Jenny’s hatred of Michael was starting to feel like its own bloviated mass. She saw him standing by the Federal Courthouse cafeteria, looking at the white and gray landscape of the harbor, and she wanted to run. The view was stunning in all other seasons, but in the winter, the seaport district was all wind and cold, whipping her as she walked from the State Street T, mocking her with howls as she made her way over the footbridge by the Barking Crab.
Inside, Michael—hands behind his back, surveying the view, as if he owned it, said instead of greeting her, “Just three more months until my boat’ll be out right there.” He jammed his finger in the general area of Rose Wharf. “Right there,” he repeated.
Jenny nodded, not saying anything. They walked together to the courtroom in silence. She could feel him sweating next to her as they sat waiting for the judge. They both stared intently at the briefing papers. It was all show. Michael was usually underprepared, and Jenny was always overprepared, even though there was no point. She never got to speak. Michael never let her. She was just the numbers maven, the spreadsheet girl, the exhibit curator. She knew her role. Whenever she came to court, though, she acted as if he might say, “Take it from here.”
And then—today of all days—he did exactly that. The bailiff jolted Jenny from her stony, self-righteous silence with a bellowing, “All rise!”
“I’m moving your briefing schedule back two weeks to make up for the snow days,” the judge said first. “Any objection?”
The plaintiff’s counsel, represented by a lawyer who favored thin knit ties, said, “Thank you, Your Honor,” as if the decision hadn’t just delayed settlement and thus the award of their contingency fee.
“Thanks,” Michael said into the mic at the table.
“Thanks?” the judge said. Her tone wasn’t hostile, but it was pointed enough that Michael clued in rather fast.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” he said. The judge pursed her lips and looked at him.
“We’ll start with the Van Croughton Daubert,” she said.
Michael looked nervously around the room and then down at Jenny’s notepad. She could tell he was distracted. His lips moved a little as he scanned her outline, which was built around the concession that the zero calculation was unreasonable. Jenny fought the impulse to stretch her forearm across the page so Michael couldn’t read it. But it was shared work product, of course. Nothing to hide. She had made it for him.
The knit-tie lawyer cleared his throat and stood. Jenny started taking notes, writing down most of what he said, nearly transcribing. That’s what she always did. Took down the volume and parsed out the main points later.
While Knit Tie was still speaking, though, Michael yanked the paper away from her. “I’ll do that. Just listen.”
“Why?” Jenny whispered, ready to grab the pad back. They had already missed a few seconds.
“You’re going to argue it,” he said.
Jenny flushed, and her heart started beating furiously. If Knit Tie stopped speaking she was sure the courtroom would pick up the sound over the microphone.
She told herself to listen, but all she could hear was a jumble of words. She took the printed outline from its folder and clutched it in her hand. Michael looked at her and smiled. It was a small one, but it was, for the first time that morning or for several weeks—months, maybe—a break in the tension between them. It was a smile of encouragement. Of faith.
So, she summoned her courage, and when the judge said, “Counsel for BlueCoast Bank?” Jenny stood up. Not too fast, not too slow. She tried to appear graceful behind the podium. She knew what she had to say, because she believed it. Wholeheartedly, without fail. She could finally say it.
“First of all, Your Honor, we voluntarily withdraw Mr. Van Croughton’s zero damages calculation.” She wanted to say, “because it was a hack job,” but the judge would know that was the reason anyway.
She nodded. “So, we are just wasting my time?”
“With all due respect, Your Honor, the plaintiffs also moved against the alternate damages scenario, and we strenuously oppose their motion with respect to the seventy million. If I may, I’d like to—”
“Stop, Ms. O’Toole. We should reschedule this for when the expert can defend that one himself. I was inclined to rule against you on both, but without the zero estimate you have regained some of your waning credibility.”
Jenny could have screamed with glee, jumped up and down, but she swallowed and let just a small smile come through. Oh, how she would gloat later. She didn’t even need to say anything to Michael; it could stay unspoken. She had won.
