1 Motor City Shakedown (4 page)

FOUR

In the parking garage, Issabella decided sanity needed to reassert itself.
She stopped walking and fixed Darren with a level, pragmatic expression.

“We’re not partners on this,” she said.

“We’re not? Then why did you come out here?”

“T
his is where I parked.”

Darren shook his head and said “No, I mean to the hospital.
You were going to scam your way into Vernon’s room. You got rebuffed once, and you came back a second time and got in. Now you’re out? Just like that? I guess I don’t understand. I offer you exactly what you wanted, and now you’re driving away?”

Issabella peered over his shoulder and spotted her tired old Buick sedan down the lane.

“I don’t know that I owe you an explanation,” she said, and walked around him toward her car. She had the trunk open and was stashing her briefcase inside when he appeared at her shoulder again.

“I think you do.”

“No, I really don’t. It was nice meeting you. See you in court some time, okay?”

She pushed the trunk lid down, heard it latch shut, and kept her hands there.
She didn’t move for a long moment, and was aware of him staring at her. She wanted him to go away, to stop staring—to stop seeing what was happening.

“You’re shaking,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, the way it had been when he’d put his hand on her back and guided her away from the hostility of Lieutenant Phelps.

“I’m alright.”

But she wasn’t.
Issabella’s personal storm, the one that was never farther away from her than the horizon, was roiling through her. It had begun in the elevator, on the way down. Her fingertips had gone numb and her heart began to race.

In the few minutes it had taken to get out here to her car, the storm of panic had blown itself into a frenzy.
Her breathing was shallow and ragged. She felt weak all over, so much so that she was keeping her hands on the trunk because she wasn’t certain she wouldn’t fall down if she tried to stand straight.

Worst of all was the persistent sense of doom that pervaded every thought.
No matter what idea or image floated to the surface, the storm would take hold of it and instantly re-cast it as a sign of failure or stupidity.

“Issabella?”

She screwed her eyes shut and prayed he’d leave her alone. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this. It was humiliating.

‘Soldier on,’
she thought, concentrating on the feel of the metal under her palms. The Buick was real. The cement floor under her feet was real.

His hand touched her shoulder, and that was real.

“I’m going to say something,” she whispered, concentrating on getting the words out calmly. “And it’s for my benefit. Not for yours. Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered back, and started to withdraw his hand.

“Don’t. Don’t take your hand away.”

She for
ced herself to take a long, slow breath, then the words came in a rush as she stared into the storm of dread.

“I suffer from panic attacks.
It’s embarrassing, but there it is. They started when I was a kid. When my dad left for the last time and never came back. They just show up and that’s how it is. They show up and I have to deal with them because either I deal with them, or they deal with me. Lately, they show up a lot. Because of stress. Because I’m broke and my car is falling apart and I’m practicing alone in a crummy office in a crummy neighborhood. And my mind takes all those things and blows them up into big ugly things that make me think I’m failing at everything. It’s all irrational. It doesn’t make sense, and that just makes it all worse. It feeds on itself like that. I’m supposed to take medicine for it, but I don’t. I hate how the pills make me feel. So I have moments like right now.”

Her breathing was coming back
to her, and the dizziness was subsiding. Issabella opened her eyes and stared down at her hands planted on the trunk.

“That
sounds terrible,” Darren said.

“Yeah,” she admitted
. “Yeah, it sucks. It makes me feel like I’m broken. And then that makes the panic worse. And the only way to deal with it is like this. I stare at it and admit it for what it is and talk myself through it. That’s why I’m talking. For me, so I’ll calm down faster and get on with things.”

“I understand.”

Issabella wondered. How could he understand? As far as he knew, she was some unethical huckster who’d swept in and tried to solicit a client in a hospital bed. And now she was dumping all her problems on him and disclosing way too much personal information about herself.

She was certain he was just being kind.
He saw a woman in obvious distress and was being gentle with her, because that was the quickest way to get her to shut up, get in her car, and drive away. He was placating her.

‘Stop.’

She threw those thoughts away before they could spiral and grow stronger, an invitation for the waning storm to return.

“Anyway,” she sighed, “I’m sorry I barged in on you.
I was really down this morning. I guess I seized on the idea of grabbing up a big case because it might…I don’t know.”

Darren squeezed her shoulder and she looked at him.
She was searching for some sort of sign of judgment in his eyes, an indication that she was right and he was just trying to get her to calm down enough that he could walk away without feeling guilty.

That’s not what she saw.
There was no thinly-veiled criticism in his patient stare.

He smiled encouragingly at her and said “You thought maybe you could change your life with one case.
You saw the headline and you started building all kinds of ideas around it, and talking yourself into coming out here. You blew it up in your mind until you were certain that coming out here and volunteering to save a stranger would somehow save
you
. That’s what you did.”

She blinked, the storm of panic
remote now, receding to the horizon under the inexplicable kindness this stranger seemed intent on bestowing.

“Yeah,” she admitted, confused.
“That’s what I did. That is exactly the series of stupid lies I told myself in order to end up here, breaking down and dumping everything on you. I’m really sorry about all of this.”

“
Sorry enough to say yes to lunch?”

Issabella snorted a laugh, went red, and laughed again.

“You’re serious.”

“Totally serious.”

