Fire in the Firefly (32 page)

It is exactly 12:00 PM.

Roebuck has made a snap decision. He is making them small and snappy now,
one-at
-
a-timers
; no scope for grander vistas; no panoramas, no
wide-angle
lenses. When did people start
taking
decisions and stop making them?
Making
is constructive;
taking
more in line with common theft. Around the time the
biz-heads
took over. Yes, almost certainly then. Stop that. His brain is skittering all around the back seat of the cab. Give it a break; it's had a tough week. Roebuck will devote every available neuron to Anne and Lily, later. Later. Right now every time his thinking tries to sneak away in that direction, he's going to put a bag over it, tie it in a knot, and lock it in the trunk. Right at this moment, Roebuck is aiming squarely up the road with Yasmin. Yasmin and her lawyer. Right now that's all that matters. He is aware he's in a hurry. He has left his car parked on the street outside
Gama-Care
and hailed a taxi. That was his decision. Roebuck doesn't trust himself to drive.

It's 12:05 PM.

He can afford to be a little late. But not
too
late. So he takes out his crisp, new
hundred-dollar
bills, making sure they're visible, waves them like the high roller he is and asks the cabbie kindly to speed it up. Roebuck is on a roll. Oh what a roll he's on. Should he stop first at a bank?

No.

Another key decision firmly made.

He has his credit cards, in case of emergency, his chequebook. Ophelia the Blessed. Like those bits of broken cellphone. Motherboard he thinks. Oh, ha ha. One funny thing after another this morning.

But it isn't morning any longer. It is 12:37 when the cab drops him at the curb. Roebuck is certifiably late.

It's an
eighty-story
glass cathedral, and he takes the wrong elevator. This wasn't a decision; this was an honest mistake. He has boarded the one that goes only as far as the fortieth floor; he has to get off, go back to ground, and change over. The elevator's walls are mirrored on all sides. Roebuck's image is reflected back upon itself into eternity. It's confusing.

It is nearly 12:45 when Yasmin's lawyer finally shakes his hand, utterly unsmiling. At four hundred an hour, she's already a
C-note
ahead so why not crack a grin? Roebuck has been imagining some kind of
troll-like
creature with a hump and sharp teeth; something like a cross between a fire hydrant and an English bull terrier. Instead, Yasmin's lawyer is elegant; beautiful, even. In fact, she reminds him of Yasmin.

“I am truly, very sorry I am late,” he tells her as she leads him down the plush and silent carpet to her office, walking like Yasmin, too. Roebuck is aware that he's aware of the comparison.

Yasmin has arranged herself like a puma on a couch beside the lawyer's desk. “You're fucking late!”

“I am truly, very sorry.”

He is offered perfunctory refreshment and humbly declines. There's a cup and saucer on a low table beside Yasmin's couch; quality china. A nice bowl of biscotti. Roebuck is directed to a chair that has been situated so as to face his accusers in the manner of a plaintiff set before his judge and jury. He meekly takes his seat.

Because he is late, because he has, by his lateness, more than sufficiently demonstrated his contempt for these proceedings, his contempt for her client, and her client's condition—which assuredly entails meaningful and incontestable obligation on his part—in light of Mr. Roebuck's clear and thoughtless disregard for the situation in which he has placed himself and her client, Yasmin's lawyer will waste no further time today in preamble. A net of legal jargon descends upon his head, statutes quoted, disclosures demanded, contracts proffered, interlocutory remedies particularized and figures—a welter of figures past, present, and most significantly future—bind him to his chair. Anne's name crops up parenthetically.

Roebuck nods, tries to look worried, and thinks about Tchaikovsky. Although he has tried his best, his very best, he really cannot bring himself to like ballet. Every year around Christmas, he takes the girls to see
The Nutcracker
. But Roebuck is a plot man. He prefers the subtleties of dialogue, the real and human tensions of script without the clutter of costume and the crutch of orchestration. Tchaikovsky is an improvement on most of those Italians, sure—and then of course there's Wagner—but always, always, by the middle of Act II he finds himself addressing the question of which of the Marzipan Shepherdesses likely has the largest breasts. It's like that now with Yasmin and her attorney. He ponders what these women would say if they could read his thoughts. Perhaps they can. Probably they can. Of course they can, and that's why he is here. Roebuck enjoys a sudden, spontaneous image of Yasmin's
leopard-spotted
bra. They'll be even larger, what with pregnancy; rounder. Enough. He removes the neatly folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his
dark-blue
suit—the same one he wore yesterday, for luck—smoothes them on his leg, and slips them silently across the gleaming surface of the lawyer's desk.

“What the fuck is that?” asks Yasmin, stroking her prehensile hips.

The attorney, having a better feel for the relationship of time to money, accepts the documents and silently reads. Roebuck watches her eyes move from top to bottom, pause, blink—lovely eyes, also—and blink again before shifting the page.

“These of course could be forgeries.”

“And I, of course, am willing to verify them in person at any medical facility of your choosing.” He practised bouncing that one off his multiple reflections on the way up in the elevator.

