Jack with a Twist (10 page)

“Y
ou do not look like James Bond,” I say.

“Of course I do,” Jack says, not even looking at me, waving the zappy gun menacingly at the row of crystal bowls we’re browsing. We’re at Tiffany and Co. today to register since my parents’ friends apparently went to Tiffany to buy us an engagement gift and we were—gasp!—not registered there yet. (“The Goldmans said that you are still not registered at Tiffany’s. I could
not
believe my ears. Still not registered at Tiffany’s?
Still?
Well, when they told me I was horrified. Horrified!”)

“You don’t,” I say, grabbing the gun from him to zap the Harmony bowl onto our registry. I’ve bought that bowl for so many engaged couples that I’ve lost count. I know that I should be thrilled that
I
am now the one registering for it, but all I can do is be annoyed at Jack for acting so juvenile. Who is this man-child and what has he done with my fiancé?

Why does Tiffany’s even give out these stupid zappy guns to couples who are registering, anyway? You would think that a classy joint like Tiffany and Co. wouldn’t want to give couples a scanner to scan merchandise directly onto their registry. You’d think that they’d ask you to write them a formal note on perfumed stationery detailing just exactly which items you would like on your registry instead of letting all of their couples make a scene in the store by having them walk around debating the merits of the basketweave pattern versus the plaid. More importantly, don’t they know that the men who hold the scanners will instantly revert to children and start using the scanning guns as toys?

I had this image of us walking into Tiffany’s—a modern-day Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard—behaving elegantly as we registered for all of the things that we would need for our glamorous new life together. I even wore a black shift dress and beige raincoat. Instead, my fiancé began playing with the gun like a six-year-old, thus testing our relationship to its very brink.

“Gimme that,” he says, grabbing the gun from my hands, “those Russians are on our tails.” And with that, he begins to skulk behind the glassware.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” I whisper loudly as I follow him behind the rock-cut beer mugs.

“Shhh!” he says, pointing at another couple around the same age as us who are also registering, “the Russian couple!”

“First of all,” I say, “they’re not Russian, Jackie.”

“Yes, they are,” he whispers. “And use my code name, Hannibal.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hannibal,”
he says, crawling past the wineglasses straight toward the bowls. “You said that I had to be George Peppard today.”

“Get up!” I say, pulling Jack up off the ground from his shirt collar, “His character’s name was
not
Hannibal.”

“Well, I’m George Peppard from the
A-Team,
” he says, “George Peppard from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
was a huge wimp.”

“You can’t just pick whatever George Peppard you want to be,” I say.

“The Russians!” he says, pulling me behind the wall that separates the personal shoppers from the rest of the floor.

“Stop this,” I say, “You’re George Peppard from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Start behaving accordingly.”

“A-Team!”

“Who are you and what have you done with my fiancé?”

“Please, Brooke,” he whispers, “we don’t want the Russians to attack. We’re vulnerable by the glassware. Let’s move to the sterling silver.”

“You do realize that you’re supposed to be the normal one in this relationship,” I say as he drags me across the floor to the sterling silver. And he’s right, there’s much more cover in the sterling silver section. It’s just that my father will kill me if I register for any sterling silver that could be gotten for cheaper out on Long Island at Morell’s.

“Do you see the Russians?” Jack asks, his back to the display case.

“Okay, they are not Russian!” I say. “They are just another couple registering for their wedding, just like us.”

“Well, actually, Brooke,” Jack says, “both of my grandmothers were born in Russia, as was my grandfather on my mother’s side.”

“Could you focus on the task at hand, please,” I say, taking the gun away from him.

“Shouldn’t you just be happy that I came?” Jack asks. “Most men make their fiancées do all the work by themselves. But, I’m here. So, can’t you just appreciate that and let me have a little fun instead of being bored to death?”

“Oh, my God, Jackie, you’re bored to death?”

“Kind of,” he says, “but I know it’s important to you, so I’m here.”

“Jackie,” I sing, grabbing him for a kiss. “That is so sweet of you.”

“Of course, sweetie,” he says as he glances back to the table filled with crystal bowls. “But you can do Bloomie’s with your mother, right?”

