“Well, milords,” Prudhomme begins, then stalls, past hope.
“We will hear you, of course,” says Horowitz, making a point of extending the courtesy Santorini withheld.
Prudhomme sighs. “Out of discretion, I’ll simply ask that the matter be remitted to Justice Santorini for reconsideration.”
That results in a debate about whether it’s fair to return the matter to a mind apparently settled, but Arthur rises and whispers to Selwyn, “Stick with Santorini.”
Later, the appeal allowed, the matter sent back, Selwyn asks Arthur, “Why Santorini?”
“Better the devil you know. This makes him malleable-Eddie’s terrified of the court of appeal.” Equally important, they have bought Gwendolyn more time.
Brian is red-eyed and haggard as he joins Arthur in his suite. He is garrulous nonetheless, and paces, smoking. They are in Arthur’s favourite small hotel, overlooking English Bay, sailboats dwarfed by hulking anchored freighters.
“Brovak’s just back from Mexico. He acted insulted that I accused him of pulling that prank with the panties. The guilt on his face was as obvious as your nose, Arthur. ‘At least cover for me,’ I begged him. ‘Tell Caroline you did it.’ But he won’t, and he’s lost a friend. I may even leave the firm.”
Arthur understands he must listen to the commercials before the feature begins. But he can empathize with Brian, his marriage crisis. Between the two of them, they have as much understanding of women as they have of the mechanics of gamma-ray bursters.
“You’ve been through it, Arturo. How does it fall apart?”
What has Brian heard? Has Margaret given a press conference? Cud and I are deeply in love…It dawns he’s speaking of Annabelle, relief floods in. “Hardly made in heaven. I wore the horns.”
“But who came out the winner in the end? The great Cyrano met an eco-suffragette with whom he has an abnormally non-fractious relationship. How do you do it? What is the answer, my adored master?”
Arthur takes that as rhetorical. He doesn’t have an answer anyway. To sit around like a lump, accept whatever fate deals-that’s his traditional response. At least Brian is actively fighting for his marriage. It may be messy, but there’s life in it, excitement.
“One of the factors contributing to the debacle of last night was my hostile hearing from the marital fixer-you saw her, Lila Chow-Thomas.” Brian relates this between bites of room-service sandwiches, washed down with beer from the mini-bar. “Thin-skinned woman, offended because I asked to meet in a bar. Only because I wanted to talk to her alone, without Caroline running interference. I made the mistake of asking if being attractive was a handicap to her work. I wasn’t flirting, but she flounced out. Afterwards, at what my bar dares call happy hour, I had a couple of doubles, smoothing the way for a historic bad trip, which, by the way, El Torro is the perfect locale for, shit-coloured brick, bullfight posters, dental office music.”
Arthur works his way through this thicket of words and images as he watches Brian set up a laptop computer. Arthur has remained, and vows he ever will be, computer illiterate, leery of this contrivance and its baffling lexicon of disks and bits and ports and prompts. Clearly, this one will be used as a playback device, the evening’s events copied to it from the recorder that spent last evening in Brian’s crotch.
“She’s already there when I roll in, looking as if she just stepped out of HMS Pinafore, navy jacket and knee-length tartan skirt and leggings. The lady may be aesthetically challenged, but she’s attractive in a 1950s-movie sort of way, a notable feature being her two thrusting vital statistics. Heavy makeup, hot lipstick, her hair in bangs and bows. She has a copa de vino going, I’m about to learn she’s a bit of a juicer. There’s some innocuous chat about wine, about how the sangria at El Torro is, as she puts it, fun. A lot of sangria is what Nick drank here ten years ago, but I go along with it, tell the waiter to bring a pitcher-I’m reckless, already hammered. Let me take you on location…”
From the computer’s speakers come the opening bars of a bolero. Lights blink and flicker on the screen, an inscrutable message appears: “Right click to pause.”
I thought you might not show up. Afraid of what I might write.
Why?
Well, defending that sort of people…Criminals, sexual predators, it’s hard to paint a sympathetic picture…All right, I have to admit I’m biased.
You have a right to be. I know what you’ve been through. I looked up your Web site.
Brian pauses the recording, lights another cigarette. “Maybe she picked up a pornographic undertone, because she gave me a startled look. You looked up my what? She was primping, flirty nuances, playing with her hair.”
What does it feel like when you ask them if they enjoyed it?
Come again?
When you’re cross-examining. That’s what Mr. Beauchamp asked me, or almost. He accused me of being a willing party.
“Okay, pause again, here’s where she introduces the topic of you, Senior Queen’s Counsel Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, the defender of her rapist. This is where it starts to get chilling, because in a spooky way that trial was the highlight of her life. She’s slugging up the sangria as she recounts the horrors of the witness stand.”
Arthur can hear the bolero louder, an accelerating pulse, like a heart keeping beat.
Are you friendly with Mr. Beauchamp?
He runs in different circles. Hasn’t been the same man since your trial. Basically, that was the end of his practice, he quit soon after.
He was so…I wanted to kill him.
Brian stops the recording. “I miss a prawn with my fork, it clangs against the dish. She wanted to kill you, Arturo. What was I to say? Goodness, my dear, you had every right to feel that way.”
Arthur wonders if he ought to shrug off such a harsh remark from this prim, mannered woman. No doubt many others spoke as angrily after feeling the whip of his cross-examinations, but after ten years this was hardly spontaneous.
“She starts doodling instead of making notes-she doesn’t want to interview me, she wants to talk. About her interview with Buddy Svabo, about how she must relive the horrible ordeal-as if she hasn’t been dining off it for the last ten years-about Faloon, about the Winters murder. Burbling away as I top up the sangrias.”
“Do not underestimate her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to get you soused enough to reveal her name has been bandied about.” Arthur opens the window to let out the smoke, and he can see grey prominences above the horizon, the Gulf Islands, that world impossibly distant. This is not the last time, he suspects, he’ll feel twinges of regret about taking on this case. He can’t back out, but he’d rather be fishing.
“Fast-forwarding here, because she toddles off to the loo. The one thing she doesn’t mention is going to Winters for therapeutic advice, how she threatened to sue her.”
A significant omission. The cassette from Dr. Winters’s answering machine was teeming with insults. You’re an unprincipled, unethical bitch. Wait till I see my lawyer, you bitch. I hate you.
“She comes back smelling like a hothouse flower, drenched in something called Fantaisie, which I’m later to learn is her parfum de gout. In the meantime, I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And I’m drunk, Arthur, and I start to pour it out, how I’m a victim of a cruel joke, how I haven’t been home for twelve days. And I’m getting an audience-she exudes sympathy, she’s human, she isn’t a psychopathic monster after all. In the meantime, I’m in such a state of flotation that I’ve let chances slip by, the waiter has grabbed her empty glass with all her fingerprints. I turn the subject to her, expressing wonder that this femme fatal remains unpartnered. We pick up here.”