Chapter Text
He turns around twice on his way to the phone, thinking and re-thinking this course of action. He looks like an idiot and knows it, and those that see him don’t bother to hide their perplexed expressions.
Would she even be there this time of day? Would he expose her if the wrong person picked up the line? Expose himself?
In the end, the promise of hearing her voice once more wins out. She might yell at him for calling, or go into that quieter anger that truly unnerved him. Or she might cry. Might sob into his ear about the hell he’s put her through.
The most likely scenario is that she’ll hang up.
But there’s a small chance, just a small one, that she’ll smile at his voice, tell him about her life, ask him about his. There’s a small chance that him talking to her will help her to forgive herself for the sins they committed together. There’s a small chance that for a few minutes, he’ll get to live in the heaven that she weaves effortlessly with her husky voice as she murmurs in his ear.
By nature, he’s a risk-taker.
So he picks up the phone, dials the number that he never needed to write down, and waits.
***
2004
Have a nice life, Kim.
Brisk, no sentiment. Nothing more between them than the past. A clean break between the then and the now. She’d tried to get him to look at her, but eventually gave up, and left him to his client.
They all gave up on him in the end. There was dread and comfort in that thought.
At least he was free and clear, now. Just him and Swimmy, waiting until he could secure that new house and refurbish it to his taste, once the sellers stopped dragging their feet. He touched the aquarium with a fingertip as he moved through the kitchen of his Beachcomber apartment, making himself coffee and cereal.
“Not just a big house for me, my girl,” he says fondly to Swimmy. “You’re going to get a huge aquarium that takes you half the day to swim across, and a harem of male goldfish to do your bidding. We’ll audition them, and you pick the ones you like. We’re a team, you and me. Did you see all the pools in this place? I’m basically getting my own fish tank, too.”
Swimmy doesn’t reply, only circles the top of her tank listlessly. Saul takes that as his cue to sprinkle in a few flakes. This silence in the mornings is still new, and no less irritating every time he goes through it. He switches on the morning news, letting news of Iraq and Afghanistan fill the air. It’s consistently bad news, but at least it’s familiar.
“This morning – Florida braces for a pounding from Hurricane Charley as the Category 2 storm menaces the state.”
He smirks a bit at the poor wording from the unfortunate newscaster, before the rest of the sentence catches up with his brain, and quickly merges with images of the horrors wrought by Camille, Hugo, Andrew, along with nameless others.
Saul scrambles for the remote control, upsetting the cup of coffee on the floor. He ignores it and watches the swirling mass of color lurking just south of Florida. Where the hell was Titusville?
Kim had left him a forwarding address through Francesca so that they could exchange information needed to figure out their taxes in the coming year. He didn’t expect she would stay there long, just enough time to pull herself together. But it was everything he had.
He pulls up the Titusville location, then the projected path of Charley. Why the fuck did you move to Florida, Kim?!? It’s America’s dick in every sense of the word!
Saul takes a look at the projection line, then superimposes the location of Titusville on top with his mind’s eye. Okay. Okay. Kim isn’t in line to take a direct hit – the storm will have to pass totally over the state before it reaches her, and experience seemed to show that doing so would sap it of its strength. And a Category Two? Well, they went up to Five for a reason.
Kim was a smart woman, and a Midwesterner to boot, someone who never took the weather for granted or held it in a position of trust. She’d head underground for a tornado, settle in and store provisions for a blizzard, take cover in lightning and hail.
She’d seal the apartment, turn off the air conditioning, and snuggle with him under a blanket for a haboob. After they made love, he coaxed Kim to let him open the curtains, to admire the ruby light against her pale skin, then curled behind her to watch the dust swirl in the sky.
He shoos away the stray thought. Kim would evacuate. Or she would stay and be absolutely fine. Maybe inconvenienced, but physically safe.
And besides, Kim was Jimmy’s concern, not Saul’s. And Jimmy didn’t live there anymore.
Saul forces himself to finish breakfast and start preparing for the day. He buttons up a turquoise dress shirt and pairs it with a terracotta-colored suit, ear pricked to the news, which had by then refocused on other matters. He grimaces as reporters chat about the upcoming elections, about State vs. Johnson headed on appeal to the New Mexico Supreme Court.
But Charley, and all those in his path, don’t come up again.
He leaves for work then, pulling together his old bonhomie long enough to ask Francesca to meet him in his office prior to opening.
