Beverly Bird - Playing By The Rules

I found her at her desk outside Judge Castello’s chambers on the sixth floor. She was snarling into the phone at someone who apparently mistook her for a woman who cared about the terms of his parole. I waited for six minutes and during that time, Grace told the caller no less than eight times that he ought to get a lawyer who would then tell it to the judge.

She hung up the phone a little too hard and looked surprised to see me. “If it’s five o’clock already, then this must be my afterlife.”

I hated to disappoint her. “I need to talk to you,” I said. “About Sam.”

Her brows did a slow slide up her forehead. “Have you decided to claw with him?”

I think I gave a jerky little nod before I shook my head.

“Which is it?” she asked. “Yes or no?”

“Yes. But I’m having doubts now.”

“That would make you an idiot.”

I glowered at her. “I should have gone to Jenny with this.”

“Jenny would already be out buying floral arrangements for your wedding.” Grace stood from her desk. “This requires coffee,” she decided.

I followed her out of the chambers area to the balcony that overlooked a lot of empty air all the way down to the ground floor. I generally avoided standing near the railing because it made me dizzy. Grace went right over to it and leaned against it, folding her arms over her chest, utterly unperturbed by the fact that if the wood suddenly gave way, her life would be over.

“What happened to the coffee?” I asked, surprised.

“This can’t wait for the elevator.” The cafeteria was on the third floor. “I want to hear what you two have been up to.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, it’s an arrangement,” I said. “It’s…uh, sex. Only.” But that wasn’t entirely true. “Also companionship,” I added.

“Conversation?” she asked.

“Of course.” I scowled. “We’re hardly going to claw with our lips sealed.”

“Comfort?”

Suddenly I saw where she was headed with this. I threw my hands up in surrender.

“Am I to take it that you two talked about this,” Grace asked, “set some guidelines and decided to get naked together?”

“We…” I trailed off. “That’s about the size of it.”

“It’s about time.”

“You don’t think it’s odd that we discussed it first?”

“You’re both lawyers. This is what lawyers do.”

“We made bylaws, too.”

She nodded as though this made all the sense in the world. “Less chance of chaos and misunderstanding that way. So what’s the problem?”

“My motives aren’t the purest.” There—I said it aloud. After all, confession is supposed to be good for the soul. “I’m not doing it to dodge the dating pool,” I admitted. “I haven’t been in the dating pool for a while.”

“So dodging the dating pool is the motivation behind all this?”

“It’s Sam’s.” We finally set off toward the elevators.

“What’s yours?”

“It’s entirely possible that I just want to rip his clothes off,” I admitted.

I said this just as the elevator doors slid open. There were three people inside. An elderly woman gasped mildly. An overweight man in red suspenders grinned at me. The child with him seemed to have no reaction to my comment whatsoever.

Grace sailed into the elevator car without a qualm. I followed, feeling ridiculous.

“How long is this arrangement supposed to last?” she asked me.

“Can we finish discussing this when we get to the cafeteria?” I looked left and right to find that we still had the rapt attention of both the other passengers over the age of ten.

The elevator doors slid open again, and I fled through them, refusing to look back. “Until one or both of us decide we want to move on,” I explained finally.

“This will get him out of your system so you can finally start dating again. You know, you’ve been hung up on him for a very long time now,” Grace observed.

I frowned. Teenagers got “hung up,” I thought. Cinderella had pined for Prince Charming, and Snow White had been prepared to sleep forever without that kiss. I, on the other hand, was a thirty-five-year-old professional just stuffed to the brim with common sense and independence. I did not get “hung up” on anyone.

“So when does this deal start?” Grace asked when we reached the cafeteria.

“Maybe tonight.”

“Ah. There’s the floor that makes the feet feel cold.”

“I’m not hung up and I don’t have cold feet.”

“Mandy, you’re jumping around like a ballerina here. Whose idea was this anyway—yours or Sam’s?”

I thought about it as we collected our coffee. “His.”

“That makes it even better.”

We sat at a table and reached for the sugar canister at the same time. We both took our coffee black except when we were at the courthouse. The brew there is abysmal. I got to the little packets first and plucked out a whole handful of them. We divided them up, four apiece.

“I have another ulterior motive,” I said suddenly. “I’m thinking maybe it will get back to Mill that I’m seeing someone.”

Grace very rarely made a move that wasn’t smooth, but this almost made her snort her first sip of coffee out her nose. “What does Mill have to do with it?” she asked.

“He’s suing me for custody of Chloe.”

She went very still. “Bastard.”

“It’s the election.”

“Of course it’s the election. That’s what makes him a bastard.”

I felt the tension continue to uncoil and relax inside me. That’s the thing about friends. The good ones, the real ones, don’t just talk you down when you’re nervous about something and they don’t just reserve comment about why you need four sugars in your coffee and what that might do to your health. Real friends are always on your side. If you take it into your head to shoot someone, a real friend will help you hide the body before she asks you why you did it.

“What are you going to do?” Grace asked me now.

“Tear him limb from limb and use him for fertilizer.”

“You should ask Sam to represent you,” she said. “He’s got that amazing winning percentage.”

A lot of it had come at my expense, too. “He offered,” I said. “I think if Judge Larson is going to hear this, I’ll probably take him up on it.” The complexion of things had changed since we had talked about it last night and I had declined his offer. We had an arrangement now and I wanted Mill to know about it. And Larson would probably give Sam the moon and the stars if he batted those blue eyes at her just the right way.

Grace finally drained her coffee—courageous soul that she is—and stood. “I need to get back upstairs. The criminal element calls. If tonight turns out to be the big night for you two, would you like Jenny to take Chloe off your hands?”

Some people might have thought it odd that she would offer up her roommate’s services that way. I was used to it by now. “I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t use Mrs. Casamento,” she warned. “She’d be knocking on your door on an hourly basis, and that would be very tough on the libido.”

“Sam’s or mine?” I asked, standing as well.

“Sam’s. Yours is so primed, a scud missile couldn’t take it out.”

I didn’t even try to argue that one. I had been ignoring the little shock waves he created inside me for quite some time now. So I just nodded again. My neck was starting to hurt from all the up-and-down jerks I’d given it in the past twenty minutes or so, but I knew I could probably count a good neck rub in my immediate future.

We went back to the elevator bay, and Grace rode up while I headed down. When I hit the lobby again, I rooted my cell phone out of my briefcase. I called the office and told my secretary that something personal had come up so I wouldn’t be back today. It wasn’t really a lie. This was definitely personal with a capital P.

Wine had gotten me into this, I decided, and wine would get me through it. I stopped at a liquor store on my way home and hit the front door of my building at the precise moment a cab pulled up to the curb, toting Chloe and three other classmates whose mothers I’d made kiddie-travel arrangements with for purposes of school. It was my week to pay. Mrs. Casamento was waiting at the curb to collect Chloe for me and I took back the money I’d given her for the taxi.

“I’m home early today,” I explained. Then Chloe bulleted out of the taxi and threw herself into my arms. I caught her neatly and didn’t even come close to bobbling the bottle of Cabernet I’d bought.

“How come, Mom? This is cool!” Chloe shouted. I felt a spasm of guilt that she was so glad to see me. I wasn’t around after school nearly enough.

“Hard to make a living if you don’t work normal hours,” Sylvie Casamento judged.

“I don’t get paid by the hour,” I assured her. “It’s okay.”

“Thing is, I count on this money every afternoon,” she complained.

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