Poles Apart (40 page)

“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to provide her forwarding address.”

“But you have her forwarding address.”

“But I’m not permitted to disclose it.”

“I see. Thank you, anyway.”

Good news, bad news. She was no longer working for that firm, but I didn’t know how to reach her.

Idea. I searched on my phone for a florist in the area. It took me about thirty seconds to identify a flower shop, a block and a half from the restaurant. I was there in four minutes. I ordered a bouquet of freshly cut flowers. Or perhaps you just call it a bunch of freshly cut flowers. Bouquet has a mildly matrimonial ring to it. In a perfect storm of serendipity, the store’s delivery driver pulled up outside just as I left. He not only drove the florist’s van, but he drove a hard bargain, too. A minute later, I handed him $40 and he handed me his ball cap emblazoned with the store’s logo. I wanted to look the part. But more than that, a few days ago my face had been plastered all over the newscasts. I pulled the florist’s cap down low on my cranium and took another cab the sixteen blocks to the swanky offices of Mackenzie Martin.

I might not have mentioned this, but some people think I have a slightly Slavic look – something about the placement of my
eyes and the size of my forehead. Frankly, I don’t see it. My eyes are just where you’d expect them to be, as far as I’m concerned. And I like my forehead. I think I’m kind of average looking. But since I was about to address, in person, the receptionist I’d just spoken to on the phone, I figured I’d go with the Slavic thing.

It’s actually not that difficult to speak English with a slight Russian accent, even if your only exemplar is Boris from the
Rocky and Bullwinkle
cartoons. I thought I could pull it off, provided the receptionist wasn’t named Ludmilla or Ekaterina. I took that chance and walked into the sixteenth-floor lobby of Mason Bennington’s law firm bearing my bunch of freshly cut flowers. I know this sounds like something out of a
TV
sitcom, but at that moment, I was short on alternatives, short on time, and, apparently, long on chutzpah.

The receptionist looked up as I approached her station in the way I hoped your average floral delivery guy would.

“Yes, hello. Good afternoon. I am havink flowers here for, let me see now, Ms. Megan Cook. Yes, dat’s de name.” I checked the piece of paper I held in my hand.

“I’m sorry, but Megan Cook no longer works here,” she replied.

And yes, her voice confirmed it was the same receptionist I’d spoken to on the phone not twenty minutes earlier.

“Oh, I see. She has moved. Dat’s not good for me. Could please you tell me vere she now vorks?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot give you her address. I’m not allowed to.”

“Please. Zis is quite important. I took zis order myself, and wrote za card myself,” I said, worried slightly that I was morphing into
a German accent. “I can say dat it is a serious matter zat is urgent, very urgent. And a matter of za heart.”

I gave her my most earnest look, before continuing.

“Zis delivery, I need to make. Please,” I said, now worried that I sounded like Yoda with a German accent. “Please. No one vill know, and Ms. Cook vill be happy. You vill be happy. I vill be happy. We all vill be happy.”

I could see she was thinking about it.

I pulled two tulips from the bunch and handed them to her.

“Please.”

She took the tulips and stuck them in a cup filled with pens on her desk. Then she heaved a heavy sigh, looked one way, looked the other, and typed on her keyboard.

“I’ll deny giving this to you, but she’s working at the Anacostia Community Legal Aid Clinic, you know, in the southeast quad.”

“Tank you. Tank you.”

I turned and got the hell out of Dodge.

I should have guessed. I remember her telling me she’d worked there during law school. I flagged down another cab and gave the driver the address, courtesy of Google. I had no plan, just some romantic notion that if I showed up on her doorstep, apologized, and handed her the flowers, I might just have a fighting chance. That seems to be what always happens in the rom-com flicks I’d seen.

I watched the cityscape change as the taxi crossed into Anacostia. He pulled over in front of the nondescript low-rise building. I
paid and got out, leaving the florist’s cap in the back seat as an extra tip for the driver. This truly was a rough part of
DC
. I entered the clinic. The waiting area was crowded. Really crowded. I approached the frazzled-looking woman behind the glass.

“I’m here to see Megan Cook.”

“Is she expecting you?”

“No, probably not.”

“Are you a client?” she asked, eyeing my flowers.

“Would it be easier to see her if I were?”

The woman was not amused.

“Um, then no, I’m not a client. I’m a friend of hers.”

“Will she want to see you?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m hanging way out here on this limb.”

“You got a name?”

“Well, yes, yes I do. But I wonder if it might be more effective just to tell her that someone is here with flowers and not give her my name.”

“I think I’d better give her your name.”

“Right. Yes, of course. I think that would be best,” I agreed. “It’s Everett Kane.”

“I know that name. And you seem kind of familiar. Do I know you?”

“I have a very average face. Lots of guys look like me. I’m sure we’ve never met,” I said. “Um, don’t forget to mention the flowers. That could tip the balance my way.”

She nodded and smiled at least a little.

“You can wait over there.” She pointed to a small alcove a little away from the mayhem of the waiting area.

I did as I was told and sat down on the wooden bench beneath the window.

I was looking out the window when she appeared. I hadn’t heard her approach.

“Everett? What are you doing here?”

She wasn’t smiling. But my heart did something anyway, when I turned to see her.

“Oh, hi, Megan. Um, I was in the area, and just thought I’d pop in to say hi.”

She sighed but said nothing.

“Okay, that’s not exactly true. I just thought we kind of left things a little unresolved and I wanted a chance to explain, because I think you have the wrong impression of me. I just want a minute to explain,” I babbled. “Oh, and these are for you.”

She took the flowers I offered and smelled them.

“They’re really very nice,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that. In fact, it makes this all a little awkward.”

“Sorry. I don’t want this to be awkward. I was really hoping for un-awkward.”