“Let me guess – the Folgers is playing dirty pool with your insides?” Francesca’s cheerful demeanor around him was beginning to melt into a harder, more cynical personality. Someone who didn’t hesitate to call him Saul in private and in public. She no longer distinguished between the two.
“It has. Lined everything up and put ‘em all straight into the hole for a corner shot.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Guilty. But I’m going to ask for the court’s mercy on this. I need you to do a project for me today. Trade-off? You don’t have to clean the client toilet.” The air in the lobby was decidedly rancid.
“I don’t anyway.”
“Ah. Well, that would explain a few things. I’ll hire a cleaning service. Anyway, I do actually need you to do something, and not ask a lot of questions.”
“No. Not that shit again. You don’t pay me enough to risk jail, Saul.” He found Francesca’s animosity towards Saul easy to play off of – and therefore, easy to maintain his cool around.
“It’s absolutely not illegal. I’m asking you to watch the news. Tell me about Hurricane Charley. I want to know where he’s headed, the towns he’s expected to hit, if he changes category at all. I want you to pay special attention to a place called Titusville.”
“And what do you want me to find out?”
He sighs. This is the hard part. “I want to know if that area’s being hit. And if so, when. And also the names of any private investigators in the area.”
Francesca heaves a large sigh through her nose. “I can do the first two, no problem. Probably would have done anyway, I liked her. But that last one? You need to call in that regular client.”
“Regular client?”
“Balding guy. Gruff. Rambo, but the senior citizen version.”
“Rings a bell. Good suggestion.”
“And the cleaning service?”
“Pick one with good references, give me their rates, and I’ll have them here this afternoon.”
“But only if it hits Titusville in some way, not if it just gets the panhandle or the tip.”
“Got it. Just the tip.”
He buries himself in work that morning, preparing defenses for three workman’s comp denials (potential class action lawsuit, if they were all from the same employer), two charges of marijuana possession, and yet another charge of indecent exposure. You could set your watch to public exposure incidents – almost never in winter, always in warmer weather, with more minor peaks in spring and fall. This Mr. Weiderman must not fear sunburns, to drop trou in late July in New Mexico.
Saul leaves a terse message in Mike’s voicemail as well.
At noon, Francesca comes in, bearing his order from Blake’s Whataburger, the name of a cleaning service, and a charted path for Hurricane Charley. She might have slapped it down on the desk, but he notes that she’s used a pink highlighter to show him the predicted path of the storm.
Target on Tampa. Francesca even helpfully made a little X on the other side of Florida’s coast, pointing out Titusville, and how far away it was from the path. It was also a Category Two, and small, meaning that maybe she’d get a bad storm, maybe a few stray tornadoes, but nothing a Midwesterner like Kim couldn’t handle.
He breathes easier then and takes in a variety of new clients that afternoon. Francesca leads in the representative of Twinkle Time Cleaning Service, and Saul signs a contract for three months of work. He expects a grimace from the woman wielding the mop and scrub brush, but she doesn’t even flinch.
He heads to court then, a representative at several bail hearings and a few court dates throughout the building, setting trials and asking for continuances. He’s aware of the looks that Saul Goodman and his clients get, but where Jimmy would have cared, it’s all background noise to Saul. And a reputation to be feared in the courtroom is not one to look askance at, no matter how one comes by it.
The day ends, and while Mike hasn’t called or arrived yet, it’s probably not the worst thing. He’s got another assignment or two that the old fella might enjoy…if he actually enjoyed anything. He imagines, fleetingly, Mike surrounded by golden retriever puppies licking his weathered face, grimacing like he was at the DMV.
He checks the forecast once more before heading to bed. Fine. She doesn’t need him looking after her anymore. She’s just fine.
The next morning, his eyes pop open and he stares blearily at the alarm clock before slapping it silent.
Friday the 13th.
Immediately, his mind goes to the hurricane. No, he tells himself, no. He’s not going to turn on the news, not going to look. There will come a day when his first thought isn’t of Kim. He’s not there yet, but if Mike is correct (and he usually is), that day will come.
Saul picks out a neon pink shirt, pairing it with a sharp blue suit and pink argyle socks. He sprinkles a bit of food in for Swimmy, then prepares a bowl of cereal for himself.
“Different versions of the same thing, isn’t that right my friend?” he says to the fish.
Swimmy chases a flake of food in response.
“Yeah, I never got tired of Cheerios either.”
He keeps the radio on during the drive in, but keeps it on the classic rock station. No news was good news.
