Old School Ch. 04: The Weight

"What's so interesting on that phone, Red Label," Marsha said, startling me, when she caught me in the kitchen looking at my phone screen. "She not texting back?"

How the hell did Marsha know?

"Well, ... still waiting," I said. "What is it, some telepathy thing among women?"

She poured Karl another two fingers of Weller's and poured herself a Diet Coke with just a splash of the bourbon, then looked at me with a sympathetic smile and shook her head.

"Guys as a rule have damn little intuition, social awareness, emotional intelligence ... whatever you want to call it. But damn, Red, you got even less than the average dude. You're easier to read than a Dr. Suess book," Marsha said in her sweetest Tennessee Chi Omega twang. She sauntered over to me, put an arm around my waist, and looked up at me.

"Bless your heart, Les, it'll work out. Y'all gonna find your way back together. It takes time because, well ... you fucked up. You didn't kill anybody and you meant well in a dorky-ass, lawyer kind of way, and that accounts for something. You're a good egg, Les. Believe in yourself," Marsha said, then pecked me on the cheek before picking up the two crystal tumblers into which she had poured drinks for herself and Karl and headed back toward the den. Just before she left the kitchen, she paused, peeked back over her shoulder, and added, "... just don't fuck up anymore."

A night earlier, I had briefed Les and Marsha on my fall from grace with Kass when I took them to dinner at a bougie, expensive eatery downtown where we feasted on fresh red snapper and lobster thermidor. Karl, who grew up near Bowling Green, had met Kass a few times back in our UK undergrad days when he'd accompany me on the short ride from campus out to Versailles for an occasional homecooked meal and to hang out with my high school pals, sometimes including Kass. He remembered Dano, too.

They were fascinated to learn that what disrupted the courtship between Kass and me was my peripheral tie to the criminal cases against the anti-gay Ebenezer's Eyes cult that generated extensive coverage all the way down to Nashville. I appreciated that they listened sympathetically and withheld judgment and unsolicited advice. What Marsha had to say just now brightened my brooding outlook that must have stood out like a neon beer sign to her. As I was pouring my last Weller's of the night, I felt the phone buzz.

"Happy New Year to you, too, Les. I'm at a countdown dinner party at a friend's house in Danville. Miss U 2. Here's hoping for the best in 23."

At least it was something to build hope on. No heart emoji, but I'll take it. Had midnight come and gone with no word from her, I'd have been crushed.

Then the phone buzzed again. From Kass: "Still working on the heart emoji. Maybe with time."

I texted back a thumbs-up. "Understand. To a great '23 & working to earn back your trust & your ♥."

Damn the consequences. A moment like this without her hurts too much. I'm putting it all on the table. I hit send.

Then I added: "Because I'll always love you."

I swallowed hard and wiped tears from my eyes. Then I hit send again.

Kass was with friends. I found comfort in that. I got what I hoped for: confirmation that Kass was at least thinking of me. Now it was time to rejoin my hosts and get a little drunker. I plopped onto Karl and Marsha's leather sofa.

On television, revelers were reveling, bands were playing, celebrities were celebrating and the crowd was getting louder as the big, glowing ball was poised to make its descent over Times Square in Manhattan.

"Karl, remember that crazy-as-hell New Year's Eve you and I spent there in Manhattan our sophomore year?" I said.

"How can I forget. Not every day you puke into someone's lap in a subway," he said, remembering how I pounded shot after shot of Johnnie Walker Red Label at a bar a few blocks from Times Square after midnight. It earned me my nickname. I don't remember yakking into the old fellow's lap. Somehow, we avoided the Port Authority and Metro cops and a night in jail, a break I attribute to the fact that we were only a short distance from the massive hole where the World Trade Center twin towers had stood just a few years earlier and law enforcement at every level was far more worried about terror attacks than about drunk, puking college kids.

"Now look at us, Karl. On a sofa in a Nashville suburb and barely able to even stay awake and watch this stuff on TV. O, how the mighty have fallen, Karl."

Karl laughed as Marsha stared at me in mock horror.

"You really puked ... on somebody? ... in a subway? Shitfire, Red, here I thought I'd heard all y'all's crazy-ass UK stories."

On TV, the final countdown had begun. The crystal orb was descending its pole as the final seconds ticked down on a gigantic screen at its base.

"14 ... 13 ... 12 ..."

