vendor stalls and a central courtyard full of tables was still there though, but now hemmed in by a Banana Republic and its surrounding citizenry of Nordstrom, an Apple Store, chain restaurants, and a ridiculous trolley running the length of the mall.
I took a seat by the Cajun place and felt the envelope in my coat pocket as I sat. It was only then that I felt a little nervous about sitting around with that kind of cash. But the Market was pretty crowded. There were twenty or more people sitting around at the tables and a lot more milling around through the shops and stands. It would be a bad place to try a robbery.
At exactly two o’clock, I got up and bought a lemonade from the Cajun guy. I felt bad just sitting there in front of his place. As I sat again, I realized how tired I was and started to wonder how much sleep I’d really gotten. Liz and I were up and walking to the coffee shop on Montana Avenue by nine, so it couldn’t have been much. As we walked, she asked me all about what had happened at the warehouse, what I’d learned from the cops, but she seemed distracted.
Then she reminded me of the conference she was attending in San Diego on Monday. She’d be home Tuesday night. She told me she’d decided to drive down today to spend the weekend with her mother. Liz had grown up in San Diego. Her mother still lived there. Driving down early was a perfectly logical and reasonable thing to do. But all I could think of was Ben Cross. I asked her who all was going as casually as I could. She said everyone. But she might as well have just said Ben and her. That’s all I heard. That was all I cared about.
At 2:10, I started to wonder where the kid was. I started to fidget and get restless, despite my exhaustion, or perhaps because of it. I felt the envelope again. Still there. Where else would it be? I thought about Liz driving down to San Diego. How much of what she told me was the truth? I finished the lemonade as I thought about it. Then I started questioning myself. When had I become so irrational? When had I become a jealous guy, suspicious of everything she did? And was it really about her behavior, or my own?
It had only just happened. Ben Cross had only been at Legal Aid a couple of months and it took awhile for me to start feeling insecure. I was pretty sure I hid it well. I doubted Liz had any idea how her interaction with Ben made me feel. Why would she think I was jealous? And, as I thought about it, I realized I didn’t know why I was reacting this way. Liz had never done anything wrong. She’d never done anything to hurt me.
Not yet. I told myself. Not yet. But this is how it starts. Office flirtation, escalating to moments of temptation—alone together in the office, late at night, or traveling together on a business trip—Liz hadn’t done anything yet, but she could. And then the obvious hit me. My jealousy wasn’t a product of Liz having cheated on me, it was the result of my having cheated on her.
At 2:40, I started to suspect the kid wasn’t going to show.
I walked into our small suite of offices and tossed the envelope on Jendrek’s desk. “The kid didn’t show.”
Jendrek eyed me over the top of his reading glasses and shrugged. Then glanced down at the envelope and laughed, “We could always say he did and keep the ten grand ourselves.”
“That’s just what I need, to get disbarred over ten grand.”
“Just think of it, Ollie. You’d be saved from being a lawyer, from being a parasite on society. You’re young, you could still become a respectable person.” Jendrek laughed at his own joke and locked the thick envelope in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to his desk. He called it the smoking gun drawer. He said that was where he locked the smoking guns when his clients came in and dropped them on his desk as they confessed to murder. Life never really happened like that, but Jendrek had a drawer ready, just in case it ever did.
I took a seat in the chair opposite Jendrek. “So what now? What do you think?”
He didn’t have much to say.