“Capsular contracture,” said the paralegal, without looking up from her notes.
“That’s it,” Mrs. Nordstrom said. “Dr. Graveline told me everything would be fine in a month or two. He said they’d be soft as little pillows.”
“And?”
“And we waited, just like he told us. In the meantime, of course, John kept wanting to try them out.”
“Hey,” Nordstrom said, “I paid for the damn things.”
“I understand,” said Kipper Garth. “So you made love to your wife?”
Nordstrom’s cheeks reddened. “You know the rest.”
With his chin Kipper Garth pointed toward the stenographer and the paralegal, both absorbed in transcribing the incident.
Nordstrom sighed and said, “Yeah, I made love to my wife. Or tried to.”
“That’s when the accident happened between John and my breasts,” continued Mrs. Nordstrom. “I’m not sure if it was the left one or the right one that got him.”
Nordstrom muttered, “I’m not sure, either. It was a big hard boob, that’s all I know.”
Kipper Garth said, “And it actually put your eye out?”
John Nordstrom nodded darkly.
His wife said: “Technically they called it a detached retina. We didn’t know it was so serious right away. John’s eye got swollen and then there was some bleeding. When his vision didn’t come back after a few days, we went to a specialist … but it was already too late.”
Gently Kipper Garth said, “I noticed that you told the ophthalmic surgeon a slightly different story. You told him you were poked by a Christmas tree branch.”
Nordstrom glared, with his good eye, at the lawyer. “What the hell would you have told him—that you were blinded by a tit?”
“It must have been difficult,” Kipper Garth said, his voice rich with sympathy. “And this was your right eye, according to the file.”
“Yeah,” said Nordstrom, pointing.
“They gave him a glass one,” his wife added. “You can hardly tell.”
“I can sure as hell tell,” Nordstrom said.
Kipper Garth asked: “Did it affect your work?”
“Are you kidding? I lost my job.”
“Really?” The lawyer suppressed a grin of delight, but mentally tacked a couple more zeros to the pain-and-suffering demand.
Mrs. Nordstrom said: “John was an air-traffic controller. You can well imagine the problems.”
“Yeah, and the jokes,” Nordstrom said bitterly.
Kipper Garth leaned back and locked his hands across his vest. “Folks, how does ten million sound?”
Nordstrom snorted. “Come off it.”
“We get the right jury, we can probably do twelve.”
“Twelve million dollars—no shit?”
“No shit,” said Kipper Garth. “Mrs. Nordstrom, I need to ask you something. Did this, uh, condition with your breasts ever improve?”
She glanced down at her chest. “Not much.”
“Not much is right,” said her husband. “Take my word, they’re like goddamn bocci balls.”
The guy would be poison as a witness, Kipper Garth decided; the jury would hate his guts. No wonder other lawyers had balked at taking the case. Kipper Garth thanked the Nordstroms for their time and showed them to the door. He promised to get back to them in a few days with some important papers to review.
After the couple had gone, Kipper Garth ordered the stenographer to transcribe the interview and make a half-dozen copies. Then he told the paralegal to type up a malpractice complaint against Dr. Rudy Graveline and the Whispering Palms Spa and Surgery Center.
“Can you handle that?” Kipper Garth asked.
“I think so,” the paralegal said, coolly.
“And afterwards go down to the courthouse and do … whatever it is needs to be done.”
“We’ll go together,” the paralegal said. “You might as well learn your way around.”
Kipper Garth agreed pensively. If only his ski bunny knew what their dalliance had cost him. That his blackmailer was his own frigging brother-in-law compounded the humiliation. “One more question,” Kipper Garth said to his paralegal. “After we file the lawsuit, then what?”
“We wait,” she replied.
The lawyer giggled with relief. “That’s all?”
“Sure, we wait and see what happens,” the paralegal said. “It’s just like dropping a bomb.”
“I see,” said Kipper Garth. Just what he needed in his life. A bomb.
Freddie was napping in his office at the Gay Bidet when one of the ticket girls stuck her head in the doorway and said there was a man wanted to see him. Right away Freddie didn’t like the looks of the guy, and would have taken him for a cop except that cops don’t dress so good. The other thing Freddie didn’t like about the guy was the way he kept looking around the place with his nose twitching up in the air like a swamp rabbit, like there was something about the place that really stunk. Freddie didn’t appreciate that.