your vitamins.”
Jesse grinned. “How’d the plea bargaining come out,” he
said.
“Nothing you’d like. They get three
years’ probation, mandatory
counseling, and a hundred and twenty hours each of community service.”
“And Candace gets her life ruined,” Jesse said.
“I’m a lawyer,” Rita said.
“I represent my
client.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
Rita put her feet up on Jesse’s coffee table. She was wearing a
tailored beige suit with a fitted jacket and a short skirt. Jesse admired her legs.
“And,” Rita said, “people
recover from rape.”
“I guess so,” Jesse said. “And
maybe she will. But she doesn’t
think so now.”
Rita stared at him.
“My God,” she said. “You really
care about her.”
“Right now,” Jesse said, “home
alone, maybe in her room
listening to CDs, she cannot imagine going to school tomorrow. She cannot imagine facing all the kids who will know that she was gang-raped and photographed naked. And the three guys who did it will be in the same high school, maybe the same class, certainly the same cafeteria … Think back, when you were sixteen.”
Rita crossed her ankles on the coffee table. She was wearing dark high heels with pointed toes and thin ankle straps. She sipped her martini and stared at her shoes for a moment while she swallowed slowly.
“I represented Marino. My job, since I couldn’t get him off, was
to bargain for the best deal he could get. The other lawyers jumped in with me, and we came up with a package deal. I did a good job.
While I am,” Rita smiled at him, “no longer a little girl, I am a
woman, and as a woman I sympathize with the girl. But I wasn’t
hired to be a woman.”
“A lot of the kids in her school will think she was probably
asking for it, and they’ll think she finked to the cops, and ruined
it for three good guys including their football star.”
Rita took another sip of martini.
“I know,” she said.
They were silent. Rita looked past her martini glass at something very distant. Jesse drank some orange juice.
“I saw the pictures, of course,” Rita said. “Spread-eagled naked
on the ground. Raped, photographed … to them she was just another form of masturbation.”
Jesse was silent.
“A sex toy,” Rita said. “A
thing.”
They were both quiet. Rita finished her martini. Jesse poured the rest of the shaker into her glass. She took two olives from the small bowl on the coffee table and plomped them into her drink.
“The court going to specify the community service?” Jesse
said.
“They’ll leave it to the prosecution. Once they’re sentenced
we’ll get together with Reagan and decide something. Usually the
prosecution consults the schools.”
“You have any input in this?”