But she wanted to win even more. She wanted to do this herself, here, now, keep the seventy million estimate in. The expert who drafted the other report didn’t need to be there. Jenny had written the whole damn thing herself, even though that was technically against the rules.
“Your Honor, with all due respect, if you’d allow me to use my allotted time to briefly overview the estimates, I think you’ll see that—”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, Your Honor, if you’ll permit me to approach—”
Beside her she heard the nasal, whirring sound of Michael’s labored breathing. Nerves, or what, she didn’t know. It was as loud as her heart. She walked to the judge with the exhibit printouts in hand.
The judge took the papers and thumbed through them faster than she could have even read the captions. “You prepared these?”
“I supported the expert in his preparation of the materials.”
The judge looked down at Jenny and crossed her arms, regarding her. Jenny could sense that she suspected this was Jenny’s first argument, knew that it was Jenny who’d prepared the whole report, knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t leave the courtroom without winning.
“Very well, continue,” she said, and Jenny was off—introducing the methodology, explaining its rationales, describing the stock drop damages with such precision even the plaintiff’s attorney seemed to be listening, not just for rebuttal, but for the full explanation of the math. She was rudimentary but specific, basic but expansive. She felt like she could fly.
The light went off, letting her know her time was done, but the judge waved it off. “You’re done, but I’m not,” she said, and she asked Jenny a few more questions. Jenny, answering them, felt herself relax. She felt for the first time that she could excel not just in the back of the house but in the front. If there had been a jury there, she would have walked over to them, smiled, and introduced the economic issues of the case. Everything was true, so it didn’t feel like advocacy. Everything was exactly as she had written.
Finally, the judge said, “Very well. Thank you,” and Jenny, realizing that she was sweating a little, sat down, with a bigger sound than she meant to. She slumped in the chair, as if she had just jogged around the building. Michael didn’t look over at her, but he didn’t have to. She knew it had been perfect.
“We will have a short recess until we move onto the other discovery motions, but I’m prepared to rule on this Daubert from the bench. Defendant’s stipulation removing the first damages calculation of zero damages is noted. Plaintiff’s motion to exclude the expert’s seventy-million-dollar calculation is denied.”
Jenny wanted to yelp, but she swallowed it down. As she walked out of the courtroom, she felt like she had grown three feet during the hearing. She really had never been so tall. She really had never been so happy. She pushed the heavy oak door, stepping out to the blinding light of the foyer, the sloped window spanning four levels above the harbor, almost blinding her with its white, snowy view of the city. She felt like she wanted to frolic.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” she said to Michael, the ultimate peace offering. She was trying not to gloat.
“No thank you,” he said. “You can go home.” He stretched his arms up, as if he were waking from sleep, and pointed with his chin toward the stairs to the front lobby. “Go ahead.”
This was a gift. She nodded at him and walked toward the doors. She wanted to stop everyone she saw, grip their shoulders, and yell, “I just won! No, not a case but a motion. Yes! my first!”
But giddy wasn’t something she was used to being, and she had no one to tell. The gray-and black-suited figures around her were all trudging to their own appointments, going in and out of their own bleak, cold days. She felt like having a mai tai on a beach. But there was no beach, no little umbrella drinks, no sunshine, and most horribly, no one to sit next to.
No one to regale the story with.
No one who would care.
Lydia would say congratulations, sure. After she explained to Davis the basic procedural posture of the case, he’d at least nod and say, “Good job!” But no one would be there at home waiting for her, ready to take her in their arms.
Then, there she was. Wrapped in layers of wool so it was hard to see her face. She was standing right in front of Jenny on the icy sidewalk, looking down intently at her phone and up again at the skyline. She seemed lost. Blake.
Jenny couldn’t believe it. The person she most dreaded seeing and most wanted to see was standing in front of her. The coward in her wanted to turn around and go back inside the courthouse, flash her bar card, and retreat quickly into the crowd of suits.
