America 1982-Chapter 135 - 44: Good Night, Miss Sophia

At midnight, yawning Sophia stood by the roadside outside her graduate dormitory with a small suitcase in front of her, looking around as if she was a youthful girl ready to elope with someone.

Tommy Hawk drove his beat-up Barracuda slowly from a distance, eventually stopping in front of her. He rolled down the window and greeted Sophia, "Good evening, Sophia, it seems that meeting your idol isn’t enough to perk you up."

"The main reason I’m not perked up is that you, in order to save money, chose a red-eye flight," Sophia said irritably as she opened the trunk, placed her suitcase inside, then got into the passenger seat, looking at the stingy and unscrupulous Tommy Hawk:

"Couldn’t you fly over during the day, find a hotel to stay in for the night, and then go meet Ms. Delia Case the next day? The red-eye flight has strict requirements for passengers’ belongings. I couldn’t even bring a few extra sets of clothes."

She had thought this bastard would be sleepy like her, but at that moment Tommy looked energetic, his chiseled face coupled with a monochrome black suit, white shirt, and dark blue tie gave him an icy cold vibe, and even with that blond hair, Sophia couldn’t feel a hint of sunniness from Tommy.

"Thankfully, you’re still alive," Sophia put her fingers in front of Tommy’s nose to feel his breath, then shook the little crucifix hanging in the car to be sure Tommy showed no adverse reactions, before she finally buckled up her seatbelt and sighed in relief:

"Lately they’ve been rerunning ’The Exorcist’ on TV. Your get-up for tonight had me thinking you were possessed by a demon."

After working part-time on legal matters for this guy for a while, Sophia noticed that Tommy Hawk had many faces, adjusting the one he wore as his environment changed.

In front of the camera for those ordinary people in Florida, he was like a friendly country boy. The bastard would even exaggerate his Northeastern accent when selling software, just to seem more personable.

When he needed her to accompany him for consultations with her law school professors, the bastard would morph into a knowledge-thirsty and well-mannered gentleman, addressing the professors with honorifics in every sentence.

With his Fraternity brothers, he was like an idiot set free to be his true self.

If Sophia hadn’t seen his other side, she wouldn’t believe this guy was capable of setting up an inflatable pool in the front yard of the Fraternity house, and then he and a bunch of fools would jump from the second-floor balcony over and over again into the water, acting like complete idiots.

They didn’t dive to train for the Olympics; they just wanted to splash the girls attending the charity mixer, wet their shirts, and stage a wet-shirt temptation. Even if he was chased and pranked by a group of girls, he would just laugh like an idiot, totally incongruent with the ambitious soul hiding beneath the idiotic surface who wanted to topple Lotus.

When with Holly, this guy would always deliberately show he was a bit smarter, making Holly always strive not to be outdone.

With Susan, he was like her father or older brother, indulging all her mistakes, and making Susan work doubly hard out of guilt.

When with Mark, he was more like an instigator, continually encouraging Mark to do the types of potentially illegal data collection tasks that he himself would never do.

His relationship with Jason was somewhat complicated; they were each other’s fathers and sons, detesting each other intensely, yet when in need, they were the first people they thought of for help.

And when with her, Tommy played the capitalist deserving of the gallows to the hilt—utterly stingy.

That bastard could even go so far as to borrow money from her, already underpaid, right after their meeting because he was rushing to a date with his girlfriend and didn’t have change for a Trojan purchase, and then act as if nothing happened and default on the debt. She was clearly angry, but the bastard always managed to find something to hold her interest, making her continue to help him.

"You look like a Secret Service agent guarding the White House right now. Are you going to meet Delia Case, or Ronald Reagan?" Sophia pushed up the black frames on her nose and asked the driving Tommy.

