Sacred Monster

Flashback 18A

The courtroom was just as full as ever, the judge as fatherly as ever, the Kallikaks as numerous and ill-favored as ever, but now it was Jack who sat in the witness box while Rubelle sprawled behind the plaintiff’s table, baby vomiting on her heedless breast. One of Jack’s highly polished attorneys had just finished leading him through one irrelevant thicket of testimony, was preparing for another similar canter, and had paused beside the defense table, gazing downward, studying his notes with the frown they deserved. Into the little silence thus created, Jack interposed himself, turning his most open and guileless and innocent smile upon the judge, saying, “Your Honor, may I beg the court’s indulgence for just a moment?”

The look the judge lowered upon Jack was not fatherly at all, but was truculent, hostile, and terminally unsympathetic. “And just what, Mr. Pine,” he wanted to know, “do you and your expensive attorneys have in mind?”

“This is all my idea, Your Honor,” Jack said, as his expensive attorney approached the bench, looking worried. “May I proceed?”

“Just a minute, Your Honor,” the expensive attorney said, and he turned his unbelieving and disapproving frown upon Jack, saying, “Jack? What are you up to?”

“This won’t take long,” Jack assured both the judge and the expensive attorney. He turned on the judge his most winning smile, saying, “May I, Your Honor, take just a minute? My own idea.”

“His own idea, whatever it is,” the expensive attorney confirmed, in a voice of doom.

The judge considered. He didn’t believe Jack’s winning smile for a second, but he had to believe the expensive attorney’s disapproving frown. “You may proceed,” he told Jack, giving the fellow enough rope, and sat back to enjoy the results, whatever they might be.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Jack said, with simple sincerity. Facing the courtroom, raising his voice just a bit, projecting like the stage actor he’d been trained to be, he said, “Lorraine, would you rise, please?”

Lorraine, not knowing what was going on, bewildered that Jack would have come to a plan of action without having first talked it to death with her, uncertainly and with an obvious reluctance got to her feet.

“Thank you,” Jack said, and called a bit louder: “Marcia, would you mind, please? Would you rise and come forward and stand next to Lorraine?”

Everyone in the courtroom watched as Marcia Callahan stood from the midst of the spectators — on the media side, not the Kallikak side, which was why she hadn’t been noticed before, she could have been just another blond news co-anchor — and walked forward down the aisle. A bailiff opened the gate in the railing, and Marcia stepped through, turning toward Lorraine. Although her career had faltered in the last few years, she was still well enough known to be recognized by just about everybody in court.

Lorraine, watching Marcia approach, did what’s up? semaphores with her eyebrows, but Marcia merely shrugged and shook her head; she didn’t know what was going on, either.

Meanwhile, Jack was nodding, reassuring his expensive attorney with little smiles and pats of the hand, and now he spoke up again, calling, “Denise. Angelica. Simone. Would you all come up with Lorraine and Marcia? Just come up and stand beside them.”

Three incredibly beautiful women rose from their places in different parts of the courtroom — but all on the media side — and made their way forward. The bailiff’s hand shook as he held the gate in the railing open for them, and they passed through, looking about with some curiosity, at one another, at Marcia and Lorraine, and over at Jack, who nodded and smiled and encouraged them with little hand gestures to line up in a row, all five of them.

Once all five were in position, Jack rose and turned to face the jury, which looked at him with hostility and suspicion. Pretending to see nothing but cheery faces, Jack gestured to the five women standing there and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that is my present wife, Lorraine, and that is my former wife, the well-known actress, Marcia Callahan.”

Expressionless now, the two ladies and four gentlemen of the jury looked at Lorraine and Marcia, and then looked back at Jack.

Who smiled and gestured at the other three women, saying, “Denise and Angelica and Simone are just three of the many attractive and highly intelligent women with whom I have had deliciously satisfying affairs over the last several years on various continents.”

Everyone in the room gazed with close concentration on Denise and Angelica and Simone, all three of whom looked startled but game, standing there under all that surveillance. Lorraine and Marcia gave these three new women very measuring looks.

Jack’s smile now was pitying. He gestured toward the plaintiff’s table. “And there,” he said, “is Miss, uh, Kallikak.”

Rubelle removed her infant from one flopping breast with a moist pop sound and attached it to the other.

The jury looked at Rubelle. The jury looked at Lorraine and Marcia and Denise and Angelica and Simone.

Jack spread his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “...I ask you.”

“But, I don’t know,” I tell O’Connor, shaking my head at the memory, “sometimes you can’t win for losing.”