Practice Makes Perfect(29)
“Since birth. My mother’s doing.”
“Fish?”
“Nope. ‘Nothing with a face,’ as my mom used to say.”
“Nothing with a face,” Chase repeated. “I like that.”
After they decided what meatless appetizers to try, Chase signaled the waitress and placed their order. As Payton watched him, she couldn’t help but think: if she had created him à la Weird Science at build-a-date.com, had him packaged, wrapped up in a red bow, and shipped right to her front door, she couldn’t have found a guy seemingly more perfect for her than Chase Bellamy.
So why was there something nagging at her?
She was just out of sorts, she assured herself. She was feeling anxious and under pressure with the looming partnership decision. Nothing else.
She heard Chase ask her a question; he wanted to know about her trial. He said he’d love to drop by the courthouse one day to watch her.
Payton brushed aside her misgivings.
After all, it would be a silly woman indeed who disliked a man simply because he liked her.
Ten
IT ALL STARTED innocently enough.
Payton was in the second day of her trial, and things were progressing well. Her client, a Fortune 500 wireless carrier, had been sued for sexual harassment stemming from an incident that occurred at one of its sales offices. According to the plaintiff, a female sales representative, she had accepted a ride home from her male manager after the company’s annual boat cruise and after pulling into her driveway, the manager had—one might perhaps say—sexually propositioned her.
Or—one might perhaps also say—he unzipped his fly and asked whether she wanted to “test-drive his love stick.”
Whether or not the incident had occurred was not in dispute, as the plaintiff had been thoughtful enough to snap a photo of said love stick with her cell phone, which had now come to be known as “Exhibit A” of the trial.
“Fire the guy,” Payton had advised her client in no uncertain terms when the incident had first come to light a little over a year ago. “And tell him to get a better line. That’s just embarrassing.”
Firing the manager, however, had not been enough to satisfy the plaintiff, who had slapped the company with a two-million-dollar lawsuit. Because no one disputed the incident had occurred, Payton’s job at trial was to establish that the company had efficiently and appropriately responded to the incident, thus absolving it of any liability under the law.
Step one of her defense strategy started on the first day of trial, with jury selection. In light of the infamous Exhibit A (which the plaintiff’s attorneys had blown up to ridiculously gargantuan proportions and undoubtedly planned to display throughout the entire course of the trial), Payton had avoided selecting any juror she felt had what one might call “delicate sensibilities.” Someone who perhaps tended toward what one might describe as a “conservatively moralistic” viewpoint; one who could possibly be outraged by the conduct of the defendant’s ex-employee and want to ease that outrage in the form of dollars thrown in the direction of the plaintiff.
In other words, no Laneys.
Nobody who would take one look at a six-foot color photo of a half-mast penis popping out of a Dockers button-fly (hello!) and promptly ask how many zeros are in a gazillion.
From there, step two of Payton’s defense strategy was to set the right tone for the trial in her opening statement: sympathetic, but firm. Understanding and in complete agreement that managerial love sticks should be kept firmly tucked behind closed zippers, but rational and logical in guiding the jury to understand that her client, the employer, was not financially liable to the tune of two million dollars for the actions of one rogue ex-employee.
Payton hoped she had accomplished that task this morning. J.D. had been right when he’d told Jasper that she had quite a bit of trial experience under her belt, and with that she liked to think she was fairly skilled at reading jurors’ body language. She had started her opening statement by gesturing to Exhibit A, the six-foot half-mast penis photo, that plaintiff’s counsel had displayed front and center during his opening statement.
“Wow,” Payton had said, eyeing the photo as she turned to the jury to begin. “If the courthouse coffee wasn’t enough to wake you up, seeing that at nine a.m. sure will.”
The jury had laughed.
Now, any day that a person delivers an opening statement while standing in front of a six-foot billboard of semierect male genitalia is clearly a bit of an unusual day. But that was just the tip of the iceberg of events that spiraled out of control over the next forty-eight hours.
Payton returned to the office during her lunch break; she and Brandon planned to use the time to review the cross-examinations of the plaintiff’s witnesses that would begin that afternoon. When she got to the office, however, she found Irma in a frantic state, digging through the files on Payton’s desk.
“Thank god you’re here,” Irma said as soon as she saw Payton walk through the door. “Marie called—she’s been looking everywhere for the receipt for your dinner at Japonais with the Gibson’s reps. She needs to submit it before the close of the billing cycle—Accounts Payable won’t process any of the expenditures for your pitch until they have all the receipts in hand.”
Payton frowned. “J.D. paid for the dinner, not me. He should have the receipt.”