Karl lifted his glass.

"To Red Label and Kass and the year they finally tie the knot," he said.

"8 ... 7 ... 6 ..."

"Hear hear!" Marsha added as she and I lifted our glasses to touch Karl's.

"4 ... 3 ... 2 ..."

"Your lips to God's ears," I said as the clock hit zero, "... and happy new year!"

We took a gulp as Guy Lombardo's "Auld Lang Syne" played in Times Square. Then Marsha grabbed Carl — one arm around his neck and one hand grasping his ass — and kissed him lasciviously.

I had little choice but to awkwardly watch. It was beautiful. They had been married almost 12 years now and were very much a part of each other. Each was home to and for the other. It was a romance, sure, but it was different. Deeper. Fuller. What I saw was not just a couple but a family. Their two small children were spending the holidays with Marsha's parents — Grandpop and Nonna, the kids called them — a couple of hours away in McMinnville, Tennessee. On this night, just the two of them — Mr. and Mrs. Blankenship — in and of themselves radiated the wholly unmistakable aura of family. They had since that summer afternoon when I was a groomsman in their wedding near a waterfall in a state park just outside McMinnville.

I drank it all in. I recorded it in my heart.

This! Karl himself had spoken the very benediction that could make it so in his final toast of 2022. (Well, never mind that although it was after midnight and already 2023 in Times Square in the Eastern Time Zone, it was still just after 11 p.m. here in Goodletsville, in the Central Time Zone.) And Marsha had seconded it.

Marsha had wrapped an arm firmly around Karl's neck as their kiss lingered with little regard for me as their lone spectator. When they finally came up for air, I could see Marsha's face flushed a healthy shade of pink. I don't know if it was from the kiss, the bourbon or both.

She looked over Karl's shoulder at me with a leering grin.

"We'll see you boys in the morning, Red Label," she purred to Ry and me. "Mr. Blankenship, you need to take Mrs. Blankenship to bed."

She hooked two fingers inside the waistband of Karl's trousers and tugged him toward the hallway, down it and into the primary bedroom before its door resolutely closed. Ryder interrupted his fireside slumber to watch all the stirring, and then looked up at me, as if searching for an explanation of what just happened.

"That, Ry boy, is what I want. Family.

▼ ▼ ▼

"Les Walker," I said, answering my desk phone at Gladney & Watson. It was my second day back in the office after the brief holiday respite.

"Hey, it's Cabot."

I caught myself wincing slightly. Not that I didn't want to talk to my old law school study buddy who was now the No. 2 person in the Kenton County Commonwealth's Attorney's office just across the river in Covington, Kentucky. I just knew that since I first learned of Mason Burnley, the secretly gay former state trooper whose life's work had been to torment my friend Dano Albertson and other gay people, unexpected calls from Cabot's office seldom brought glad tidings.

"What's up, my friend?" I said.

"Nothing good," the weariness plain in his voice.

"What now?"

"We won't be trying Trooper Burnley. He hung himself last night in his jail cell in Miami."

"Jeez," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not going to lower any flags to half-staff, but I hate to see that."

"Left a note in his cell. It mentions you. He thinks you had something to do with blowing up his reputation and causing his downfall, which he actually did all on his own. And — get this — he decided to 'forgive you.'"

"He ain't wrong, and I ain't sorry. I hired Fassbinder Investigations to find out why he was investigating—and trying to posthumously trash—my client, but I never dreamed we'd find this level of corruption and just ... evil."

I asked him what else the note says.

"He apologizes to his family — though his wife was divorcing him and evidently his kids hadn't spoken to him in years. He apologizes to anybody who, and I quote here, 'may have been hurt by my actions.' The rest is an incoherent, self-loathing rant. Never acknowledges what we know he did or expresses any remorse. It's worthless from an evidentiary point of view regarding the other defendants in either the state or federal prosecutions."

"Well, the million-dollar question, Cabot: Has the press gotten hold of the note yet?"

"I haven't seen it reported anywhere, but it's just a matter of time. We've learned that Miami-Dade law enforcement is full of press sluts."

The timing couldn't be worse. I had managed to avoid being subpoenaed to testify, either before the federal grand jury or as a trial witness. As Wilson Rush went out of his way to inform me, Gladney & Watson had incurred some serious IOUs with the Justice Department to ensure that outcome.

