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"Come and see me if you finish before we close for the day, and you can give me an update."
Of course! You can count on it! She would make sure she was late, she told herself, nodding at him.
"Hurry up then, your new client is waiting for you."
With a forced smile, just like the one he had given her when she came in, Loreley walked out of the room, her back straight and a sure step, looking confident and composed; but she had a great desire to kick that fat butt of his.
***
Having to defend what she considered indefensible had never been in her plans, nor did she consider it a means of getting ahead in her career, so the case she had been assigned was hard to swallow. If only she could refuse it, but she had already lost face when she had refrained to assist Leen Soraya Desmond, so she could not back out yet again. Kilmer would be furious and would jump on it as the perfect pretext to kick her out of the firm. She had always felt that he had a certain prejudice towards her, but in recent times it had become worse.
Her boss was demanding increasing commitment from her, more than he asked of Ethan, and she suspected that the motivation stemmed from the fact that she was privileged by birth, a girl who only had to ask and it would be given. He, on the other hand, had been forced to work hard for thirty years to attain a certain position and a decent bank account.
Thus, the day before, she had been forced to accept that thankless job, and it had kept her awake late into the night.
What technicality could she call upon to prevent her client ending his days in prison? A 31-year-old man who had beaten his partner to death leaving her agonizing on the floor of the house, then going off as if nothing had happened. How many cases like this must she see in courtrooms? It was not for her to judge, but how could she prepare a good defence, based on reciprocal trust with her client, if she herself felt no empathy for that individual, nor any kind of compassion?
Sometimes she wondered if it had been a mistake to choose the career of criminal lawyer. Perhaps it was not suitable, she should have chosen civil law; or maybe she was just going through a period of confusion, in conflict with her own work. Who knows?
But if she wanted to become a good lawyer, she knew she needed to toughen up.
In the interview room, her client had claimed that he had only slapped the girl and did not kill her. Just before he left the house, he had seen her touch her cheeks, in tears. She was alive and angry.
A murderer who declared he was innocent, however, was nothing new.
The waiter put the coffee she had ordered on the table, bringing Loreley's attention back to where it was before: the newspaper that had printed the article about that misdeed. The names of the accused and his defence lawyer, her, were also included were.
What perverse emotion drove a man to beat to death the woman he said he loved? Or to want to keep her tied to him at all costs, when instead all she wants is to be free?
She had heard so many stories like that and there were certainly others who were still silent because the victims often just put up with it, most of the time out of fear, but in some cases because of a penchant for submission. She recalled a friend from her university days who had saved herself only because she had reported her boyfriend in time and then had turned to a psychologist to overcome her addiction.
How long can a victim be considered just a victim and not also accomplice, because she accepts to endure the violence in silence? Luckily, things were changing, but not fast enough. Not yet.
With a gesture of frustration, she turned a couple of pages and stopped when she saw a short article with the image of a tall guy with brown hair coming out of the theatre beside a beautiful red-haired woman.
Her hands trembled. Him again!
Since that man had almost died at the hands of his ex-wife, his notoriety had taken a huge leap, and he was now known even to people who had never seen him.
Not stopping to read the short piece, she closed the newspaper and threw it onto the empty chair beside her. To hell with him!
She was feeling the need to get rid of her tension, and the only thing that took her mind off work was ice skating. Yes, of course, why not? It was a while since she’d been there.
Finishing her coffee, she paid and called a cab to take her home to get what she needed. She asked the taxi driver to wait for her downstairs and in less than an hour she was at Chelsea Piers, on the Hudson River Park.
It was that very place where she had put the blades on her feet for the first time, a day she remembered very well, because it had given her a taste of what it meant to fall down and have to get up again despite the fear. She had fallen in love with the sport immediately and had become an excellent skater, winning a few local competitions along the way. But then with university she had been forced to cut back on training and after the accident had not competed again. The return to skating had not been easy. She was terrified she might have another bad fall and it had blocked her. It had taken several months before she was able to get back on the ice.
But she had won that battle.
She put on a tight-fitting full-length jumpsuit, of black stretchy water-repellent fabric, and began to wind the boot laces around the hooks. She had almost finished that tedious but important operation when her work phone rang.
The urge not to answer was so great that, before pulling it out of her backpack, she sat there for several seconds listening to Khachaturian’s "Sabre Dance”. Would she let it keep ringing until it stopped? But the new case required her to be available all day.
There was an unfamiliar number on the display.
"Hello, Loreley. Am I interrupting you? Are you working?"
"No, no..." she replied, trying to figure out who that male voice belonged to. She didn't want to risk making a fool of herself, but at that moment she didn’t recognize it as anyone she knew.
"If you have an hour to spare, I’d like to talk to you. It wasn’t possible the last time we saw each other."
"Actually, I'm really busy and…" she stopped. "Sonny?!"
She uttered that name, letting out all the air in her lungs.
"I'm sorry, I was assuming you would have recognized me."
"We've never spoken on the phone; your voice sounds a little different."
There was a brief embarrassed silence, then he spoke again: "Maybe I shouldn’t have called you."
