Once Upon Another Time (4 page)

 “Excuse me Ms.
McCory,” said Cohen, “do you or do you not have the date of the incident?”

My head shot up
from staring absentmindedly at a faint coffee ring on the glass-topped table,
to see Cohen glance at his watch with an irritable flick of his wrist. 

 “Yes, I have the
date right here.  April tenth.”  I pulled a signed deposition out of a manila
folder and handed it to Cohen.

Greenburg leaned
in Rossi’s direction.  “Rip her throat out,” he whispered loudly. 

One side of
Cohen’s mouth turned up as he sat forward in his chair, like something finally
caught his attention.  Greenburg
’s wife
who looked chic
and rich, and very
Dynasty-like
dressed in
a
white suit, dark sunglasses, black wide-brimmed sun hat and air of entitlement,
shot a stiff look at her husband.
  Greenburg turned away from her and
gave me a grisly stare, while adjusting his two hundred dollar Bulgari tie.
 

My client, Mr.
Levy, a bulky puddle of a man, fidgeted in his seat like he had Mexican jumping
beans in his underwear.  His witness,
Mr. Peach, a thin, shy,
aristocratic-looking man with silvery gray hair, looked at Levy and raised an
eyebrow. 

Tilting my head, I
aimed a smile at Rossi.  “The agreement is on the table.  We think it’s more
than fair,” I said, as I
adjusted the cuffs of my crisp white
blouse under a black pinstripe suit.  “However, if you prefer we take this into
litigation, I'll see you in court.  It’s up to you.”  

I
pushed my chair slightly back from the conference table and crossed my legs,
while thinking about narcissistic
personalities like Greenburg.  People
of notoriety or of unscrupulous behavior preferred to settle lawsuits out of
court, as to avoid unwanted publicity.  They generally played dirtier and were
more decadent than run of the mill company heads, and just the kind of
challenge I thrived on.

“I don’t see what
relevance any of this has,” said Rossi, as she batted a wavy lock of chocolate
brown hair out of her eye like an irritating thought. 

My eyes grew to
the size of watermelons.  
Is she joking?

Cohen removed his
eyeglasses and kneaded the bridge of his nose.  “The relevance is that Ms.
McCory took an M4 assault rifle and blew a hole through what your witness had
stated an hour ago,” he said.  His squinty, pudgy eyes magnified like stones
under water as he placed the eyeglasses back on his face.

Greenburg looked
confused, as if someone turned off the lights and switched up the furniture. 

The thought of
someone shredding my face with a cheese grater and applying liberal doses of
lemon juice, couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.  In law, rattling your
opponent’s cage is like getting a touchdown at the Super Bowl or winning
employment as a personal massage therapist for George Clooney. 

My posture suddenly
took on the erectness of a catholic schoolgirl, as tingly static-like energy
pulses grazed my skin, the sensation skittering up and down my arms and spine. 
And then I heard it, the faint sound of tinkling wind chimes traveling into the
room.  Just a phantom echo rattling around in my head, I thought, when the
pitch of the chimes became clearer and purer like the reverberation of a
tinkling sound made by flicking a finger against a fine crystal glass.  My
stomach lurched, as the others carried on business in the usual manner. 

A tight-lipped
smile crossed my face as I looked at Rossi.  She pointed her nose upward as if
she were sniffing the air and turned toward Cohen to argue her point.  As the
tinkling chimes grew louder, I tried to not react as if I were hiding a dead
body under the conference table.  But seriously, my nerve endings felt like
dangling electrical wires. 

Perhaps the
strange oddities I’d experienced were precursors for totally losing my mind! 

I held my palm to
my chest, as if trying to keep my heart from falling out onto the floor, and
turned toward Cohen to state my case.  “The complaint for my client, Mr. Levy,
set out solid and substantial--”

“
Ms
.
McCory,” said Rossi, while slapping her palms on the tabletop and springing to
her feet, her shoulders hunched like a hyena. 

Rossi not being
able to sit for a long period was understandable, as figuratively speaking,
she’d always had a stick stuck up her ass.  But she was becoming a little
theatrical, and the sound of wind chimes playing in my mind was becoming a
little louder. 

