Judging Valentine by Steve Milton

Author:Steve Milton [Milton, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-02-10T23:00:00+00:00

Nine

“Hello, Mister Smyrchenko?”

“Judge Hobbs. How are you? Need a ride home? I’m not too far from the courthouse.”

“My car is apparently still in repair. Can I possibly ask you for a lift home?”

“No problem. What time?”

“Same place as before, in front of the courthouse.”

“Okay, around when?”

“After my last hearing, give me some time to shower, ok, six o’clock, ok?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“See you there.”

“You too.”

When Val had driven him to work that afternoon, it had taken Peter a good hour after leaving Val’s car to put his mind back to staid jurisprudential sanity. He was mostly able to go through his normal docket without drifting off into daydreams -- because Val was something in the corner of his mind, like a muscular Russian PhD gangster icon on his mental Windows taskbar, and therefore thoughts of Val didn’t need a daydream all their own. Peter had not even caught himself checking out any lawyers or defendants that afternoon, so fully had Val consumed Peter’s libido.

After requesting the ride home from Val, Peter realized that he didn’t have anywhere to be that evening. If Val took him to a lonely beach to take him fiercely in the surf, he wouldn’t mind at all. Or a muscle orgy in a warehouse, Val in denim overalls, he wouldn’t mind at all. Nor would he mind if Val arrived at the courthouse with a pizza box and asked Peter “would you like one more topping?” Or if Peter was the inexperienced pool boy and Val was the angry homeowner who assertively shows him the way. When Peter’s phone beeped with the “Hey, I’m here in front of the courthouse” text message from Val, he slapped himself out of gay porn fantasies and jogged out to the waiting blue Bentley.

“Hi, did you wait long?” he asked while staring straight ahead.

“Probably would’ve gotten a ticket if I’d waited long. Just the minute since I texted you.” Val accelerated out from curbside and into Miami early-evening traffic. Peter watched the courthouse disappear like a child watching school disappear through the school bus’s rain-streaked window.

“Where are we going?”

“You wanted to go home, right?” Val realized too late that it sounded like an accusation or a point of disappointment.

“I wanted? To go home?”

“Are you hungry after work? I mean want to go eat?” It could have been a chance for Val to have a companion for dinner. As his Miami mafia contacts drifted away, and as his teaching life faded into the distance, he missed the only previous social life he knew, going out in groups, drinking vodka and eating hard boiled eggs late into the night in smoky Moscow apartments. Sure, there’d been business meetings, but the fellowship, the camaraderie, the bonhomie, was something he’d missed. He felt as though Russians were a brutish people, but brutish also in their constant need for company. And in his new, post-criminal life, he missed nothing more than company.

“Yes. Hungry after work. Definitely.”

“Wanna go to the Rusty Pelican? I eat there by myself a lot.

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