When he walks in, at least an hour earlier than usual, it’s quiet. Francesca hasn’t arrived yet, and he takes the opportunity to load up the coffee machine. It’s quiet in the waiting room, no din of determinedly patriotic music. It also smells far better now that the cleaning service has done its job. Bill Oakley used to advise him to smear a bit of Vicks just inside his nostrils when they’d both been public defenders.
Look at him now.
Well, he could still probably benefit with a bit of Vicks for some clients.
Saul sinks below the surface of work, mind buzzing with the details of each case. Each one is a triumph, another stone pulled back from the pile of the state, which took so much. Each one a victory to wave in the face of those who doubted him, doubted his ability, doubted his work ethic.
Each one a tidy bundle of money that could be noted down in Francesca’s books.
He takes another sip and frowns. For all that money, they could definitely afford a better coffee bean. Something lighter, less likely to eat a hole through his stomach.
A click of tumblers in the lock, and he hears Francesca letting herself in through the front, slamming the door and shooting the bolt. He looks up at that – she’s not one to be frantic to get in for another day of dispensing justice to the masses.
Without a knock, she pushes through the door and into his office, dark eyes crackling with energy.
“Good morning,” he calls out sarcastically. “Best time of day to enter by knocking.”
“Saul, did you get hold of your guy?” There’s real fright in Francesca’s eyes, and Saul stands up, eyes flicking to the glass windows behind her, looking for a menacing figure, the flicker of a candle flame.
“I didn’t,” he replies, thinking to the .38 snub in his desk drawer. “What’s going on?”
“You need to get hold of him, then,” Francesca responds sharply. “Because if Kim’s still in Florida, she’s in trouble.”
One hour. He’d managed to go one hour without thinking about her, and the sound of her name hit him like a dagger thrust.
“What…who?” The shadow of the cartel lingers, and though he can’t see how Francesca would know about them, or why they might be after Kim, he breaks out in a cold sweat.
“Kim!” Francesca’s concern comes forth in waves of condescension. “Your ex-wife? The one currently sitting on land that’s just above sea level while a Category Five hurricane takes direct aim at her?”
“What?” He feels a coldness in his belly that hasn’t been there since the night she packed her things.
“Check the damn news!” Francesca barks at him. “You’ve probably got a new broad already, but Charley changed direction, intensified overnight. They’re calling it Hurricane Camille for the new millennium.”
“Get out,” he grinds, and she turns on her heel in a snit, snapping the door closed behind her.
He powers up his computer clicking the icon for the internet multiple times and cursing sharply at the stalled reaction. Thankfully, the start page for him immediately pulls up to news. And all the news that’s fit to print is on Hurricane Charley.
Fuck you, Chuck, why are you still going after Kim to torment me?
He calls up the website for the city of Titusville, a work in progress if he ever saw one. Despite half the pages being under construction, he gathers from the description on the home page that the town has the distinct privilege of being next door to Cape Canaveral. Therefore, Kim made her new home next to the premiere space shuttle launchpad in the country.
He recalls her desperate eyes as she threw random items into boxes. He’d had her pegged correctly in that instance, at least. Kim was crawling out of her own skin, and running, as far away as she could get from the scene of the crime, to a place where she could potentially fling herself into the dark vastness of outer space to escape the misplaced guilt gnawing on her bones.
More hurtful, but probably truer, Kim has come to realize that life in the hurricane hellscape of Florida is preferable to sharing the same state with him, let alone the same profession. Or the same living space.
Saul shuts the screen off firmly. He has a trial this afternoon to prepare for, new potential clients to greet this morning, a gorgeous mansion in Altura Park that he’d like to close on, and an ex-wife in Florida who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. And she’s no longer his concern.
He maintains this fiction all day somehow. Greets three clients needing help with solicitation charges (there must have been a bust that week) and another client with a second narcotics charge, checks in with a client who’s back in jail for violating probation. (Idiot. That was hard-won probation, can’t he make one weekly appointment?) Talks to the realtor, groans a little bit when the agent tells him that the seller is now asking to keep light fixtures they have a sentimental attachment to. (Real estate law really shouldn’t be this emotional. It’s not family court) Tells the agent to indicate that he’s considering walking over the fixtures – maybe they’ll lower the price as a result. Tells Francesca off when she attempts to update him on Charley’s progress. Considers ordering a steak to go, but instead goes with the granola bars that will let him keep working through lunch.
