On day four, when I called that snot-voiced supervisor to tell him I was still in Miami, waiting to find out if and when I would testify, he informed me a little too eagerly that I had ventured into unexcused-absences territory. On orientation day, we were warned that we could be terminated for missing more than three days of work.
“There is nothing I can do,” I told this supervisor, whose name I can no longer recall but whose squinty and constipated face I can.
“In real life,” he was saying—hilariously, as though he knew more about the inconveniences of real life than I did—“our client doesn’t care about your circumstances, outstanding as they may be. In real life, you’ve just lost your client.”
The thought was so clear, it was almost as though someone had spoken it into my ear: I don’t give one flying fuck. “It’s possible this could go on awhile,” I said without inflection. It had been exhausting, trying to keep up this pretense that I cared, with everything else going on. My stamina was in rags. “I don’t want to let down the firm any more than I already have. I’ll draft my resignation letter today.”
Stuttering, the supervisor said, “Let’s not be rash here.”
“Thank you so much for bearing with me on this,” I said graciously. “I apologize for any trouble I’ve caused. Take care.”
I hung up quickly, in case Mr. Pearl was trying to reach me.
PAMELA
Miami, 1979
Day 548
On the stand, when Mr. Pearl asked if the man I’d seen at the front door was in the courtroom, I answered, “Yes. He is.”
Then, as I was raising my right arm to identify him for the jurors, I found I was rising to my feet, the compulsion to stand as instinctual as the night in The House when I ran toward him rather than away. We were about the same distance from each other as we were then. Thirteen feet, two inches. Only this time, he gazed back at me, legitimately bored, one elbow on the counsel table and his face supported in a sprawled-open hand. I was one hour into my testimony, and I had another to go, and he would not be the one to question me. The way his team had to manage him, by calling inconsequential witnesses to the stand just so he had someone to question without torpedoing his defense, would later remind me of a toddler given one of those play cell phones because that’s what all the adults have and he is not a baby.
“Relax, now.” The directive came from the most prominent bench. Though he’d ruled to allow my testimony, I despised Judge Lambert with every fiber of my being, the way he addressed me as ma’am and The Defendant as young man, then later as cowboy, compadre, partner. I was twenty-three years old to The Defendant’s thirty-two. I had earned top marks in my first year of law school. I was the young woman, the compadre, closer to his equal than The Defendant, but you never would have known it by the way the judge spoke to him.
I sat back down on my own time, brushing the lap of my dress smooth.
“What were you doing,” Mr. Pearl continued, “right before you came downstairs and saw The Defendant?”
“I was sleeping.”
“How had you spent the night previously?”
“I was working out the volunteering schedule for some of our spring charity events. After that, I finished up some reading for an econ class.”
“Busy evening. And did you see Denise at all?”
“Yes. She stopped by my room because she wanted to borrow one of my coats, and to see if I wanted to attend a party with her.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I told her I couldn’t because I had too much work to do.”
“How did she react?”
“She was disappointed, and she tried to get me to change my mind.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me that it was our senior spring and that I deserved to have a little fun.” I angled my knees so that I was speaking directly to the jurors. Mr. Pearl had told me to try and seek out the juror who wore cat’s-eye glasses and a silver cross around her neck. She was a nurse and a single mother, a woman likely to be sympathetic to the account of another woman up to her ears with deadlines and responsibilities. “She told me it was just one party, and that I had my whole life to be Pam Perfect.”
“That’s what she called you—Pam Perfect?”
“Yes. It was a nickname she had for me. After the cooking spray commercial. You know the one that promises to help you save money, calories, and time?” The women jurors were smiling among themselves, nodding. “In the end, they always show the dish and it looks delicious and they say it came out PAM Perfect.”