"Hey." "Okay." "Now, what about this guy just sitting down?" " Marry, sex, kill?" " Sex?" "Nikki, you said "sex" about the last three guys and her." "I know." "I think I might be ovulating." "As fascinating as this conversation is, do you ladies mind keeping it down just a little bit?" "Working on a deposition here." "Kill." "Hey, mom." "An exciting educational opportunity has come up." "There's a field trip that I really want to go on." " That's great, honey." " It's in Utah." "It's a study of how global warming has affected sea levels." "I thought it was a ski trip." "We just talked about this outside." "Nice try, Sophie." "Please, mom." "Everyone's going." " And it's only 800 dollars." " Oh, is that it?" "Well, let me just write you a check." "Now, where is my solid gold fountain pen that writes in only melted diamonds?" "But that covers everything." "Transportation, hotel, lift tickets." "Does it cover a filling for this tooth I can't afford to fix?" "Do you ever stop complaining about that tooth?" "It's dead." "Move on." "Yeah." "Well, that's easy for you to say because you can still eat ice cream." "This is so unfair." "Mackenzie gets to go." "How do you know?" "She hasn't even asked her mom yet." " Hey, mom." " Whatever you want, baby." " Nikki!" " You know, fine." "I'll just ask dad." "He's a rock star." "No." "He is a rock professional who's paying off two mortgages and a loan on a boat that sank three years ago." "Okay, fine." "How about this?" "I am way behind on this case." "What if Sophie comes to work for me and I'll pay her?" "Oh my God." "Oh my God!" "You're going to be a lawyer!" "She's not actually going to be..." "Forget it." "Oh." "No, no, no." "No, thank you." "That's very nice, but we do not need charity." "It sort of sounds like you do." "All right." "In fact, I'll make you a deal." "You go work for your uncle and earn half the money and I'll pay for the other half." "Thanks, Uncle Jack!" "You're the best!" "Hey!" "Nothing for me?" "I said I'd pay for half." "You also said you weren't paying for the other half." "She really should be a lawyer." " Hey, Nikki!" " Hey!" "Mackenzie left her school books at my house." "Three weeks ago." "And a trash." "I'm glad you're here." "Mackenzie's class is going on a ski trip, and it costs 800 dollars." " 800 dollars?" " Plus a few little extras." "Ski jacket, ski goggles, maybe a cute little ski dog she could carry around." "He'll probably need a jacket too." "And one of those little barrels that hangs on his collar." "I can't do it, Nikki." "Business is dead." "The first thing people cut when things get rough is recreation." "And I teach golf." "The world's most unnecessary sprawling daytime activity since polo." "What am I supposed to tell Mackenzie?" "Tell her the truth." "We don't have the money right now, and she can't go." "Oh, right." "The truth." "Great parenting, Gary." "Hello." "Hello, ladies." "Wow!" "Very professional, Sophie." "Thanks." "I watched "Law  Order" last night to see how the hot lawyer was dressed." "Yeah." "And then I made a dress like the no-nonsense police lieutenant." "Nikki." "You look strangely age-appropriate." "Well, this is my job hunting outfit." "I have to provide for me and little Mackenzie now that Gary has abandoned us." "That outfit's left over from when she played Hilary Clinton in the PTA musical." "The school paper called me a tragic misfire." "She put that on her fridge." "Can you make me a hundred copies of my resume?" "Do any of these diplomas on the wall say "Nikki's little helper"?" "No, but this one says you won third place in the Junior Scout Soap Box Derby." "Okay, Sophie." "You got your first job." "Copy machine is in the back." "Oh, I'll go with you." "I want to show you something funny I do on the copy machine." "So, this is your office, huh?" "Fancy." "Bet you don't have street people washing their pits in your bathroom." "That happens?" "I am never using the bathroom in your coffeehouse again." "Mr. Cooper, did you want me to order your lunch?" "No." "I'll probably just grab something downstairs." "Thanks." "Annie, this is my new assistant, Sienna." "Sienna, this is Annie." "Hi." "Nice to meet you." "Can I get you something to drink, Annie?" "Oh." "No." "Thanks." "I'm not staying." "Um..." "I got to get back to my... gardening." "Because I was..." "I was