“Let me make something
very clear,” Rossi said.  A lock of hair fell over her eye, causing her to
blink in rapid succession, sort of mimicking the pace of my heart.  “There is
no evidence whatsoever that my client was involved in any malicious behavior.” 

Laura made an
indistinct coughing sound.  Her eyes widened to show emerald colored irises
framed by long black lashes.  I looked at her perfectly manicured nails that
always wore colors with fun names like Don’t Socra-Tease Me, Aphrodite’s Pink
Nightie, and Fiji Weegee Fawn.  I glanced at my natural, unpainted nails and
couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of myself as fun and frivolous.

“Ms. Rossi,” I
replied, when a strange buzz clouded my head.  Pausing, I reached for my glass
of water and took a sip.  “I’m sorry, as I was saying.  We believe our
complaint for our client, Mr. Levy, set out solid and substantial claims for
reputational injury caused by your client’s malicious and irresponsible
conduct.  And we obviously have proof of that with two signed depositions and
our witness, Mr. Peach.”

As the last word
left my lips, the buzz in my head turned into a drone of voices.  The thoughts
of
all
eight people in the room talking in my head at once sounded like
a televised GOP brawl on C-SPAN.

The air in my
lungs felt thin, while tiny stars shimmered on the walls and wind chimes tinkled
like raindrops all around me.  I knew I was in trouble, but I had no idea to
what extent, and then I turned toward Cohen.  As my breath hitched in my throat,
everything went silent, as if I had submerged underwater.  The boardroom took
on a soft, hazy glow, while Greenburg’s flailing arms looked like slow moving
blades on a fan, barely cutting through the air.  Cohen’s head shook from
side-to-side in slow motion, his words sounding like loud noises from a stifled
trombone, while I focused on the wall behind him.

The library of
legal reference books housed on one full wall of cabinets behind glass doors,
showed though the transparent image of a man’s body.  Attributes quickly came
into view--a warm smile and expressive eyes the color of amber jewels backlit
by the sun, broad shoulders, the sleeves on his sky blue shirt rolled up over
his forearms.  His hands shoved into the pant pockets of his light khakis. 
Minus a set of splayed wings shooting out from behind him, Matt looked like an
angel all glowing and bright. 

At home, I could
handle the situation, but how in the
hell
was I supposed to handle this
at the office?  As I gripped my chest with both hands I thought about Fred
Sanford crying out, “I’m coming Elizabeth, it’s the big one!” 

And then I glanced
at the people seated at the conference table and everything changed.  The faces
staring back at me looked as if they were straight out of “Deliverance.”  The
people were scary, the room was scary, the lights, the pointy pens, the double
closed doors, everything!  All while Matt glowed like a glorious day of
brilliant sunshine.  The kind of day that fools you into thinking your life is
perfect. 

I squeezed my eyes
shut, and when I opened them, I was no longer in the boardroom.  A bright light
whitewashed my surroundings, making me squint and wonder whether I was still in
Providence or perhaps had slipped through some whirlwind portal into Nebraska. 
I was all alone in a state of confusion, but didn’t know where I was or how I
had gotten there.  All I knew was that a total nervous breakdown is when your
brain is too tired and decides to take the next jet out to Hawaii to sit
poolside and sip piña coladas. 

“Oh, crap!”  My
voice cracked, as I shouted a knee-jerk reaction after my sight came back into
focus.  Battleship gray institutional looking walls surrounded me. 
Had the
white jackets locked me up?

I felt a sudden
poke to my back, causing me to flinch and slam my shin against something hard. 
I looked down to see a toilet.  Behind me was a metal door with a coat hook. 
Oddly enough, I held my cell phone and tiny battery operated fan in one hand
and a lit cigarette in the other.  How I ended up in a bathroom stall within
the building was anyone’s guess. 

Setting the fan on
the back of the toilet, I rubbed my forehead, as if I were trying to rub some
sense into my brain.  “Thank God I haven’t been institutionalized with the rest
of the crazies,” I said under my breath, while twisting the band on my watch to
see the face.  Roughly, ten minutes had passed since I was in the boardroom. 
Wonderful, now I was having blackouts.  However, that was the least of my
problems.

