A Necessary Struggle: Fall Semester

Part 29

Easy like Sunday morning it wasn't. Not for Harmony. While most people were still in bed at 9:43 am, she was in her office at Wilson & Mills. Well, the office was an understatement. It was more like a cubicle with walls of glass and a view of a brick building. It wasn't anything to brag about. However, she was the only intern at the firm not crammed in the windowless bullpen on the first floor.

Harmony dragged the neon yellow highlighter over the limitless purchases on the Wells Fargo bank statement. One person, Bridget Heisenberg, made the purchases. The owner of a yoga studio and the wife of Senator Duncan Heisenberg—the client of Caroline Turner, and since Caroline Turner was Harmony's boss he was Harmony's client too.

Cairo stretched his walnut eyes open, "I have to study all this!" He fanned through the copious pages of his philosophy textbook resting on his lap. He groaned peering at Harmony's notebook of notes.

"Forget everybody else, just make sure you go over Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato." Harmony pointed the highlighter at the names she wrote in bold blue ink.

"Plato..." Cairo circled his eyes up then looked over at Harmony. "He's the one that..."

"He believed in Philosopher Kings, you know." Harmony nodded remembering the lecture that was two weeks ago. "You can't tell me you don't know this." Harmony's hand smacked the notebook. "I know you were in class; you sat right next to me.... every day." Cairo stared at her blankly and she clicked the top back on the highlighter. "Just take my notes and my book." She closed the seven-hundred-page textbook and slid it across the Maplewood desk. "All you need to know is highlighted and the notes will cover everything Professor Boyd covered in class. And if all else fails you're sitting next to me...you can glance over nonchalantly, of course." She grinned.

"Or you telling me to cheat, Ms. Monroe?" One of Cairo's eyebrows coyly rose.

Harmony shrugged trailing her finger down the bank statement, "Do what you want but if you don't want Mr. Barden jumping down your throat you better get a C for the semester."

"I'll slip into a study coma before that happens." Cairo stuffed the books into his black backpack. Before he pulled the zipper across the plastic tracks he watched her clench her pearly whites on the plastic top, "Don't you need your notes."

Harmony let the top drop from her mouth and plop to the desk, "I've studied. See my notes." Her phone vibrated against the pile of papers on the corner of the desk. She read the text while the black Otterbox cased iPhone was still lit. "Fiya wants to go crib shopping." Her plumped pink lips became a thin line.

"Doesn't she have five more months?"

"Four."

"Whatever." Cairo shrugged one shoulder. "She needs to get the owner of the sperm to go shopping for cribs with her." He checked his cassette tape cased phone for messages. He read the names displayed on the screen of the Samsung Galaxy; Trevor, Ryan (the other roommate), Heaven, and Luke were all looking for him.

Harmony typed her password in the twenty-one inch iMac, "She can't."

"Why not." Cairo slipped the backpack strap on his shoulder. He had to be at a meeting at Pulse in forty minutes; apparently, someone's been giving away free drinks.

Harmony's fingers hovered over the silver wireless keyboard as the Mac's welcome screen came into view and the speakers sung its little ditty. "You don't know." She covered her mouth. "I thought Trevor told you."

"What does Trey know?" He rose from the mocha leather chair, which was supposed to be used by clients, private investigators, and witnesses Harmony was instructed to meet with when Caroline was too busy but it was her friends that used it most.