says.
I’m thinking to myself that I would never use the word “tawdry” to describe Dana.
“Can you imagine how hurtful that is?” she says. I expect her at any moment to be reaching for the Kleenex.
Instead she says: “Fine, if they want to play hardball, we’ll accommodate them. Those damages you told them about. The punitive ones. How much do you think we could get?”
Dana may know nothing about sports cars, but instincts of reprisal and vendetta seem to come naturally. “We can take them to the cleaners,” she tells me. “We’ll sue the hell out of them. Think they can screw with me.” She’s talking to herself now, pacing again-her right forefinger to her bottom lip, the long nail touching a lower front tooth and smearing the red lip gloss a little-contemplating just how far she should have me turn the wheel on the rack once I get the insurance company stretched out.
Then she stops. She turns this way.
Sensing that something more serious is coming, Fittipaldi turns in the chair so that he can see her, so that his back is to me now.
I can tell from Dana’s darting blue eyes that some dark thought has suddenly stimulated them from behind.
“Are they going to pay her?” she says. The her she is talking about is Margaret.
“Dana. We need to discuss this in private.”
“They are, aren’t they? That’s it, isn’t it? Damn it. I knew it. They’ve decided to pay that bitch instead of me.” She looks at Nathan. “Over my dead body,” she says. “I was the one who was married to Nick when he got shot. I was the one putting up with him, putting up with his crap, not her. You are gonna sue them?” She looks at me like suddenly I’m the enemy. “Or did they buy you off too?” she says.
“Dana!” Fittipaldi, his voice now assuming a tone of command, gets her attention.
He shakes his head slowly, a signal that maybe she has said too much, gone too far, that she should calm down, watch what she’s saying.
From the smooth pelt of jaguar to cold steel in less than a minute.
I say nothing, waiting to see if she’s going to fire up again. But she doesn’t. Instead she stands there looking down at the carpet, back to Nathan and then to me, trying, I suspect, to remember all the little poisonous items that spilled over the glossy bottom lip when the devil took hold. When it’s obvious she’s stopped, I finally step in.
“Nathan is right,” I tell her. “You need to sit down. Calm down.” She looks at the chair, but she doesn’t move toward it.
“The carrier has made an offer,” I tell her.
It’s as if a pale light flickers on behind her eyes. The steel lips begin to bend toward a smile.
“But the reason I called you here today, what I have to talk to you about, has nothing to do with the insurance. At least not directly. It’s… well… it’s much more serious than that.”
What can be more serious than two million dollars in cash? This seems to freeze her brain cells. The light of hope in her eyes suddenly vanishes. They glass over, so within a couple of seconds after the words leave my lips, Dana’s eyes are two watery blue marbles. She stands there wavering back and forth on limp legs.
When she finally focuses, she is looking not at me, but at Fittipaldi, who is still turned toward her in his chair. It is fleeting. It lasts only an instant, the expression of dark apprehension that passes over her face like the shadow of a black cloud.
I can’t see Nathan’s face.
For a second it looks as if her legs might actually buckle, but Fittipaldi is out of the chair, grabbing her before she does. She stumbles through one step then catches herself, as he settles her again into the other client chair.
He huddles over her. “She’s not herself,” he says. “She’s been under a tremendous strain.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have anything? A drink? Maybe some brandy?”
“No brandy,” I tell him. “Soft drinks and some wine in the refrigerator in the other room.”
“Just some water,” she says. “I’ll be all right.” She’s running the back of one hand across her forehead, her eyes still a little glassy. Unless she is awfully good, this is no act. Dana is white as a sheet.
“If you could get it?” he says.
I leave to get a glass of water. It takes me a minute or so to find a clean glass in the cupboard of the lunch room, knock some ice from one of the trays up in the freezer area, and fill the glass with water.
I’m almost back to my office door when I hear Fittipaldi’s voice in hushed, low tones. “Don’t say anything. We’re almost through this. Just stay cool.”
As he looks up, I’m standing in the doorway with the glass in my hand, smiling like the butler who’s listened at the keyhole.
“Don’t say anything about what?” I ask.
“Oh, we were just talking.” He has one knee on the floor, next to her chair, holding her hand, looking at me, wondering how much I might have heard outside the door.
Dana pulls herself together, sits upright in the chair. She takes a deep breath, now the full-bodied flesh of her former shadow. Color back in her face. I hand her the glass and she sips a little water. She gathers a little condensation with two fingers from around the outside of the glass and wipes it gently across her forehead. Takes some more and hits her neck and chest just above the bodice of her blouse.
Whatever it was that sent her spinning, Nathan has pulled her out of it.
“I don’t know what it was,” she says. “I just felt a little faint.” She sips from the glass again.
“What is it you needed to talk to her about?” Nathan suddenly seems to be in charge. “Is it something that can wait until tomorrow?” he asks. “I think maybe I should get her home.”
“It’s a serious matter,” I tell him. “But if it has to wait one day, I suppose it can.”
“Good,” he says.
“I’ll just have to call and tell them.”
Nathan leans toward me, almost saying it but he doesn’t: “Tell who?”
Dana’s eyes glance up at me, as I pass her and walk to the side of my desk, where I stop and face her. Even in her withered state, she is a bubble of anxiety, filled with questions she doesn’t really want to ask but is unable to resist.
“No.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m feeling better,” she says. “I’d like to know what it is.” She’s holding the icy glass of water to her forehead now.
“It has to do with the law firm,” I tell her. “Rocker, Dusha.”
She looks at me for a full second, then her eyes close and she expels a breath. When she opens her eyes to look at me again, I suspect she knows what I’m talking about. But the sideways glance she shoots toward Nathan causes me to wonder if he does.
To resolve any doubt, I tell her: “They have a few questions regarding some of the accounts that Nick managed before his death.”
“Oh.” Her parched lips open a little, head nodding slowly. “I see. I’m feeling better,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should discuss this in private. After all, it is business relating to Nick’s firm.” She leans toward Nathan who still has one knee on the floor beside her. “Would you mind?” she says.
Suddenly Fittipaldi is the man standing out in the cold. “Sure.” What else can he say?
“You’re a dear,” she says.
“If you need me, I’ll just be outside the door.”
Probably on his knees with his ear to the wood.
She lets his hand slip slowly out of hers, and he leaves the office, closing the door behind him.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask.
“I’m much better,” she says.
Instead of sitting in the chair behind my desk I move around front and settle one cheek onto the edge of the desk, looking down at her in the chair.
“What was it you thought I was going to tell you?”