Today was a day for victory. For firsts. Jenny swallowed, her heart beating as loudly as it had in the courtroom but muffled beneath her own winter gear. She walked toward Blake. Her strides felt slow and long, like she was making a decision.
“Can I help you?” she said. Blake looked up, her face initially furrowed with annoyance. Then, recognizing Jenny, Blake’s face seemed to light up. Am I doing that to her? Jenny thought, feeling powerful. Not only had she conjured Blake up, she was somehow making her smile.
“Wow. Hi,” Blake said. Jenny watched the puff of her breath turn into a cloud between them. Blake pointed at the courthouse behind them. “You came out of there?” Jenny nodded. Blake sighed and waved her phone. “I’m looking for the ICA.”
Of course she was. Jenny felt at ease, able to help. Sort of like when she helped Blake build the walls. Somehow, being useful for Blake, in front of Blake, felt right.
Jenny gestured over at the seaport, at the skyline of half-constructed buildings and tall concrete elevator shafts. The bright red and orange cranes seemed to glow against the gray sky. Some of the cables were waving a bit in the wind. “The Institute of Contemporary Art is behind there.”
Words started tumbling out of Jenny as Blake looked incredulously at the skyline. “None of those buildings were there when the ICA was built. I mean, the new building. The old one was in a firehouse. A few years ago. It was the only new building down here, and now you can’t see it and it’s totally dwarfed, but it still has a choice view of the harbor.”
“It’s on the water?
“Directly. They have a pedestrian walkway set up, I think, abutting the construction sites. You can get there from here, but you won’t see it until you’re behind that first building.”
“You know the area well?” Blake’s face was red from the cold wind, but open, friendly. Like she was interested.
The nervousness Jenny consistently felt in Blake’s presence was translating into a flood of words. “When I was growing up, there was nobody here. Just warehouses. You would never come here at all. And the Rose Kennedy Greenway over there—that was like a no-man’s-land. A horrible purgatory between the financial district and the North End. New buildings are popping up now like pimples. If I had a toddler, I’d be down here all the time watching the cranes.”
Jenny stopped. What was wrong with her? Why was she talking so damn much? She clamped her lips together. Pimples? Toddlers? What the hell was wrong with her?
Blake’s expression was hard to read. She looked sort of bemused. God. Or her half-smile was mocking Jenny.
“Not that I have a toddler. I mean, not that I want one. I mean, now. I mean…”
Jenny wanted to run away. She couldn’t stop talking, but everything she said was coming out wrong. She had gone from abject silence in Blake’s presence to full-on babble. Why couldn’t she find a normal middle ground? She blew out her breath, feeling like, since she’d completely fucked up the whole interaction anyway, she might as well speak plainly. “You know. I don’t rule anything out. That’s all I mean.”
Blake smiled, big and broad, her dimple announcing itself loudly on her face. Jenny’s breath hitched at the sight of it. Blake’s eyes sparkled in the gray day.
“You love this city, don’t you?” Blake asked.
Jenny shrugged. “It’s home.” Blake pursed her lips for a moment and softened her face again.
“So you’ve been?”
“To the ICA?” Jenny asked. Blake nodded. Jenny closed her mouth tightly, not wanting anything to spill out. She had talked too much already, sounded like a scatterbrained Masshole. Pride in the seaport. It was probably a block of development in New York, nothing to be proud of. And she wasn’t about to tell Blake that she didn’t like the ICA. The building was great, sure, with views of the harbor, but the art… She had been once, yes. The huge wall in the lobby was a painting of an anime girl farting flowery clouds. Twenty-foot-tall flowery clouds. It was resolutely not her thing.
So she just said, “Yes, I’ve been.”
Blake raised one eyebrow. “But?”
“No buts. Great museum.” Jenny wouldn’t give Blake the satisfaction of attacking her taste again. Making assumptions. No. She would not give her that satisfaction.
