeeeeeeye—”

The car ahead of him stopped suddenly. Richard had to jam on his brakes, causing the CD to skip and leaving him to shout on his own:

“OF THE TIGER!”

He shook off this humiliation by honking a rebuke to the slowpoke in front of him, whose shiny bumper he'd missed by an inch, maybe two. Richard eyed the car; it was immaculate, probably brand-new. That was all he needed—to shell out an ungodly sum for some minuscule dent or scratch, or, worse, risk jacking up his insurance.

ELIZABETH SHRUGGED AT
the filthy car behind her. It was true; she could've made the light. But the rule was to slow down at a yellow light, not speed up, and the fact that no one else seemed to remember this made her all the more eager to remember it herself.

A dreadlocked man who had been standing at the side of the road began shambling drunkenly between lanes, begging for change. When she lowered her window, his head swerved toward her, and he stopped so abruptly the top half of his body had to compensate in a liquid bend from the waist that reminded her of those Gumby-ish air funnels that twist and dip from the roofs of used car dealerships and secondhand furniture stores. He hurried toward her.

“Mocha chip or yogurt honey peanut? Or both?” she asked him brightly, holding out two Balance Bars retrieved from her glove compartment.

He blinked. “Both, I guess.”

“Here you go!” She handed them over. The window rose between them; he had to yank his hand back to avoid being
nipped. As he stumbled toward the sidewalk, Elizabeth watched his lips working furiously in what was probably a torrent of abuse leveled at her (surely he would have preferred money), but barely a minute later, he'd ripped open one of the bars and begun devouring it.

The light was still red. Elizabeth used the extra downtime to close her eyes for five seconds, counting on her left hand with “Mississippis” in between, her way of ensuring she took enough time to acknowledge something good in her life, no matter how small. In fact, the smaller the better, and especially when it was a blessing in an otherwise unfortunate situation. A new friend of hers (
yes
, she thought, with the tiniest thrill of pride,
La Máquina can make new friends
) had inspired her recently not to ignore these destitute men and women she saw from time to time on the road, as long as she didn't compromise her safety. For almost six months now, she'd kept her glove compartment stocked with Balance Bars for this exact purpose, and this was only the second time she'd been able to use them.

The light turned green.

RICHARD FOLLOWED THE
car ahead of him through the intersection and then left onto Avenue of the Stars. But instead of proceeding to the address he'd been given, he turned off at the Century City Mall, where parking was only a dollar an hour for up to three hours. (He'd forgotten to ask if parking at the lawyer's building would be validated, and he couldn't afford to leave it to chance.) By the time he extricated himself from the mall's labyrinth of a garage, jaywalked across the street, snagged an elevator, tracked down the correct suite, and supplied his name to the modelesque receptionist at the front desk, it was 2:38. He was ushered immediately into a conference room where a man and woman sat waiting in silence.

WHEN ELIZABETH HAD
been shown into the room exactly eight minutes earlier, the old man she assumed was Jonathan Hertzfeld had told her they were waiting for one more, and he hadn't said another word. He was wearing suspenders, and she couldn't help thinking of him as an age-progressed version of Jake/Jack/Jock. When the second guest arrived, Elizabeth felt a jolt of something akin to surprise. She hardly knew what she was expecting, but it wasn't this: a boyish-looking man sweating visibly through his T-shirt, a sizable rip in one knee of his undeniably grimy jeans. What was he, twelve? Who wore jeans to a meeting anyway? He was attractive, admittedly, but this was nothing special. So were a lot of people in L.A.

RICHARD TOOK A
chair opposite the woman, who looked straight out of
Working Girl
with her high heels and tailored business suit. Obviously she was another lawyer. Maybe she was the one who'd written the script? On the side?
Doubtful.

But she did have the best breasts he'd seen in a while.

“I'M SURE YOU'RE
both wondering why you're here.”

Richard Baumbach and Elizabeth Santiago eyed each other across the Formica vista of the conference room table.

“At this point you're probably aware I'm an estates attorney.”

Huh?
thought Richard, while the woman nodded owlishly.
Like wills and stuff?
His heart began to race. Someone had died and was leaving him a boatload of cash. He
knew
it! He was saved!

