Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 15



“No, no, no! All you ever wear is brown!” Miles said, in the middle of the Walmart make-up aisle. “Try violet. It will make your eyes pop, and it’ll look fabulous with your hair.”

I let Miles talk me into violet eye shadow and pale nude lip gloss before we went clothes shopping.

At the Ritzy Rags boutique, all they had was fringe, fringe, and more fringe, heavily accented with rhinestones and silver studs. I eventually settled on a relatively tame black silk jacket with only a little fringe on the sleeves and hem. I also selected a purple cami and black slacks to match. I had to select something high-cut to hide one of the burns. Once dressed, despite my injuries and fatigue, I felt like something of a lawyer again, even though the clothes were definitely not Escada quality.

At three o’clock, I was not as ready as I could have been, but I was as ready as I could possibly be in that moment, given the timeframe for preparation. I had hoped to stop by the station and drop in on Nash before now, but I hadn’t had the chance.

Thankfully, I also had not had the chance to go by the office, which meant I had not yet been forced to explain myself to Dick Richardson, so there was something of a silver lining in the situation after all. Was it small of me to notice that he hadn’t bothered to drop by the hospital?

I parted ways with Miles and drove into the Caliente lot, parking behind a clump of prickly pear cacti and a barbed wire fence. All of the grass was dead because of the July heat. I was probably the only person between here and Houston wearing long sleeves. I concentrated on not sweating.

Maybe Dorian would buy me a margarita. That would be nice. On that note, I took a deep breath and walked inside.

The interior of Caliente was poorly lit, which, when you thought about it, made sense. If you were going to order chicken-fried jalapeno rattlesnake, did you really want to see what it looked like right before you shoveled it down your throat?

The contrast between the bright light of the outdoors and the air-conditioned shade inside had me squinting. If I had not been so acutely attuned to the potential of his presence, I might not have immediately seen Dorian sitting in the bar. He had chosen the corner of the restaurant, his back against the intersection of two walls, perfectly positioned to take in everything going on inside and everyone who came in from outdoors—before they had a chance to even notice he was there. Strategic as always. He hadn’t changed.

It was the motion of him rising to his feet that first caught my eye.

I caught my breath. I felt nauseated. Exhilarated. Disgusted. Attracted to him against my will.

Dorian wore a black suit, black shirt, no tie. He was exquisitely tailored head to toe and didn’t look like he’d been out in the South Texas dust and heat at all. He’d grown his hair out a bit. It was lush and curly, falling with a studied carelessness over his perfectly proportioned brow and dazzling blue eyes. He was clean shaven. And when he saw me and smiled, the glint off his teeth put the Orbitz gum commercial models to shame.

I swallowed hard.

He rushed towards me and enveloped me in an all-too-familiar embrace.

I caught myself sinking into it for just a split second before jerking backwards.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. I didn’t think I could handle it.

“Ahh, Chloe.” He smelled like coffee and spice and everything nice. “Have some compassion and be kind to the man whose heart you’ve already broken. He placed both palms on either side of my face and kissed my forehead. “I’ve missed you.”

“Well, I haven’t missed you,” I lied. “So tell me. Why on earth did the partners at Smith Knight decide to send you all the way down here?”

“It took a lot of convincing on my part, but I finally managed to persuade them it was in their best interests for them to let me see you again.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

Without looking away from me, Dorian called the waiter over and asked for a table in the back. We sat down, and Dorian ordered. “Two margaritas, por favor.” He flashed his uber-white smile at me one more time and took my hand in his. “Or have you gotten tired of margaritas since I’ve seen you last?”

“I’ve gotten tired of plenty of things since then, including you.” I whipped my hand away and turned to the waiter, irritated.

Fifty percent of my irritation stemmed from the fact that I really wanted a margarita and wasn’t about to let him order one for me. The other fifty percent was reserved solely for Dorian and Dorian alone.

“No margarita for me. Make it a martini. Extra dirty.” I turned back to Dorian and glared at him. “Just like you and your filthy, dirty, stinking, low-down, conniving tricks. You’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up here like this, but if you think I’m going to let you throw me off my game, you’ve got another think coming.”

The waiter raised his eyebrows and faded away without a word.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Dorian said. “In fact, that’s one of the reasons I came down here. No other girl in Dallas can compete with your game.”

