Chapter 3
The rest of the evening didn’t go too well. Morgan was probably suffering from shock. Risa definitely was. Together, they went through the motions of unearthing poor Tyson. Flicking clumps of dirt and snow from his matted hair, wrapping his flattened body in a beach towel, carrying him inside. All that, under the harsh white glare of the overhead lights, without a word.
What, after all, was there to say? He’d killed her dog. Even if he felt bad about it. Even if he’d been 700 miles away when it happened. It was his pot. It’d fallen off of his deck. He should’ve moved the thing last fall, just like Mandie’d said. Risa didn’t need to hear about him forgetting, ex-sorta-girlfriends, fireworks, all of that.
They just did what they had to do, out there in the cold, and brought Tyson’s body into Risa’s kitchen, and she laid the swaddled mess onto the table, and they stood over it for a while in silence, and then Morgan whispered how sorry he was– again– and left. Walked out and closed the back door. Quietly. Trudged back out into the snow, retrieved the now-empty pot and carried it back under the deck, stowed it away in a corner.
The backyard lights winked out. He glanced up at her lighted bedroom, sighed, leaned the shovel against the wall, and let himself in his own back door.
*
And yet, the true impact of that evening’s events didn’t fully unfold until two weeks later, when the papers arrived from her lawyers.
Registered mail. Never a good sign.
The whole thing seemed rather vague, but apparently they wanted him to apologize. Repeatedly. Or at least lavishly. Which he thought he’d already done. (And for what, exactly? That was the vague part.) Maybe he hadn’t done it often enough, or profusely enough.
So, being a courageous and fair-minded soul, he took a few deep breaths, walked over, and knocked on her door. And she opened it, and almost meekly invited him in.
It felt almost like a funeral, a wake, in there. She wasn’t in widow’s weeds, exactly, but the whole thing seemed oddly surreal. Like there should’ve been candles burning, old women weeping quietly into their shawls. (There were, actually, two other women there. Women he’d never seen before.) He walked in, sat down on the couch, and after that his recollections got kinda jumbled.
He remembered first noticing how nicely she’d done the place up. He’d hardly been inside her side of the building since she’d moved in, but she and the various Mister Fix-Its had definitely taken the place up a few notches. It looked like a layout in Aspen Magazine, or something. Made his side look like the lawn-chairs-and-linoleum in the old Limelight lobby.
After that moment of wonder, he remembered them making small talk: how good the skiing was, how he’d been thinking of going to Vail, the back bowls and all that, and things were going swimmingly– much better than their one-and-only “date,” in fact– and the other two women were just sitting there, staying out of it…
… and then somebody brought up Tyson.
And that’s when the yelling started. Morgan couldn’t recall who started it, but he did remember how steamy-hot she got, how her long light-brown hair got all sweaty and stuck to her forehead, how she started breathing really heavy. So they must’ve been going at it pretty good. (And in front of two total strangers.)
He didn’t remember her actually throwing anything, but he did recall how her eyes flashed– like they were on fire– when he said whatever it was that had really hacked her off, for good. Then she did, in fact, throw something.
She picked up a plate of cold Brussels sprouts (why would you have a plate of cold Brussels sprouts lying around?) and heaved it straight across the room at him. Hit him from ten feet, like a pie in the face. What a throw! She must’ve had brothers growing up, to throw that good! And he hated Brussels sprouts! Even the smell, much less having them smack you in the face. How’d she know that?
He remembered storming out, then. Hard to forget that part. He probably shouted something like “I hate Brussels sprouts!” Or maybe “I hate you!” And left the door open. Or maybe not. He didn’t remember. Tough guys in the movies always left the door open, he knew that.
The other two women just sat there, stunned. Like: “Does this sort of thing happen often, around here?”
*
Morgan had no sooner plopped himself down on his own (now that he noticed) embarrassingly threadbare couch– to sulk, naturally– in the middle of an afternoon when he could’ve been out skiing or hiking up Buttermilk or helping old ladies across Main Street, than Justin Winship came waltzing in.
Justin Winship, lawyer to the rich and famous, counselor to the stars. With a wedge of Brie, a cold Montrachet, and a just-baked baguette. Justin’s sense of timing was sometimes annoying, but you couldn’t turn down a good, gooey Brie.
So Justin came gliding in, looking as always a lot like the movie star Hugh Grant. The same mussed-up brown hair, the same rumpled preppie clothes (and low-cut duck shoes), the same dopey smile, always barging in, oblivious.
“See you haven’t re-decorated,” he chirped, dumping the victuals on the kitchen counter. He made a show of scanning the living-room floor. “And you’re still saving the shag carpet for the Smithsonian.”
He commenced scouring the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, and, as always, managed the conversation quite well without any help from Morgan.
As it happened, he’d just gotten in from Banff. The skiing was excellent– thank you, Captain Morg– but he’d really been up there working. Some boy-band dweeb had gotten mugged at a made-for-TV celebrity dog-sled competition, and Justin’d been called in to threaten retaliation.
“Turned oot,” he explained, flaunting a newly-acquired Canadian vowel, “turned out, it was a Playboy photo shoot, and the kid drooled all over the wrong girl, and her boyfriend threw him through a plate-glass window. Moron could’ve been looking at major reconstructive…
“But look at it this way, I told him…”
Justin found the corkscrew. In the dishwasher. He held it aloft, triumphantly.
“I pointed out to him: His career’d been going nowhere. He’d probably be headed to jail, if he hadn’t been in some hospital for a year. I’ve heard the medical care in Canada is first-rate, by the way. So I cleaned him up, I even managed to win him the race– after I’d promised the other guys more than I should’ve, by way of a few ersatz bunnies–”
(Only Justin would use a word like “ersatz.”)
