Until (7 page)

In the steam of the bathroom, with the heart now fading from the mirror. With the tea he got up to make just for her on the edge of the countertop. With the memories of the seconds they'd just spent together and the towel nestled at her feet. She mouthed “I love you,” so quietly she couldn't even hear the words. No man had moved her like this one. No man had made her shake and shiver without a single touch. No man had done so much just to bring her joy. While her foster mother would, or could, never understand, she felt her lips wrap around the words once again. “Evander, I love you so much.”

After she backed out of the garage, Betty released the convertible top of her car and picked up her cellular to check her messages. The workday, although it was the weekend, had begun. Behind the gates of Royalton Oaks, most families
pulled out their fishing boats, started searching for antiques, or put up their garage-sale signs on this sunny morning. The smell of dew in the air would soon be replaced with the scent of fresh-cut grass. But enjoying the leisure of the weekend was not a privilege she would allow herself to indulge. As she drove, she glanced at her organizer and her fingertips slid down the to-do section. Betty then pulled out her favorite cassette, Stevie Wonder's
Songs in the Key of Life,
and fast-forwarded the tape to the song “As.”

The sun gave hints of a beautiful day as the temperature was well above the average for the season. While the calendar said it was winter, it was in the low seventies that morning in spite of torrential rains the previous night. The nesting birds let loose in song as Betty drove through the gates of the neighborhood, headed toward the firm.

When the track began, she put on her shades and burst out in song off-key.

The lyrics were special to Betty because she hoped to find that type of love. Unconditional love. The kind of love she could feel comfortable with just as if it were her favorite childhood comforter or a cozy sweater. A love in which she could roll up and rest after a long day. She would feel warm and sheltered from storms in this love, no matter how cold it became outside. The kind of love she would know in her heart would last forever. She had not reached that point with Evander, but she could feel herself getting closer to it each day. With every “I love you” from him, her heart tapped a little harder. With every flower, the words came closer to his ear.

The most difficult aspect in regards to Betty's relationship with Evander was that she lacked a frame of reference. The men who'd preceded him had little or no redeeming qualities to speak of. Her first lover had taken her money and much of her respect for men in general.

Then there was Derrick, who looked like a black Marlboro man and drove a thirty-thousand-dollar automobile. Betty met him at a bookstore one Saturday afternoon in the ancient history section. Her thought was,
Wow. A brother interested in ancient Egypt. One cool point.
He introduced himself without any of the nonsense men often used to mask their
fear when they spoke to ladies.
Two cool points.
He could converse and he had an obvious command of the English language, which was due in part to the fact that he was an English teacher in a high school.
Three points.
Helping with the books, wearing her favorite men's cologne, and walking her out to the car were simply the cherry on top.

Derrick, after a little intelligent banter, asked for her phone number. Betty was not the type of woman who gave out such information, nor was she impressed by most men. Usually she asked men for their numbers if they asked for hers, and said she would call them. But if an exception was to be made to her rule, this would be the man. Derrick was a cocoa-fine brother in more ways than one, with an athletic chest, an L-shaped chin, and sculpted arms.
And after all, he did earn three cool points,
she thought, saying, “555-1831,” as he wrote it in his palm. She even liked the fact he wrote it on his hand, because it showed her he was not there on a mission to pick up women.

As he walked backward, he smiled and opened his hand to show her he had the number, and headed off.
That was cute,
she thought. Then he took out his keys and opened the door to the cherry red SC300, making sure she saw him do so. The personalized, gold-framed vanity plates read
SLIC RIC
.

The attorney came out in Betty as she thought,
Now, I know teachers only make about twenty-six to twenty-eight when they start.
He had told Betty he had been a teacher for three years and received a coaching stipend.
So how could he afford a car like that? Well, maybe he's just a penny-pincher. Maybe his family is affluent. After all, he did appear to be cultured. Or maybe he's selling . . . Well, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Later that night she received the call she'd been waiting for. “Hello . . . this is Derrick,” he said in a deep, sweet, slow-sex voice. “Is, ahh, Betty there?”

“This is Betty. How are you?” she replied as an electrical current of anticipation inched down her spine.

“I'm okay. You remembered my voice?”

“You have a nice voice.”

With a smile in his tone he said, “Thank you. How did the rest of your day turn out?”

“It was okay. Got to run a few errands and rode my bike
for a couple of miles. Then I started reading the book I bought earlier by Tolstoy,
Resurrection.
Good book so far. How about you?” As she finished her sentence, she could hear him muffle the phone with his hand over the receiver and say something to someone else.