“Right,” I say with a smile.

“Hey, are these the Georgetown bowls?” Jack says, picking up a crystal bowl and turning it over. It’s a large crystal bowl, but rather plain. It lacks the elegant lines of the Harmony bowl, and has big sides that look cumbersome—like they’d always get in the way. I never would have chosen it myself, but if Jack wants it, I suppose I don’t mind.

“Miranda says that we should register for the Georgetown bowl,” Jack says, getting the scanner ready to zap.

Miranda? Why is
Miranda
telling him what to register for?

“Why is Miranda telling us what to register for?” I ask, taking the bowl from his grasp under the pretense of taking a closer look at it.

“She says it makes a great salad bowl,” he says, baby blues shining. He seems so excited about having suggested something for our registry that I barely have the heart to tell him that I really don’t care what Miranda thinks we should register for, since she’s not our friend. She’s just someone who works for Jack.

Not like I’m jealous of her or anything. But, really. How dare he invoke her name while we are in the temple of Tiffany and Co. (And if you don’t think that shopping at Tiffany’s is a religious experience, clearly you’ve never been there.)

“It’s at a good price point,” Jack says, smiling. “Didn’t your mother tell us that we should register for things in a wide variety of price points?”

“Zap it in,” I say, forcing a smile. I think to myself that I can always delete it off of our registry later online.

“Will do,” Jack says, and turns around to zap the totally boring Georgetown bowl into our registry.

“Gotcha!” the faux Russian guy says, coming from out of nowhere, pointing his zappy thingy at Jack. Jack clutches his chest and pretends to fall to the floor. I do what any woman in my position would do—stand there with my mouth wide open, waiting for faux Russian guy’s fiancée to arrive so that we can roll our eyes at our respective men-children.

“Brooke,” he chokes out, “just remember how much I love you. (Cough.) I want you to go on without me and live a happy life. (Cough, cough.) Don’t mourn me for the rest of your life. And—whatever you do—don’t register for that Metropolitan vase. I really hate it.” He coughs a bit more, just for good measure, and then collapses completely onto the floor, moaning all the way.

I am not amused. Again, and I really can’t stress this enough,
he’s
supposed to be the normal one in this relationship.

“Who
are
you?” I say, and take his gun and start zapping silver serving spoons indiscriminately.

“Boys and their toys,” a woman, whom I can only assume is the faux Russian fiancée says to me, rolling her eyes. “Just give them a phallus and they can play all day.” Um, okay, can’t we just call them little boys? Was that phallus remark really necessary? That comment totally ruined Tiffany and Co. for me for the day. Perhaps forever.

But, maybe they really
are
Russian. That post-perestroika tough-talking sort of Russian woman who simply tells it like it is. After all, she does have pitch-black straight hair, pale skin and bloodred lipstick. I ask you, what says Russian woman more than black hair, pale skin and red lipstick? And her fiancé has pale blond hair, even paler skin and a tall, skinny frame that totally screams Baryshnikov in
White Nights.

Or, she could just be totally correct. There was something disturbingly phallic about the zappy guns at Tiffany’s, with their long noses and thick bases.

Eeew. Now I’ve grossed myself out.

“Let me give you a hand there,” faux Russian says to Jack, as he helps pull Jack up off of the floor.

“Thanks,” Jack says, brushing off his pants and running his hand through his hair.

“No problem,” faux Russian says. “I’m Yuri. And this is my fiancée, Natasha.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say, shaking their hands as Jack introduces us. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the edges of Jack’s mouth creep into a sly smile.

“So,” Jack says, putting his arm around my waist and giving me a squeeze, “you guys are Russian, huh?”

Jack smiles, and I must admit, I smile a bit, too, at the ridiculousness of the situation, but really, all I can think is:
Who is this man and what has he done with my perfect fiancé?

“S
o, how’s the Monique case going?” Noah asks me, peeking his head into my office.

“Great,” I say, smiling at him, “just great!”

And why shouldn’t I feel great? After all, I’ve got the litigation totally under control. I’ve researched the law on dissolution of partnership, studied Monique’s partnership agreement, analyzed her non-compete clause, and even had the case fast-tracked in an effort to avoid unwanted media exposure. So, I’ve got it all in the bag.

