Dos: Chapter 8

The phone rang. And rang again. And again. She listened with bated breath, willing him to be asleep in his barracks while simultaneously wanting him to have phones be allowed in the camp. 

At the seventh ring, a female voice answered, full of sleep, “Attorney Tracy Randall speaking. Who is this, please?”

Her world stopped. The voice, despite sounding as though the owner was unpleasantly and unceremoniously roused from sleep, was what a eucalyptus tree sounds like. It was regal, seductive, cold.

She stared at the screen for what seemed like an eternity, not finding the will or the voice to reply.

How cliché, she thought, if she in turn demanded what she was doing with her man’s phone, who she was, and where they were.

She hung up the phone, still reeling. After a couple of breaths, she carefully parsed what she heard.

“Attorney.” With the inadvertent admission of her profession, Tano immediately knew she had ultimately won against her, although that was far from her intention. What she truly wanted was to be cursed with understanding: why was he not in the barracks, and why did he fuck an attorney, of all people?

Yet this desire for understanding of course presupposes the she does not know his predilections, much less his motives for doing what he does.

This woman attorney, she was certain, thought the power of the vagina is that it’s always on, always wet, ever-conquering dicks lining up the sidewalk. She, on the other had, can turn hers off and think and write like a man. It was like a dam letting jets of water in a time when it was most crucial, granting it all the power a wet cunt can’t even being to fathom. Lawyers have to be certain and have to be one whole person: the trial demands that they take a stand involving their very principles, be their client guilty or not 

All these things entered her head like a trail of glacial water down her spine: having the revelation of certainty, having the finality of a deadline. She felt, yes, betrayed, (but why is it a betrayal? Brandon wasn’t beholden to her, for fuck’s sake), afraid (oh, god, I do love him), and the most traitorous of feelings: sad. All these feelings were racing one another to the finish line, not realizing that numbness was already on the finish line, smiling.