Even worse, it was critical that I put this gay-hating church/cult drama in my past to rebuild my bridges with Kass. Our relationship suffered a grievous, potentially mortal blow when this case came crashing down on us, blindsiding Kass, and that was my fault. Reminders of it could destroy any inroads I had made toward rapprochement.

Part of me saw justice in Mason Burnley finally experiencing the hopelessness my childhood friend felt when he knew that taking his own life was his only option after his unbearable secret was out of his control. But in Burnley's suicide, he put an enormous weight back on me as I tried to rebuild a future with Kass, the only future that I could imagine.

I told Cabot about the rupture in my relationship with Kass and the costly toll Burnley and this case had already taken on it.

"Shit, Les, I am sorry. You don't deserve that. You were one of the good guys, a hero in a lot of ways. There are LGBTQ people all over who have a brighter future on account of what you did and the help you gave us."

"Yeah. Well, not your fault, Cabot. I'm not ashamed of what I did to bring down Burnley and these other assholes, but I just wish I'd been smarter about it with Kass."

"Understood. Let me know if there's anything I can do," he said.

"Ten-four, Cabot. And happy new year."

I stared at the papers on my desk that now defied my efforts to focus on anything but the news I just received and what felt like a leaden cannonball in the pit of my stomach. My first instinct was to call Wilson Rush, my practice chair, and inform him. But should I?

▼ ▼ ▼

"A call at 10 in the morning on a weekday isn't small talk," Elise Walker said, answering her phone.

I explained what I had just learned from Cabot Nathanson. I didn't have to draw a map for her about the consequences. Mom grasped it instantly.

"It's not great news, no, but look at this as an opportunity, son," she said.

That did not compute. Not to my mind.

I was about to take a PR hit, it appeared. It would not be greeted warmly by my superiors at Gladney & Watson. Wilson Rush and Ramesh Quereshi had already made clear the aversion that billion-dollar-plus international law firms like ours have to tabloid-fodder sagas like these. And when Kass saw the first report about it, any goodwill I had engendered with her in the more than two months since our parting would be gone.

My intuitive mother had anticipated exactly how I would perceive this development and was ready with the right advice.

"Les, what was your big mistake with Kass so far," she asked.

"Keeping her in the dark. Thinking too much like a lawyer, not leveling with her and imagining that she'd be better off not knowing."

"See, that wasn't so hard."

"So what should I ..." I began before mom cut me off.

"Son, you know what you have to do. I'm hanging up. You start dialing Kass. Now!"

Instantly, my line went dead.

I felt the first butterflies in my gut as my finger hovered over Kass's speed dial icon, but I didn't give them time to flutter. I started the call. One ring. Two. Three. I was getting nervous. Was she ignoring me and the urgent information I had for her?

"Hi Les," she said, sounding harried as she picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

"Hey, I have some important info. You got a second?"

"Things are a little crazy this morning. Internet's down and a vendor just pulled up ...," she said, turning to shout instructions to someone in the store.

"Maybe it's a good idea to walk around the corner or into an office for a few minutes," I said.

She exhaled. "OK, what's up?"

"The deputy commonwealth's attorney in Kenton County called me about an overnight development in this case that's likely to create some publicity very soon. It's likely to affect me, and I don't want you to be blindsided when the press gets hold of it," I said.

"Oh God, what's happened," she said, a slight quiver in her voice.

I told her about Burnley hanging himself in a Miami jail and the suicide note he left that blamed me, among others, for his downfall. I told her that she's not mentioned in the note. I told her that while I couldn't be certain she would not be drawn into this, I doubted it would touch her.

"I hoped we'd heard the last of this after we both got cleared from testifying," I said. "How much attention this generates, I don't know. I don't intend to comment at all if contacted."

"I guess your firm's PR department will handle that, right?" she said.

"I don't know. I haven't told anyone in the firm about this yet."

She was quiet for a minute.

"Won't that get you in some sort of trouble with your higher ups? You know, ethical problems and all?"

"It might. But if there's any lesson from bitter experience, it is that my first duty is to you. Gladney & Watson grosses north of a billion bucks a year; they can take care of themselves."

More silence. So I filled it.

"You've been hurt by this mess, and that's my fault because I kept things from you. I did the lawyerly thing, and for that I am sorry and ashamed. From here on, I'm going to do the right thing."