“Yeah, umm. I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“I said my day was fine. What about yours?”

“It was okay. Kids are kids, you know. It's always something different with them. Especially when you're trying to get them to practice on the weekends.”

“I'd imagine. It takes a lot of courage to both coach and teach nowadays.” And then she paused and tried to decide if she would go for it now or later.
What the hell. Why not try him now.
“When they pay you guys such meager wages and all.”

“Yeah, you're right.”

She continued like the skilled litigator she was, attempting to extract the truth from a key witness. “I admire you guys, because you have to put up with a lot from kids. They are so different from our generation. It's unfortunate so many teachers have to work a
second
job, just to make a decent living.”

There was a pause, then he said, “Yeah, I know. So tell me, I don't think I ever asked, where do you work?”

I gotta do better.
“Murphy, Renfro and Collins.”

“Oh. Are you a secretary or a paralegal? I used to date a paralegal with Farris and Hall. Or is it Farris and Washington?”

“Ah, no. It's Blount and Farris, and I'm an attorney.” That comment had cost
SLIC
Lexus-Driving, Ancient-Egypt-Reading, Syrupy Barry White-Sounding
RIC
all three
cool
points.

“Damn, that's impressive. Do you like it?”

“It pays the bills.” She wanted to ask,
So tell me, what pays yours?
but she decided to let it die since she'd only spoken to him for all of three minutes.

“I'm sorry, Betty,” he said, and took his hand once again away from the phone's receiver. “What did you say?”

“I said it's okay, nothing special.”

“Damn, one second,” he said. “I have a call coming through.”

Tired of the interruptions, Betty tried to say,
You can call me when it's more convenient for you,
but he switched over before she could get it out. It was obvious he had company. So
if he was with his friends, why would he call me, and why wouldn't they respect him on the phone?

“It's for you,” she heard him say as he clicked over. “Betty, are you there? Betty? Betty!”

“Yeah, I'm here,” she said, and tried to figure out what was going on.

“Can I call you back? An important call just came through.”

“Sure, no problem,” she said as she thought she now knew what was happening. Then she heard the nail in the coffin.

“Derrick, is that Pastor Camps on the phone?” an elderly lady's voice asked in the background.

She heard Derrick's muffled and aggravated voice saying, “Yeah! Damn! One second! Betty, ah, I'll call you in, about thirty minutes, okay?” As he spoke to her, he obviously tried to take the agitated edge out of his voice, with little success.

“That's fine,” she replied with a smile, and then hung up before he could say good-bye. “So that's it.”
Homeboy fronting in a Lexus and living off his momma. How trifling,
she thought, and laughed to herself.
Brother drives an expensive car like that and walks around his momma's house in his drawers eating out of the fridge every day?
“And had the nerve to catch an attitude with his momma—about her phone no less!” she said out loud. For the next two weeks Betty checked the Caller ID box before she answered the phone until
SLIC RIC
stopped leaving messages.

And then there was Abdul, an ultra black man who always said
salam alaikum
to everybody and everything. Unfortunately, everything he knew about Islam he learned from Spike Lee's movie about Malcolm X. Abdul, who never changed his name legally from Reggie Carter, worked as a loan officer in the university credit union and did some computer programming on the side.

He wasn't the cutest brother on the block, but he had a confidence in himself that made him attractive. He knew
what he wanted, and nothing, absolutely nothing, could stop him from getting it. Or so he thought.

After he took her to a film festival, they enjoyed dinner at The Sovereign, which happened to be in the basement of her firm's building and featured a spectacular view of the lake lit in a red sunset. Afterward he escorted Betty to her apartment and walked in as if he'd been invited. The conversation at dinner had been okay. A little long on rhetoric and he was a bit too self-aggrandizing, but that was all right when she considered the alternative.

Betty enjoyed it when a man took control. She was old-fashioned in that regard. But everything had a limit. She chose not to change clothes or even remove her high heels because she didn't wish to send the wrong message. Picking up the remote, Betty turned on “BET Tonight.” As she sat on the couch, she placed it beside her because there was a feature on African-American superstar attorneys, so there was no need to channel-surf. Abdul stood and looked at her sitting and then looked at Tavis Smiley as if he wondered,
Why are we watching this?

“You're welcome to sit if you like,” Betty said, and moved a pillow aside.

