Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

“I won’t.”

  Julie stands up, puts on her coat, then walks to my side of the table and bends down. I turn my head so she can kiss my cheek. She kisses me, deeply, on the lips instead.

  18. Lionized

  The benches in the hallway outside courtroom 311 are short and constructed from a material that sounds like plastic when I strike it with my fist, but feels like steel to the touch. Whatever this space-age substance is, benches should not be made of it. This is the most uncomfortable bench I have ever sat on. This stretch of hallway is overheated. The fluorescent lighting is excessive. All of these things work together to create a passageway so uncomfortable the effect must be intentional: it is an interior engineered to stop you from lingering, to keep you moving along. At one end of the hall is Hazel, and at the other is Mary. The two women have put as much space between them as the hallway allows.

  Hazel is slightly younger. Her eyes are rimmed in black and she wears a skirt that would be too short for court if she weren’t wearing thick tights. Mary wears nylons and a black dress that would be suitable for either a cocktail party or funeral. The lock on the door to the courtroom clicks. The court reporter opens the door from the inside and kicks a rubber stopper underneath to prop it open. We all go in. To my surprise, Hazel sits behind the long wooden table marked Plaintiff, Mary behind Defendant. Justice Smith enters and Hazel and Mary, for the first time, do something together as they rise in unison.

  Last night, Karl Ove Knausgård was in town. The great Norwegian realist was being interviewed by Sheila Heti at the Drake Hotel. There was a time when Sheila and I enjoyed an equal level of literary fame. Both our first books were published by small presses and received positive if tentative reviews peppered with the phrases like “great potential” and “writer to watch.” We were both occasionally invited to be panellists on CBC Radio programs and appear at fundraisers.

  But then Sheila just exploded all over the place. Her collection of short stories was picked up by a prestigious American press. Her first novel was published by an even more prestigious American press. But it was her third book, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story with a sex-positive feminist twist that really broke things open for her. International sales, tours, all of it culminating in a feature profile in the New Yorker. Now she writes for the Paris Review and Granta, spends a lot of time in New York and gets flown to Australia for readings.

  Yes, obviously I was jealous. Worse than that, I was envious—it didn’t seem fair that Sheila was getting all this glory, living the life I not only dreamed of, but firmly expected to have, the life I believed I deserved. The problem is that she’s a really good writer. Her prose is original, unforced, and honest. Admittedly, she is a distinctive voice worthy of recognition, but what really made her success hard to take was how it hadn’t gone to her head. If anything, Sheila’s fame has made her more relaxed, less pretentious, left with nothing to prove.

  It had been a while since we’d seen each other, but I decided to go to the interview. What else was I going to do? The prospect of spending the evening praying to a higher power by shaping sentences out of the linen was unappealing. I took a shower, used the iron in the closet to press my shirt, and closed the door of my hotel room firmly behind me.

  Mary has stopped pretending not to stare at Hazel, although the look of scorn she’s sending her way cannot be considered an improvement. Hazel calls her only witness, and Betty, a middle-aged woman who’d be good cast as the nosy neighbour in an American sitcom, gets sworn in.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Devil Girl Home Furnishing.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “I work in the credit department.”

  “What is the nature of that work in the credit department?”

  “I collect on unpaid loans.”

  “If you could read the highlighted passage?” Hazel hands Betty a piece of paper. Betty reads the highlighted passage, a clause so indecipherable that even in my capacity as a lowly technical writer, I’m offended. Justice Smith asks for clarification and it’s eventually revealed that two and a half years ago Mary went on an epic shopping spree at Devil Girl Home Furnishing, store #117, located at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst, where she basically outfitted the entire first floor of her house. She bought two couches, a love seat, end tables, six kitchen chairs, and a new refrigerator. All of which she bought on credit that was approved and financed by Devil Girl Home Furnishing’s own in-house credit operation. For the first year, everything was fine. In the second Mary fell behind on her payments, then stopped paying altogether. Devil Girl Home Furnishing is suing for $17,321, the original purchase price of the furniture plus incurred interest.

  These things established, Hazel closes the brief. She has no further questions.

  “What’s the interest rate?” Justice Smith asks.

  “Seven percent,” Hazel answers.

  “For the full term?”

  “For the first twelve months, yes.”

  “And after that?”

  “Twenty-seven-point-eight percent.”

  “I see.”