“No one has died,” said the lawyer. “I represent my clients when they die, but I represent them while they're living, too—in particular, when they wish to dispose of property. And one of my clients is offering you five hundred thousand dollars each,
if
you'll agree to spend some time together. At
least once a week for two continuous hours, for one full calendar year.”

Richard's eyebrows tilted downward in an exaggerated V that looked almost comical, like a vaudeville pantomime, but Elizabeth's face didn't move at all. It was her frozen mask—suggestive of horror—that made the lawyer pause, and inside this pause his brisk manner fell away. He took refuge in his notes, slipping on a rimless pair of reading glasses with a flustered, fumbling air. Though he wasn't quite sixty-five, in this moment he looked older, almost feeble, while struggling to find his place.

“Please understand that my client wishes to remain anonymous. I can tell you nothing about this individual.”

His eyes flicked upward in apology. He forced them down again.

“Let's see . . . a few points: There cannot be any third parties present except for incidental reasons—waiters at restaurants and so forth—and you must conduct yourselves in a substantially conversational manner. That is to say, it is not enough to merely
remain
in each other's presence for the two hours. You must
talk
during them. But please note that conversation is the only requirement, and the subject of this conversation is immaterial.”

He removed his glasses and began polishing them on his silken tie with an air of relief.

Richard was the first to speak. He laughed: a single, disbelieving bark of a laugh.

“Half a
million
dollars?
Each?
”

The lawyer nodded.

“You're kidding, right?” Richard made a show of whipping his head around the room, as if he were looking for a hidden camera, but even now, seconds after hearing the proposal, a part of him was wondering if he could ask for an advance.

The lawyer put down his glasses and shook his head,
no
.

“But . . . why?” Richard asked. “I mean, we've never met before—”

He swung his head in the woman's direction.

“—right?”

She nodded, which was the first time she'd moved since the lawyer had spoken.

“So why us? What's the point?”

The lawyer spread out his hands. “I'm afraid I can't give you any reasons, just the proposal itself. These were my client's express instructions.”

Elizabeth felt as though she were watching them from inside a glass bottle, or some sort of aquarium or other transparent tank. It was hard to follow what they were saying, but she could see them perfectly, and she tracked every hand gesture and head movement now as if her life depended on it. The lawyer's proposal was a trap, obviously, or a joke, or something equally cruel. She wanted nothing to do with it. If there was one thing she knew, it was that nothing came for free.

“I've made two copies of the formal agreement, which lays out in more detail what I've already told you, along with standard and customary supplementation: representations and warranties, a no-publicity clause, the pro rata payment schedule, and so forth.”

With a jerk of his hands, he pushed two stapled documents in opposite directions over the glossy tabletop, as if they were air hockey pucks. Richard caught his copy and turned over the pages without reading them. No matter what ended up happening, he couldn't wait to tell Mike, who was going to
Freak. The Hell. Out
.

Elizabeth let her copy slide off the table and fall to the ground. She stared at it, and then at the lawyer, as if to say:
that's what I think of your proposal
.

“How were we selected for this?” she asked finally, her dark eyes boring into him.

Richard looked up:
yeah, how?

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that either,” the lawyer said. “But no one has violated your privacy. And I give you my word no one ever will.”

“But we don't know you,” said Elizabeth, her exasperation lending her voice a degree of animation it didn't usually have. “And we don't know who's making the offer. You can't seriously expect us to go along with this? Without more information?”

The lawyer stared at her.

“Would
you
accept this proposal?” she demanded.

“I know this is a very, ahem,
unusual
disclosure to receive, and in so sudden a manner,” he said. “But I thought this was the best way.”

There was a long pause, during which Elizabeth conveyed with perfect eloquence the unspoken notion that sometimes, the best wasn't good enough. She stood up. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “It was nice meeting you both.”

The flatness of her tone couldn't have articulated the opposite meaning more clearly than if she'd spat on them.

“You have until the end of the week to think it over,” the lawyer called out a little desperately, and Elizabeth gave him the courtesy of stopping while he continued. “I suggest you exchange contact information and talk it over in a day or two. Maybe over coffee? And of course you know how to reach me.”

Richard sprang up. He couldn't let her go without having some way of contacting her. He pulled out a business card from his wallet and shoved it in her direction.

“Here, just in case. It's got my cell and e-mail.”

“I don't have any cards on me,” she said, accepting his reluctantly.

“That's okay, what's your e-mail?” His fingertips hovered over his phone.