He looked at the TV and then, without taking his eyes off it, he sat beside her. Abdul reached across her for the remote as she thought,
I know this is a take-charge brother and all, but I hope he is not about to do what I think he is going to do. I know he is not going to change stations during Tavis.
And to her surprise, he didn't. He turned the TV off. As Tavis's face disappeared, the click bounced around the room, or at least it sounded that way to Betty.
Ooo-kayy,
she thought,
now I gotta hurt this fool's feelings.

Abdul lunged into the kiss and did not say a word. It was obvious he had watched a lot of cable TV or daytime soaps. Unfortunately for him, he was not nearly as successful as the actors he emulated. Betty's forearm went up and caught him between his chin and Adam's apple. She saw his eyes bulge as he let out a sharp grunt. The look was similar to the Three Stooges routine when Moe would slap Curly and Larry with one swat, but Abdul looked funnier.

“Heyyy, li'l bit, what's wrong?” he said in a perplexed voice as he rubbed his throat.

I know he didn't call me li'l bit.
“Nothing. I just think this is moving a little fast.”

“Too fast for a kiss?”

“Well,” she said in an attempt to be diplomatic, “who knows what a kiss could lead to? I just don't think—”

Wrong words. Abdul smiled with one of those
your lips are saying no, no, no, but your eyes are saying yes, yes, yes
smiles. “Baby, it's time for you to exhale, because a kiss can't take
you
anywhere
you
don't wanna go.”

Is that the best line you could come up with?
“I'm not ready for this,
Abdul,”
she reasserted as he continued to press his body against hers. Abdul was a small man, and since she was just a hair shorter, it was not a physical match made in heaven. If he were larger, she may have been a little more intimidated. But since she could look him in the eye in her stocking feet and spent the entire evening glancing over his head in her heels, she thought,
If push comes to shove, I'll just slap the hell out of him and send him home.
Since things had gone on a little longer in the touchy-grabby phase of the date, she'd been left with no choice. She'd had to hurt more than just his feelings.

Thinking back on it all, Betty, who had decided not to hot-curl her hair after all, smiled as her fingers tugged on the brim of her baseball cap. As she swiped her employee parking card to raise the guardrail, she noticed the normally empty parking lot was uncommonly full of cars.

“What!” Betty said
in shock as she dropped her attaché and thermos on her desk. “When?”

“That's what I said when I heard about it. Mr. Murphy had a massive heart attack,” Carol, a secretary Betty shared at the firm, said. “We got the news yesterday. I saw the files I left on your desk were missing and could tell you had been by. I knew you were working from home and tried to call you, but actually, I wasn't at my best. None of us were. Can you imagine what that penny-pinching weasel Renfro will do to this place? You remember how he tried to fire half of the clerical pool a couple of years ago. Yesterday most of the paralegals and secretaries were updating their résumés, for Pete's sakes.”

“Oh my God,” Betty said, unable to close her mouth as she blocked out Carol's last comment regarding job security. “I can't believe this. I wondered why no one was at the reception desk when we walked in yesterday. When we were leaving, I saw Lisa in the back with the secretaries, but it never dawned on me it could have been something like this.”

“It's true!” Carol said. Her red, medium-length hair was gathered in a bun with a number-two pencil, and her burgundy heckles stood away from her white complexion. “This place has been an absolute zoo ever since.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how those assholish partners are. It's all about money with them. They're trying to get a senior partnership or a place on the executive board. And the associates? They're just as bad. You can see it on their faces.”

Betty couldn't stop thinking about Jack Murphy. He was of Irish ancestry and was always willing to share the latest joke he had heard. He would set his appointments around attorneys' birthday parties and demanded everyone attend, including the partners. His wife, Agnes, even sent cards to all employees and their spouses on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries.

He took pride in calling the members of the firm “family.” Each year the annual Christmas party was celebrated at one of the Murphy homes, either the one in the city or the one on nearby Amelia Island. While everyone in the firm would draw names, Jack and Agnes always bought gifts for each of the more than 125 employees and their spouses.

While Jack Murphy could be generous, he was a calculating and at times ruthless attorney. He was the lead litigator in each of the three largest cases awarded the firm. Unlike most senior partners, he enjoyed the fire of the courtroom. He would get as excited while practicing in his fifth decade as if he were preparing to deliver his first summation. He would always litigate with his toothy smile and familiar charisma. His favorite expression was “Kill them with kindness.” Now he fought with every breath in his body for his life.

“So the vultures are lining up in formation already?” Betty asked as she sat behind her desk.

“Yeah, and we were just out of it yesterday. I came in today to work on a few things O'Shaughnessy gave me as well as to find the files you needed for the Henderson Electric case.”