The lawyer sighs. She is a real professional. “If so, this alters … the circumstances.”

“
What
alters the circumstances?” Yasmin is sitting up a little straighter.

Her lawyer gives her a lawyerly look; some would swear it was almost a motherly look. “It would appear that Mr. Roebuck is … infertile.”

“What!”

“Shooting blanks,” he offers sweetly.

“But …”

Roebuck has no desire to be cruel. He has no wish to see his former procreative partner flounder upward through the necessary stages of cognition. Besides which, this is Yasmin. “I had a vasectomy,” he says cutting to the chase.

Years of legal education pounce on that one.
“When?”
Roebuck has to admire the tenacity. “When do you purport this procedure took place?”

“Before.
Well
before. Which means,” he says, returning to Yasmin and her nascent expectations, “the father can't be me.”

“You …
asshole!”

The lawyer clears her throat, a warning her client chooses to ignore.

“Do you mean to tell me, you fucking asshole, after all this …?”

Roebuck nods. “I'm definitely not your guy.”

“I would like us to return to this presumed vasectomy …” The attorney isn't willing to let up. He can see the wheels turning: perhaps there is some new action possible, some parallel line of attack. False representation? “The timing of this procedure is suspiciously …”

“So if it's not me …” Roebuck is still
eye-to
-eye with Yasmin. “That means …?” He wants to hear it said out loud, that she can have no claim on him.

“Fucking Daniel!”

“Sorry. What?”

But Yasmin is now deep in the thickets of her own considerations.

“Did you say
Daniel
?”

“I should say the
alleged
vasectomy, because this
presumed
procedure has in no way been established …”

“Daniel
Greenwoo
d
?” Roebuck massages his scalp. His head feels itchy. “Daniel Greenwood's in Australia.”

“I know that, Dipshit.”

“And, even in the event it
is
established, notwithstanding …”

Roebuck's fertile mind, which has until moments ago been relaxing with pleasant images of sugar plum fairies and leopard-spotted breasts, of habeas corpus and the etymology of
tort
, now presents him with a brand new sequence of connected thoughts at the end of which arrives a seismic, though achingly practical, conclusion. He understands. He does understand. At last. Roebuck smiles; he actually smiles, a real smile—it all makes so much sense now—and withdraws his chequebook. One thing at a time. He asks politely if it might be possible to borrow a pen. The lawyer courteously hands him hers.

“Yo
u and I have wronged each other,” he says addressing Yasmin. He has always had a talent for the talk, has Roebuck. “That is clear to me now. Perhaps in some small way this will … ameliorate.” He turns again toward the attorney. “Is that the proper word?”

“Prick!” shouts Yasmin.
“
That's
the proper word!”

Roebuck clicks the lawyer's pen and writes a cheque for fifty thousand dollars. Then another in the same amount—
so
much nicer being rich—payable to Yasmin's lawyer. He hesitates. “Should this be made out to you or to your firm?”

“That would depend on what service it is intended to retain.”

Roebuck nods and smiles. It's a serene smile, he can tell. He has floated to another plane, hovering in a spot just below the ceiling, watching himself and these two women in this
glass-walled
office like a fish tank high, high above the city. Is this what closure turns out to be? He truly does admire this attorney. “As a start,” he says, “with your permission, let me enquire: do we have reciprocal enforcement agreements with Australia, do you know?”

“That is not my area of expertise. But yes, I believe so. Yes.”

“So it would be possible then to launch, hmm, similar … proceedings there … with respect to Mr. Daniel Greenwood, in Australia?”

“Presupposing Mr. Greenwood has indeed …” The lawyer interrupts herself. “Yes,” she says simply. “Definitely.”

“Then please accept this”—Roebuck slides the cheque across the desk—“as a retainer intended to further your client's pursuit of justice in that jurisdiction. I assume your firm has correspondents on the ground there? Good. I will also require you
to provide assistance in winding up your client's business connections here in this country as rapidly as possible. Before the end of next week, shall we say?” He places the other cheque on the fabric next to Yasmin's twitching
thigh. She doesn't touch it, but he knows she's counting zeros.

“Yasmin,” he says. “You'll want to get yourself to Sydney right away. I would advise next week. Why don't we say next week at the latest?”

“Shut up. I'm thinking.”

“It's never too soon to start planning.”

“I said shut up …”

“The sooner you finalize your support mechanisms, the smoother things will go. You could have a difficult pregnancy, Yasmin. What if you're confined to bed?”

“You are one incredible prick.”

“That's me. Additionally, I will arrange with your attorney to provide you with a living allowance of, say, five thousand dollars per month for a period of …”

“Ten thousand,” corrects the lawyer.

Roebuck nods. “I will arrange with your attorney to provide you with a living allowance of
seventy-five
hundred dollars monthly, for a period of nine calendar months. After which point I believe we can assume you will have achieved full financial independence.”

Yasmin has taken on a posture he hasn't seen before. She looks … thoughtful.