Read Online No Legal Grounds by James Scott Bell - Free Book Online

baby. She waived child support. And
that’s the last I ever heard.”
For a long moment Linda was silent, looking away. Not a good
sign. When he upset her, hurt her feelings with an untoward comment, she would look away from him, slightly and quietly. And it
would take a lot of apologizing to set things straight.
He decided to start. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before, but
we said we wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, little things,” Linda said, her eyes still averted. “But this.”
She shook her head.
“This isn’t any different. It’s a part of my past I really regret. I
thought about telling you early on, but I just kept putting it off, and
finally it seemed like the best thing was to let it go.”
“Until now.”
“Yes, until now.”
“Why?”
“It just — ” He stopped himself as he was about to go on a roundabout linguistic tangent, a lawyerly avoidance. He thought better of
it. “A guy I used to know back in college, his name’s Nicky Oberlin,
he got in touch with me.”
“How?”
“He just did. Tracked me through the Internet. Said he wanted
to get together with me. I ignored him, but he kept emailing. Finally
I met with him.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know, a week ago maybe.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
“It didn’t occur to me that there was anything to tell.” “Oh, not much.”
“Linda, you’re being a little unfair, aren’t you?”
“Where are they?”
“Who?”
“Your former lover and child.”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I have no idea. Oberlin tracked
her down and said they’re living in Southern Cal.”
“You’ve thought about them a lot, haven’t you?”
Her barb stung. “No.”
“Come on.”
“What do you want me to say? That I stay up nights thinking of
what might have been?”
“Do you?”
“No!”
Linda opened her mouth halfway, but words seemed to stick
behind her teeth. She held like that for a moment, then buried her
head in her hands.
That’s when Sam saw the smoke in the kitchen signaling an
early end to dinner.
6.
    Sam opened his eyes. His head was humming.
The digital clock read 3:43 A . M .
He knew he would not be sleeping anytime soon.
Usually he’d jolt awake the night before a trial. This felt different, like he was the conductor of not just one runaway train, but several. He was simultaneously outside the trains and inside, and he could only ride in one for a few moments before shooting to another. He couldn’t get his hands on any controls.
    His chest tightened.
All right, dude, don’t have a heart attack.
Slipping out of bed, he heard Linda murmur his name. “Go back
    to sleep,” he whispered. They’d managed to call enough of a truce to go to bed. But much more would have to be said. Sam was not looking forward to that.
    He’d been unfair to Linda. He hated being unfair, because it went against the entire grain of his life. Law was about fairness, ultimately. Fundamental fairness was the legal term of art.
    Count your blessings, he reminded himself. Meeting Linda had been his greatest blessing, and he knew it. They’d met at a little coffee house in North Hollywood. Sam was pursuing his dream of being an underappreciated poet, and succeeding. Even then he knew he’d be going back to school someday. He just wanted to give the artist thing a flier.
    He lived in a studio apartment off Vineland and supported himself waiting tables at a steak house in Toluca Lake. During the day he wrote his poetry, sending it off to underground mags and getting three free issues when something got published.
    And he did readings at local venues. The Ginkgo Leaf was a place that gave homegrown poets a place to do the open-mic thing. Sam showed up one night with a couple of poems and a flask of bourbon. His writing fantasy included bouts of hard drinking. Later he’d call it his Dylan Thomas phase, in reference to the Welsh poet who died drunk at age thirty-nine.
    It was while he was waiting his turn, and taking a nip, that Linda