“I can't believe this! He was the picture of health. Poor Agnes.”

“Yes, Mrs. Murphy has always been good to all of us, you know.”

“Have any of you been out to see him yet?” Betty asked as she handed Carol a tissue from the box on her desk to
wipe her eyes. “Except I guess he's still in ICU, so we can't, right?”

“Yeah. We took up a collection for flowers, but Lisa thought about it and told us we couldn't even send them yet. She even tried to call last night and find out if they had upgraded his condition, but they wouldn't tell her anything since she wasn't family.”

“So what are you doing here, on a Saturday, at eight o'clock no less?”

“Like I said, we didn't do anything yesterday. It's sad to say it, but people were either praying the man would live so they could keep their job or hoping things would happen so they could get a promotion. I feel bad even thinking that, but it's true. I've got almost twenty years invested in this place and I know Renfro would love to get rid of me and hire someone for half as much. Lisa just said we should all try to ignore it, pray for Mr. Murphy, and come in early today to catch up on our work so we could get out before noon.”

“Well, that would explain why there are so many cars out there today.”

“Darling, they tell me they really are already discussing his replacement, and it's a domino effect for the other partners and associates, you know. Shush,” Carol said with her finger to her lips as she turned to look into the hallway. “Hello, Mr. Patterson. How are you today, sir?” she said to the middle-aged balding attorney wearing Docker shorts and carrying his six iron.

“Fine, ladies, fine,” he said as he looked at Betty. “So, are you as shocked about this as I am?” Patterson was considered a loner and rarely spoke to the other employees. Rumor had it he'd transferred to the firm from Stamford, Connecticut, with a partnership as bait, but four years later he was still an associate.

“I just heard about it this morning,” Betty said between sips of tea. “Do you know if anyone has spoken with Agnes?”

“I'm told she and the boys are doing well, considering. Renfro has been out to the hospital several times, and Burt Collins will be there this morning with Cee Cee, and then
possibly Danny and Beatrice Lake this evening. Muffy and I sent Agnes and the boys a fruit basket to the house, but outside of that, there's just not much we can do but wait. Jack's secretary, umm, umm . . . What's her name?” he asked, looking at Betty.

“Paula,” Carol said in monotone.

“Ah, yeah,” he said with a brief glance at Carol. “She told me there were telegrams and faxes from the governor's office and even one from Senator Graham.” And then R. Raymond Patterson added with faux sincerity as he leaned his stubby body against the door, “That man was an institution in this state. In this country, in fact. Everybody loved Jack Murphy.”

“That's true,” Betty said.

Jack Murphy had been instrumental in Betty's recruitment and subsequent hiring. It was rumored that two of the partners, one of whom was Renfro, had been against the first African-American female associate joining the firm. Ten years earlier, an African-American male who had barely passed the bar had been brought into the fold. When Renfro caught him at his desk asleep, he was forever used as the excuse not to integrate. But Murphy, in his delicate and yet effective way, got what he wanted like a velvet bulldozer.

“Yep. He's one heck of a man,” Patterson said, and then there was dead silence. Betty and Carol glanced at each other with looks that said,
Why is he still in here?
as Patterson glanced around Betty's office.

With a glimpse at her watch Betty said, “Well, I better get to work, guys. If you hear anything else, Ray, please let me know.”

“You betcha, Betsy.” And then he glanced at her nameplate on the door. “I mean, ahh, Betty.”

Betty and Carol gave each other weak smiles, and then Carol followed him out the door after saying 'bye with a wink.

Betty looked at the pile of work in her in-box and prepared to catch up from the day missed as she noticed a note from George O'Shaughnessy.

To:       Betty

From:  George

If you have an opening
@
12:30 for lunch on Monday, Sampkins and I would like to run something by you. Please let me know.

O'Shaughnessy was the oldest associate in the firm and was connected in the political arena from having served as a bodyguard for former governor Claude Kirk and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. He was a husky man, which bespoke his previous profession. If he had not ended up as an attorney, he could have used his six-foot-eight-inch rock truck of a frame as a bouncer. O'Shaughnessy was in his midsixties and had spent thirty of those years in law enforcement with the state of Florida.

He'd had the tenacity to attend and receive a law degree from a diploma mill and had taken the bar five times before he'd received the letter in the mail stating he had passed. Content with his position in the firm, O'Shaughnessy never played the office politics game. He was satisfied with just being an associate. This made him popular with the other attorneys and the clerical staff as well, because he was free to say what he felt.