It was one thing
to see Matt at the house, but the office!  My heart thumped as I inhaled deeply
on the cigarette while thinking about spirits, ghosts, and the afterlife.  I
knew nothing about any of it, nor did I understand why Matt would be following
me around, other than haunting me for causing his death.  But wouldn’t he have
done that right after he died instead of years later?  Thinking back to my
childhood, I should have paid better attention to my parents conversing with
their friends about parallel universes.

I wasn’t convinced
I wasn’t totally batty.  It seemed the most logical.  Almost seven years of a
dark secret about Matt’s death rooted somewhere in my head, could have caused
me to go insane.  That, combined with my dysfunctional childhood was enough to
scramble anyone’s brain.  After all, how sane can one expect to be after
growing up with parents who people referred to as the Abbie and Anita Hoffman
of suburbia?  Hippies who invited half-naked people to backyard bonfires, grew
alfalfa sprouts in the bathtub, and constantly quoted Zen Buddhism. 

Then there was my
luck, which I had none of, that played into my rationalization.  I’m a McCory,
being insane would have been too normal, too easy. 

Incredible as it
seemed my obsession of wanting to see Matt might have pushed me over the
threshold into another world, or had opened some type of portal from beyond
into the living, or that I really was so totally insane that these options
actually seemed to make a small amount of sense.

Years before in my
grief class while I sat with a group of women in the hospital meeting room on
creaky folding chairs in a big circle and sipped tea from a Styrofoam cup, I
tried to will it to be that Matt was still alive.  A widow was not supposed to
be a twenty-eight year old pregnant woman.  Widows wore cable knit cardigans
and had a hint of blue in their white hair and veins on the backs of their hands
that resemble roadmaps.  Even so, one common thread bound us all, and that was
the longing for the miracle of communication from beyond to see and speak to
our spouses one last time. 

Happenstance had
brought Matt and me together the first time, but when it happened a second time,
I knew it was fate.  Matt had grown up in Kearny, a small town dwarfed by the
shadows of nearby Newark and New York.  Both of his parents were professors at
Rutgers University in Brunswick, and at the time, I was completing my law
degree. 

I was at Rutgers
stadium with my friends.  The Scarlet Knights were playing against UNC.  The
stadium was busting at the seams with hooting, hollering, and high-fiving
college kids.  Charging up from the lower bleachers was this bare-chested guy
leading the pack.  His upper body and face painted red with a slash of white
across his eyes like the stripe on a raccoon. 

We both tried to
get out of each other’s way, but sidestepped in the same direction.  I was miffed
that his painted body nearly missed getting on my white angora sweater. 
“Excuse me,” he said.  I looked into his beautiful whisky-colored eyes and felt
we had shared a moment, right before he shot past me, climbing to the higher
bleachers.  I couldn’t get his beautiful, soulful, eyes out of my mind. 
Occasionally, we’d cross paths on campus in the central quadrangle.  Neither of
us spoke a word to each other, but still there was always that special moment
when our eyes locked.

Back in Providence
on spring break, I had stopped at Iovino’s Market at the corner of Depasquale
and Kenyon Street to grab some lunch.  When it was my turn to order, I asked
for the Italian tuna, and a voice behind me said, “Make that two.”  I turned
around to see those familiar whisky-colored eyes staring back at me.  “Hi,”
said Matt, with a cocky smile.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Although it was
unrealistic, it felt as if fate has brought us back together again.

“Ouch!”  The coat hook on the stall
door jabbed at my back one too many times.  Annoyed, I turned quickly.  My tush
slammed into the gray transparent jumbo toilet paper dispenser.  Of all the
stalls in a twenty-story building, I’d chosen one so tiny you’d have thought
it’d take a small explosive to dislodge me from it.

 As smoke wafted
out through the silent O of my lips, I pondered the thought of whether crazy
people truly know if they’ve gone off the deep end.  Are there times before
they lose complete touch with reality when they rationalize the craziness? 
Like me trying to rationalize the existence of my husband’s ghost haunting me. 
Not the kind of thought most people entertain.  Certainly, not people who ooze
confidence and fit into the heady spheres of society like Laura.  A serious
problem for her could mean a single raindrop had hit the top of her kid-suede
Gucci stilettos or that her hairdresser had gone out of town for the weekend
and failed to notify her.