“A hundred bucks says that’s not what you tell them when you’re in bed together.”

Dorian shifted in his seat. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he calculated his next move. Probably he didn’t appear studied to anyone else who might have been watching him at the moment, but I knew him. Everything he said and did was calculated, down to the precise trim of his fingernails and the sheen on the Rolex watch he inevitably wore, not because he especially liked Rolexes, but because he knew they impressed juries.

“There is no one else,” Dorian said. “There never was.”

“Right,” I said. “She came to my office, remember?”

“I told you,” Dorian said. “She was my secretary. I fired her. She was mad and trying to get back at me. None of it was true.”

I slammed my fist down on the table, stood, and leaned over it, getting right in Dorian’s face. “I am not stupid,” I whispered, too angry to trust my normal speaking voice. “Don’t you dare insult my intelligence.” I sat back down, slowly. “We both know you are a lying, cheating, sorry excuse for a man and that you are here not because of me, or because of any kind of sense of human loss or personal regret, but because of the chance to get your name on the biggest named client of your career. Counsel of Record for PetroPlex, Incorporated. Mister big man. Time 100. Man of the Year. I will not—not, I tell you—allow you to get away with pretending you are here for any other reason.”

I searched his face as he digested this little speech, realizing in the pit of my stomach that I was hoping for, praying for, the slightest indication that what I said was not the truth—that he had come back for me after all.

His face was marble. Michelangelo’s David marble. He didn’t move, didn’t give an inch.

I felt my own upper lip twitch against my will. How could a girl feel such a mix of hurt, anger, betrayal, heat, and attraction all at the same time and never let on? The universe had no right to expect it of me. It was too much. I felt myself drawn to him again, only this time the attraction was just as strong as the repulsion that pushed me away. I felt stuck, suspended in a limbo that could not sustain itself if either of us moved a millimeter forward or back.

After a long moment, I saw the muscles in his neck tighten as he swallowed, considering what to say. He leaned forward, his eyes boring into me, as though no one but the two of us were sitting there. “I don’t think you have ever really understood any of my intentions, or me, at all.”

This time I felt the twitch in the corner of my eye. So help me, if a tear squeezed itself out of the duct and down my cheek right now, I would die of shame. “I think,” I whispered, my voice shaking, “that’s what you tell yourself in order to be able to sleep at night. You are a liar to your core. You have the unique ability to deceive even your own soul.”

“Or maybe it’s you who’ve been deceiving yourself,” he said. “Did you ever think you might be wrong? Did you ever even once consider the fact that your ego got in the way of a future that could have been truly great?”

“My ego? My ego?” I was finding my voice again. “Our issues were never about me. They were about you. You and your ego. You and how one woman just wasn’t enough for the legendary Dorian Saks.”

“I think that’s what you tell yourself in order to be able to sleep at night,” he countered.

We were locked in a battle of wills. If he had just admitted it, just broken down and admitted that he’d had an affair, that he was wrong, that he had loved me and slipped in a moment of weakness, I might have given into him.

Under those circumstances, I might even have taken him back, if he’d asked. But he didn’t. He steadfastly refused to admit that anything had happened, that he was to blame. He was a paragon of defense-attorney glory, a fortress for his clients and a fortress for himself—a characteristic that equally fascinated and repulsed me.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Really. What do you want? If you ever gave two cents about me, you will not pretend you are here for some romantic reconciliation or an ex-lover’s tryst.”

I could see the muscles in his jaw clench as he considered how to answer.

“The truth,” I pressed. “I do not think it is possible to make it more clear that I am not interested in, nor will I fall for any more posturing, any more seduction, anything that is any part of your act and the hollow façade that is you, at all, anymore. Ever. So what is it? What’s the truth?”

Dorian drew a long breath. The waiter arrived with our drinks. Seeing the almost tangible tension between us, he set them on the table without a word. I downed half my martini in one swallow as I waited.

Dorian cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Since you put it that way.”

I sensed that I had somehow hurt him. Somehow wounded his pride by doubting his sincerity, by failing to welcome him back into my life with even a grudging appreciation for the love we had once shared.

I did doubt his sincerity after all, didn’t I? There was no chance that he could possibly be for real. If he had been for real, he would have come after me long before now. Right. Right?

