Chapter 56: The Laugh in the Quiet Room
The hearing was set for a Tuesday, in the same courthouse where Grant had filed the thing, in a courtroom with bad acoustics and a judge who had read everything.
She will dismiss it, Owen said in the hallway. The only question is whether she sanctions him on top.
Watch her eyes when she mentions the exhibits. That will tell you how the next year of his life goes.
I watched. He was right. It is a terrible thing, watching a professional be right about your life.
Vera did not come. I had not asked her to. Some witnesses should only have to tell the truth once in a lifetime, and she had already spent hers.
Grant arrived alone, in the one suit, pressed at home.
He had lost weight I did not comment on, even to Owen. The collar was ironed by a hand that had not ironed anything in fifteen years, and it showed.
The judge dismissed the complaint in eleven minutes.
I counted. When your life is being decided in minutes, you count the minutes.
Judges who have read everything do not raise their voices. They do not have to. The record raises it for them.
The claim, she said, was built substantially on materials the plaintiff had no right to possess.
Concerning a review he had no right to read.
Filed against a woman the record showed had done nothing but own what she owned.
She noted the access dates. She noted the sworn affidavit. She used the word troubling twice, and both times it landed like a gavel.
Once for the taking. Once for the filing.
The court, she said, is not required to pretend otherwise.
Dismissed.
Then came the part Grant had not priced in.
Fees.
My costs. My lawyers. The firm's wasted motion practice.
All of it taxed to the man who had filed the thing.
The number, when she read it out, was not large by the standards of my world.
By the standards of his, it was a year.
Owen did not react. He had called it in the hallway before we walked in, and Owen hates being surprised twice.
Grant stood alone at the plaintiff's table.
No Paula. No Dale. No one.
He had subpoenaed no one, because there was no one left to subpoena.
The judge asked him, twice, if he understood the order.
And that was when he laughed.
I have heard Grant laugh at dinners, at partners, at waiters, at me.
This was a different animal.
Quiet. Almost gentle. The sound of a door closing somewhere inside a man, and it did not reach anywhere near his eyes.
You will regret this, he said.
He was not looking at the judge.
He was looking at me.
The courtroom went very still, the way rooms do when everyone understands the same thing at the same time.
The bailiff took one step forward, his hand resting where hands rest.
The judge's voice dropped a full floor.
Mr. Wexler. The reporter is writing down everything you say.
I suggest you give her nothing else to write.
Grant closed his mouth.
But the words were already in the record.
Dated. Timed. Sworn to by a room full of strangers.
Owen's hand appeared at my elbow. Not gripping. Just there.
Outside, two reporters waited on the steps in the drizzle, the kind who live on courthouse news and other people's endings.
Owen said one word, no, in a tone that ended the interview.
He walked me to the car and did not speak until the doors closed.
That laugh, he said finally.
I know, I said.
That is not a man accepting an ending, he said.
He started the engine and did not pull out.
That is a man shopping for one.