Buch lesen: «Under The Bali Moon»

Chapter 1

Attorney Zena Nefertiti Shaw looked like a million bucks in the courtroom that afternoon. She was wearing burgundy, thin-heeled suede pumps with matching straps and golden buckles at the ankles that made her feet arch downward with unmistakable femininity. A fitted merlot skirt paired with a dramatic black suit jacket that was gathered in pleats in the small of her back showed off her tiny waist and flat stomach. Her long black hair was pressed and hanging down her back with a subtle curl at the bottom. When Zena moved, her hair floated as if an invisible fan was blowing in her direction for dramatic allure.

In the courtroom in downtown Atlanta, Zena knew she looked good while delivering her closing argument.

“In closing, dear jury, what I want to ask all of you, each of you, is, what would you want if the one you love, the person who stood before man, his family and friends and your family and friends, the church and God in heaven and swore to always love you back, dishonored the innocence of your vows with the unspeakable behaviors Mr. Rayland has imposed upon my client’s ever-delicate heart?” Zena posed, releasing the stare that had been locked upon the jury and turning to face Tanisha Rayland, her thirty-seven-year-old client who was at the center of a very ugly and controversial divorce from her bed-hopping R & B husband of twelve years.

Zena stood with her profile parallel to the jury as she gazed at Tanisha. She wanted them to see the connection she had with this woman. Wanted them to see what sympathy for this woman could look like. She folded her arms and exhaled long and deep and dramatically.

“As you all learned throughout these proceedings, and as this woman had to relive, Mrs. Rayland’s college sweetheart slept with and impregnated the eighteen-year-old they hired to enter their home to care for their children. And that’s only the worst part. Maybe. Because in twelve years of marriage, Mrs. Rayland can’t recall one year when she wasn’t sharing her husband’s affections with another woman. Especially not after the fame came to him. Not after the singing career she helped him build took off. After the money started rolling in. Well, then she had to share him with three and four young women at a time.”

A tear fell from Tanisha’s left eye. She was a woman of striking beauty. Light skin with a red undertone that made her ethnicity unclear until she opened her mouth and the South Side of Chicago came out. Full, pouty lips. Long eyelashes. If it wasn’t for the weight she’d put on after having five children—she’d confessed to Zena that she had the last three with hopes of keeping her husband at home and other women away from him—she might look like one of the video vixens with whom Mr. Rayland enjoyed his many indiscretions. And even with the weight, Zena thought Tanisha could easily find work as a full-figured model.

Zena exhaled again, adding hyperbole to Tanisha’s tears. She turned back to the jury. As she rolled her eyes along her path, she got a glimpse of Mr. Rayland sitting beside his attorney on the other side of the courtroom. His head was hung low and twisting back and forth in embarrassment or disagreement, as if Zena had shone a light on his deepest, darkest secret. When the divorce proceedings had started, days ago, he’d arrived with huge diamonds in his ears, a pernicious smile and a Rolex on his wrist that seemed to connote this would be a breeze; his wealth would prevail. He was confident. He stated he would beat the entitlement case. But after days in the courtroom, he didn’t look so sure of this articulation. That wicked smile was so yesterday. Also gone were the diamond earrings. That Rolex was a ghost. He was in his simplest form now. A man without airs. Humbled.

Eyes on the jury, Zena added, “And the torment didn’t stop with the many affairs. Add in the drugs, the weeks away from home, the year Mr. Rayland was in jail and my client had to care for their five children alone, and the lies.” She pursed her lips. Gave the jury time to recall these infractions she’d been feeding them over the past few days. Time to be disgusted with the images of Mr. Rayland she’d so carefully painted. “The lies. Lie after lie.” She glanced back at Tanisha and her tears. “So, I ask again, what would you want in return? What should she want? Can we really place limitations on what this woman deserves when all she wants is enough support to care for her children in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed, a return on her investment in her husband and to stay in the home where she’s been living for the last six years? Respectfully, in contrast with how Mr. Rayland’s attorneys have painted this woman’s request, this isn’t about anger or being vindictive or asking for someone to support her. This is about justice. It’s about making things right.”

Amid grumbles from her opposition, Zena paused and straightened her suit jacket. She leaned against the jury box to appear more vulnerable, as if she was one of them sharing some secret. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you to return to this room with a righteous verdict. To do what’s fair. What’s just. Award Mrs. Tanisha Rayland twenty-five million dollars in entitlements as she dissolves ties from Mr. Rayland and her sad past with him. Release her, so she can move on. Do what you would want done. What she deserves.”

