She oiled Nina’s foot and started tweaking and pulling on her toes, as if they had muscles too.
“Practicing law? Well, a case starts with an immediate problem. Your client is in jail, or your client’s about to be evicted, or your client’s marriage is falling apart. You try to organize this real-life chaos into a theory or story that calms things down and will resolve the problem in a fair and orderly way. You get all the information and you try to work the system so your client has the outcome he or she deserves.”
“How do you come up with this theory?”
“You read other legal cases and try to organize the facts so that your client comes out the hero, not the villain. Then you try to convince the judge that your version is the best version. Because the other guy always has a good story, too.”
“You don’t try to get the client what they want?”
“Sometimes they don’t know. Sometimes they are unrealistic. Sometimes the system can’t give them what they deserve. All the system can really do is lock people up or transfer money around. It can’t bring back a loved one, for instance, and sometimes that’s all the client wants. What’s the matter?” Chelsi’s hands had faltered, and she sighed.
“You make me think of a loved one I lost,” she said.
The chime rang.
“That darn thing,” Chelsi said. She gave Nina’s feet one final squeeze and said, “You take as long as you need to get dressed.” The door shut behind her, the soft New Age chords switched off abruptly, and Nina, deposited back into rude reality, blinked open her eyes to a shelf of unguents and towels and strong mountain sun filtering through the pines outside Chelsi’s window.
She sat up reluctantly and slid off the table. While she dressed, she thought about Chelsi. She pulled on her blue silk jacket last and brushed her hair in the mirror above the sink, then consulted her watch. Court in thirty minutes.
She opened the door.
In the cubbyhole office, Chelsi hung up the phone and said, “Feeling better?”
“Much better. There’s one thing I wanted to ask you. For about two minutes, when you were working on my face, I suddenly got the most splitting headache. Then it disappeared like air, and now I’m fine.”
“That was your headache quota for the week. It let go all at once. You’ll have a good week.”
“Thanks. Really. I’m glad I found you. What do I owe you today?”
“Nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not a thing. And nothing next week, either.” Chelsi folded her arms over the flowers embroidered on her smock. “I’d like to ask you a favor instead. My uncle Dave has-he needs-he has a legal thing. Would you talk to him?”
Nina put on her sunglasses and laid her business card and fifty dollars on the desk. “Like I said, Chelsi, anything that comes through the door. The first consultation is free.”
“It’s urgent. My dad and I have been trying to help him find a lawyer fast.”
“No! No! He was a victim. He and my aunt Sarah. Two years ago. There was a robbery in a motel they were staying at near Prize’s and-and my aunt Sarah was shot.” Chelsi gave Nina’s body a look and Nina could almost feel her curious fingers on the scar again. “The South Lake Tahoe police couldn’t find the shooter. Uncle Dave went to a lawyer who helped him file a suit against the motel. For-for-”
“Negligent security?”
“Right. Something like that. And he put in a bunch of John Does like the lawyer said, so when he found out who the robber was he could do a-”
“Substitute in the robber as a defendant,” Nina said. “There must be a wrongful-death cause of action too.”
“That sounds right. Even if the police didn’t feel they had enough evidence to arrest the robber, Uncle Dave could still sue him for damages. But now there’s a court deadline or something where the motel is going to have the suit thrown out. Uncle Dave drinks too much, you know? He’s broke and he’s broken. My dad and I can put in some money to help, but-anyway, would you talk to him and look at his papers? For two massages?” She handed Nina her money back.
“I’ll be getting the better of the barter,” Nina said. “Have your uncle Dave call my office and set up a time with Sandy, my secretary.”
“Great! My aunt Sarah was such a good person. It can’t happen that the universe could let her die and not punish anyone. She was only thirty-eight, and here’s the worst, it still makes me choke up to talk about it, she was pregnant. Their first baby. They had been trying so long. It makes me so sad and mad. My mother left us when I was three, and Aunt Sarah was always there for me. Anyway, I appreciate it.”
“I’ll see you next week, then.”
“We won’t talk about it during your next massage. It’s bad for relaxation.”
“I’m sorry about your aunt, Chelsi,” Nina said.
Chelsi gave her a pained smile.
“Thanks. I can tell you mean it. I know you can’t bring her back, but-anyway, thank you. Now here’s your assignment for the week. Yawn whenever you feel tense,” Chelsi said.
2
TWO DAYS LATER, A FRESH MUG of Italian espresso in hand, stockinged heels riding the edge of her desk, Nina stole a moment to reflect.