“I suppose I’m here,” Dorian said slowly, “because in a week there will be a motion for summary judgment, which you will not win.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said.

“I am not here alone,” Dorian said. “I came down with six junior associates and an unlimited, blank-check bankroll, which your puny three-person firm cannot possibly hope to compete with.”

“You’ve always underestimated me,” I said.

“This is not about you, Chloe. This thing is so much bigger than you it’s beyond your comprehension. Even if, by some miracle, you manage to win at summary judgment, my client has enough money and enough power to drag this thing out so long Armageddon will happen sooner than you’ll get to trial. I represent a client who has all but bankrupted the FTC, who has forced the government to drop cases after 20 years of trying for sheer lack of resources and staying power. The government, Chloe. Do you think you’re bigger, badder, and tougher than Uncle Sam? Your boss might pass for wealthy down here, but he cannot stand up to the sheer size of what I am threatening, and neither can you. You and your boss and your perky little paralegal are only three people. We are Big Oil, the very foundation of these United States.”

I downed the rest of my martini and gathered my courage. “Nice try,” I said. “You ought to know by now that your jury voice doesn’t work on me.”

The thing is, it did, kind of. If I had been wearing boots, I’d be shaking in them.

“I’m going to say this once,” Dorian said. “And only once. The offer is off the table as of six p.m. tonight, so I suggest you run it by your client.”

“Spit it out,” I said.

“Three hundred thousand.”

I laughed, almost genuinely. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here to insult me like that. A man died. Two men, actually, a fact about which I think you are acutely aware, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. The case is worth at least a million, and you know it.”

“Do I?” he asked. “Because from where I sit, your expert is dead, your case files are destroyed, and you only have a week to prepare for a new hearing. In other words, you haven’t got a prayer.” He paused. “Unless you’re aware of something I’m not?”

Little alarm bells went off in my head. Was it possible that Dorian was even more evil than I had previously imagined? Or was it that he was involved in something bigger than even he thought was possible?

I leaned forward and searched his eyes. All I saw was the same old Dorian, whoever that was. “You’re asking me if I have a bargaining chip?”

“I’m asking you what your leverage for a counter offer might be. I’m asking you why in the world you wouldn’t take three-hundred and run.”

I had to be careful here. If I let on that perhaps I knew something he didn’t—something big enough to warrant a larger counter-offer—and that information got back to the people who had killed Schaeffer, things could get ugly for me. On the other hand, if I let on like I had no case, Dorian was liable to take the entire offer off the table altogether. After all, there was nothing in writing yet.

“I’m not authorized to take offers or make counters without first speaking to my client,” I said.

I could feel Dorian searching my eyes just as intensely as I had searched his a moment ago. I wondered what he saw. If he saw even a hint of my stress or fear, I would be toast.

“The question is, can you and your client afford to refuse?” He looked me up and down. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve downgraded your wardrobe.”

I felt myself wilting with embarrassment. I knew I should have begged, borrowed or stolen a better suit before meeting him in person. It wasn’t that Dorian was into fashion. My clothes were just another way for him to judge the appropriate amount for his opening offer. I was sure that was one of the reasons why he’d come down here in person instead of just phoning it in. He needed to gauge how well I was doing for myself in my new life with his own eyes. If I had appeared successful, he would have offered more. I silently cursed the house fire and the unknown persons who had caused it, hoping to high Heaven that Dorian would read the anger in my face as anger at him and not at the situation in general.

Dorian was done with me for now. He stood up and tossed a fifty dollar bill onto the table. Knowing him, it was the smallest bill he had in his wallet.

“Six p.m.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his card. “And my number, in case you’ve forgotten it.”

He leaned over and kissed me softly on the cheek, taking care to brush my earlobe and the curve of my chin with the tips of his fingers. I didn’t turn toward him. Didn’t move.

“You could have had it better than this,” he whispered, and walked away.

I waited until he disappeared into the halo of daylight that pooled around him when he opened the doors to leave before I took the napkin out of my lap and started sopping up the sweat threatening to stain my collar.

I eyed the money on the table. I didn’t want to take his money. But desperate times called for desperate measures. I asked the waiter to make change and walked out the door forty bucks richer.