“No. But thanks.”

She
climbed into her car and he followed her around, so she rolled her window down. He stooped, his mop of dark curls straying over his eyes. He looked suddenly boyish. Before she could form the thought, she reached out and brushed an errant curl back into place with a finger.

They
both were looking at each other now, their faces very close.

“I have no idea why I did that,” she admitted.

“You’re having a weird morning, aren’t you?”

“The weirdest.”

“I’d like you to help me defend Vernon Pullins.”

“And
it’s crazy that you would say that. You don’t know me.”

“That’s what lunch is for.”

“I think having you watch me eat is one humiliation too many,” she quipped, and turned the ignition. “See you. Sorry about the scheme to steal your client. And the eavesdropping. And the panic freak-out.”

“You should stop apologizing to me.”

“Okay,” she said, and backed out of the space.

As she pulled away, she watched him in her rearview mirror, staring after her with his hands in his pockets.
Despite his charming smile and his seemingly easy confidence, there was something in his eyes that looked lost, even lonesome.

She remembered what he had told the unconscious Mr. Pullins in the hotel room.

“I did my best for people who were stuck in a really brutal system. And then I…I made a mistake.”

She turned a
corner, looked again, and he was gone.

*

Issabella was back behind her desk in her office beneath the Bingham Tower’s shadow, trying her best to concentrate on the stack of files piled in front of her. She would read a paragraph of a motion, her red pen poised and ready to make corrections. Her mind would drift and go over the events of that morning and she’d realize she’d read that same paragraph several times without making a mark.

“Shut up,” she whispered, and re-doubled her efforts, intent on getting something that could be could called ‘work’ completed before the day was done.
But it was no use. She couldn’t just shut her mind off.

Of all the moments her thoughts kept returning to, it was her panic attack in the parking garage that bothered her the most.
The memory of suffering through it in front of Darren Fletcher was like having a loose tooth she couldn’t stop prodding with her tongue. Again and again as she tried to let her impulsive morning escapade recede, she’d come back to that moment and replay it.

His hand on her shoulder.
It had been offered so freely and reflexively, as if he’d somehow known that one simple physical connection would serve as a point of grounding. It had kept her from being carried away on the winds of her personal storm. His presence there, his physical presence, had allowed her to gather her wits and begin to talk herself down from the swirling chaos of her own thoughts.

“Ugh,” she moaned and stood up, beginning to pace the room.
“Stop. Just stop and let it all go.”

That was the problem, always the problem.
She couldn’t stop dwelling over every little detail of a frustration, whether real or imagined. She knew that was her nature, and that it was one of the reasons the bouts of anxiety grew until they were tempests.

“You’re too fussy,” her mother was fond of telling her.
“Life’s messy. You can’t put everything into a neat little pile, Bella. You have to let it be messy sometimes and just move on.”

She paced out of the office, through the pretend reception room, and into the bathroom.
She splashed cold water from the sink over her face. She stared in the mirror at her drawn, tired reflection. There was no mistaking the stress that tightened her features. She looked like she felt, unraveled and haggard.

“You made a deal,” she whispered to the tired woman in the mirror.
“Remember? If it gets like this, you get back on the prescription. Not for a day or two. For real. You put up with the way it makes you feel and get on with things. Right? Right, Issabella?”

She knew what that woman looking back at her wanted to say.

‘Oh, sure. Make yourself drowsy and disinterested. Take the pills. Go ahead. You’ll be a passenger in your own life, sedate and passive. Why confront your fears, when you can dispel them with a little serotonin regulation? Good thing you didn’t let him talk you into taking that case, Bella Dear. Opportunities are only good for people who are willing to seize them. Go ahead. Go get pharmacologically sleepy.’

She left that woman in the mirror and walked back into her office.
Her purse was dumped on the client chair. She stared at it for a long while.

“You have to let it all go,” she whispered.
“No more flailing around and grasping at big ideas. The only thing that can rescue you is you. Not a headline. Not a case. So stop.”

She grabbed up her purse and sat down behind her desk with it in her lap.
The pills were inside. She’d take one today, and one more each day after. Tomorrow, she’d be yawning even though she was wide awake. The day after that, an afternoon nap would seem like a reasonable thing to do. After a week, getting through a pile of files from other firms wouldn’t seem like a bother at all. She’d be able to see clearly that she was lucky to have the “drudge work”. What was there to feel bad about? She’d gotten her bar card and was working as a lawyer. It would be that simple to her.

Inside the purse, her fingers found the slim
, orange plastic bottle with the white child-proof lid. She held it up in front of her and read her name on the label
, Bright, Issabella
, typed out in a clean little bold script, as if the pile of chemicals arranged inside the bottle was somehow specifically significant to
her
-- as if a stranger could read the contents of the bottle and, in so doing, know some elemental truth about her nature.

‘Issabella Bright?
Sure, she’s that panicky little broken thing, right? Yeah, I read her story. Well, twenty milligrams worth of it. It gets pretty boring after a couple doses, so I put it down. But you know where the whole things going anyway after you get past the label.’

The memory of Darren Fletcher pushed its way up to the fore, and she heard him telling her something he had no business knowing about her.
‘You blew it up in your mind until you were certain that coming out here and volunteering to save a stranger would somehow save you. That’s what you did.’