The long workday had begun. On the drive down Pioneer Trail that morning toward the office, Nina had watched the bicyclists and joggers with even more than her usual envy. They were out grabbing the last glories of fall, so damn happy, smelling the fresh tang of high snows and watching fluttering dry leaves while she contemplated her day, the bitter child-custody battle coming up, along with two grisly settlement conferences, all to be conducted in the windowless courtroom of the irascible Judge Flaherty.
Long ago, when law began, the advocates and judges must have met in tree-shaded glades, toga-clad, birdsong the accompaniment to their work, courtesy and dignity their style, and-
– And of course, as a woman, she would have been pouring the wine from the ewer, not arguing the case. But one could fantasize at 7:45 in the morning while watching birds and squirrels chase around the autumnal marsh that rolled out toward a distant, twinkling Lake Tahoe.
After several months in Monterey, she and her teenage son, Bob, had returned to Tahoe. Sandy Whitefeather had returned to her domain in Nina’s office in the Starlake Building and was drumming up business before Nina had time to put down her cup on the desk. The young woman lawyer who had been handling Nina’s cases found a law job in Reno, and left open files and a busy calendar of court appearances.
In spite of the time crunch, Nina found just enough space in the morning to pour Hitchcock’s kibble and Bob’s cereal, and to enjoy the short trip up Pioneer Trail to her law office.
When evening came, after she and Sandy locked up, Nina would drive home through the forest to the cabin on Kulow Street, noting the hints of winter to come she perceived in the dry pines and parched streams. The cabin still basked in early-evening sun. Inside, she would kick off her shoes and pour herself a glass of Clos du Bois and watch the world news, make dinner, and nag Bob into finishing his homework. Once a week she called her father, and once or twice a week she and Bob went to her brother Matt’s house for dinner.
September and October passed in a flurry while she reestablished her routines. The fees rolled in and she paid off her debts.
The judges accepted her back. She had a pretty good working relationship with most of the local lawyers, and she finally knew what she was doing.
The small office suite in the Starlake Building on Lake Tahoe Boulevard, right in the heart of town and less than five miles from the Nevada state line, now felt like home, but some part of her was still restless. She had gone from Carmel to San Francisco to Tahoe and back to Carmel and then back to Tahoe again in the past few years. She was starting to ask herself, uncomfortably, if she would ever settle down. Bob deserved stability, and she was going to have to stay put for a while.
She wasn’t even sure why she had returned to Tahoe. She might just as well have stayed in Carmel and joined the Pohlmann firm, which had made her a very good offer.
And she had made one other uncomfortable discovery since returning to Tahoe.
Her ex-lover, Paul van Wagoner, and his new flame, Susan Misumi, had quickly moved in together down in Carmel. Fair enough, since Nina had ended it with Paul. The choice of Susan Misumi, with her black bangs, her humorlessness, escaped Nina, but it wasn’t her business anymore. Nina and Paul still checked in on each other. They managed to stay friendly because they had been friends before they became lovers.
Nina had moved on. She went out, danced, ate good food, had a few unexpectedly intimate conversations. But she had discovered that she didn’t expect much from men anymore. She didn’t want to try for love.
That feeling had been growing in her for a long time, and she sometimes wondered if it had something to do with the breakup with Paul. Finding a partner seemed impossible, based on her experiences, so she put it out of her mind.
Men and places. Still, the restlessness would come over her, and she’d feel a need for another place and another man. Other people followed their lifelines. She careened along, too fast, not able to see her own.
But she would always have two constants to ground her: Bob, and her work.
Today, we persevere, she thought. With the last gulp of coffee, she threw two ibuprofen down her throat.
The phone buzzed. Nina swung her legs down, sighed, and picked up the phone. Sandy must have come in. Her desk was only ten feet away, through the closed door, but Sandy didn’t like getting up.
“He’s here, and so’s she. Your eight o’clocks,” Sandy said.
“And a fine morning it is.”
“Hmph. You have half an hour.”
The man stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets, looking at one of Sandy ’s decorations, a Washoe Indian basket on the shelf. He wore a green-and-black plaid lumberjack shirt tucked into a well-broken-in pair of jeans. The belt, a leathercraft affair, must have dated from the sixties. Work boots, a body used to physical work.
A conservative local, Nina thought, pegging him almost before he turned around. Nice wrinkled tan face. Grim expression. Plenty of gray-brown hair on both head and chin. A belly, that was a surprise.
Behind him, pretty Chelsi nodded. She was taller than her uncle. She wore her hair down today and it fell straight and satiny. Something had turned off the smile.
“Hi. I’m Nina Reilly,” Nina said, looking the man in the eye, holding out her hand.
