“This is not the sort of thing you expect to find in an upscale law office.”
Mr. Wentworth was commenting on the cowboy who was lodged in the transom of the entryway to our offices, Wentworth, Dysan and Gushaty. I had to agree with him. It was an uncommon place for a cowboy to be.
As Mr. Wentworth was the senior partner, I felt I had to offer him an explanation, inadequate though it might be.
“Well, sir, it happened late yesterday when Mrs. Murakami arrived for her appointment. We were to discuss how we would proceed with the divorce process when Mr. Murakami arrived …”
“That’s Murakami in the transom?”
“Yes sir, that would be him.”
“You don’t often see Asian cowboys. Not in Alberta.”
“No, sir. I suspect that’s true …”
“He’s asleep now? He’s not very animated. Not for a man in a transom.”
This was true. Mr. Murakami, having raged almost constantly through the night, had finally succumbed to exhaustion.
“Yes sir. He is asleep. The night was a long and stressful one for him.”
Mr. Wentworth gave his head a disapproving shake. “I never did like the idea of a transom. It was Dysan who wanted it. Thought it would give the place a certain stylish flare. To hell with style and flare, I say. Results. That’s what people want.
“Never should have gone along with that business. Now we’ve got a goddamn Asian cowboy stuck in a transom. Not the sort of thing clients expect to see in a law firm. Bad for business. Get him out of there.”
With that, Mr. Wentworth headed into his office, shutting the door as he always did.
I was left with the problem of the cowboy in the transom.
* * * * *
Mrs. Murakami was in Mr. Gushaty’s office, which was free. He was in Montevideo destroying his family with a waitress he had met in a Boston Pizza.
One of the most stunningly beautiful women I have ever seen, Mrs. Murakami was curled up asleep on the chaise lounge in the office. Her night had been long. As Mr. Murakami had raged from the transom, she had wept through the night.
She had refused to be consoled.
She had refused Mr. Murakami’s insistence she return to him and end her foolishness.
She had moved about the office, distracted, like an ethereal being, something or someone not merely apart from the rest of us but better, or so it had seemed to me.
How a woman of her beauty and mystery had come to be married to a cowboy baffled me, but it did not keep me from trying to handle the situation. Though still a mere student of law I had seen enough of it, and through it life itself, to know that all things are possible where human beings are concerned. In fact, the less sense they make the more likely they are to occur.
I had several tasks ahead of me. The first, I felt, was to see that Mrs. Murakami was appropriately settled – safely removed from our offices and returned home, assured the divorce proceedings were moving ahead with alacrity. Hopefully, this would be accomplished quickly as the second task, removing Mr. Murakami from the transom, was a pressing one. Soon the day’s clients would begin to arrive and, as Mr. Wentworth had pointed out, they would not be assured by the sight of a cowboy in a transom.
Lastly, I would need to find a suitable moment to profess my love to Mrs. Murakami. Yes, during the troubled night I had been captured by her and could no longer see a way of continuing in life without this exquisite, if curious, woman.
I leaned over and touched her should gently (a thrill running through me).
“Mrs. Murakami? Mrs. Murakami? Please, wake up. You must go home.”
For a moment, there was no response. Then, as if a single motion, with the fluidity of water, her eyelids slowly lifted and she rose to a sitting position and said, “Yes. That is what I must do.”
I smiled hoping to reassure her.
“Mr. Murakami?” she asked.
“Still in the transom, I’m afraid. But asleep!”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“We must kill him,” she said.
“We?” I asked.
* * * * *
When I first took up my junior position at Wentworth, Dysan and Gushaty, Mr. Wentworth set aside a few minutes to discuss how I should approach my duties.
“You don’t want to make the mistake of trying to understand the clients,” he said. “They’re all crazier than cats in heat. Just focus on the facts of the case. Ignore the people. They don’t exist. Only facts do.
“Never get involved with people. They’re always a balls-up. Facts aren’t.”
I never quite understood what he meant by this until the moment Mrs. Murakami stated calmly and with dispassion, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that “We must kill him.”
To begin with, killing Mr. Murakami seemed rather an extreme measure and one leading to all manner of legal complications. Yet I was less disturbed by this than her use of the pronoun “we.”
It struck me as just the sort of thing Mr. Wentworth had advised me to avoid. On the other hand, Mr. Wentworth didn’t have Mrs. Murakami’s legs.
It left me in a state of indecision.
Mrs. Murakami leaned over and picked up her purse which was on the floor at her feet. She opened it and took out what looked like a stiletto. Whatever it was, it was clearly a knife and seemed wickedly dangerous. As others have observed, women keep the oddest things in their purses.
Eying the blade, Mrs. Murakami said, “It should be easy. Just a quick thrust and swift slash. To the throat would be best.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, then continued, more to herself than to me, “The transom. I forgot the transom … You’re not a tall man. You will need a chair.”
Mr. Wentworth’s advice had neglected to suggest ways by which I could just “stick to the facts” and ignore people. As I was discovering with Mrs. Murakami, people often will not be ignored. They have an almost blasé way of insinuating themselves into your life and before you know it, you’re buggered.
I felt this was the case with Mrs. Murakami. I had become an assumption in her life. My own life, as a result, was buggered.
* * * * *
(From March 5, 2006. This was for Flash Fiction Friday #27. This story was submitted incomplete. It was an “in progress” submission. So be warned – it has no ending yet.)
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