Another gap of silence.

“Am I wrong?” I asked.

“No...” Her voice was low. “I don’t think you’re horny right now though.”

“Trust me. I am.”

“Maybe, but I think you called me because you like me—because you want to hear my voice since we haven’t talked on the phone in a while.”

“I called you because my dick is hard and I want to make you cum over the phone.”

She laughed again. “So, you don’t like me?”

“I like your pussy.”

“So, the white roses and the “He’s just yelling at you because he knows you’re the best. Don’t let him get to you,” note that was on the hood of my car today wasn’t from you?”

I hung up.

Retraction (n.):

The legal withdrawal of a promise or offer of contract.

Andrew

“How do you think we should proceed with the client, Harriet?” I leaned back in my chair the next night, dreading my “Let the Interns Help with One Case per Month” required hours.

“Um, Mr. Hamilton...” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “My name is Hannah.”

“Same thing,” I said. “How do you think we should proceed with this case?”

“We could put his ex-wife on the stand. She could vouch for his character.”

“They were married for thirty days.” I rolled my eyes and looked at the intern sitting next to her. “And that was ten years ago. Bob, what do you have?”

“It’s...It’s actually Bryan.”

“It’s whatever I say it is. What. Do. You. Have?”

“I was doing some research on his background and he apparently was reprimanded for breaking his university’s firewall his senior year. We could start there and build a case around his past of anarchy...”

I sighed. “He’s our client, Bryan. Why would we intentionally make him look bad?”

He blinked.

I turned toward the last intern in the room, a petite brunette. “What do you suggest?”

“You’re not going to try and guess my name?” She smiled.

“I just realized that you weren’t my janitor today. What do you have?”

“This.” She slid a folder across the table. “If we’re trying to prove that he wasn’t in breach of his company’s policies when he took out his initial shares, we could use this case as a reference.”

I opened the folder, reading the first line of a case that was not only over a hundred years old, but it had been overturned by the Supreme Court decades ago.

“Did you all smoke the same drugs before your interviews?” I shook my head. “You’re in law school. A few years away from potentially having someone’s future in your hands and this is the type of shit you come up with?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Hamilton...” Bryan spoke up. “Is there even a right answer to this question? I mean...Is this one of those ‘Ha-ha this was just a test to see how our minds work’ things? Is there really an answer?”

“Yes.” I stood up.

“Really? What is it?”

“It’s go the fuck home.” I started stacking my papers. “All of you. Right now.”

“But—”

“Now.” I glared at them, waiting until they all left the room.

The second I was alone I let out a sigh and sat down again. I was better off letting Jessica help me on this case. She didn’t know shit about the law but I was sure that she would at least try.

“Mr. Hamilton, I—” Aubrey stepped into the room with a cup of coffee. “Where did everyone go?”

“Home.” I took the cup from her, frustrated. “You’re free to go, too.”

“Are you ever going to formally give me my intern position back or am I forever stuck being your coffee and file organizer?”

“You’re also in charge of taking phone calls. That’s a responsibility you shouldn’t take lightly.”

“I’m serious...” She rolled her eyes. “As much as I enjoy having sex with you every morning with your coffee, I would like to go back to feeling like I actually have a purpose here.”

“Fine.” I took a sip from my cup. “Have you been keeping up with my current case?”

She nodded.

“Great,” I said dryly. “How do you think I should proceed?”

“I think you need to first find the man who erased your client’s identity.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

She took a folder from her purse and set it in front of me. “My parents taught me how to research someone’s background very, very well. That’s the one thing I can credit them for.” She flipped a few pages. “Your client has school records from his childhood—test scores, address changes, et cetera. There’s a record of where he attended college, grad school—even a record of the time he broke into his school’s firewall and got suspended for an entire semester. After that, there’s a short failed marriage to some woman he met in Cabo, and a few founding records for his company. But after that—with the exception of these recent allegations, there’s nothing.”

I glanced at the pages.

“Don’t you think that’s odd?” She looked at me. “How you can google someone and nothing about them pops up? How you can search several databases for information and find entire decades are missing?”

I shut the folder. “It’s slightly odd.”

“Slightly?”

“Yes. Slightly. Is this all the evidence you have?”

“It’s all the evidence you need.” She stared into my eyes. “Find the guy who erased him, or find the guy who erased you and you might have yourself another win under your belt. If not—”

“Aubrey...”

“People don’t just come out of nowhere, Andrew,” she said. “You know that, I know that, and I’m pretty sure your client knows that.”

“Now we’re talking about the client?”

“There is no record of Andrew Hamilton in any of the state’s registered lawyer databases.”

“I’m not facing a trial.”

“I called every law school in the state and pretended to be an alumna searching for a fellow alum and there was no record of an Andrew Hamilton getting his degree from any of them.”

“Are you that obsessed with me?” He smirked.

“I did the same thing for the law schools in New York. That was a bit trickier, but the results were just the same. There was no record of you going to school during the years you would’ve been in attendance.”

“And this affects you how?”

“You humiliated me when you found out I lied to you.”

“I apologize.”

“Don’t.” She shook her head. “You made me cry because you told me that I was a liar for hiding the truth and pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”

“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be the only person to classify you as a liar after what you did.”

“Yet, every day that I see you, every night that I talk to you on the phone, I’m no closer to getting to know anything about you.” There was concern in her eyes. “It’s always me talking about me, or you talking about abstract things that make up a blurry picture.”