No Accident by Dan Webb Page A

to make Luke give up.”
    “Give up?”
    “Are you lawyer or a parrot?”
    Yeah, litigants love to “give up,” Brad thought. Wake up every morning wondering how quickly they can “give up.” Two weeks earlier, it was “show up and take instructions.” Now it was “make him give up.” He shouldn’t be surprised. He was going to have to earn his fee, after all. Fine, then—it was time for some tough love.
    “Sheila. Number one: control yourself.” She came out of her snit and looked at him in surprise. “Good. Number two: Luke is not going to give up. Surprised? No. You’re not. Number three: Luke has the money and the power, so he has the leverage and . . . he . . . is trying . . . to make you give up. Yes.” She started to look defiant again. “Number four: I won’t let him, but—Number five: I need you with me.”
    Sheila nodded with religious fervor.
    “Do I need to count higher?” Brad said.
    Sheila shook her head and collapsed into the chair. Then she started crying.
    Oh, great , Brad thought, why didn’t I just let her keep screaming? Her sobs were soft and tentative. Because I’m her lawyer , he thought. Brad came around to the front of his desk and put an arm around her shoulder. That comforted her.
    Brad knew he wasn’t a handsome man, and he was fine with that. Here for once he had his arm around a beautiful woman, and to his surprise he wasn’t thinking about a beautiful woman, or the smell of her hair or how she filled out her skirt. He was thinking about his adversary and about how to stop him.
    He was thinking like a lawyer.
    The paper for this case had started coming in, a lot more of it than he had expected. Eighty hours this week —eighty billable hours—just to get through the first set of motions and other worthless bundles couriered to his office door once or twice a day by Luke’s lawyers. He’d already billed beyond the amount of the retainer, and he’d meant to speak with Sheila today about arranging payment of his first month’s bill, but now obviously wasn’t the right time for that. Sheila’s getting fired opened a whole new legal front on which Brad could attack Luke. But Brad’s priority had to be getting Sheila some interim alimony, and fast—for both of their sakes.
    The bright side was that the divorce saga appeared in the local tabloids almost every day. Even ugly guys were photographed for the paper now and then; with any luck, that would start happening soon for him. Some free publicity about his winning a great settlement for Sheila would certainly help revive his legal practice. In fact, this case was so high profile that it could do what Brad had hoped his hardware-store class action would do —bring him to a point where new clients looked for him rather than the other way around. This case could be his salvation yet, if he could find a way to save Sheila.
     

11
    The night after he was fired, Alex drank to fall asleep. But he didn’t drink enough to stop from dreaming. He had the Pamela dream, the one he’d had off and on for a year, even since before she left him. Each time the dream moved a little further along. In the dream, Pamela had warned him not to buy any more houses and then left when he did so anyway. This time Alex dreamed that he negotiated a miraculous deal with the banks in which they forgave all the mortgage debt and gave Alex an option to purchase a mansion in Bel Air. Alex raced around town to find Pamela, to show her that he had repaired his finances and to beg her forgiveness. He finally found her on Rodeo Drive, where he spotted her through the picture window of an expensive boutique. He approached the window and tapped on it with a fingernail to draw her attention from her shopping. She didn’t look up. Then he rapped the window with his knuckles. Then he called her name and pounded his fists on the window, over and over until the glass undulated like a sheet being unfurled onto a newly made bed. But she didn’t hear