gardening." "That's why I'm dressed like a gardener." "Okay." "Well, it was nice to meet you." "Wow!" "I see why you hired her." "Because she was top of her class at UT and that she's extremely bright and efficient?" "No." "I was talking about her boobies." "I'll make a note." "After I get this guy off death row," "I'll be sure to check out her boobies." "I know you're mocking me, but do yourself a favor and check them out because they are sick." "Got my resumes." "Thank you." "As a token of my appreciation, here's a picture of my butt." "I've been looking for a job all day, and there's nothing." "I don't know if you know this or not, but there's something going on with our economy." "Let me see your resume." "Nikki, this is my resume!" "Well, you are unhirable." "Unhirable?" "With these skills?" "Excellent phone manners." "Types 50 words per minute." "Able to rap with teens on their level." "Yeah." "I was an assistant youth pastor." "I don't know what I'm going to do." "The only job I ever had was working in an ice cream shop in high school." "Which was not a good choice for me." "I took a lick off of every cone I served." "When I got mono, the whole town got mono." "Was that hard on you as a youth?" "You want to rap about it?" "Thank you." "Don't worry about Nikki." "She's always got a Plan B." "I was hoping I wouldn't have to resort to this, but desperate times call for desperate measures." "I don't have any idea what" " it's worth these days, but..." " Oh God." "Nikki!" "You would sell your body for a ski trip?" "No." "That's Plan E." "I'm going to sell my wedding ring." "What?" " But you love that ring." " I do love that ring, but I love my daughter more." "She has all these great opportunities, and I want her to experience all of them." "I was the fat girl who never got to go on any high school trips." "I didn't fit into social circles." "Or standard bus seats." " Yeah, but your wedding ring?" " I know." "It's a beautiful symbol of what Gary and I had, but that's over." "Maybe someday, someone else will love me enough to give me three karats." "That's going to be tough." "I'm sorry." "I was just thinking out loud." "Hey, mom." "I'm in." "Here's my half." "400 dollars?" "You only worked for two hours." "Can I copy your resume?" "Hey." "Here's your check." " So, what's wrong now?" " What's wrong is" "I specifically told you not to make Sophie and I your little charity case, and you turned right around and did it anyway." "And Superman checks?" "Really?" "Will you calm down?" "That money I gave Sophie was not charity." "You paid her 400 dollars for two hours of work." "No one makes 200 dollars an hour." "Some of us make four." "You said smugly to the woman with a dying tooth?" "The word on the street is that it's already dead." "And actually, I paid Sophie that money so she would stop working." "Her two hours of help cost me three extra days of work." " What did she do?" " She deleted two days of depositions before I had a chance to print them." "Now they have to be transcribed all over again." "Oh my God, Jack." "I am so sorry." "But in her defense, you did hire a 14 year old girl" "Zworkon  a capital murder case." "A very talkative 14 year old girl." "Did you know that Philip and Flash got into a fight over Monica Larson even though she's totally going out with some westoid from Westlake named Splice?" " Splice is out of juvie?" " You see?" "You get sucked in." "Okay." "You can't say no." "I am going to stay and help you transcribe your documents." " Really?" " Yeah." "Don't worry." "I'm an excellent typist." "I had to retype our family Bible after daddy edited it." "He took all the begetting and begotten out." "Mr. Cooper, here's the McCormick deposition." "Oh." "Thank you." "Seriously, how are you not distracted by those?" "400 dollars an hour." " What are you looking at?" " I was just wondering how the school librarian got in here." "Oh." "I just wear these for fashion." "And to see stuff." "Hey, I just noticed something." "There is no way that your client left the sports arena at 5:00 and shot some guy in East Austin at 5:30." "Why not?" "It's only a 15-minute drive." "Not at that time of the day." "With rush hour traffic, it would take an hour at minimum." " Traffic's that bad?" " Yup." "And not a bathroom to be found." "Unless you call a scrub brush after shoulder a