Zena bowed deeply toward the jury, and she actually saw some heads nod back to her. One older woman who’d always smiled at her looked as if she was about to clap. Zena turned back to her seat and winked at her client as she walked toward her. When she sat and grabbed Tanisha’s hand beneath the table to reassure her of their success, Zena’s assistant and best friend, Malak, who was sitting in the front row, leaned forward smiling.

“This one is in the bag, Z!” Malak cheered in a low voice.

“I hope you’re right,” Zena whispered, eyeing Mr. Rayland’s attorney, who was standing before the jury, ready to present his closing arguments before the jury would return to their room to vote. Zena really did need to have this one in the bag. When Tanisha left her husband, he froze all of her accounts and she had little money to cover Zena’s high hourly fee. Since news of the Raylands’ pending divorce broke, the hungry media made a gossip sensation of Tanisha’s life and split from the R & B crooner many saw as a stable and loving husband—at least that’s how his team had been portraying him in all the gossip rags. Zena had to play offense and defense, creating a team for her client, which now included her firm’s personal publicist, security staff member and photographer. This robbed her other cases of valuable time—and her bank account of precious dollars. Zena told herself this was the cost of maintaining her firm’s reputation. All of this while praying a big payday would come when, as Malak predicted, “this one is in the bag.”

“Don’t worry,” Zena said to Tanisha, but it was clear she was also trying to encourage herself. “Everything will be fine.”

* * *

Luckily, Malak’s psychic sensibilities were better than her jet-black-and-blond ombré weave.

After just twenty minutes of deliberating, the jury returned with a verdict that made a rich woman of Zena’s client. She’d be able to pay Zena’s fees and those of her associates and, more importantly, move on with her life.

Moving on for Zena, though, meant her usual posttrial trip to Margarita Town with Malak in tow. After debriefing Tanisha on their next steps and assuring her this was “really it—she’d won,” Zena hopped into a Town Car waiting outside the courthouse and quietly thanked God for the magical mix of tequila and strawberry flavoring awaiting her arrival at Margarita Town. It would wash away all of her thoughts of Mr. Priest Rayland and his deplorable behavior.

“You shut that fool all the way down,” Malak said later, sitting across from Zena at Margarita Town. Before her was a behemoth of a margarita glass, the size of a baby’s head, filled to the rim with frothy blue ice chips and liquid. “I thought he was going to hop out of his chair and run across the room to start choking you at any moment.” Malak laughed and held her hands up as if she had them wrapped around Zena’s neck.

Behind her was the normal fare of a margarita bar. Nothing fancy. Nothing too nice. Soft red lights set aglow garage-sale rainbow ponchos, sombreros and dusty, half-clothed Lupita dolls tacked to the walls. No one was there for the decor, though. It was just a theme for the real prize that attracted professionals to Margarita Town’s lopsided high-top tables and sticky bar each night after work. The clientele included burned-out teachers, lawyers, doctors, publicists, business owners, even yoga teachers.

The red ice in Zena’s significantly smaller margarita glass was nearly gone, and Zena was already feeling the soothing affects of the concoction, so she laughed more deeply than Malak had expected.

“Slow down, cowgirl,” Malak teased. “You know you’re a lightweight. I don’t want to carry you out of here.”

Malak and Zena had been best friends since high school. They were nothing alike, but since the first day they met when Zena had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, from Queens, New York, and chose a seat behind Malak in her first-period history class, they were together through most of life’s laughs and hard times. That was why when Zena finished law school at Howard and returned to Atlanta to start her own practice, she called Malak, who only finished high school with a GED, and offered Malak a job as her assistant. Zena trusted Malak, and as a new attorney building a practice in the ever-cliquish legal field, she wanted someone by her side who would anticipate her moves, encourage her and keep her laughing. Malak was good at all of those things, but what made her most valuable to Zena, what she knew when she hired Malak, was that she was whip smart. While she’d made some poor choices, including getting pregnant by her boyfriend senior year of high school, Malak was smarter than many of the cohorts Zena went up against during mock trials in law school. While Zena always made it a point to check in on her old friend and encourage her to go back to school, Malak wanted to try to make her family work and got married right out of high school. By the time she was twenty-five, she was divorced with two children. Zena vowed to return home to make sure Malak had a chance to really turn things around.

