The Lazy Lemon Sun Ch. 01

"What do we do now?"

"Now?"

"I'm leaving in two days. You're leaving in three. Are we going to continue this?"

She rubbed her cheek in against my forearm under her head. "We see each other on weekends when we can and all of Spring Break and we use the internet to chat and we keep going."

"You sure?"

"Aren't you?"

"I guess so."

"You guess?" She flipped around and started tickling me, her soft blond hair falling into my face and sticking to my lips as I tried to fight her off without bruising her. "You guess? I'm just some trollop for a quick fling, then it's back to the big bad city where you've got a string of groupies chasing after you and your silly little band?"

"They're not silly," I protested.

"The groupies or the band?"

"Neither," I said, taking her wrists and flipping us around until she was pinned beneath me. "But especially the groupies."

"You pig," she squealed in fits of laughter.

We rolled around on the bed, laughing and tickling and teasing for another ten minutes before we settled down. When it was over, we laid there panting.

"I'm going to be here for you, Mark," she said, her voice serious. "You get your degree and I'll get mine. I've already got a job probably lined up in Memphis, too, and we'll get a place together and set up house and get married and all that fun stuff."

I turned my head to her, not believing what I was hearing.

"You saying you love me?"

"What? You? You've got to be kidding." She flashed a smile. "Why? You love me?"

"You know I do."

"You've never said so."

"Didn't want to scare you off. Seemed a bit too much too soon."

"So you do?" she said, glee all over her face again.

I nodded, smiling.

"Then say it."

"Say what?"

"That you love me."

"Okay. I love you."

"Say it like you mean it."

"Sandra Truelson, I love you with all of my heart. Not a star in the sky burns as brightly as my love– "

"Oh gag me," she said, flipping on top of me. "I said like you mean it, not like a Hallmark card."

I laughed. "But it's true."

"Oh really."

"Really."

She beamed, then said, "Okay. Then I guess I love you, too."

"You guess?"

She shrugged. "Bit early, don't you think?"

"You little shit," I said, again flipping her onto her back.

"Did you just call me a shit?"

"Yes."

For some reason, that sent her into more peals of hysterical laughter that only ended when I started tickling between her legs. At first she tried to squeeze her legs shut and get away from my fingertips. As her laughter died down, though, her legs opened and she began pushing herself against my fingers.

"Looks like someone's in the mood for round two," she said, then pulled my head to her breasts.

* * * * *

Sandy was as good as her word. Every day, frequently two and sometimes three times a day, she e-mailed me little messages. Funny messages, sweet messages, cute messages, messages ranting about someone or something. It was all there. Three or four times a week, we talked on the phone, which wasn't cheap given our distance. Somehow, though we were apart, we grew closer.

Through our correspondence and calls, I learned to anticipate her moods and to laugh inwardly at her impetuous, sometimes utterly unpredictable nature. She said the craziest things, and it was sometimes difficult to tell whether she was joking or deadly serious. Then, just as I would get ready to ask her, she'd give that cute little giggle or some such thing, and I'd laugh at some joke I'd spend the rest of the evening trying to figure out.

It was crazy and whacky and fun and giddy and all that sappy shit you see in the old movies and hear David Gates sing about in old Bread songs.

Sandy was not just a breath of fresh air.

She was a strong, continuous gust that just blew into my life and kept me hanging on for dear life.

God, it was great.

* * * * *

We spent Spring Break together in Chicago. She saw me and the ragtag band I was in play two gigs, one at a club in Lincoln Park, the other at a honky tonk out in the sticks. The rest of the week, we screwed like rabbits and spent lazy days walking hand in hand through the Loop, museums, a zoo, and along the lakefront.

"Why so glum?" Sandy whispered into my chest.

I was laying flat on my back, staring at the ceiling; she was curled on her side, stroking my chest.

I gave a slight shrug.

"Sad to see me go?" Her voice sounded gleeful at the notion, like I was being too cute by about half and she was either mocking or enjoying my confusion and depression.

"What is this?" I asked a bit louder than intended as I turned to face her.

She shrank back, at first surprised. But the smile quickly returned.

"This is the last semester before the rest of our lives, silly."

"All of this, Sandy. What is it?"

Now it was her turn to be confused. "What's what? All of what?"

