Chapter One: Part One
The city’s endless traffic reluctantly yielded to the authority of the red light before a green silhouette illuminated, declaring the crossing safe for the waiting pedestrians just as a taxi roared past, a dark cloud of acrid exhaust left in its wake. City life had taught its survivors to temper such automated assurances of safety with a healthy measure of scepticism.
Kate stepped from the curb with her eyes fixed on the other side of the road, each footfall heavier than her last. Some unusual movement caught her attention; a young executive-type was rushing to make the crossing and dodging erratically around others whilst yelling self-importantly into his mobile phone.
Too close! she thought as he cut across an older woman’s path, bumping her groceries with his shoulder and rushing on; disregarding the sounds of her fall and ignoring his culpability in it. Seeing tears already in the woman’s eyes as she looked up, surrounded by her scattered purchases, a dark thought arose grimly in Kate’s mind. Someone else’s day is going like mine.
Waiting for a couple with a baby stroller to navigate the pedestrian island ahead of her, Kate watched a man in a white shirt spring from a town car that was already pulling over. He crouched by the woman’s side and talked to her for a moment before helping her to her feet. Another man in a suit had leapt from the driver’s seat of the car, and was already retrieving her scattered groceries.
Drawing closer, Kate overheard the man in the white shirt saying, ‘You needn’t worry about that any longer, I’m sure Edison was headed right that way from here.’
In tones that were almost too earnest, his driver affirmed, ‘I am going straight past your door, ma’am, and your company is most welcome.’
Watching the woman being courteously ushered towards the town car, she recalled one of her mother’s favourite quotes. “Actions speak louder than words.” She had quietly repeated the words to Kate every time her father had demonstrated his love for them. Even though he was never quite able to say the words, his actions spoke clearly. She recalled how whenever he was home, there was always a little flower on both her and her mother’s pillow every evening, even if just wildflowers from their garden. It had been their bedtime ritual; she and her mother would recite the words when they found their flowers each evening. The memories came to her mind in a happy rush.
‘You have a beautiful smile, my lady.’
Kate snapped back to reality and stared straight into the eyes of the man in the white shirt, his generous smile quickly causing her face to warm. I am smiling, Kate realised. He inclined his head with a mischievous grin and mimed tipping his non-existent hat in farewell before turning and walking briskly into his day.
A bell rang out from the direction of the courthouse, a stark reminder to her of the reason she was in the city today. Her smile withered and died as the musical peal became a banshee’s scream, foretelling her imminent demise.
Just under three and a half years ago, Silvio Schivello had promised to honour and love her until he died. He had been the man of her dreams and the love of her life. He’d told her that he wanted to grow old with her, to father her children, and take her all over the world. Today, the sum of his treachery and betrayals were to be completed with the willing complicity of the legal system. Trudging towards the courthouse, her lawyer’s words replayed constantly in her mind.
It’s all gone Kate. The company’s assets are all mortgaged beyond value and it can’t service the debts. We could plead that what he did was unethical and immoral, but the documents are valid. You have no position left. I am so sorry Kate. There is no valid legal argument we can make. For your creditors to clear the debts, even after a forty percent write-down, there will be nothing left. Nothing at all. Why did you sign those papers?
The only answer that she could come up with, either then or now, was, ‘I trusted him because I loved him. He was my husband.’
Inside the courthouse, a man in a dark suit met her with a well-rehearsed but vaguely reptilian smile. He reeked of far too much aftershave, and as Kate’s day dissolved into a haze of white noise, her last clear memory of the day was of recoiling from his olfactory assault. People spoke at her, using too many words with too many syllables to explain ‘officially’ what she already knew. The divorce and settlement of the company debts were costing her everything; the company, her house and savings, her car, her clothes, even her mother’s jewellery. Everything.
A faceless ‘suit’ handed Kate her old battered backpack and a round cardboard cylinder. He said to her in his cheeriest voice, ‘At least you are debt free after this. You’re lucky, most people end up bankrupt.’ Kate only barely managed to contain her urge to slap him. The liquidator’s representative had called it a gesture of good will. Her threadbare backpack was loosely filled with underwear and a few scant items of clothing deemed “not of sufficient value for seizure” by her liquidators. The cardboard document tube held her degrees, along with certificates and photos documenting Kate’s life. Of course, they had all been removed from their ‘sufficient-value’ frames.
Kate found out that for his part of the final settlement and divorce, Silvio had already signed the papers in front of a judge. She recognised the crushing and soul-destroying truth that she had been denying until that moment. He doesn’t even care enough to show up and gloat.
Helpless, she felt herself being dragged into the ravenous crushing gears of an insatiable legal machine, an uncaring system that had little time or regard for justice. She signed next to sticky arrows marked ‘Sign Here’ and watched the lawyers, receivers and clerks greedily checking, sorting and dividing the stacks of paper. Their chatter far away and unintelligible, all she could see were vultures and jackals arguing over the remnants of her carcass. Each pounding of the clerk’s official stamp sounded to her like another shot from her firing squad. Once they had picked her bones clean, they lost interest in her. They never even bothered to look her in the eye or say her name as they dismissed her with flat, emotionless smiles and generic, often-recited farewells.
Detached and numb, Kate stood shaking on the courthouse steps in the mid-afternoon sun. Alone, broke and homeless, she was unable to comprehend the horrific reality of her life’s reduction to just her old high-school backpack and a tubular post pack. She could barely find the energy reserves to take her next breath in, or the will to let it out again. Her muscles transformed into cold unfeeling lead, crushing her bones.
~~~~~