“No slowing down for me tonight. Actually, I think I’ll have another,” Zena said, signaling for the waitress to bring a second margarita. “I need to wash the memory of that sneaky, slithering snake out of my mind. We have new blood in the morning, and I don’t want to stay up all night thinking about—” She stopped and looked off, forlorn.

“I know what you mean,” Malak agreed pensively, flipping ombré tendrils over her shoulder. “He really did a number on her. A number on you, too.”

“Me?” Zena smiled as if Malak had to be joking. “How did he do a number on me?”

“Um...” Malak nodded to the new margarita the waitress was sliding on the table before Zena.

Zena was no drinker. While she always indulged a little after they’d closed a case, too much alcohol almost always made her a bit emotional.

“Come on. I’m just celebrating. Of course, I hated that toad, but it’s not like I took anything he did personally. It’s not like he did that mess to me.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Malak pointed out. “Not the way you were carrying on these last few days—hell, since the case began. It was like you had to win. You had to beat him.”

“Isn’t that common? Why I have an unblemished record in the courtroom?” Zena’s tone was snarky. Overly confident. But still comical. While she was just thirty-one, after six years in the courtroom as the sole attorney at Z. Shaw Law, she made a name for herself as a fearless and swift attorney. One of her first cases was a long shot. Her sorority sister from Bethune-Cookman had married a football pro who was smart enough to lock her into an ironclad prenup before making her his punching bag. The football wife came to Zena with no money and no way out of the dysfunctional marriage. While Zena had little experience and could barely pay her bills, she took on the case pro bono. There was something about the messy marriage that turned a knife in Zena’s gut, and she spent day and night on the case. In the end, she found a loophole in the prenup and won a nice settlement for her client.

Of course, the case took over news headlines for weeks, making young Zena a new name to know in legal circles. Quickly, Z. Shaw became one of a few top firms in the city that represented high-profile clients in divorce cases involving entitlement hearings where large sums of money were on the table. Ninety-nine percent of her clients were women seeking settlements from their cheating and very wealthy husbands. These were cases with obvious winners and losers. Bad boys who’d done good girls wrong. Zena knew the right buttons to push in the courtroom. She always got her ruling.

Zena’s cell phone started rattling beside her margarita on the table. She looked down. Zola was on the screen.

“Oh, man, I don’t even feel like talking to her right now,” Zena said, letting the phone vibrate. “You know she only calls if she needs money—or to borrow something.”

“Maybe you should answer. She’s been calling all day,” Malak said.

“All day?” Zena repeated, surprised and staring at Malak as if she’d somehow failed as an assistant. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zena moved to answer the phone, but the ringing had already stopped and was replaced with the clatter of an incoming text message:

ZOLA: Z, call me back. I’ve been calling you all day. I have news.

Zena looked at the screen and repeated “news” aloud. “What the hell?” she added. “What kind of news could she have?”

Malak looked away nervously, but Zena didn’t question her because she was busy getting up from her seat to return Zola’s call.

“I’ll be right back,” Zena said, already out of the booth across from Malak. “Don’t let anyone spike my drink.”

“Sure won’t, Boss Lady,” Malak confirmed solidly.

The friends laughed, and Zena made her way through the joyous, drunken crowd of now-smiling professionals. Zena recognized a guy she’d met on a dating website standing by the bar with a beer in his hand. His white business shirt was unbuttoned to his chest; opposing ends of an open tie flanked each shoulder. Men and women who looked as if they must be his colleagues stood laughing at something he’d just said. When he saw Zena, he waved, but she turned her head, pressed her cold cell phone to her ear to pretend to be on a call and padded quickly toward the door.

Outside Margartia Town, Zena found a place on the curb beside a skinny and stylish East Indian couple smoking cigarettes and dialed Zola’s number. Beneath the amber glow of an oversize blow-up margarita glass filled with plastic golden liquid, she pressed the phone to her ear again, crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at the couple in heightened disgust at their activity. While the early-summer afternoon heat had cleared with the sunset, it was still too hot and muggy outside in Georgia to withstand the stale, dry air of cigarette smoke. Just when Zena was about to mention the local ordinance banning smoking in the private dining zone, Zola answered.