O'Shaughnessy had an adequate win percentage, and his billable hours were in league with the other associates. His goal was to stay above the normal office jockeying for position and to enjoy his employment with Murphy, Renfro and Collins before he retired with his wife and camping equipment to Flagstaff.

Betty, on the other hand, was a cash register to the firm. Her billable hours were thirty percent higher than the second highest associate, who happened to be R. Raymond Patterson. She was a rainmaker to the concern, not because Jack Murphy was her mentor, but because she did as she'd been instructed as a child. She always worked twice as hard as the next person.

An hour after the departure of R. Raymond, George O'Shaughnessy tapped on the door. Betty, who was dressed
in her sorority red and white sweat suit, had her white Keds perched on top of the desk. As she reviewed the Henderson Electric file, she was not in the mood for company.

“How are you doing, Betty?”

“Fine,” she said, and peered over the top of the reading glasses she wore as a result of studying for hours in badly lit dormitories and coffeehouses. “And yourself?”

“I can't complain, can't complain,” he said, and looked at a chair with her attaché on it. “May I?”

“Sure.”

“So what do you think about what's going on in this place?”

After she took a breath, Betty put her feet on the floor, rested her elbows on her desk, and tugged softly at the brim of her cap. “I just hope he pulls through,” she said, trying to camouflage her pain.

“Hey, don't you worry, little darling. Jack Murphy is one of the toughest kids on the block,” he said, with his Brooklyn accent somehow preserved after all the years in the sun belt. “I've known da man twenty, thirty years, and it'll take more than a li'l cramp in his ticker to take him out, believe you me.”

“I hope so,” she said, and made eye contact with him. “The only reason I came to this firm and decided to stay in this godforsaken town was because of Murphy. He wasn't like the others who talked to me. I could have done better with several firms in Atlanta, Dallas, or New York. In fact, I even had a firm here in town offer me more. It was never just about money with Jack. I guess—” her voice lowered—“that's why he has so much of it now. He once told me that money was a great servant but a terrible master. He spoke of the honor of this profession. About something called
ethics.
Even after I graduated, I debated if one could be ethical and still be a successful attorney. I found out the answer to that question by watching Jack Murphy. No one else, and I mean no one I spoke to, talked like that. Those were the reasons I initially wanted to practice instead of going into medicine,” she said as she stared through George O'Shaughnessy. “He spoke of the law in such, I don't know, in such eloquent terms. He has such a passion for what we do.”
And then she added in a whisper as she thought about the words she'd said, “Mr. Murphy is what I wanted, I mean, would like to be.”

“Well,” O'Shaughnessy said in a consoling tone, “he'll be okay, darling. You know,” he said, and tried to change the subject with the tact of a hungry pit bull in a butcher shop, “I was talking to Pete Sampkins last night about a case he's preparing a motion of dismissal on and it reminded me of you.”

Betty, who'd taken another tissue from her box for her nose, looked at O'Shaughnessy.

“It appears this
African-American
kid is being denied a promotion with a Subaru distribution center and he's saying it's because of racism. He has no evidence as such. They have no other legal precedence for making the claim, yet because he is black, I mean
African-American,
it's discriminatory. He wants a promotion based solely on affirmative action, and that's just not right. Call me crazy, but I just don't understand it,” he said with a smile and shake of his Nixonion jowls. “I hate it when people use racism as an excuse for anything and everything that happens. When you cry wolf like that, the next time someone comes with a valid claim, they'll be ignored. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've been around. My father couldn't get work in the union because of our last name. So I understand where you're coming from with the racism thing there. But you can't always blame it on race.” As he spoke, Betty sat poker-faced. “Which is why I thought about you. Because you are the perfect example of what is
wrong
with affirmative action.”

Betty tilted forward in her chair and removed her glasses. “Oh really?”

“Hell yeah!” he replied with a raised voice. “Look at you! You're black, I mean
African-American,
as well as a woman. I've worked with you on a couple of cases and you're a pretty good lawyer. I don't know what type of upbringing you've had, but you have had every reason in the world to give up. Every time I see Jesse Jackson or that Fair-a-con, yelling about quotas and affirmative action—I tell you, I think about you. Because,” he said, and thumped his fist on the edge of her desk, causing Betty to look at the ripples in
her tea, “it's people like you who show black folk that you
can
pull yourself up by your bootstraps in this country. In America,” he finished, and thumped his fist with every syllable, “the opportunity is there for anybody if they want it, by golly. But some people—and I'm not just talking about the black people, there's some sorry-assed white folks out there too—would starve to death with a ham under each arm.”