bathroom, which I did." "Good catch, Annie." "It was?" "Wait." "Did I just break a case wide open and save a man from death row?" "No." "Our conclusive DNA evidence and eye witness testimony will be enough to free him." "But this was pretty neat though." "You know, you're really sharp." "Did you ever think about going in the law?" "No." "I mean, not really." "Not seriously." "Sort of." "A little bit." "Solid answer." "You know what I mean." "It's like one of those things you think about and never really follow up on." "Kind of like starting a journal or getting life insurance." "Going back to school kind of had to take a backseat after I got pregnant." "In a backseat." "That's too bad." "If you'd finished school, there's no telling where you'd be now." "Excuse me?" "You know, if you'd be able to finish your degree you could have done anything you wanted." "Is there something wrong with what I'm doing now?" "As a lawyer, I know there's no good answer to that question." "So, what are you saying?" "That making an honest living and raising a daughter by myself isn't good enough?" "You know what?" "I think I'm done here." "Good luck with your depositions." "Okay." "I don't understand what I'm saying that's making you so mad." "I'm just pointing out that it's a shame a person as smart as you isn't living up to her potential." "Okay." "Now I hear it." "How dare he judge me?" "If Jack's such a big deal lawyer, why doesn't he have his face on any bus stop benches?" "Pow!" "I should have said that to him." "I don't understand why you're so mad at him." "He thinks I'm a loser." "You know who's a loser?" "He is." "Pow!" "That's another one." "He did not call you a loser." "He said you were smart." "He was impressed by you and that you could do anything you want with your life." "To my face!" "Look." "If you didn't like him so much, nothing he said would have bugged you." "Jack could talk about anything and you'd take it the wrong way." "You take it the wrong way." "Pow!" "I am on fire!" " Can I help you ladies?" " Yeah." "I want to sell this ring." "May I see it please?" "Are you sure you want to do this?" "No." "I'm not sure." "I know you need to make sacrifices for your kids, but that ring represents a lot of love between me and Gary." "I'll give you 20 dollars for it." "Excuse me?" "I'm sorry." "We don't have much of a market for cubic zirconia." "What?" "Are you sure that's cubic zirconia?" "No." "It could be high grade laminated glass." "Did you hear that, Nikki?" "High grade laminated glass." "That sounds nice." "Hey." "I'm just dropping Mackenzie off." "She's still in the car on her cellphone." "I love her." "But sometimes the sound of her voice makes me want to kill myself." "How's the job search going?" "Not so good, actually." "So I thought of a different way to make some money." "How would you feel if I sold my wedding ring?" "Uh..." "I would be very upset." "It represents everything we ever had." "Does it, Gary?" "Yes." "And it kind of hurts my feelings that you would even think of getting rid of it." "Shame on you, Nikki." "Cubic zirconia." "I've lived in fear of this moment for 16 years." "Hey." "Could I get...?" "Mad." "Scared." "Peace out." "I can't believe you gave me a fake ring." "Do you know how many times a day I looked down at it and thought," ""Somebody thinks I'm worth this." "Somebody thinks I'm special"?" "Now I look down at it and think" "I'm worth a movie and a medium soda." "Honestly, I always thought you knew it was fake." "." "I mean, I was living in my grandmother's storage shed when I gave it to you." "I thought that's why you were living there." "I always planned to replace it when I got the money." "But there were always other things that you wanted, like a nicer car, a bigger house," "Omaha steaks." "All those things cost money, Nikki." "You know what, Gary?" "It's not that the ring is fake." "It's that you lied to me." "It makes me feel that maybe the whole marriage was a lie." "No." "Don't even say that." "Okay, maybe the ring wasn't real, but everything else was." "Nikki, you were the love of my life." "I loved you so much I carried you over the threshold." "It probably ruined my chances of a professional golf career, but I just wanted you to be happy." "I'm sorry if I hurt you." "It was the opposite of what I wanted." "I know." "And I can't keep asking