Skinny-dipping Read Free Page A

his favorite quote is “Don’t get in a pissing contest with a skunk.” It does not worry me in the least that the man who signs my paycheck believes that he is the physical reincarnation of Stonewall Jackson. Despite a certain love-hate cachet to our relationship, he is my hero, my mentor, and the man who single-handedly made me the firm’s only woman partner.
    Jackson glared at my French press. “What’s wrong with the coffee in the lunchroom?”
    Oh, please. Shall I start with the dioxin in the bleached paper coffee filters, or the pesticides in the coffee, or the white fake dairy creamer consisting almost entirely of fat, dye, and chemicals? Or limit myself to the apt observation that the stuff tasted like crap?
    Smiling, though I felt the muscle spasm kicking in at my jaws, I asked, “Join me?”
    I maximized the swing of my hair and my smile while I fixed us both coffee with just a dollop of organic two percent milk. We tipped our coffee cups together like friends toasting with their wine, and I sat down, leaned back in my chair, and waited.
    â€œAh, sorry about the mugging. You don’t need to file a workers’ comp claim.”
    I noted this was a statement, not a question, but nodded and said, “I’m fine” as if he’d asked how I was.
    â€œI’ve ordered new security lights for the back. Also, I sent out a memo telling people to leave the building in groups of two or more after dark.”
    Nothing so silly as saying, “Don’t work nights anymore.”
    â€œA good idea,” I answered, sipping my coffee and waiting.
    â€œHow’s your caseload?”
    Aha.
    â€œHeavy.” I gave the answer I always give to that question. Not to be overworked is the kiss of demise in a law firm.
    â€œGood,” Jackson said, the answer he always gives to assertions of overwork. “I want you to take over my CMV case, the brain-damaged baby case. One with cerebral palsy and mental retardation.”
    Oh, sure, I thought, now that you’ve milked thousands of dollars of legal fees out of the discovery stage of the litigation process, dump it on me. So year-end, your computer printout shows you made a ton of money for the firm, and my score sheet shows I lost a multimillion-dollar veggie baby case after a two-week trial.
    â€œI thought you were going to settle that one.” The rule of thumb being that a defense attorney always settles a brain-damaged baby case unless the mother is a total pig caught smoking crack on a police video while visibly pregnant and pounding her womb with sharp objects in front of forty bishops, all of whom will testify against her. Not that negligence on the part of the doctor or the hospital has a thing to do with the jury’s decision. A sweet young mother, a distraught and earnest father, and a drooling infant dangling his big-eyed, vacant head left and right. No way a jury doesn’t give that skewed Norman Rockwell painting some money. Big money.
    â€œTried to settle it,” Jackson said. “Parents’ damned attorney has visions of grandeur. Some snotty hot-shot out of Miami.”
    Yeah, I knew the parents’ attorney, an arrogant son of a bitch who liked to make sure everybody knew he went to Harvard and who was forever correcting my pronunciation of his name—Steph-fin, not Steve-in. We’d met at some early rounds when Jackson sent me to argue some legal minutia in the case. As I recalled, our theory was that the infant’s birth defects were caused by a common virus, CMV, and not mistakes during the delivery. But it was going to be hard to get around the argument that the obstetrician screwed up by not doing an emergency cesarean when problems developed during labor.
    â€œUp the settlement offer,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like I was begging.
    â€œCan’t. Already at policy limits.”
    That was a lot of money thrown at the plaintiffs. Their refusal