"No! You just caught me off guard. I'm at the Chelsea Piers ice rink." She had never given him her number. Oh, but he had called her work number, which anyone could find on the internet.
"Are you with someone?"
"No, I’m alone," she replied, repenting it instantly. If she wanted to avoid that man, she should have said something else.
"Then I can join you if you like. I'm not far from Chelsea, I could be there in twenty minutes."
Loreley took a moment to reflect. It was going to happen sooner or later, so best to get it over with now, so she could get on with her usual life.
"You'll have to rent some skates, because I'm just about to go onto the ice." If he didn’t know how to skate, it would be fun to see him suffer a little.
"I realize that. I'm on my way."
With her hair tied in a ponytail and shields on the blades, Loreley left the locker room and made her way to the rink.
When she saw that the ice had just been smoothed, she smiled with satisfaction but hoped there would be fewer people on it, especially less children… they would make her apprehensive. It had been while trying to avoid a child that she had fallen. The resulting concussion and trauma to the cervical vertebrae had diminished her sense of direction and although she had long since healed, the pain at the back of her neck persisted.
She removed the shields from the blades and slid lightly over the immaculate surface for a few minutes, letting herself be carried away by the music. The chill of the ice under her feet rose and enveloped her whole body, but it was like a pleasant embrace, sometimes electrifying and at others relaxing.
After performing some warm-up exercises, she amused herself with some cross-steps and simple figures, and then tried some jumps. She finished with a few spins of medium difficulty, but went no further, not wanting to hurt herself.
The music became slow and gentle, as if wrapping itself around her. She lifted her face, gave herself some momentum and raised her arms to shoulder height, then lifted one leg behind her in the Angel pose. As she glided over the ice, with the cool air brushing her skin and lifting her long blonde ponytail, a whirlwind of sensations seemed to direct her towards nothingness, towards an infinite quiet.
Suddenly she became aware that she could collide with the people around her and opened her eyes. A hand touched her outstretched arm; she turned, straightened up and put her raised foot back on the ground.
"Oh... you've arrived!"
"I didn't want to interrupt you," Sonny said. He had appeared beside her almost like magic. Wearing a heavy jacket, a scarf and wool beanie, he skated beside her try to keep up with her.
Loreley slowed down. "Don't apologize, I shouldn’t have been doing certain things with all these people around." She usually skated at times when she knew there would be very few people on the ice, but that afternoon she hadn’t been able to respect that logical caution.
A little boy darted past, almost touching her, and she swerved to the opposite direction, going closer to Sonny, who put a hand on her shoulder as if to protect her. "Let’s not stop here or we’ll be run over," he suggested, looking around.
"I'd rather we didn't stop at all..." Saying that, Loreley accelerated leaving the man behind her and went to the opposite side of the rink, where the large windows offered a lovely close-up view of the Hudson River and the pier where the sports center was located.
Sonny watched her perform a slalom to get past the skaters she encountered along the way. He could easily have reached her in a few seconds but preferred not to follow her. It was clear that she was trying to postpone the moment when they would have to clarify things between them, and he didn't want to put too much pressure on her.
What would he say to Loreley? That he was sorry he’d had sex with her? Would she have believed him? He didn't believe it either. Although he did not remember exactly everything that had happened, he knew that he had never given as much vent to his basest instincts as he had that night; perhaps because he was not very sober, but that mattered very little now. What bothered him most was something quite different.
Among all the women at the wedding, I took Hans' sister to bed of all people!
He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t so drunk that he didn't know who the woman was that he was dragging into the room. So why her? If Hans found out, he would not believe it was a coincidence; no, he would have accused him of doing it on purpose.
He shrugged. Who cares!
Loreley was an adult. And she had been consenting, drunk but consenting and a participant too. No one could have blamed him, and he was wrong to create problems for himself, especially since she had sneaked out of the hotel room without even waiting for him to wake up, without exchanging a single word with him.
That morning he had struggled to piece together everything that had happened; at first he had felt relieved that the girl had vanished, thus avoiding to have to give and receive explanations, but then he told himself that until they had spoken there would always be something outstanding.
He went to the side of the rink and waited for her to join him, giving her a lovely smile.
"How many years have you skated?" he asked her.
"I started figure skating when I was five years old, but I gave it up in my first year of university. Every now and then I come here to take my mind off things and get a little exercise. It's not healthy to sit for hours in an office or in a courtroom. Besides, I like skating too much. What about you?"
"I used to play hockey when I was little more than a kid. But I stopped a long time ago to dedicate myself to music."
"You wouldn't think so, to look at you."
"I think it's like a riding a bike. You get back on it after a long time, and it’s like you’d been riding it just a few days ago. Now we should go and talk somewhere else; maybe we can get a drink here at the bar."
4
With her backpack on her shoulders, Loreley headed to the exit from the sports centre. She had freshened up and taken her hair out of the ponytail to hang loose on her shoulders.
After returning the locker keys to reception, she went into the vast colourful lobby where Sonny would be waiting for her. And there she stopped.