"Us."

"Don't you know?"

"I'm not sure."

She gave a funny look and rolled our eyes. "Dear Gawd, apparently I have to do all the thinking here."

"See? I don't know when you're being serious or just jerking my chain."

Her face got deadly serious at that, and her eyes bore into mine. "Serious? You want serious? Fine. How's this. We both graduate by late May, both move to Memphis, get apartments close to each other, announce the engagement by September, and have a lovely wedding about August next year. Serious enough?"

My jaw dropped. "Just like that?"

She gave that lopsided grin. "No sense in making it all too confusing, is there?"

I shook my head.

"How long have you been planning all of this?"

"Since Christmas night." She gave a devilish flicker of her eyes and nudged me in the ribs. "That's when I was pretty sure I'd be able to stomach being married to you, I suppose. Remember?"

I did, of course. But it seemed like she was trying to divert me. "So when you raped me in front of the Christmas tree, that– "

"I didn't rape you," she shrieked in protest. "That was a Christmas present. And you'd better not say it was a cheap one, either."

"Anyway," I continued, smiling now, "since you . . . uhm . . . well, worked your womanly wiles upon me, took advantage of my holiday spirit and all, that's when you decided you wanted to marry me?"

She gave a dismissive shrug. "Pretty much."

I nodded. "Do I get any say in this?"

"Sure. If your mother has no objection, you can probably plan your own bachelor party. She and my mother are already making all the other plans. The important ones. Probably as we speak."

I laughed. "Yeah. Right."

She saw I was serious and gave an exasperated sigh. "You men can be so dense sometimes. You think this is easy? Planning a wedding?"

"You're serious, aren't you?"

Now the look of confusion was back, followed seconds later by anger. She pushed the blankets off and swung her legs over the bed, her back to me.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"The thought of being married to me really that repugnant?"

"What? No, of course not. It's just that this is all moving . . . well, it's really caught me by surprise."

She whirled on me, her eyes still ablaze.

"You think this is easy for me?"

I held up my arms.

"I'm practically throwing myself at you here, just like at Christmas, and you think it doesn't make me feel just a little bit maybe underappreciated?"

"Jesus, Sandy, I'm sorry. I just didn't . . . I don't want to . . . you're not the easiest person to read, you know, and I don't want to make the wrong step and fuck everything up, okay? I mean, Christ, you wanna get married? Fuck, I'll do it right now. Go to City Hall, get the damned license, and hunt down a judge somewhere."

Her face got all questioning again, then softened, then the grin was back. "Okay, don't go messing with the schedule now. Remember, engagement ring in September or so, wedding ring the following August."

"Should I drop to my knee or something?"

She laughed, then crawled over the bed toward me, pulling the sheets back and exposing my bare body as she did so. "I'll do the knee work for now. You just remind me about what you said earlier."

"What?"

She reached her tiny, cool fingers around my prick and lowered her head. "Something about taking advantage of your Christmas spirit? Was this the Christmas spirit you were referring to?"

With that, she lowered her lips to my cock and sucked me all the way in.

I could only watch with glazed eyes, enjoying the sensations coursing through my body as this pixie nymph gave me a glimpse of what I hoped marriage would be like.

* * * * *

No real sense in giving you the blow by blow of the next eighteen months. They played out exactly they way Sandy promised they would.

We both got our own condos in Memphis, though hers was only rented month to month and went mostly unused.

We were engaged in September; I passed the bar exam and became licensed in October; we were married in August; and her Dad was elected Governor of Tennessee in November.

Oh shit, that's right, there was that one little fly in the ointment. Shortly after our graduation, Pat Truelson announced he would be running for Governor the following year. Thus, what would've otherwise been a minor blurb in the social pages–U.S. Senator's Son and State Speaker's Daughter Are Wed–became the cause celebre of the gossip columnists, People magazine, and a all of those God forsaken rags you buy in the checkout aisle with your toothpaste and baloney.

Thus, our engagement announcement wasn't limited to family and close friends. Oh no, instead it was dispatched to the press with precision and efficiency by Pat Truelson's campaign people. Then, to make matters worse, the campaign picked exactly the angle that would maximize both interest to the public and annoyance for me and Sandy.

"From Tragedy to True Love," is how People put it.

