Free Lily White by Susan Isaacs

the name across the top, the person whose account it was: Charles Michael Phalen, Counselor-at-Law.)
    As Mary was still standing, I motioned for her to sit. Then I handed over the envelope to Sandi, who left my office to return to her desk, where she would open it and make sure the retainer was inside—not just a wad of cutup newspaper. You’d think I’d have hated practicing law this way, dealing with such overt sleaze-balls. But every time I worked on a nice, clean white-collar criminal matter—sales tax evasion, co-op conversion fraud—a giant yawn arose inside me that the biggest corporate check couldn’t stifle.
    Mary, still jittery, hadn’t taken a seat. She clutched her purse tight against her chest in a pathetically defensive posture, her shoulders and head thrust forward. She stared out the window. It was one of those nasty days in early May, more appropriate to March, rainy, gray, with a low, chill wind that blew down the street and bit at your ankles. I spoke so sweetly I practically cooed: “Please sit down.”
    “Jeez,” she said, alighting on the edge of an armchair in front of my desk. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.” The backs of her hands were red. Her nails were chewed down so low they sliced into the flesh of her fingers. Then she babbled, a long, agitated apology about how the police had impounded Norman’s car and how the taxi she’d called hadn’t come and how just when she thought she was okay, she discovered the bus she was on was headed to Long Beach. Normally, I would have cut her off as courteously as possible, but suddenly I found myself transfixed by Mary’s looks.
    First of all, I realized her face was a flawless oval. True, the heavy makeup she was wearing was unflattering, chalky, especially against the peachy glow of her neck. Her cheeks were as bright as geraniums. The lipstick she wore, a neon orange, was applied so thickly that when she formed words beginning with b or p it looked as though her lips would meld. Still, I could see that the makeup was not meant to hide serious imperfections. Her skin appeared flawless.
    Mary’s too white face was framed by shiny black curls that spilled over her shoulders. The hairdo was neither the elegant three hundred dollar frenzy of a Manhattan cut nor the sculpted perfection of big Texas hair. To me, it looked like a homey attempt to copy the none-of-that-androgyny-shit-for-me style of a Dolly or a Wynonna. Unlike country music stars, however, Mary’s hair was not tier upon tier of faultless curlicues. In the sodden weather, the tresses on her shoulders had lost their verve and lay limp, wormlike, on her green suit jacket.
    Obviously, she’d chosen the suit color to play up her luminous eyes. Those eyes didn’t need any help. On the contrary, the suit was green overkill. In truth, though, nothing could detract from those eyes, not even the opalescent pistachio shadow that covered her lids and orbital rims up to her brows, not the greasy black pencil liner.
    Now, as to the rest of Mary Dean: Her nose would have been perfect except it had the tiniest indentation at the tip, as if she’d pressed on it throughout childhood, trying to get it to turn up. And her lips: full, but pretty, not those collagen-injected trout-mouths that had become so trendy. And just before she sat, I finally noticed the figure. High-breasted, tiny-waisted, long-legged. An ambulatory Barbie doll.
    Except Mary was human. She was sweating and gave off an odor that was a combination of natural musk, wet wool and cheap perfume—gardenia? jasmine?—that I bet had the word“Jungle” as part of its name. I watched a drop of perspiration slide down her left temple, past her jaw to her chin. It would have dribbled onto her neck, only she wiped it away with the back of her hand. In doing so, she lost control of the black patent-leather envelope-purse she’d been hugging to her chest. It dropped to the floor. Bending to pick it up, she