Sonny was busy with two young men who were asking him to put an autograph on their skates, and a girl was wanting to take a selfie with him. Someone had recognized him even without his trademark ponytail at the nape of his neck, wearing a woollen hat and a scarf covering his goatee. When she had invited him to join her at the ice rink she had not taken into account that, after the recent events, Sonny's face had been published in several magazines and newspapers.
This is not what we needed!
If she walked out of there with him, there was the risk that a curious fan might immortalize them together, and the next day she would find herself on social media, complete with allusions of a possible relationship. Maybe Johnny would have believed it, and that was the last thing she wanted.
She thought about it for a few seconds then, deciding she should escape, she joined a small group of people who were on their way out. Before closing the glass door leading to the garden, she turned to Sonny, who was now looking at her confused, still holding the marker pen he had used for the autographs.
The brunette at his side pointed to the surface of the skate where he was to sign, but he ignored her and kept staring at Loreley.
She shook her head a little.
I'm sorry, Sonny! she said to him barely moving her lips and opening her arms in a gesture of resignation. We’ll do it some other time. Then she quickly went out and did not slow down until she was a good distance from the blue and red building.
There was a small park next to the sports centre, and although the day wasn't exactly ideal for a stroll, she stopped there for a while. Large clouds covered the sky, heralding a downpour, and the air was already damp, but she didn't mind if she got wet.
The meeting with Sonny had upset her. She kept telling herself that she had to forget what had happened between them and get on with life as usual, but she just couldn't. In any case, she cared too much about Johnny to risk losing him because of a stupid drunken escapade. She had to do something about it before it was too late. But what could she do?
Needing to rest her legs, she sat down on a bench and shook her head smiling. Sonny would be sure to give her a wide berth anyway, after the way she had behaved. Despite her good intentions to clarify things, it seemed that fate had decided it wasn’t yet the right moment.
It was six o’clock when she opened the door of her apartment and total silence welcomed her. The cushions on the L-shaped sofa where Johnny was usually lying in the evening, were still in place. She called him in a loud voice and when there was no response, went to check the study to see if he was there working. Whenever he locked himself in there he cut himself off from the rest of the world. She turned on the light, but everything was as she had left it that morning, even the sweatshirt on the arm of the chair. The bedroom was empty too.
He wasn’t home yet.
She picked up a pair of his black socks from the floor and threw them into the dirty laundry basket; he would never lose the bad habit of leaving them lying around.
Putting on an apron, she went to the kitchen thinking she would try and prepare something for a dinner that was half-way decent.
Finding some fish in the fridge, she took it out to clean it, and removed the scales under running water so they wouldn't scatter everywhere. Mira, her housekeeper, who was staying with relatives that weekend, had taught her that. Loreley wanted to take advantage of her absence to spend an evening alone with Johnny, like they used to do in the early days of their relationship. She peeled some potatoes, cut them into small pieces and put them in the pan with the fish, hoping that it wouldn’t all turn into a puree or charcoal.
When everything was in the oven, she took a quick shower, put on some lacy underwear and stay-up stockings, and a short blue dress. She combed her hair back and gathered it at the nape of her neck, securing it with an elaborate clasp, then finished with a light touch of makeup.
She took some care in setting the table and placed a small glass container in the middle with a candle burning inside it,.
It was getting late and there was still no sign of Johnny. The dinner was getting cold and half the candle had burned away.
At eight o'clock a message arrived on her phone. Don't wait for me, I’m eating out with Ethan.
She sighed. He usually went out with Ethan after dinner, once a week so as not to "lose his friendship", as he told her to justify the evenings he spent with him. Loreley hoped that this exception would not become the rule. He hadn't even taken the time to phone her before she started cooking, knowing full well that it was a chore for her.
All she could do was resign herself to eating dinner alone. She felt disappointed: the one time she had managed to make something decent, Johnny wasn't there to appreciate it.
She didn’t waste time clearing the table, and put the fish with the leftover potatoes in a container, stored it in the fridge and went to bed. She was really tired, and still had to catch up on the sleep she had lost the night before studying the Wallace case.
When Loreley woke up the next morning, she found Johnny beside her, still asleep and snoring, which happened when he drank too much in the evening. How strange that she hadn’t heard him come home.
I wonder what time he got back!
She looked at the clock: half past nine. As she pulled back the blankets Johnny muttered an expletive and turned over: he didn’t work on Saturdays and if he wanted to sleep in, he was free to do so.
Loreley put on her heavy blue satin robe, pinned up her hair and after washing her face went to the kitchen. She was feeling sluggish that morning, as if she still needed some sleep. And yet she had slept even too much that night. A large dose of coffee was what she needed.
She was about to pour it into her cup when she heard Johnny come into the kitchen behind her. His short hair was sticking straight up at the front, his eyes were bloodshot and there were dark circles under them, which revealed insomnia.
"Will you pour me a little too?" he asked, scratching his cheek, rough with a growth of beard.
"I didn't think you'd be up so soon."
He murmured something incomprehensible, but she didn’t ask him to repeat it. Sometimes he woke up in a bad mood and this morning had to be one of them, because besides the serious expression on his face, he had not even given her the usual peck on the cheek to say good morning.