Entertainment Tonight, being bored with Lindsey Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Brangelina, Paris, the Kardashians, and all the rest, decided to make Sandy and me their new poster children for romance, values, love, and success. Hell, you name it, Sandy and I were the darlings of it for awhile there. HLN and CNN decided this was a good idea, apparently. As a result, I was regularly running into video cameras, reporters, and photographers outside both my condo and my office.

"You need to cooperate with them more," Patricia Burley told me for months on end. As Truelson's press attache, she was responsible for milking this for as much as possible, so I didn't exactly trust her.

"How so, Patricia? You want I should get them coffee and bagels every morning before taking a couple hours out of my day to sit for pictures and interviews?"

"Oh no. Bagels? Too New York. It'd never fly. Biscuits wouldn't hurt, though."

I stared at her. She was dead serious, apparently impressed I'd (almost) come up with a really great idea.

Sandy didn't seem to mind all of the attention, though. To the contrary, she basked in it. She was always perfectly prepped–dressed just so with enough but never too much make-up and a bright smile that could turn into a sad look of remembrance at the mention of Stevie before turning back to a shy smile at the mention of how we'd fallen in love and our pending nuptials.

I have to say, Sandy was a natural at it. Then again, she held a Master's in Communications and worked in a public relations firm, so I suppose she should've been good at it.

The shitstorm seemed to die down when the photos and video of our wedding, which was supposed to be private, somehow managed to leak to the press only a few weeks before the November elections.

Pat Truelson's speech to the congregation both eulogizing Stevie and praising Sandy and me for moving on with our lives put him over the top. At the end, he won in a landslide.

Me? I wanted to punch all of them. Patricia Burley, Pat Truelson, the photographers, reporters, cameramen, and talking heads. The whole damned lot of them.

Unfortunately . . . well, okay, fortunately . . . Sandy and I were a bit too busy setting up house and christening all of the rooms in our newer, bigger condo on the river for me to get around to staying pissed off all that long.

So yeah, life was good.

For a little more than three years.

Until a problem arose.

CHAPTER TWO

The problem's name was Napoleon Bonaparte Bonaroo. (I know. That was my reaction, too.)

Nap Bonaroo was a decent enough good ole boy, assuming you manage to look past his string of petty theft and minor drug and alcohol convictions. Simply put, when Nap Bonaroo got to drinking or popping meth, he took things that weren't his and got into the occasional bar fight.

Unfortunately, in 1996, someone slipped into the Dew Drop Inn just east of Memphis with mayhem on his mind. That someone, who managed to keep his face turned away from the low quality camera, approached the cash register with pistol drawn, demanded the money, shot the bartender, and swiped a carton of Pall Malls before skedaddling on down the road to spend the whopping three hundred bucks and change that had justified killing a twenty-three year old mother of one.

The cops got lucky, or so they said. Someone heard someone who told someone who just happened to mention to a confidential informant that one Napoleon Bonaparte Bonaroo was bragging to his buddies about the shooting. Two days after receiving that crappy tip, the cops spotted Nap leaving a liquor store and took him in for questioning. Of course, Nap was a bit eager to get into the two half pints of Old Thompson under his arm, so he refused to go. Cops, being used to fellows like Nap, just slapped on the cuffs, tossed his booze in their trunk to take home themselves, and took him down to the station anyway.

Eleven hours later, the cops had a confession. In their own writing and unsigned, granted, but a confession nevertheless. Or so they claimed.

And Nap? Well, he had a broken cheekbone, busted lip, and a couple of cracked ribs. Resisting arrest, they claimed.

The trial judge denied Nap's motion to suppress the confession. The jury later convicted. Death penalty. The State Supreme Court managed to lend little guidance, instead preferring to send it back to the trial judge for re-sentencing due to another mistake at trial. The trial judge, reading the handwriting on the wall, vacated the death sentence on different grounds and gave old Nap life without parole.

