“Yes, that’s what I am doing.” At Ben’s wide-eyed gape, Matt snorted. “Of course I am not trying to ruin us, but buddy, I have to tell you that your song of ruination is getting a little old. We’ve done pretty well for ourselves. I brought in the Rosenberg case and the Wheeler White case, and they were both big money settlements. Now you just sound greedy.”
“And you sound like you think you have some superior cause and the rest of us attorneys just can’t understand your higher calling,” Ben had snapped so sharply that Harold had quickly jumped up and pulled the door shut. “I am sick to death of this save-the-world crap you have going, Matt. You may think you are bringing in the money, but take a look at the books. I am the only one consistently bringing in paying clients while you are taking on homeless drunks.”
Matt really wanted to throttle Ben, but he managed to remain calm. “Charlie has a right to seek legal counsel. He got hit by a bus, Ben. He wasn’t doing anything but standing there when a big fat-ass bus with a big orange longhorn painted on the side came barreling around the corner on a red light. I know you don’t give a shit what happens to him, but look at it from a humanitarian standpoint. If there was a chance in hell this guy would have ever gotten off the streets, it’s gone now—he can hardly walk, much less work. Cap Metro knows they hit him, they know that their driver was at fault, yet they have practically told Charlie to go to hell.”
“That’s because,” Ben said, barely able to control his seething, “your charity case had a blood alcohol content of point one four, almost twice the legal limit. Cap Metro will have no problem convincing a jury that the bum was so drunk, he stepped off the curb in front of their bus. You know that, and still you go looking for this kind of thing.”
“I didn’t go looking for him,” Matt said, quickly reaching his limit of patience. “Kate Leslie in the drug diversion court called me. I had a hard time pretending that because the guy is homeless and an alcoholic, he was not entitled to the same laws and protections that we enjoy. So what if we lose the case? Doesn’t he deserve legal representation?”
Ben threw his hands in the air. “There’s not a thing I can say to you, is there? We’re at opposite ends of the universe.”
There it was, the truth said out loud and now lying there, like a corpse, between two old friends. Neither of them said anything for a long moment, just stared at each other as the truth sunk in. “Yeah,” Matt said at last. “I guess we are.”
Ben had turned and walked out of his office.
That’s the way they left it that afternoon and for days afterward, a philosophical argument hanging over them like a death knell, affecting everyone in the place. Even Harold, unflappable Harold, was making little mistakes, the type for which he normally would have offered his resignation. And that alone, Matt thought, was reason enough for him to do something. The only problem was, he couldn’t figure out what, exactly, he was supposed to do.
So he just kept working, hoping the problem would go away, or that a solution would magically present itself.
Fortunately, there was Rebecca to keep him afloat. He was enjoying her metamorphosis, watching her chip away at her perfect little cocoon and seeing her true self shine through. In sharp contrast to the perfectly put together house he had first entered, now there were books strewn all over her house, haphazardly dropped in one place or another, without regard to color or height. There were days at the lake house she never donned even a smudge of makeup—which made no difference to him, frankly, because there was something naturally seductive about her, whatever she wore or did. But the biggest sign of change had to be the evening Grayson spilled ice cream on a very expensive rug. She didn’t freak out, she didn’t scream with horror, she didn’t cry. She laughed and made some remark about how much the boy was like his mother when it came to ice cream—a real pig.
The more Matt knew Rebecca, the lovelier she became, and he knew, of course, that he was head over heels for her. Completely and totally captivated, obviously and permanently bewitched. Obvious to him, anyway, because when she began to exhibit her newfound enthusiasm for politics, he really couldn’t think of anything to say, especially since he had, in a heated moment, encouraged it. And then having subsequently learned, on those rare occasions he actually did say something, like, Why are you doing this, the new Rebecca could bust his balls like nobody’s business in the course of reminding him why she was doing it.