He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill novel · Chapter 11 of 32
Chapter 11: Public Record
"Read it to me," I said.
"Deenie, I'm at my desk."
"Read me what's on page thirty-one. In the court's copy."
Gina lowered her voice. I could hear the printer jamming in the background, the same printer, five years later.
"Intimacy, net initiations. Dates. Tally marks. Twelve fifty each. Rate, half of a standard date night." She stopped. "It's all there. Every line. Your name at the top."
I sat down on the edge of her couch with the kid's blue blanket in my lap.
"Who reads court filings?" I said.
"Nobody," Gina said. "Usually."
The first person who read it was a reporter.
She worked for the paper downtown and covered courts.
She found the case on the docket that afternoon because the name Keefe caught her eye, and by six that evening the story was up.
EVENUP FOUNDER SUES GRIEVING WIFE FOR $38,412.50, ITEMIZED.
She'd put page thirty-one in the article.
She'd blacked out the dates. She'd left the rate.
By nine it was everywhere.
I didn't read the comments. Gina read them out loud to me from the kitchen in different voices.
"Twelve fifty?? Sir, I would pay that NOT to."
"He's charging her for half the date she didn't get to go on."
"Imagine a man who thinks he's worth twelve fifty."
"I'm deleting this app so fast my phone is on fire."
Gina's son wandered out in his pajamas.
"Why is Mom laughing like that?"
"Somebody on the internet said something funny," I said.
"About what?"
"About a man who's bad at math."
He went back to bed satisfied.
By the next morning there was a song.
Somebody had set the tally column to a country tune.
A comedian in New York did four minutes on it.
EvenUp's rating in the app store dropped from four point eight stars to two point one in a day.
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