“Zeeeennnaaaa!” Zola squealed into the phone so loudly Zena winced and pulled the receiver back from her ear. There was a brazen exuberance and cheeriness to Zola’s voice. She sounded like a pregame high school cheerleader, eager and enthusiastic, but decidedly so. Determinedly so. The voice was simply the calling card of everything else about the little sister on the other end of the phone. She was the metaphor of a smile. Anxiously happy. Not only was her glass always half-full, but it was also filled with sugary pink lemonade and she was all too excited to share with everyone else. But that was how she’d decided to be; how Zola made herself function.

As the sisters exchanged common salutations filled with updates and weather predictions, Zena relaxed in the comfort of her sister’s arbitrary joyfulness. There was always something about the sweet spirit in Zola that calmed and loosened the uptight and upright spirit in Zena.

“I was actually surprised we won,” Zena acknowledged on the tail end of a summary about her adventure in the courtroom closing Priest Rayland’s case. “Of course, we had enough evidence stacked against that fool to make it impossible for the jury to rule in his favor, but you just never know these days. I used to expect the jury to rule based upon facts, but it’s really all emotion. All feeling. You’ll see.” Zena inhaled deeply as the couple departed after taking their final puffs. “Enough about me. What’s up with you? How’s studying going for my future partner?” Zena’s voice was wrapped in giddiness then.

Just two weeks ago, Zena was in Washington, DC, for Zola’s law school graduation at Howard. Though Zola originally planned to move to New York City to pursue her dream of being a fashion critic after undergrad, with much prodding and planning and some strings pulled by Zena, Zola attended her big sister’s law school alma mater, graduated with decent marks, and now it was just a matter of getting Zola to pass the Georgia Bar Exam before she’d be the newest addition to Z. Shaw Law, soon to be Z. and Z. Shaw Law.

“Um...it’s going fine,” Zola let out with a marked zip in her zeal. “Okay, I guess... It’s cool—”

Zena cut in, ready to inspire, ready to employ the swift hand of big sister judgment that had already decided that Zola wasn’t living up to her potential. She needed to let Zola know this slacking was dangerous. She needed to inspire Zola to do better. And this was the way things had always been between the sisters.

“You don’t sound like it’s ‘cool.’ Come on, Zola. Don’t drop the ball now. You can do this. I’m paying your bills, so you don’t have to work. All you have to do every day is study. You know how many people wish they had that privilege? I know I did.”

Sounding diminished, Zola started, “I know. I know—but—”

Zena cut her off again, though. “Look, you’re smart. You can do this. You have to focus. Focus and don’t accept mediocrity. I keep telling you that.”

“I know I can do it, Zena, but that’s what I’m calling to talk to you about—I don’t think I want to do it right now.”

“What? What do you mean ‘want’?” Zena’s face contorted into something that looked like an angered question mark. She looked at the phone as if Zola could see her cold stare. As she had all of those times in the past, Zena felt she just needed to find the right words of encouragement to entice Zola to change her view. Should she be stern or sensitive? What would work best at such a crossroads just shy of eight weeks before the July Georgia Bar Exam?

“This isn’t about your clock, Zola. It’s not about whether now is the time for you. Now is the only time. You have to take the Bar. You have to take it this summer.”

There was silence then—the kind that signifies that there’s more information coming.

“Wait, didn’t your text say you had news?” Zena recalled. “Is that what this is about? What’s going on?” Images depicting a reel of disaster rolled through Zena’s mind—Zola had already run off to New York to dance in hip-hop music videos; she’d used all the money Zena had been giving her for rent to pay for a secret drug habit; she hadn’t even started studying; she was preg— “Are you preg—?”

Zola stopped her sister’s stream of dark thoughts with a soft and mousy revelation: “Alton asked me to elope. That’s what I’ve been trying to get out. That’s why I’ve been calling you all day. We decided to just do it—to just get married. Now.” Zola was referring to her recent status as the fiancée of Alton Douglass, her childhood sweetheart and long-term boyfriend, who’d just popped the question at Zola’s graduation in DC. While Zena wasn’t exactly hip to the idea of Alton and Zola getting married right when Zola was about to really start her career, as she watched her baby sister cry when Alton slid the stoneless silver ring he’d called “antique” onto Zola’s finger, Zena was reconciled knowing that it would be at least one year before there was even a discussion about a wedding. By then, Zola would be back in Atlanta, have passed the Bar Exam and be a practicing attorney.