The trial is somewhat interesting insofar as trials go. Saul’s client is charged with a stickup at a liquor store, making off with several bottles of bourbon and the contents of the cash register. The crime itself is hard to deny – it has all the hallmarks of an idiotic first attempt at crime. The chump wore no mask, exposing his full face to several cameras. He’d been confronted by the cashier when he was seen stuffing the bourbon down his pants, so his next step was to threaten the cashier with a heavy glass jug of table wine. He’d done this all at the beginning of the night, rather than the end, when the till was certain to be fuller. Idiot.
Saul’s only concession to the possibility of his client’s intelligence was the fact that he hadn’t been shot. Either he’d researched to find out which one of the small percentage of liquor store clerks wasn’t armed, or (as he actually suspected), the man had an acute case of dumb luck.
Through a bravura performance, he manages to get his client convicted on the misdemeanor shoplifting charges. The felony robbery one, however, is dismissed, but read into the record.
Victory.
Saul would savor this triumph, really, he would. But as he’s packing up his briefcase and ignoring Bill Oakley’s doleful glare, he glances at his cell. Sees a message from a phone that won’t leave a voicemail.
His hands tremble a bit, and he hurries out the courtroom to take the call outside, far from any prying ears. The sunshine is blinding after hours inside the fluorescent lights, and he squints feebly at the screen of his cellphone, brushing away sweat from his eyes, dialing the number in slowly.
“Hey, it’s me. Saw your call.”
“What’s the job?” Mike’s still pretty pissy with him, but he’s no fool. Saul offers real money, and the chance to fill up his days when he’s not working for the Great and Powerful Oz.
“Simple one. Easiest money you’ll see, other than sitting under a bridge and making people answer riddles to cross. I’ll pay you a finder’s fee for a good reference in Florida, preferably around Orlando. Nothing illegal, just someone who can check on someone.” It comes out in a rush, but a good one. The kind of patter Saul is becoming famous for.
“Someone who can check on someone.” The monotone is expressive in a way all its own.
“And help evacuate them to safety, if they haven’t already gone.”
Mike doesn’t even bother with an answer, just hangs up the phone.
“Mike? Mike!” His stomach dropped, his guts twisting. Saul bends down, hands on his knees, helpless. He’s always been helpless when faced with Kim.
It’s going to be a moment before he can pick up the mask again and reposition it. Someday, it will just be there, as much a part of him as his hands or his shoulders. For now, there’s still some effort involved in extenuating circumstances.
A minute. A lawyer walks out with a client, and Saul watches them shake hands.
Two minutes. A man in a suit jacket and a woman in a white sundress with a bouquet of roses walk out, and he twirls her in a giddy dance, their new paperwork clutched in his other hand.
Three minutes. A bus pulls up from the direction of the jail, pulling around to the back of the courthouse. Saul can’t see them, but knows there’s a group of inmates in orange jumpsuits and leg shackles waiting to go before the judge for the first time.
Some of them will eventually land in front of his office.
He draws a breath. Fine, he’s fine. And so is she. These two things have nothing in common with one another anymore. Or at least, they shouldn’t.
There is a storm churning in Atlantic waters hundreds of miles to the east, and it has no bearing on how he’s going to get through the day.
***
Saul hates weekends the most, even though he does understand, on some level, that his body needs time to recoup. While he may act like the Energizer Bunny, his batteries aren’t nearly as strong.
At seven that evening, he goes to his temporary home at the Beachcomber apartment complex, carting a briefcase full of work with him. A bag of takeout from Golden Palace and a chilled longneck on the card table in front of him, and he’s much more agreeable with the state of the world.
At ten, he reaches a good stopping place. There’s not much more he can do for Sparerib Smith’s trial prep before discovery. A smattering of other cases are piled in order of their chances of total acquittal, Buster Runt at the top – the cop who’d pulled him over has yet to provide a breathalyzer report. He’s going to savor that one.
At ten-thirty, Saul pours himself a double shot of good whiskey, lets it burn down his esophagus before stripping down to his boxer shorts and brushing his teeth. He’s thinking about the White Sox now, methodically reciting scores and going through individual player stats. Young Jimmy knew these by heart, Older Saul struggles to recall them and settles for pulling up a few sites on his laptop before setting it aside and turning out the light.
At midnight, he gives up the pretense and flings the blanket off, stumbling the few feet to the living room and his television set. He tries CNN first, then moves to the Weather Channel after more pointless reporting showing palm trees struggling to stay upright in the Florida dusk, buffeted by the winds of hell. He doesn’t need updates on the western coast of Florida. He needs them to walk up to Kim’s apartment, knock on her door, and see if she’s there, and how she is.
