Lisa rose. “You’re a sad, bored housewife, Kim. Why would I be jealous?”
The lawyers were on their feet now, so Jeff rose, too. He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, but she shrugged him off. “All we want to do is help you and help Ronni, but you insist on trying to destroy us!”
“You did that all on your own with your wine and your sleeping pills,” Lisa hurled back.
“We’re not paying you three million dollars!” Kim screamed, marching toward the door. “If you won’t negotiate with us, we’ll go to trial! And you’ll get nothing!”
Kim stormed out of the room just as an elderly, slightly fearful security guard arrived.
kim
THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS AFTER
Jeff drove them home from the examination for discovery, his jaw set, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. They were racing up Market, going too fast in the ubiquitous traffic and uncharacteristic spring fog. Normally, Kim would have asked her husband to slow down, complained that he was being reckless, but she said nothing. The speed felt freeing somehow, almost comforting. If Jeff lost control and careened into an oncoming bus, at least all this shit would be over.
“Why did you tell Lisa about the LSD?” Jeff said, his voice quiet with suppressed rage.
“I didn’t tell her,” Kim snapped back. “I haven’t talked to Lisa about anything in years!”
“Well, you must have told someone. . . .”
“Why would I?” she cried. “I was humiliated!”
Jeff snorted, like being humiliated about your husband’s use of psychedelics was a character flaw. “Slow down,” Kim demanded, regaining perspective. She did not want to die in a fiery crash just because she was being sued and having her reputation destroyed. Jeff let his foot off the accelerator ever so slightly.
“Who did you tell, Jeff? Were you bragging to your friends about getting high behind my back?”
“Fuck you. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Fuck you! Neither did I!” They traveled in indignant silence until they pulled into their attached garage. It was only then that Kim realized her outrage was unjustified. She had told someone about the LSD. Despite her shame, she had told Tony. What had he done . . . ?
Jeff was too upset to go back to the office, so he took his road bike out (of course). The kids wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, at least, and Kim knew she had to make the most of the empty house. She hurried to her office and dug out the legal file she’d started the day she received the summons from Lisa’s attorney. There, on that official document, was the name of Lisa’s law firm: Lazar, Neville, and Stenton. Kim hurried to her computer and pulled up their website.
As expected, the site was professional and user-friendly. Lisa wasn’t going to hire some mini-mall solicitor to ruin Kim and Jeff. “Meet Our Team,” one of the tabs invited, so Kim clicked. As she scrolled through the professional photographs of stiff-looking attorneys, she couldn’t quite believe that Tony would betray her this way. Of course he was angry; he felt she’d used him and led him on, but would he really do something so cruel? So unethical? Did he hate her that much? And then her questions were answered. There, in the senior associates section Kim saw her: civil litigator Amanda Hoyle.
Tony’s wife was polished and attractive, with dark hair and arched eyebrows. If it weren’t for the length of her face, giving her a somewhat horsey appearance, she could have been a TV lawyer. Amanda looked intelligent and confident, an image validated by her résumé: Pepperdine University School of Law, bar admissions in Northern and Central California, various awards and distinctions. Would this accomplished woman really sink so low as to feed gossip she got from her husband to Lisa’s fat lawyer? And what exactly did Tony say to his wife? “You know that civil suit your firm is handling, where the girl lost her eye? I was messing around with the defendant and she mentioned that her husband used LSD last year.” Of course, he’d spin it so he appeared totally innocent. “The defendant in that case where the girl lost her eye . . . she’s the copywriter for Apex Outerwear. She’s been really unreliable lately, so I asked her what was up. She told me about the lawsuit. And she admitted that her husband took LSD last year.”
Suddenly, Kim was overcome with fury. She picked up the manila file full of legal papers and threw it across the room. “Fuck!” she screamed, as the papers escaped the folder and wafted to the floor like wounded birds. She swiped the desk organizer off the desk, sending pens, pencils, and paper clips clattering across the concrete floor. Kim was angry at Tony, but she was even more angry at herself. How could she have shared Jeff’s indiscretions with a stranger? How could she have thought that Tony could be her confidant? When she thought how she had kissed him and touched him, how she had thought she might have loved him . . . Jesus, he wasn’t even her type! So skinny and hairy and artsy-fartsy. He designed flyers, for Christ’s sake! Jeff was vice president of global strategy at a multimillion-dollar tech company!
Tony was clearly emasculated by his attorney wife, so he was trying to screw around on her to make himself feel like more of a man. But when Kim rejected him, he attacked her like the puny, pitiful flyer designer he was. Kim reached for the phone, then hung it up. No, this was not happening on the phone. She needed to see Tony’s face when he admitted what he had done to her. She needed him to see how his petty vendetta over blue balls had damaged her life, her family. She opened her filing cabinet and withdrew one of Tony’s invoices. His address was printed prominently on the top.
Kim hurried to the kitchen and grabbed her car keys from the bowl full of glass pebbles. She halted near the door and checked the mirror that hung there for last-minute touch-ups. As angry as she was, she still wanted to look good. She still wanted Tony to want her so she could laugh in his face. Luckily, rage seemed to suit her. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was sexily disheveled. Maybe Kim should lose it more often? With the way her life was spinning out of control, it was a definite possibility.
TONY’S HOME WAS one of three suites in a reclaimed Victorian on Russian Hill. Kim pressed the buzzer for A AND T HOYLE. She knew Tony would answer. Amanda would be at work, and the kids would be at school, followed by one of their numerous extracurricular activities that Tony often moaned about. After a few seconds, she heard Tony’s upbeat voice through the speaker. “Hello?”
“It’s Kim. I need to talk to you.”
There was a long pause and then, “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I’m not leaving here until you let me in.”