“Litigating against your fiancé is going all right?” Noah asks, furrowing his brow. When he found out that Jack was the Gilson, Hecht partner on the matter, he wanted me to pass the case off to another associate, but I stood firm. I’m really going to prove myself on this matter and nothing’s going to stand in my way.

“Of course!” I say, “In fact, it’s even better than I could have imagined. With Monique’s husband, it would have been a bit of a challenge to negotiate a settlement. But, with Jack against me, it’ll be a piece of cake! The man is putty in my hands. I almost feel sort of sorry for him, you know?” Now, I know I was laying it on a bit thick, but Noah Goldberg is one of the founding partners of the firm and I just want to assure him that my case is going well.

And, okay, Jack may not be actual
putty
in my hands—he didn’t drop the case when I asked (read: begged) him to—but, I know that he’ll treat me with kid gloves in this litigation and I plan to exploit that to the fullest extent allowed by law. You see, in a normal litigation I know exactly what Jack would do. Seeing that his opposition is a firm that’s much smaller than Gilson, Hecht, with much fewer resources, he’d begin the discovery process by burying the other side in a massive document production that would take them weeks to produce. He’d request thousands of pages of documents from the other side that they, in turn, would have to get from their client, review for relevancy and attorney-client privilege, and then number, stamp and photocopy. Given that our case is fast-tracked, the deadline would be even sooner than a regular document production, and in requesting as many documents as he could think of, he’d force the other side to concentrate all of their energy into putting together the requested documents instead of working on case strategy, which would then allow him to use all of that time to work on his own case strategy and easily win the case while the other side is inundated with minutiae.

But, my Jackie would never do that to me. Thank God, really, because I have a million wedding dress appointments to go to in the next two weeks.

“Putty?” Noah says to me, “Really?”

“Yes,” I say in a stage whisper, “it’s almost embarrassing.”

“That
would
be embarrassing,” he says, “if you hadn’t just been served with a discovery request.” He walks over to my desk and throws a legal document on top of the case law that I was reviewing. “So much for putty.”

Served?

How can that be? Jack and I had a very romantic dinner last night and he didn’t mention a
thing
to me about serving me with discovery requests. How could he do this to me when I was such a fabulous fiancée last night? I even cooked for him! Well, not so much cooked as ordered a Heat-and-Eat meal from Fresh Direct, but I
did
totally unpack the box and then heat it up for him!
And
picked up a bottle of wine and a cheesecake on the way home, to boot! He is really taking this Chinese Wall thing seriously.

I don’t even need to look at the document Noah’s just dumped on my desk. I already know what it is—it’s fastened with two staples across the top, like all discovery requests, with a “blue back” attached, which, as the name implies, is a blue piece of paper secured to the back of a document that folds over the top of the first page by one inch. The fancier law firms use that one inch where blue back folds over the top to announce, in bold-faced type, the name of their law firm. I don’t even have to look to see what this familiar blue back says:

Gilson, Hecht and Trattner

425 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10022

Jack has served me with a discovery request. A document request, to be specific.

I immediately pick up the telephone. “I’ve just been served,” I say to Vanessa.

Oh, please. As if your first order of business after being served
wouldn’t
be to call your best friend?

“Served? Like in that movie?” Vanessa asks. “Has someone challenged you to a dance off?”

“This is not funny!” I say. “Jack has just served me with a document request! And he’s requesting a lot of documents here!”

“Just get the junior associate to do it,” Vanessa says. “Why are you panicking? It’s not like
you’re
going to be the one reviewing all of those documents. You’re just going to supervise the darn thing, so don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m the only person on the case,” I say, twirling the phone cord around my index finger.

“Oh, that is not funny,” Vanessa says.

“I know,” I say, now twirling the cord around my whole hand. My engagement ring peeks out from in between the cord, all sparkles and fire, and I unwind my hand from the cord.

“What types of documents is he requesting?” Vanessa asks, and for a moment I consider faxing the document request to her to get her opinion on the case. But then I remember that she, too, works at Gilson, Hecht and could turn to the dark side just as quickly as Jack had.