you for money." "I've been relying on you too much." "I've got to learn to take care of myself." "Just so you know, I liked taking care of you." "Like the time you got stuck in a tub..." "Okay, I get it." "You loved me through thick and thin." "So now I just have to tell Mackenzie that we can't afford to send her on the ski trip." "But I don't want to do it alone." "Baby, when it comes to Mackenzie, when have I ever let you do anything alone?" "How about when I gave birth to her and you left and went to a bar?" "Oh." "If you had seen what I saw, you would have been sitting on that stool next to me." " Hey." " Annie." "I'm glad you came back." "I figured out a better way to word it." "." "You are amazing at what you do." "And if you worked at it, you could be equally amazing in another field." "There." "Are we good?" "Look, it's okay." "I thought about what you said." "Maybe I'm not living up to my full potential." "So thanks to you, I am going to sign up for some night classes." "Annie, that's great!" "And maybe if you do well there, you can transfer to a real college." " What?" " You are amazing at what you do." "Okay." "Listen." "I know that I get defensive when I'm around you." "I think it's just because I look at all you've done and accomplished, and I think..." "Oh, come on!" "This is a Certificate of Completion for a karate class." "Is there anything you don't frame?" "Seriously, you're an impressive guy, Jack." "Thank you." "You're pretty impressive too." "Thanks." "Hey, you should have heard some of the zingers" "I came up about you after I left here earlier today." "I was like, "Pow!" "Pow!" "Pow!"" "Sounds like I dodged a bullet." "Sure did, Jack Cooper, attorney at lame." "That's just a little taste." " Did you want something, Annie?" " Oh!" "Yeah." "I thought I'd come back and help you." "I didn't want to leave you in the lurch." "Actually, I already got some help." " You want to see?" " Oh." "Is it your assistant?" "Because I'm still in my gardening clothes." "Hey, Uncle Jack." "I finished all those depositions." "Oh, hey mom." "Oh my God." "What are you doing here?" "Well, I felt bad that I left here and didn't do a good job, and I wanted to earn the money the right way." " It wasn't fair to Uncle Jack." " Oh, honey, that is so sweet." "I am so proud of you." "Oh." "Hold on, mom." "It's Disgusting Tanya." "Uncle Jack, you remember I told you about Tanya." "Well, she wants to date Splice." "But hello?" "We call her Disgusting Tanya for a reason." "Hey, Tanya!" "Did you see what Disgusting Abby had on today?" "What's wrong with me?" "I really want to hear the end of that conversation." "Mack, baby, there's something we need to talk to you about." "I swear to God, if you guys tell me you're having another baby," "I'm going to run away and live in the Jersey Shore house." "Look, everything is fine." "It's just that work is a little slow right now, so the ski trip is kind of outside my budget." " Sorry." " Daddy, are you okay?" "Sweetie, I'm fine." "Things will pick back up." "Okay." "Well, you know, maybe I can help." "I can get a job." "Like babysitting." "Or, you know..." " a lot of my friends are tutoring." " Babysitting." "Babysitting sounds better." "Look." "You know what?" "Don't worry, daddy." "We'll get through this." "Did she just give me a sympathy pat?" "My daughter thinks I need a sympathy pat?" "Oh no." "I will not have my baby girl feeling sorry for me." "She is going on that ski trip." "I don't want to hear another word about it." "Where are you going to get the money?" "I don't know." "I'll figure it out." "I'll work extra hours." "Cancel my gym membership." "Hell, maybe I'll sell that Rolex that you got me for our anniversary." "Let's not do that last one." "Oh, that's one my favorite." "These are great photos, girls." "But they all seem to be of you guys in the ski lodge." "And they're only of the two of you, and you always seem to be texting." "I want to see the pictures of you skiing." "We didn't ski." "You didn't ski on your ski trip?" "Not after what happened to Tanya." "What happened?" "Well, she went down one of the slopes, totally wiped out, and when she got back to the lodge, she realized... she lost her phone." "Now the mountain has it." "I can still hear her screaming." "800 dollars." "40 wedding rings." "Two hours' work." "Dental surgery."