Chapter 2
“That would be great. Do I know the person?” she replied.
“No. She’s in my mythology class. I just don’t have any more free time this week or the next, and I know you don’t do the whole brunch thing.”
“Well, I know what you mean about being busy. This new case I’m on has me working all night.”
“What’s it about? Anything I could help with?”
“Nope, unless you’re familiar with messy custody battles. This is from the divorce of last year; the one that nearly sent Jonah to the hospital from lack of sleep. He was so determined to make partner, he figured winning the next case would do it. Too bad he forgot that the Sylvestry divorce case was already determined by the board to be the toughest to win.”
“I remember that. Afterwards, Sam Johnson gave Jonah a paycut for being so irresponsible about his health. And remember what Neal said afterwards?”
Francie started to giggle, “ ‘Hicks, if you insist on spending 23 hours of your day on an unsolvable legal battle just to impress the board, do it at someone else’s company. We run a tight ship here at this firm, and we don’t want you jeopardizing your time and family and forcing our health insurance to go up.’ ”
I laughed at her deep-voice impersonation of Jacob Neal.
“Anyways,” Francie continued, “Calvin Sylvestry wants his kids, now that he’s gotten married again. Susanna won’t give ‘em up without a fight.”
“Well, if you want to concentrate on your case, I can always leave. You can call me when you get home tonight,” I felt guilty for disturbing her.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Hey, have you talked to James yet?” she changed the subject.
“No. Belle said he would be here when we got back from lunch, but he was on an errand.”
“Wait around for a bit. We sent him out for McDonald’s. You can talk to him when he gets back. You don’t have a class this afternoon, do you?”
“No, my class is in the morning, and I only have the one.”
“I remember when I was a junior at college. I felt on top of the world. But I had about a million classes then, so I should say I felt like the world was on top of me! Anyways, I enjoyed the interruption, but I do have this stupid custody battle to figure out. See ya Carrie!”
“Adios amiga,” I answered in one of my trademark greetings. I wandered over to Isabel’s desk and sat down in her comfy chair, propping my feet up on her desk. When she returned from the supply room, and saw me relaxing in her space, she grabbed my feet and shoved them off.
“Since when do you work here?” Belle asked playfully.
“Hey, that reuben sandwich I had really filled me up. You can’t expect me to do stuff after that. I’m too full,” I smiled up at her with an innocent gaze.
“Fine. I won’t move you, but once you talk to James, you’re gone,” she rolled me out of the way and grabbed another chair to sit in. I grabbed some paper clips to fiddle with.
The elevator door opened just then, and James stepped out, pushing the mail cart and holding two or three bags from different restaurants. He stopped off at Farrah’s, Erica’s and Francie’s offices, giving them their lunches.
“Geez, I guess Francie isn’t the only one on a rough case,” I remarked, looking at Belle.
“Yeah, Erica’s got a woman suing her boss for age discrimination, and I think Farrah has a juvenile delinquent case. Some 15 year old slipped some liquor in his pocket, a robbery took place, and the store’s nailing him for the theft of $3000.”
James passed by Belle’s desk and glanced at me briefly. He said hello to her and continued on his way.
Seeing my chance, I jumped up and blocked his mail cart.
“Carrie, what do you want?”
“James, I’m just here to talk to you about the possibility of us being friends.”
“Huh?”
“Listen. I could do a lot of things to you; you made me so mad, but I am a mature adult, and I don’t like having enemies. I want to end this on a pleasant note, and being friends is the perfect solution. Besides, we still get along well enough that we wouldn’t kill each other. I have had several boyfriends that have broken it off, and we’ve managed to salvage a fairly good friendship out of it.”
“I don’t know. Things didn’t really work out between us too well,” his forehead was wrinkled in thought.
“Oh come on, life’s too short to be picky about details. Do you want to make the best out of this or what?” I was starting to get a bit impatient.
“I’ll have to think about it,” James said cautiously, pushing the cart past me. He glanced at me, then averted his eyes quickly, like he had spotted something he didn’t care to see. I shrugged, knowing he’d eventually come around, and headed for the elevator.
***
Now, as I’ve said before, Luthar always gets his way. The problem is that Jasmine always gets her way too. If you put two people together that are spoiled and selfish, you’re guaranteed to make sparks.
Jasmine decided to tell Luthar to back off, but he would not be moved. She just barely avoided a fight, but he still managed to get one swift punch in beforehand. She came to my house with a fat lip that would make your lunch come up to say hello. By the time I was done patching her up, there was blood all over my ivory carpet, and two teeth sitting in a glass on my kitchen counter.
“I can’t believe you challenged him. What were you thinking?” I practically screamed at my friend while making an ice pack for her mouth.
“Me? What about you? You were the one that told me to go fight him for you.” she retorted.
“No, I simply said you could do whatever you wanted about the whole thing. I never encouraged you to get yourself hurt. You got yourself punched.”
“Fine, fine, it was my fault. I still didn’t manage to get him to leave you alone, though.”
“He hasn’t done anything yet. I’m not worried about him. You, however, I am bothered about. Your lip’s swollen to the size of a kiwi, and you’ve lost two teeth, one of them being your right canine. You won’t be able to feed on anyone for a few days while your fang grows back.”
Jasmine’s face fell. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’ll have to get you some blood bags you can drink from, but you can’t bite anybody. Your other fangs are a little loose. I don’t want you losing your teeth in someone else’s neck.” I walked to the fridge and brought out a bottle of bloodwine and uncorked it. “Here, drink this. The wine will ease the pain, and the blood will nourish your weak bones. His punch knocked the strength right out of your body.” I handed her a full glass, and took a swig straight from the bottle to calm my own wild nerves.
“Carrie, what are we going to do about this?” Jasmine said, her mouth dripping with wine.
“Nothing, okay? I’m not going to do anything. I have more important things to worry about right now. Listen,” I changed the subject, “I want you to stay with me tonight while your lip heals. You can sleep in the guest bedroom. Alright?”
“Fine,” she agreed.
“And one more thing, no prank phone calls tonight, okay?”
“Man, you take all the fun out of a sleepover,” Jasmine whined.
“This isn’t a sleepover!”
I knocked on Ms. Lee’s office door before entering, “Hey Francie, I have a lunch engagement on Saturday with a friend of mine. Would you like to join us?” I was speaking to my former coworker while she wrote out some paperwork for her new case.