Devil Mail (12 page)

Her cellphone rang.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone at that moment. She needed to be left alone with her thoughts and her tears. She ignored it, along with the three subsequent calls.

She began to recall every detail of their time together to see if she had missed glaring signposts and red flags.
Apart from the one time when he exhibited a trace of impatience towards her on their first date, he had been the perfect gentleman, bearing all the characteristics she was looking for in a partner. Yet, it only took a week for his true colors to bleed through the surface. Had she not been at the depositions, when would she have seen the real Aiden?

She concluded that t
he fickle finger of fate had moved on after writing a segment of her life that could not be retracted. She, now, had to decide how to respond. Her timing couldn’t be any worse. Only the night before had she burned two bridges that might have led somewhere with Matt or KDoyleIII.

The beep of her cellphone indicated that she had received a text message. Suspecting that it was Aiden, she ignored it. It wasn’t until half way into her journey home
, when she pulled into a rest stop to wash her face and buy a cup of coffee, that she checked her messages. There were two unanswered calls from Aiden and one from Sharon along with a text message directing her to call Sharon immediately; it was a matter of importance.

Angela’s heartbeat soared. Someone
must have called her office and reported the disturbance Aiden had created outside the law office in Tampa. It would be just her luck for Aiden to land her in the same boat he had found himself in – fired!

She steadied her nerves as much as was possible in the circumstances, and called Sharon. “Hi, Sharon, it’s Angela. E
verything went well. I’m on my way back.”

“That’s great, but you’re going
to have to turn around. I called you earlier to let you know that someone from the law office called – you left the stenotype in their office.”

Mere words could not describe Angela’s exasperation.
She now had to compose herself and drive all the way back to the office to face the same people who were undoubtedly watching her and Aiden through the window, and were most certainly now gossiping about her. Angela felt like she was losing her mind. Unable to gather the energy to scream, she turned her car around and drove back to Tampa with reckless abandonment, flooring the gas pedal, disregarding posted speed limits, and weaving in and out of traffic. The thought of being ticketed by the police ran through her mind, but at that particular time, she didn’t care about the possible consequences of her actions. Her feelings towards Aiden were beyond resentful, they were verging on hateful.

She was completely spent by the time she
finally reached Orlando. Sharon had asked to see her forthwith upon her return. Angela concluded that at least Sharon had the decency to fire her to her face instead of over the telephone.

In preparation for the meeting,
Angela induced within herself the belief that she didn’t care if she was dismissed. She didn’t care if everyone in her office started gossiping about her. She didn’t care if she was a disappointment to her mother. She didn’t care if she went to bed and never woke up again. In fact, she told herself, the latter would be sweet relief from a life rife with struggles and deficient in rewards.

Sharon’s penetrating gaze burned through the side of Angela’s face as she closed her office door behind her.
“Take a seat. What’s going on?”

“I need to be taken off this case. I have a conflict of interest!” Angela blurted.

“How so?” Sharon was not as shocked as Angela expected.

“I know one of the witnesses.”

“That doesn’t automatically create a conflict. In what capacity are you acquainted?”

“I’m or I
was
dating him.”

“Was it with him that you caused a raucous outside of our client’s office?”

“Yes.” Angela’s voice was nothing more than a whisper.

“Did you mention the conflict to our client prior to the commencement of the depos
ition?”

“No.”

Sharon spoke with mounting irritation. “If you really believed you had a conflict, why did you not disclose it? Since when do the rules of professional conduct not apply to you?”

The floodgates opened and out poured a sea of tears. She didn’t want Sharon to think that she was weak and was crying because she was being scolded, but the tears flowed irrepressibly.

“I didn’t know he was involved in the case. He caught me off-guard.” Angela whimpered.

“
Okaay. So you did not prepare for the case. Can we assume that the recording of his depo’ is accurate in light of your emotional state at the time or do we have a potential problem?”

“No, I managed to pull myself together. It’s accurate.
He requested a transcript.”

“
If you will produce today’s transcripts I’ll get someone else to cover the remainder of the depositions.” With the same business-as-usual tenor, she asked, “Are you in trouble Angela?”

“No, it’s just an upsetting break-up, that’s all.”

“Well, you know where I am if you need help. In the meantime, we can’t allow our standards to lapse; things have got to get better, Angela.” Her manner perceptively ended the conversation. That was it? The only repercussion of embarrassing the firm and leaving equipment behind was a semi-harsh admonition? Nevertheless, this was another tally mark against Angela in Sharon’s mental record book within a short period of time, so her words would not go unheeded.

In back-to-
back telephone calls Angela brought Julia and Judith up to speed and thanked them for being there with words of wisdom, or just basic common sense, where she markedly lacked it.

“Don’t beat yourself up
.” Judith tried to cheer her up. “Mistakes are only tragic when we don’t learn from them. There are plenty more fish in the sea, and next time, you’ll just be more guarded.”

“I don’t know that there
’ll be a next time. There were only two other guys that I was even remotely interested in, and last night I sent them packing. I sent this dumb message about putting all my energy into this one relationship, and now look where I am…. back to square one and alone.”

“Meeting someone online is
not the only way to hook up with a guy, Angie. You could be in the grocery store and your Prince Charming spots you across the navel oranges, or in a fateful moment, you could both be reaching for the same bag of frozen peas when your hands touch, sealing your future; you just never know.” Judith spoke as if telling a fairytale.