Now that Nap had a life sentence instead of a death sentence, the appeals on the never decided confession issue had to be appealed all over again. This time it started with the State appellate court, who affirmed the trial judge's decision. Next, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court and found the confession was, in fact, inadmissible. However, they continued, no grounds existed to overturn the conviction because there was ample alternative evidence to convict. Thus, they said, letting the jury hear the confession–the whole goddamned cornerstone to the State's case and the only thing that really put Napoleon Bonaparte Bonaroo at the scene of the crime–was deemed harmless error. The United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

That's where it would have sat, of course, except prison inmates have little else to do except try to keep from being forcibly sodomized and filing endless motions with courts. Nap must've found a good jailhouse lawyer to help him right off the bat, too. His Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus was filed in a timely manner at the Federal Courthouse in Memphis. This is where I came in.

The one thing Federal judges don't like is having to deal with prison inmates who have nothing better to do than file crappy pleadings that are rarely legible or understandable. Thus, all of us who have a Federal trial license are forced to take at least one of these cases a year, investigate it, and present it all properly. For free, of course.

Nap Bonaroo was my first ever appointed case.

Even a cursory exam of the file, which took fifteen hours to give even a cursory examination, made it clear that this poor bastard had been sitting in jail for a decade based on little more than a bogus confession he probably never made.

"It's yours," Jim Parker told me after I'd finished explaining the whole case to him. "You keep up with all of your other work, but you do whatever you can to get this fixed. You need someone to bounce ideas off of, fine. You've got Harvey. But you still have to keep up with the rest of Harvey's cases and anything else that comes along, got it?"

I nodded.

Parker leaned back in his chair. "This is the big leagues, Mark. You take it where you want it, but you'll be the one arguing it, understand?"

Big law firms do this. What better way to get their inexperienced associates some real experience than to let them take complete charge of a case for a nonpaying prisoner? Who cares if the poor bastard's really innocent and suffering and would be better served by someone who knows what the hell they're doing? Welcome to real life.

I was, of course, terrified. My legal career to date had consisted of reviewing the records on appeal, researching until bleary eyed, and preparing rough drafts of appellate briefs. I'd never been put in charge of strategy, never appeared in a courtroom, never argued before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, nothing. Now I'd be doing the whole damned thing, and Nap Bonarro's life depended on me not fucking it up. On top of that, I had to still do my other sixty-five hours of work a week while I was at it. Oh joy.

* * * * *

The problems began two months later.

"There a problem here?"

I turned to look at Sandy, laying on her side under the covers with her head propped up by her hand.

"You know I have to get this research done," I said, pulling on a pair of jeans.

"Jesus, Mark, it's five thirty. In the morning. On a goddamned Sunday."

"But you know this is the only time I can get it done."

"And what type of case is this again?"

"A Federal prisoner case."

"A murderer, right?"

"No."

"But you said– "

"He didn't do it."

"And you're doing what with this?"

"Trying to get him free."

"And that means you can't come home before eleven every goddamned night? And you have to spend twelve hours a day in the office on weekends?"

"You think I'm happy about this, too?"

"Well you sure as hell don't seem all that upset."

I finished dressing in silence. In a way, Sandy was right. All things considered, it was pretty exciting stuff. It was my chance to make a difference for the better in some poor bastard's life.

"Well?" she pressed as I finished dressing.

I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. "What you want I should do? Just let this poor bastard rot in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he probably didn't commit?"

She pouted, but this was more than the fake pout she usually gave. There was sadness and hurt behind this pout. I'd never seen that on her before. Never.

"Listen," I said, leaning in to her, "I'll be home by one or two, okay? Promise. Then we can go do something for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Whatever you wanna do."

She didn't say anything, just stared at me. When I leaned in and kissed her, she didn't kiss me back.

* * * * *

When I got home at ten past two that afternoon, Sandy was nowhere to be found.

Nor did she answer her cell phone.

Nor was she home by the time I fell asleep on the couch at just past ten.

* * * * *

By month three, Sandy would barely speak to me. Her face was a constant mask of sadness and anger and hurt and disdain all rolled into one. It would've pissed me off or forced me to confront the problem, but I was still too busy preparing for the hearing on Nap Bonaroo's case.

The District Court judge, Leland Duesterboeck, was old, crotchety, and a stickler for the rules. That meant when you asked for a continuance, you'd damned well better have a good reason. The State got the picture on this when their first motion to extend time to answer our petition was only partially granted and the second denied outright. He was holding us to a tight schedule to get this case out of his courtroom, and our hearing was upon us before I knew it.