“How did you find me?”

“Well, it took a little creativity and some serious thespian prowess before the receptionist at your old firm caved. But here I am.”

She sat down on the bench.

“Well, you sure made a splash yesterday,” she said. “I can’t turn on a
TV
or open a paper without seeing your face.”

“Sorry about that. I have no idea why it’s been such big news. There’s so much other stuff going on in the world that’s more important.”

“I thought you handled yourself very well. And you took the initiative right out of that asshole Mason Bennington’s hands,” she said.

There was a lull in the conversation during which she looked at her watch. Great.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I have clients waiting,” she said, starting to stand up.

“Wait. Look, can you just listen for a moment? I wanted to tell you that night we had dinner that I wrote the blog. I really did. I almost got the words out. But I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to put you in that position. So, if you remember, I gave you my ‘Canadian’ cop-out instead. If I’d told you the truth, you would have had to disclose it to your client. But what’s most important for you to understand is that I wasn’t using you to get info on Bennington. I didn’t offer you safe refuge from that violent rally just to pump you for intelligence on your client. I just acted on instinct. And then I liked you. I didn’t intend for that happen. But it did. That’s all it was. I had no plans to write any more blog posts about Bennington. That was a one-shot deal, and it happened long before I even met you. I wanted to see you again because I just found I was thinking a lot about you.”

“Well, you put me in a really tough spot. When Mason Bennington found out we had dinner together, he was not pleased. Do you have any idea what he’s like when he’s not pleased?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I replied. “Did you get fired over it?”

“No. I just couldn’t take the charade anymore,” she said. “I didn’t feel like being used by Bennington and my own firm to help put a more enlightened face on a first-class jerk of a client. So I just quit. Best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Good for you.”

“I still believe everyone deserves legal representation. But I decided I didn’t have to be the one providing it to Mason Bennington.”

Silence reigned for a moment or two.

“Do you believe me when I say I wanted to tell you, that I tried to tell you? Do you understand why, in the end, I felt I couldn’t, at least not then?” I asked her.

She sighed, again, and nodded.

“I think I knew the truth long before now. But it’s nice to hear it from you. I should have called you before now, but I’ve been on a bit of a roller coaster this last week or so, and I could only handle so much at once,” she said. “I was just so shocked that you were the mystery blogger. I wasn’t expecting that. No one was. Personally, I was impressed. But professionally, I was livid. I felt stupid and I felt used. I didn’t react well. I jumped to what I thought were logical conclusions, but I never did my
due diligence to see whether I was right. Turns out I wasn’t. Sorry about that.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Wow. This is going better than I expected.”

Finally, she smiled.

“Megan, I know you’ve got clients to see,” I started. “But I also wanted to tell you that I’ve just accepted a position at
NOW
. I’m moving to
DC
in the next two weeks.”

I flew back that night and somehow managed to lug Beverley’s pine box up the stairs to my apartment. Actually that’s not quite true. The police officer on duty that night, apparently for my own protection, helped with it. She was quite strong. All was quiet on the street that night. I saw no sign of the nightly protestors, and no sign of any cars pulling up to disgorge well-heeled
XY
members.

I’d forgotten about the brown paper package Yolanda had given me that morning. I sat down at my kitchen table and picked it up. I peeled off the brown paper to reveal a shallow white cardboard box. The note taped to the top of the box said:

The lump entered my throat, hard and fast. I could feel my eyes water. I opened the box. I think I knew the instant before I saw what was inside. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. Her treasured first edition of John Stuart Mill’s
The Subjection of Women
lay there in all its crimson glory, resting on some tissue paper. I picked it up and held it in my hands, tightly. I then placed the book carefully on the table before spending the next several minutes no longer ignoring the passing of my friend. It felt good. It was a release.

In time, I recovered my faculties enough to turn my attention to the pine box sitting on the table. It was locked with kind of a metallic flap that swung down from the top and latched in front. No key had turned up. I examined the lock. It was very old, but what I knew about picking locks, I’d learned watching cop shows on television. There was almost always a bobby pin involved, and seconds later, after some deft and delicate manipulation, the lock would magically spring open. I had no bobby pins. Why would I? So I turned the box around and examined the hinges. Those I thought I could handle. I used the blade of a butter knife I didn’t even know I had in my cutlery drawer. It took me under five minutes to remove the three slot-headed screws from each of the two hinges. I carefully lifted the lid and rested the free side of it on the table, still connected at the lock.

The box was filled to the top with letters, all in envelopes and stacked neatly. There were hundreds, no, thousands of them.

My plane landed in San Francisco on time. I shouldered my carry-on bag and walked over to Special Services where I picked up the other piece of my “luggage.” With some effort, I loaded it onto a baggage cart and pushed it to the car rental counter. Fifteen minutes later I was loaded up in my Hyundai Elantra and headed for US 101-South. Other than its blinding white colour, the car was really quite nice, though my father would not be pleased at all that I had not insisted on a Ford, or at least an American car.

I’d never been to California so I was relying on my cellphone map app to get me to my destination. It would take me about an hour and a half to get there, maybe more if I ended up zigging when I should have zagged. I have a tendency to do that when driving in strange new lands. I stayed on US 101-South when it merged with I-280 South. Then, near Cupertino, I took the CA-85 South exit for a brief stint before cutting onto CA-17 South
near Los Gatos, for the final push to Santa Cruz. It was a lovely day, as they always seem to be in California. I was feeling good. I was content. I was downright happy, with a dollop of anticipation thrown in. Driving down the highway in the bright sunshine always puts me in a reflective mood. I turned off the car radio so I could just think for a few miles with no distractions, no interruptions, save for the disembodied, mechanized, but I think woman’s, voice of the navigation app on my cellphone. For some reason, I called her Tabitha.