“Zena? Zena? You there?” Zola called after a long pause.

“Yes. I am.” Zena’s words were void of emotion but somehow also overly laden with something else.

“So?” Zola paused awkwardly. “What do you think? No big wedding. We’re just going to do it. Get married and start living our lives. It’s a smart decision—right?”

Though there was the common glee in Zola’s tone, there was a stiffness there now, too—a covering used to veil her joy in some way. To protect it.

Zena could sense all of this.

Zena began pacing in small circles, subconsciously reaffirming the existence of her environment as she prepared to quiz Zola. She felt as if she was being sucked away. As if the smoking couple had returned and lit up new cigarettes to steal her air.

She looked back up at the oversize plastic margarita glass hovering over her. It was glowy and amber. Happy. This was her happy place.

She wished Malak was outside Margarita Town standing beside her to hear this. She’d put Zola on speaker and have her best friend there to share her disbelief, confirm this horrible mistake Zola was about to make. A mistake Zena would have to clean up. The thing was, Zena had been protecting her baby sister for so long, there was no way she would let anything like that happen. She loved Zola so much, and she’d gotten her so far. They were almost there—almost at the finish line.

“Well did you tell Mommy and Daddy? What did they say about this?” Zena asked.

“Daddy’s too busy with whatever up in New York. And Mommy loves Alton, of course. Who doesn’t love Alton?” The adoration in Zola’s voice was so absolute Zena imagined that Alton must be standing right beside her, listening in and probably laughing at Zena’s reaction. Maybe Zena was the one on speakerphone.

“Of course everyone loves Alton,” Zena said with years of knowing and, yes, loving sweet and kind Alton, Zola’s spiritual twin, laced in her words. While Zena, at fifteen, was nearly in love with the mere vision of Alton’s older brother, Adan, Alton was actually like a little brother to Zena.

“All of this seems so sudden. Like, who’s going to pay for all of this?”

“Really, Z? I can’t believe you asked me that. I say I’m getting married and you ask who’s paying?”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve been supporting you, and Alton isn’t exactly rolling in the dough.”

“He’s a singer. That’s just how it goes when you’re just starting out. But he is getting money for his songwriting. And he’s about to sign a deal with a major label. We just have to hold out.”

“Sure, ‘hold out,’” Zena shot nastily, though she hadn’t intended on sounding so awful.

“Z, I knew you wouldn’t take this well—especially since I’m supposed to be preparing and everything. But I at least thought you’d be excited. Like happy for me,” Zola said.

“I am happy for you. It’s just—” Zena paused and looked at the inflated margarita glass again for inspiration. She needed to say the right thing, find the right words. She needed to support her sister. Be there for her sister. But how could she do that if she felt her sister was doing the wrong thing? Marriage? It wasn’t the right time. How could she support that? Be there for that? Didn’t support and being “there” for her sister mean telling the truth? Telling it like it is? Zena looked away from the margarita glass and let go of the idea of saying the right thing. She decided to say exactly what was on her mind. “What about your life...your future?” Zena let out, and she immediately hated every word she’d said. She sounded like their mother, like their grandmother.

“My future?” Zola laughed at this assertion in a way that Zena hated. The statement and tone reeked of “my big sister is crazy and cold. She doesn’t get it.” Zola took to using the tone whenever Zena said something with which Zola found fault or could easily deconstruct. “Z, listen, Alton is my future. Not being an attorney. That’s just a job. I know how you feel about it—it’s your life—but that’s not how I see it.”

Zola’s last sentence grated against something in Zena.

“Don’t do that. Don’t go there.” Suddenly, Zena felt incredibly lonely standing out there in front of Margarita Town. Cold. Bare. Though no breeze had passed, she shuddered and turned to peek through the front window of Margarita Town to find Malak’s face. “I’m just trying to look out for you. You know? That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I’ve ever done.”

“I know. And I love you for it. And I’m still taking the Bar Exam. Just not this year.”

“What? Why not? It’s scheduled for July—that’s like eight weeks from now. You’ve been studying, right?”

“Well, that’s kind of the other thing I wanted to tell you.”

“What?”

“Alton is so excited about this whole thing—well, we both are—anyway, he really wants to do it right away. And I agree with him—I love him and I want to be his wife—sooner rather than later, of course,” Zola clattered out as if she was explaining this all to herself. “He wants to elope—now.”