A: Well, Bill, of course, he wasn’t the first.
Q: Kleeb, you mean. Well, who was?
A: Oh, a boy from home. When I was, like, fourteen?
Q: That’s young.
A: Nah. Not for me. I was ready.
Q: Who was he?
A: Another farm boy. I just like farm boys, I guess.
Q: Why do you think that is?
A: Big muscles. Tattoos. No brains. (Giggle, giggle) I even got married, once upon a time.
Q: I didn’t know that.
A: Nobody does.
Q: When was that?
Christ. Barbara Fucking Walters. I tried to concentrate, but it wasn’t easy. I struggled to listen to this self-indulgent tripe, but I hadn’t slept all night. And I hadn’t had my coffee. It was criminal working conditions, no pliers and no caffeine.
A: When I was eighteen. He was twenty. An older man.
Q: Twenty? A regular Methuselah.
A: A what?
Q: Forget it. Go on about your marriage. It’s good background information for the character.
A: Do you really think it’ll be a movie-of-the-week?
Q: I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. So go on, okay? I want to get the tapes to the agent right away.
A: Will I get a copy?
Q: (sighing) I’ll make one for you. Just tell the story, please.
A: Well, my husband, he was (unintelligible)-
Q: What was he?
A: He was… abusive. He used to hit me, when he drank.
Q: Really.
A: Uh… yes. The shit.
Q: Did you ever take pictures of it, like Polaroids?
A: No.
Q: Did you ever go to the hospital for it?
A: No.
Q: (disappointed) Well, how often did he hit you?
A: Once a week, or twice, for a long time.
Q: Then you divorced him. You had to raise yourself up and divorce him, right?
A: No I just left him. The lawyers weren’t no help. I got the court orders, one after the other, but he just kept comin’ back. Beatin’ me. There wasn’t nothin’ the courts could do about it. Half the time the police wouldn’t even come.
My head was beginning to pound. I rubbed my eyes to stay awake. The sadness in her story was lost on me. She was a victim, so she victimized. I accept no excuses for murder. An innocent man was dead at her hand and maybe Bill, too.
I shifted in my chair and my gaze fell upon a Daumier sketch on the wall. A lawyer slipping his hand into his client’s pocket or the other way around, but the glass over the print reflected something else. A figure. A man in the library stacks, in a dark suit jacket. He was bent over reading a book. I couldn’t see his head or face, but his back looked familiar. I held my head down to avoid being recognized.
Q: So you never even divorced him?
A: Nope.
Q: You’re married to him, now?
A: No. I heard he died. He got shot.
Q: (impressed) No shit. In a bar? Or by a gang or something?
A: No, no. A hunting accident. He always drank when he hunted, so did his buddies. Dumb shits.
Hunting. I flashed on the cabin in the woods. Bill’s cold body. Was there a connection? My eyes fell on the Daumier sketch. In the reflection, the hunched figure turned the page of his book. Who was he? Did he recognize me? Was he a cop? I tried to remember the cops I knew who worked plainclothes. I covered my face with my hand, like I was getting a headache, which I was.
Q: Okay, so let’s get on with it.
A: It was the courts, you know. They fucked it up.
Q: Eileen, I told you, don’t talk like that on the tape.
A: Sorry, but they did. I went to the law clinic, you know, to try to get whatever it’s called to keep him away from me.
Q: A TRO, a temporary restraining order?
A: Yeah, that’s it. But the courts, those judges, they don’t know the score.
The figure had shelved his book and was moving in the stacks now, right down the aisle toward the listening booth. I doubled over quickly and pretended I was coughing.
A: (excited) I don’t care, they don’t know shit.
Q: Who was your lawyer?
A: At the clinic?
Q: Yes.
A: Just one of the clinic lawyers.
Q: Can you remember his name?
Suddenly there was a hard rap on the glass door of the booth. My stomach tensed. I didn’t know what to do. I turned up the volume on the tape player and hoped he’d go away.
A: Why do you need the name?
Q: In case we need to get a release for the TV movie. You need releases if it’s real people.
A: (pausing) Oh. It was a girl. Uh… Renee. Renee something, I think. I’ll have to get back to you on that. I don’t know where she is now, anyway.
Huh? What? Renee? Could Eileen’s lawyer have been Renee Butler? I couldn’t believe my ears. I hit theREWIND button just as the door swung open behind me.
34
Is that you?” he asked, shocked.
“Is thatyou?” I asked, equally shocked. It was Grady, my lawyer and faithless lover. I wondered fleetingly if these things would always go together in my life. Maybe that was the problem.
“Bennie!” He closed the door quickly behind him, his gray eyes relieved.
“Grady, how the hell are you! Here’s a good one. How can you tell when a man is lying?”
“What?”
“His lips are moving.”
His brow knit in confusion. “What are you talking about? Where have you been? What are you doinghere? I’ve been worried about you.”
“Of course you have. That’s why you needed consoling the other morning.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” he drawled, squatting down so that he was eye-level with me.
“What am Italkin ’ about?” I rolled my chair backward, even though he was wearing my favorite dark blue work-shirt and khakis. I should’ve known he’d cheat. Nobody could do that much for a workshirt and not cheat. “I’mtalkin ’ about that woman. Was it your old girlfriend? Backsliding, again?”
“Who? I’m not seeing her anymore, I told you.”
“Then who answered your phone, Grady? It was morning. You were asleep.”
“Was it Sunday?”
“I guess.”
His forehead uncreased and he smiled. “That was Marshall. She told me somebody called and hung up. She came by and spent the night. On the couch, of course.”
“Marshall?” I heard myself sounding stupid and felt even stupider than I sounded. “She talked so softly, I didn’t recognize her voice.”
“She’d been upset and wanted to know the truth about you. That’s why she ran off, she was worried you might have done it. She thought you found Mark’s hidden files, she knew he was setting up his new firm. We talked until late, and she stayed over on Sunday.”
“Marshall, huh.” My face felt hot. So I’d been wrong to suspect either of them of anything. I wanted off the subject. “What are you doing here anyway?”