"Do you know what’s the most important thing when meeting a lawyer? Honesty. Many people, on their first meeting with a lawyer, feel that the lawyer is a stranger, so they put on airs, saying things like ’I don’t know’ or ’I’m not sure.’ Then, as the lawyer earns his consulting fees, he goes round and round to investigate, only to find out the evidence shows they knew all along. After wasting a lot of time, they end up back where they started, and only then do they say, ’Yes, I’ve done it.’" Tommy Hawk turned off the car radio, not bothering to ask Sophia for her preference, and just lit a cigarette for himself:

"I dress so simply and plainly as an attitude; I don’t want to waste my time and money only for my employers to think I’m an idiot,"

Sophia rested her head on the chair back, looking out at the Stanford night scene, "Do you really think you can persuade Ms. Delia Case to take your order? From what I understand, those white-shoe law firms rarely take on unknown businesses, like Actor Corporation which has no fame."

"Miss, when Actor Corporation started, everyone but Susan thought it was impossible to sell a set of software in Florida, but now, just two weeks later, I’ve sold eight thousand sets. The money of the poor is the easiest to earn, what’s the next phrase?" Tommy asked, holding the steering wheel.

Sophia casually answered, "The money of the rich is the hardest to earn?"

"No, I’d rather say that the heart of a litigator is the most greedy. Earning a litigator’s money may be difficult, but satisfying their inner greed and asking for a favor isn’t that hard—it’s nothing more than a talk that’s completely different from coaxing the poor," Tommy said with a calm voice.

"It’s a process of filling each other’s inner desires."

The Davis Polk law firm, headquartered in New York, has twelve offices in the United States, and California alone has two locations, making it convenient for the wealthy to choose a nearby service.

The Northern California office is located in San Francisco, and the Southern California office in Los Angeles, but Tommy didn’t choose either of these offices. Instead, he and Sophia were flying to Washington because that partner named Delia Case was not in California, but in Washington D.C.

After an initial communication with Holly, Delia Case showed some interest in the deal, but wanted to discuss it face to face. However, for a small fry like Tommy, expecting a white-shoe law firm partner to condescend to fly and talk to him was a pipe dream. The best approach was not to regard oneself as a potential employer but as a humble character in need, and to obediently fly to Washington.

Therefore, Tommy considerately chose a cheap, red-eye flight leaving late at night for himself and Sophia. That way, they could sleep for five or six hours in the economy class of the plane, land in Washington at dawn, and head to the office on K Street before nine o’clock to meet Delia Case.

By the time the two boarded the plane and sat down, Sophia was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open. She looked at the pitch-black outside window and then at Tommy sitting beside her, who seemed to be pondering something. She asked,

"What are you thinking about?"

"Aren’t you tired, Miss Sophia?" Tommy turned his head, looking at the brunette who somewhat resembled Ottelia and asked with a smile.

He didn’t understand why women who seemed as foolishly cute as Sophia and Ottelia would study the tedious law. Those women seemed completely unlikely to become litigators who could turn the courtroom upside down and would at most become clerks or judicial assistants in a courtroom someday.

"Not very tired. If you want to talk about what to pay attention to after we arrive in Washington, I have no problem," Sophia said, striving to fight off sleepiness and smiling at Tommy, but her heart actually harbored a different plan. Chatting with Tommy was merely groundwork for something else.

But Tommy didn’t give her any chance to lay the groundwork. He simply took out an eye mask and put it on his head, then earnestly said to Sophia,

"I’m about to collapse from exhaustion. If you’re not tired, could I lean on your shoulder to get some sleep? The backs of these airplane seats are too hard, and I have a bit of a neck condition. You wouldn’t want me to meet Delia looking like I’m tilting my neck, appearing less like a company founder and more like a victim of some case."

"You’re such a jerk, Tommy Hawk, stealing the lines I was planning to say," Sophia said, her voice so desperate she was almost crying,

"I was planning just to humor you for a bit and then subtly suggest that the back of the seat is too hard and whether I could lean on your shoulder to sleep for a while. You knew all along that was my plan, so you deliberately said it first, right?"

"Next time remember, when you talk to country folks, it’s better to be more direct. I may not have money to pay your fee, but I don’t mind being a bit of a gentleman," Tommy said as he took off Sophia’s glasses and his own eye mask, carefully puting it on for her to ensure the mask covered her eyes without letting light in, and gently let her head lean on his shoulder:

"Goodnight, Miss Sophia."