“
I don’t even like peas, but go ahead… joke at my expense.” Angela realized that there was some truth in Judith’s lightheartedly comments, but she was not ready to emerge from wallowing in self-pity just yet.

“
Well, if you wanted doom and gloom you shouldn’t have called me,” Judith laughed. “Remember the singles are going bowling on Saturday night, you should come.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be up for that,” Angela droned.

“Listen, I’m not suggesting you go looking for someone at the bowling outing, you just need to be getting on with your life, having some fun in the process, and your soul mate will show up at the right time.”

“We’ll see.”

“You’re going; even if it means I have to come over and drag you out of that apartment myself.” Despite how she made it sound, Judith had not spoken in jest.

Throughout the course of the evening, Angela disregarded two more calls from Aiden. She
didn’t need to demand space to think – she had already made up her mind. Their relationship, or whatever it was that remarkably lasted an entire week, was over! Her saving grace was that he didn’t have her address otherwise he would have been outside her door ringing her bell all night.

She went to bed early in hopes of catching up on some of the
sleep she had missed recently. Curled up in a fetal position, she began to reflect upon her past relationships and measure her current position in life against where she thought she ought to be.

She had dated
Javier Prentice towards the end of her college career and never fully understood him. He appeared to be a compulsive liar. Lying came as naturally to him as did breathing. In fact, he took many a breath for the sole purpose of fuelling a lie regarding something of little consequence. He’d lie about drinking a can of soda from her dorm room, when only the two of them had access to it. He lied about going to a fraternity party when multiple witnesses swore that they had seen and spoken to him there; he’d lie about having read books that obviously hadn’t been written yet, since no one could find records of them – always information that was either readily available or easily ascertainable. If he was so dishonest about insignificant things, Angela questioned how she could possibly trust him to be truthful about weightier issues. She reckoned her mistake was remaining in that dead-end relationship even when she knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

Thereafter, she immediately commenced a relationship with Ben
Brangore, a relatively successful sales manager, who was introduced to her by a friend of a friend. That three-month relationship assisted Angela in honing in on what she wanted in a mate. With his ‘work hard, play hard’ attitude, which on most weekends left him legless in pee-stained pants, lasciviously attempting to grope anything in a skirt, Ben was not it.

Russell Nagler was the heartthrob that Angela fell for when she was embarking upon her career as a court reporter at Maven. He was a young attorney in one of their client law firms and she caught his eye immediately. Tragically handsome, he had large eyes, the color of clear blue beryl; Angela just wanted to fall into them.
Within a few months of them meeting, he was headhunted by a firm in Texas and swiftly took the offer of a promotion and a substantial incentive package. The worst thing was that he left without notice. When she asked after him, his former colleagues informed her of the move. He refused a send-off party and insisted that he be permitted to go quietly because he hated goodbyes. Angela thought that was a lousy excuse for lousy behavior; particularly since she was under the impression that something special was kindling between them. She would have considered Russell Nagler to be the one that got away, had he not left her crushed.

Angela believed that trust was one of the cornerstones of a relationship, and she had vowed never to continue a relationship with someone who proved himself unworthy of her trust.
How could she be sure that she could trust anyone with her heart again? She concluded that no such certainty could be attained. Maybe she was never meant to date and get married and experience the joys of being a wife and a mother.

When the telephone rang and she heard Aiden’s voice, she buried her head under her pillow to muffle the sound
. Despite this, she still heard, “I don’t want to lose you, Angela, please call me.”

A plan of action was established in her mind – she would remove her profile from the Christian Blend website and settle into single life, embracing the saying that she had heard, but never wanted to accept: single stands for
S
olitary
I
ndividual
N
obly
G
rasping
L
ife’s
E
xperiences.

Th
e defeatist attitude that Judith had spent so much time trying to talk out of Angela that evening had returned like a flood. She didn’t want to be a solitary individual she wanted to be one half of a couple. She muttered, “Who am I trying to kid? My version of singleness is more like
S
ad
I
ndividual
N
ever
G
rasping
L
ove’s
E
ndowment.”

              Falling back into her pre-Aiden routine during the following week was most uncomfortable. At work, Sharon took Angela off the fraud case in Tampa and sent her to cover a five-day trial in Lake County, which kept her mind occupied. Her evenings were either spent with Julia at zumba and aerobics class or talking on the telephone with Judith or Mrs. Craddock, or trying to get ahead on the production of the paperwork that was required of her in the Lake County trial. The Christian Blend website that she couldn’t wait to check not so long ago had lost its allure. Perhaps her mother was right, perhaps the men that attracted her on the website were the ones sent directly by the devil himself to bring destruction and chaos into her life.

             
Throughout the week, she turned away from every call that Aiden made to her house, including the ones at seven o’clock every morning. Without listening to them or reading them, she deleted every message he left on her answer machine or sent by text to her cellphone. She couldn’t stomach any more of his lies.

She still hadn’t produced the t
ranscript of his deposition; she stopped part way through when the distress became too much. The experience of typing up the proceedings were particularly poignant, rubbing salt into her tender wounds and forcing her to relive moments she would rather forget. In any event, she had time, since a case of such magnitude, with so much evidence, was unlikely to go to trial any time soon.