"Thank you, Les. That means a lot," she said in a soft, vulnerable voice. "This isn't great news today, but at least I know it's out there and that you've thought of my wellbeing."

"I'm getting you help if there is any press attention from this, too. There's an independent legal marketing and PR shop that works on a contract basis for sole practitioners and small firms. I know one of its executives and I'm going to hire a woman I've worked with before to look after you and me personally on this. She will be available for you and your businesses if the press finds its way to you."

"Do I have to call this person or what?"

"No, she'll reach out to you, maybe even this afternoon. Her name's Susan. So if you see a call with a strange New York area code, pick it up and don't say anything; wait for the caller to identify herself."

"OK. If this had to happen, I appreciate the way you're handling it," she said. I could still detect a faint quiver in her cadence. Whether that was a good omen or bad, time would tell. It showed me that the hurt was still there, but just maybe, as my wise mother said, this was an opportunity. And a turning point.

"Thank you, Kass," I said. "I'll update you later, OK?"

"Yes," she said. "Later."

We hung up.

My next call was to Wilson Rush. I explained to him what Cabot Nathanson had told me and the likely fallout. He listened silently for the most part. When I was done, he spoke in a low, grumbling voice, as if his iridescent white crowns were clenched together..

"Well ... great. Just when we thought we'd scraped all this dogshit off our heel, now it's back in our lap," he said. "Aside from the collateral intangibles our white collar and government investigations guys in D.C. have had to waste at Main Justice, think of the firm billables to real clients that have been wasted on this fuck-circus or yours."

"Wilson, I've handled nearly all of this from my home, off the company clock," I said. He cut me off.

"You're an equity partner of this firm, Walker. There is no goddamn 'off the clock.'"

"And yet you've used me and my work to sign two new billionaire family offices as clients since this — as you so artfully put it — fuck circus began in October. How many client complaints have we gotten, Wilson? Not one that I've seen."

"Let's see if that holds true once this shit starts showing up on CNN, social media, the damn law blogs ...," Rush snapped back.

"Then you'd better brief our chief marketing officer and his team of spin doctors so they can come up with some sort of media plan for protecting Gladney & Watson's good name," I said. "I have a duty to inform you expeditiously of this situation. I've done that. If you have more questions, you know where to get me."

I hung up. And as I did, the weight that had felt like a leaden mass at my soul's core began to lift. I felt I had taken an important step — one that would allow me to reclaim a large measure of my life and identity, my respect for myself as a man, not just an attorney. Even if the road ahead wouldn't be smooth, perhaps even treacherous, it was one that I had no hesitation choosing.

▼ ▼ ▼

When the news broke, it broke like a dam. It made its way into CNN's reporting by 2 p.m. My news apps from the New York Times, MSNBC, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press all alerted me to the "breaking news" about the same time. Shortly after the AP story cleared, I got my first media call from NBC News. I instructed Donita to send all calls identifiable as media immediately to Sal D'Amucci, G&W's longtime PR mouthpiece. Within 10 minutes, my firm email inbox had a dozen unread requests for interviews. I forwarded those to D'Amucci, too.

The frequency of the media calls and voicemails seeking comment increased throughout the afternoon. Eventually, I just gave up and deleted them. Why bother if I have no intention of talking? Let my silence speak for itself.

How, I wondered, was Kass doing?

The press siege has started. How u doing? I texted her.

She replied quickly. Saw the first story pop up on my phone news alerts not long ago. Not a peep from any reporters here.

I sent a thumbs-up emoji. Then added: Hear anything from Susan whatshername from the PR shop?

Susan Fleming? She called just before 2. Nice. Thick Brooklyn accent. She told me not to answer any call I don't recognize and if one got through, refer them to her.

Susan had helped me out before with a well-known client I represented in a nasty child custody fight who had been the target of a vile media smear campaign by his ex. Susan was a wily veteran of both the mainstream and legal press. She had worked for the New York Post — as close as America got to London's Fleet Street tabloids — and she had put in several years at the online legal industry watchdog publication Above the Law, which was rare among legal industry media in its willingness to expose all sorts of lies, hypocrisy, ethical lapses and outright criminality within the profession, particularly Big Law. She knew how to bring reporters to heel and brought the grit she learned growing up on Brooklyn's streets to protecting her clients' reputations.