Now his dark living room is painted in shades of green, yellow, and red as the radar rolls relentlessly across his television screen. He only gets up once, to retrieve his laptop and his blanket – the first for more targeted information, the second against the chill of the air conditioning.
She’s smart. She’d have evacuated if she could. He repeats this to himself, a prayer against what might be.
But what if she couldn’t? Charley had changed track so quickly – she might be cut off and stranded.
At one in the morning, Saul learns a frightening amount about hurricanes at that point – the storm surge, the mocking calm of the eye, the possibility of alligators and poisonous snakes searching for higher ground and encountering people. He Mapquests her apartment complex and estimates the closest route to the coast.
Too close. She’s too close.
He can see her in a drab, dark little apartment, lit by lanternlight and huddled under a blanket while trees crack apart above her and the sea rises below. It puts him in mind of Chuck, and Saul instantly banishes the image.
She evacuated. Of course she had. She was at that moment, sleeping restlessly in a shitty motel somewhere in Georgia while the wind howls outside.
At four in the morning, he finally settles into a restless slumber, head cricked uncomfortably against the sofa arm while staring at the television.
He dreams that he’s back in that hospital waiting room. Everything’s white and clean and smells acridly of bleach. His suit is rumpled, his mouth still tastes like the oaky sweetness of the Zafiro Anejo, and it makes him want to vomit.
He is her emergency contact. The person she wants them to reach out to when she’s hurt or sick. He didn’t even know that she’d listed him thus. If he’d known before now, it would have filled him with warmth, her trust in him. But now, all he’s filled with is panic, brimming over with nervous energy as he paces the linoleum floors with squeaking shoes.
They’re telling him Kim is fine, injured, but going to be okay, but won’t tell him any more than that, and his mind goes into overdrive trying to imagine what their definition of fine is. He paces, fidgets with his tie, goes back over everything that had happened in the last few weeks, trying to figure out where exactly he’d failed her.
She’s just beyond that door, but he can’t reach her.
Eventually, he realizes that he not only has her address, he can search out the apartment organization and ask them in the morning. Call and keep on calling until the lines are back up and he gets through, confirms that she’s okay, has evacuated safely.
He pulls up her apartment number on his cell phone, thumb poised over the Call button.
His hand is on the doorknob of that hospital room, ready to turn it, to confirm for himself that she’s okay. He’s not her immediate kin, but if he pushes open the door, pushes down the CALL button, he’ll know.
He’ll know.
Saul pulls his hand away.
***
“You look like shit.”
“And good morning to you.” Francesca wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t really slept at all that weekend, watching the helicopter shots of debris on CNN, lines of people waiting for fresh water, to be rescued from flooded landscapes. Saul knows far more about hurricanes and Floridian geography than he ever wanted to know, more even than when he’d lived there. (a curious circumstance that, in a roundabout way, led to him being in Albuquerque)
“Did you get in contact with Rambo?”
Saul squints at her from over his Nescafe. Despite needing more caffeine, his intestines were in full rebellion.
“Huh?”
“Your old bald guy.”
“Ah. No, he had no contacts there. But Titusville seems to be okay. Flooded and no power, but okay. No fatalities.”
He takes a sip of Nescafe and allows silence to fill the office.
Francesca lowers her brows. She clearly wants to say something. Probably something about the contact in his phone that he still hasn’t dialed.
“Want me to see if I can find someone who might suit?” she asks. “I can’t imagine that I’ll be able to get anyone lined up for a while, given the hurricane, but at least that would get taken care of in the future.”
It’s a peace offering, perhaps the sweetest thing she’s said to him in months. He feels the knot in his stomach loosen.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Okay.” She turns to leave, throwing over her shoulder, “Your real estate guy is on Line One.”
The door closes, and Saul’s head hits the desk. Thinking of closing a real estate deal, moving, renovating sounds exhausting. It sounds like something that won’t let him have a moment’s peace between this and keeping the practice going.
Perfect.
“Levi! Are you a mortgage? Because you’ve got my interest.” He waits just long enough for Levi to reply. “Look, tell the sellers they can keep their ugly chandeliers and let them crash on the opera stage.”
A moment, while Levi spits disbelief after Saul’s unyielding stance on Friday.
“I know, I know. But look, this will make them happy and maybe more amenable to lowering the price. And honestly? With the redecoration I’ve got in mind, there’s no room for sentimentality.”