Blake sighed, just for a moment, and looked at her so directly Jenny wanted to look away. But she didn’t. Blake seemed to be working up to something. The silence hung.
“Fine,” Jenny said after a few more beats. “Not my cup of tea. I love the architecture. I’m glad it exists in our city. But you’re right. I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Blake said.
Jenny was feeling worked up, combative. She wanted to explain herself to Blake and defend herself all at once. She could feel her face getting hot even though the air was frigid and they’d been standing outside so long their lips were getting blue.
“I’m sorry if that makes me unsophisticated or whatever, but—”
Blake put a gloved hand on Jenny’s forearm, steading her. “I don’t think that about you,” she said, looking her straight in the eye. Jenny’s skin burned from her touch despite the intervening layers of wool and down.
Jenny looked down. “Okay,” she said, heat rising in her cheeks, aware of where they’d touched. Aware of the outsize effect Blake had on her.
Blake smiled. “I’m interested in what you like. I loved how you reacted to my Hockney room.” She took her hand away from Jenny’s arm, and for the first time since she’d been standing there with her, Jenny felt the full chill in the air. She craved Blake’s touch again. She leaned in automatically. Blake swallowed. “I’m sorry if I gave you a hard time at that dinner.”
Jenny almost gasped, but she steadied her breathing. “It’s fine,” she croaked, caught up more in Blake’s pronouncement that she cared what she thought even more than the apology.
“So,” Blake said, shuffling in her boots a bit and tilting her chin toward the courthouse. “What were you doing in there?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t nothing,” Blake said. “A trial?”
Jenny almost laughed. Non-lawyers always thought she was going to trial. The truth was, everything settled. Even if it didn’t, they’d give the trial to someone else. She was only there to calculate damages.
She had talked too much anyway. She wasn’t going to bore Blake with the horrid details of her hearing. Blake, who seemed happy to be talking to her. What was going on?
“It was just a hearing.”
“What about?”
Jenny sighed. What was she playing at? Did she really want to know? She decided to call her bluff. “I’m defending a bank. Our experts calculate the damages. We have one expert who said there are no damages and one who said there are millions in damages. I told the judge to exclude the one who said we have no damages.”
Gosh, it sounded boring even to her.
Blake hadn’t fallen asleep standing up. “So, you were showing the judge you were reasonable? Admitting that if you are guilty, you’ll pay something?”
Jenny smiled at Blake’s quick understanding. She had listened, at least. “It’s civil, so we say ‘liable,’ not ‘guilty’ but pretty much, yes.”
“And you won?”
Jenny nodded. “Michael even let me argue it,” she said, not giving herself time to think about why this felt so natural. Why she was getting exactly what she’d been craving. Time with Blake, as if they were friends.
“Michael’s the guy you were at the gala with?” Blake asked.
Jenny’s blush raged furiously. Of course, the gala. That horrible night. “Yes,” she said, “and I’m sorr—”
Blake cut her off. “No need. Davis told me he’s kind of an ogre.”
Davis and Blake had talked about her? Jenny swallowed hard, trying to maintain her breathing. She knew what she wanted. She wanted to walk with Blake to the museum, hear what she had to say about the art, take her arm, and hold her tight against the wind. Feel the heat of her body close to her.
In the silence, for a moment, she let herself wonder if Blake wanted the same thing. They stood looking at one another, their clouds of frosty breath mingling in the air.
“So I go that way?” Blake said, cutting into the silence, pointing at the harbor, where the museum would be sitting on the edge of the water, dwarfed by the new buildings. Jenny nodded, the question “Can I come along?” lodged in her throat. She stood looking at Blake, silent.
“I can’t believe you found me out here,” Blake said. She pivoted to make her way to the museum. She gave a wave over her shoulder.
Jenny couldn’t believe she’d found her out there either. And now she was watching her walk away. Her figure disappeared quickly around the corner, and Jenny stood there, trying to figure out what had just happened and why her body was covered in goose bumps and why her heart felt like it was about to jump out of her chest.