Free Wildcat Wine by Claire Matturro Page B

wine, and I tried during the transaction to get us back to the smile, smile, flirt, flirt stage, but he wasn’t going back there, so I took my wine and left him to his old-people tour.
    In light of future events, I should have stayed longer and asked more questions. Or gone back after the tour was over. But, after all, I’d had a pretty rough Saturday and, unlike Gandhi, I didn’t have the gift of seeing beyond the moment, and was nearly nauseous with exhaustion and thirst. So I went home, drank iced tea, washed up, and then Bearess and I went over to Bonita’s and picked up Benny.
    Benny was in no mood to talk. He was in no mood to do anything. If there was anything more to his Saturday adventures with Farmer Dave, he wasn’t telling me about it, bent as he was on a course of action that involved staring at his feet and mumbling incoherent not-sweet nothings. We hung out on the track at the middle school and watched Bearess run around in circles while Benny refused to talk to me. Finally Bearess laid her big head on Benny’s legs and slobbered until she caught her breath.
    I took it as a bad sign that Benny did not pet Bearess as she draped herself over him.

Chapter 9
    Monday morning I awoke early with a sense of panic pounding my chest and watering my eyes.
    Most lawyers, the litigators at least, wake up on Monday mornings with exactly that same feeling.
    Having lost the weekend, and with a looming appellate argument on Tuesday morning, I was left with a frantic sense of having run out of time. I hustled myself to the office as quick as a little bunny on steroids, and I hoped my hands would stop sweating as the day wore on.
    Inside Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, I marched past Bonita, sitting prim and pretty at her desk in her little cubbyhole office outside my big office, and I hissed, “Don’t let anyone, not anybody, past my door.”
    I slammed my way into my office with its scenic view of the parking lot and cranked open the window for a touch of real air and threw my briefcase on my desk.
    When I turned around twice, like a cat selecting a nap spot, I saw that Bonita had already made my coffee, so I poured a cup and smelled it and began to formulate a plan of preparation that didn’t involve stolen organic wine or boys from my past.
    But first I called Earl and got no answer. Then I called Philip, and after working my way through his receptionist and then his secretary, I demanded a direct line, which Philip gave me.
    â€œDo you charge a set fee for phone calls, or bill according to the actual time spent on the phone?” This would determine how much flirty, polite stuff I said.
    â€œI bill the actual time,” Philip said.
    â€œDave still in jail?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œEarl drop the charges?”
    â€œNo, not yet.”
    â€œOkay, ’bye.” I hung up the phone, jotted down two minutes so I could check Philip for honest billing, and picked up my cup of coffee.
    Before I had finished my first cup, my office door burst open with a blast of the chilly, artificial office air and I shivered.
    My associate, Angela, huge with child, teetered on her feet with the misbalance caused by a gestating baby on her petite frame.
    Poor Angela. Pregnancy had not made her glow. She had three inches of orange roots showing in her curly auburn bob and not a speck of Maybelline on her pale eyes.
    â€œBrock, every six weeks, rain or shine or baby,” I said, pointing at her hair as if she had barged in for beauty advice. Brock was our hairdresser and my primary therapist and I’d introduced Angela to him when I had decided that instead of being my overworked, mousy-faced, orange-haired associate, Angela should be an overworked world-class beauty. That makeover had also facilitated her theft of my own boyfriend Newly Moneta, who was now her husband and the father of the baby brewing inside her. Her world-class beauty, in pint size, had lasted only until she