“… and I convinced the young woman that she really should fall in love with the little shit, if I could get them a cover on People magazine.”
He popped the cork, resoundingly.
“How’s that for full-service?”
After all that, all Morgan could manage was a nod, and a glum “You got any more get-outta-jail cards on you?”
Justin paused, then walked gingerly into the living room, bottle and glasses in hand, and peered down at Morgan’s dejected face.
“Is this about the dog?” he pursed.
And Morgan looked up, looking like Matthew McConaughey having a very bad day. “You heard about it in Banff?”
“That’s all they’re talking about,” Justin beamed. “So I had to rush right back. And just when I’d arranged a serious back-rub from Miss February.”
He poured out the glasses, handed one to Morgan.
“Actually, I ran into Lindsay,” Justin said quietly, settling himself into the sofa, “and he said you were kinda shook up.”
Not as shook up as he was now. Morgan took a sip of the wine. It was all starting to come back to him. The re-done apartment, the mood of mourning, the sympathetic other women, the argument, the Brussels sprouts, him storming out. (Had he shut the door?)
He took another slug from his wine glass. The upshot was: that she’d said something like, if he wasn’t prepared to say he was sorry, then she’d have to find a way to make him say it. And he’d answered: I said I was sorry, a dozen times. What’re you gonna do? Sue me?
And she’d said: Yeah. If that’s what it takes.
And he said: What it takes, for what? For not apologizing twenty times?
And she said: No. I’m gonna sue you for…
And here she’d turned to her two silent friends, as if for moral support…
I’m going to sue you for negligence.
Oh, for cryin’ out loud, he’d said. You’re gonna sue me over a goddamned dog?
Which, admittedly, he could’ve phrased better.
Yeah, she snarled at him, starting to get really cranked. (He remembered now: That’s when her eyes had started flashing.) You created an unsafe environment for Tyson. My dear little… my dearest, dearest… friend… on the whole planet. So I’m gonna sue you for…”
And they stood there, in her House Beautiful living room (except for the 10-foot ceiling), they stood there glaring at each other, panting, squared off like two prizefighters across the ring, just waiting for the bell. And the two other women were ringside, spectators just waiting to see who’d land the next punch.
“I’m gonna sue you… for a million bucks!”
What?!
A million bucks?! he’d said, not believing his ears. You’ve gotta be kidding. He didn’t know whether to laugh, or to bend down, pick up one of the Brussels sprouts, and throw it back at her. “You may as well have me declared a mass murderer… a child molester… a menace to society… while you’re at it,” he suggested, hopping mad now. “Have me run out of town–
“Good idea!” she shot back. She glanced at her friends, a mad grin on her face, then turned back to him. “Thank you! I’ll do that! Get you run out of town!
And things degenerated from there– if that was possible– til he yelled, “I hate you!” “I hate Brussels sprouts!” and stormed out. Slammed the door, or not. He didn’t remember.
The end result, either way, was that Risa Wentworth was gonna go back to her lawyers and have them sue his chafed-off butt for a million bucks, plus tax, plus shipping and handling, plus whatever else they could think of. And while she was at it, she was gonna ask the judge to sling Morgan Somerville out of town on his ear. Forever. Permanently. No take-backs.
And Morgan had– apparently– said: Fine. Just try it. Said it in front of witnesses.
Which Justin didn’t want to hear. Justin Winship, attorney for the wealthy and the well-connected, not the hapless and the soon-to-be homeless. The soon-to-be-kicked-out-on-their-ass. All because they were too high-minded to just get down…
… and grovel, occasionally.
*
You see, if you hadn’t lived in Aspen for long, you wouldn’t know that there was actually a for-real, once-upon-a-time precedent for this sort of “frontier justice.”
Back in the high-spirited, hippies-versus-townfolk 60′s, there’d been a throwback old judge by the name of Guido who liked to offer unwanted miscreants– anyone from penny-ante shoplifters to dirtbag dope dealers– what he liked to call ”the option”: Do hard time in the county jail, or have the deputy sheriff escort you, immediately, to the county line. It was simple justice, and it worked. And if it could work back then, it could work now. At least Risa seemed to think so. And Justin couldn’t argue with it.
Especially since Morgan had all but agreed to it, himself. In front of witnesses.
“So you actually managed to make things worse,” concluded Justin, after he’d heard the whole story. And after he’d also concluded that those two unidentified women in Risa’s apartment, just now, were probably her lawyers.
Justin drained his wine, set his glass down on the coffee table. Maybe, he suggested quietly, maybe Morgan should just walk right back over to Risa’s, and apologize. Try it again. Whatever it took. Now. Just go over there and do whatever. Get down, grovel. Beg. Say he was sorry. Offer to paint her front door. Middle of winter: paint her front door. Anything.
He stood up, a lawyer well-versed in getting clients out of hopeless jams, and for all his world-class aplomb, he still looked pretty damned stunned.
“You know, I’ve represented a lot of losers over the years. Guys who’ve done incredibly stupid things. Some of them I get off, some of them I don’t. And here’s what I tell them: ‘Be prepared to lose everything.’”
To which Morgan could think of absolutely nothing to say. So he just sat there.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Justin muttered, as he walked to the door. “It’s a full moon, so we’re doing a skin tonight up Aspen Mountain tonight. If you’re up to it. 8 o’clock, gondola.”
To which Morgan just nodded.
“And I’ll tell Ed to leave his dog home,” Justin added. “I didn’t know you hated animals so much.”
Right then… Right then, Morgan should’ve realized that he was in trouble.
…
Aspen, CO