“Tons and tons of things,” I say, flipping through the request. “And it’s due in two weeks.”

“No,” Vanessa says, “in the Southern District of New York all discovery requests get thirty days for response.”

“We’re fast-tracked,” I say. “I agreed to turn around discovery requests in two weeks.”

“Well, that was stupid,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Unless you did it so that he can’t spend as much time with Miranda Foxley, man stealer to the stars.”

“Man stealer to the stars? She’s slept with
celebrities?
” I ask, my ears perking up at the thought of such delicious gossip. Even in the face of hours and hours of work, a girl’s still got time for some juicy celebrity gossip. “Who has she slept with that I would know?”

“Oh, no,” Vanessa says, “she hasn’t slept with any actual celebrities.”

“Why’d you call her man stealer to the stars then?” I say.

“Everything just sounds better when you say ‘to the stars,’ doncha think?” she says.

“Let’s see,
tailor
to the stars,
chef
to the stars,
yoga instructor
to the stars…. Yes, actually it does,” I say. “But it’s making Miranda sound more fabulous than she is. Let’s just call her ‘man stealer extraordinaire.’”

“Done,” Vanessa says. “But my point is the same. Is that why you got the case fast tracked?”

“I didn’t think he was actually going to serve me with discovery,” I say. “This is a dissolution of partnership, for God’s sake! We shouldn’t even be litigating!”

“Just request an extension,” Vanessa says. “Judges love it when parties play nice. You can ask Jack for an extension of a week or two. That way you won’t have to miss all of your wedding dress appointments and you’ll also get in good with the judge when he sees that you and Jack are being professional.”

My wedding dress appointments. I still don’t have a wedding dress. I still don’t have a wedding dress!

“That would mean that Jack wins,” I say, twirling the cord once again.

“Now you’re being ridiculous. It’s not about winning or losing,” she says as I hear her slam the door to her office shut. “It’s about the wedding dress! Get your priorities straight, for God’s sake, woman.”

“Anyway, you can’t ask for extensions on a fast-tracked case, especially when it was your own motion that requested the fast-track,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “The judge will realize that you don’t actually need the case to go fast and think that you’re just trying to manipulate his court calendar.”

“I wish your judge was a woman,” Vanessa says. “A woman would totally understand that you need an extension to go wedding dress shopping.”

“So true,” I say as Vanessa begins to tell me the horror of her latest first date. We’d been so excited about this one, since he had tickets to see
The Drowsy Chaperone
on Broadway, which Vanessa and I were both dying to see. We got even more excited when he asked her to go to dinner beforehand. The only thing, he said, was that he got the tickets with another couple, and would she mind it much if they went on a double date as their first date? Well, the theater is the theater, so Vanessa told him that she wouldn’t mind one bit and then put on her cutest skirt and cropped jacket to go on the date.

Imagine her surprise when she gets to the restaurant to meet her date and finds out that their dinner companions are her date’s parents. Who would also be accompanying them to the show.

“Ironic,” I say, “considering you were going to see
The Drowsy Chaperone.
”

“Are you mocking me?” Vanessa says, and I can’t help but giggle. And I do feel badly that I’m laughing at Vanessa, but come on! A double date with the guy’s parents?

And then I take a peek at document request number thirteen and immediately stop laughing. Document request thirteen is a request for all e-mails sent by Monique that relate to the partnership she had with her husband. Requests that ask for e-mails are always a nightmare—it means that the lawyer reviewing them will have to go through each and every one of their client’s e-mails one by one to analyze them for relevancy, just like you would a normal document. But they usually take three times longer to review than regular documents, since e-mails are generally single-spaced. And God forbid there be an attachment.

I could object to the request on the grounds that it is overly broad—it could take me months to go through all of Monique’s e-mails—but chances are that the judge will tell me that it’s relevant to Monique’s husband’s countersuit. Which is true. There’s only one thing I can do here. Besides throwing myself on the floor and crying like a baby, that is. Or calling my fiancé to yell at him. Or my mother. Or my therapist.

No, there is one thing that I
really
must do here: I need to get myself to Monique’s computer as soon as humanly possible.

“Van,” I say, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”