  The courtroom is quiet for a while. Betty remains on the stand, and Marvin, whose suit and organizational skills both appear rumpled, bursts into the room, apologizes for his lateness, and begins his cross. By his own admission, Marvin only received this case a couple of hours ago and hasn’t really had time to fully look it over. He does what he can, asks a bunch of obvious questions, solicits information from Betty that she’s already freely put forth. When Marvin has no further questions, Hazel rests her case.

  Marvin mounts his defence, which seems to consist exclusively of asking Mary to take the stand.

  “Can you state your name?” Marvin asks.

  “Mary.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Yes.” Mary’s voice is cold and her monosyllabic answers give the impression that she’s answering questions from an opposing lawyer, not her own.

  “Kids?” Marvin looks down at the paper open in front of him. He seems slightly surprised by what he sees.

  “Yes. I have two.”

  “Very good. Okay…”

  Marvin asks three more questions before Mary begins taking the lead, finding places to explain that she’s a single mom with two kids who thought she’d hit it big when she got a job as an assistant accountant with a production company. This is what led to the splurge on furnishings. But then she lost her job when the dollar went up and the U.S. productions stopped coming north to shoot. She hit tough times, made tougher when the second year of the contract kicked in and her monthly payments more than doubled from interest alone. Mary negotiated a settlement agreement with Devil Girl Home Furnishing, who agreed to lower the amount owed and gave her a repayment structure. But part of this deal was a clause that, should Mary miss a payment, her debt would revert to the full amount. She honoured five of six payments, but on October 27, the day before the very last payment was due, Mary lost her bank card, which left her unable to make her usual payment. Mary says she explained the situation to a customer service representative named Karen, who told her to just mail a cheque. She directs Marvin, who eventually finds a photocopy of the cheque for $3,500, which he presents into evidence.

  This cheque, Mary says, was never cashed—either the bank never put it through or it never arrived. She called Devil Girl Furnishing a couple of times, tried to follow up, got the runaround. In June, she received a letter from the Devil Girl credit department telling her they wanted the full amount, $17,321, Marvin nods, has no further questions. He is not fully seated, but Hazel is already standing, her lips forming the hard consonants of her first question.

  Knausgård took long, easy steps as he walked across the stage. He was tall and as good-looking as his author photo promised; his clothes were well tailored and worn in. He greeted Sheila warmly. The stage was as spare as their respective prose, two leather armchairs angled toward each other an
d a small, clear coffee table, on which sat two bottles of water and Sheila’s notes. Knausgård waited for Sheila to sit. His fingers rested calmly in his lap. It was at this moment that I realized I’d come with a disingenuous heart, that I’d wanted to see Knausgård slink onto stage as a frayed wire of nervous energy, with neurosis and anxiety exposing how his brilliance as a writer had destroyed him as a person. But he wasn’t like that at all. There was an audio problem, and even before the technician fixed the microphone pinned to his lapel, long before Sheila even asked her first question, the casual arch of his shoulders and the laugh lines around his eyes made it obvious to all he wasn’t damaged, not in any way, to any degree.

  Knausgård is pretty much the opposite of everything I’ve turned out to be, the literary Superman to my pop-culture Bizzaro. He writes serious, weighty novels based on his life and has achieved both international literary recognition and best-selling status. I write funny little stories about talking frogs that are marketed as novels even though they’re novellas and I’m lucky to sell a couple thousand copies. For all my talk of compassion and empathy, my outstanding ability to feel both, the essential importance of both, I found myself unable to rise to the occasion—every moment Knausgård continued to be self-deprecating, while still managing to maintain his authorial authority, made me a little more bitter and weak and pathetic. I wanted to leave, and just when I’d found a good moment to do so, Sheila caught my eye from the stage, gave me a nod, and smiled in approval at my presence.

  So I had to sit there, forced not only to witness Knausgård’s greatness but my own inferiority. After the last question was finally asked, I rushed to leave, but the audience was excited—they’d just witnessed something significant and, wanting to savour the moment, they were in no hurry. I got caught up behind a woman on crutches, and when I finally made it out of the auditorium to stand on the sidewalk in the chilly autumn air, my timing couldn’t have been worse: less than a foot in front of me, Sheila and Knausgård were climbing into a taxi.

  “There you are! Get in here!” Sheila called. She grabbed the shoulder of my jacket and pulled me toward the open door of the taxi. To resist would have revealed how small and petty I am, something I’m too small and petty to do. So I got into the back of the taxi. I sat in the middle of the bench seat, next to Knausgård, Sheila piling in after me. Sheila introduced us, shut the door, and we went east on Queen.

  Hazel stops herself, doesn’t say anything. Ninety seconds pass. This seems like a very long period of time. Then, without clearing her throat or taking a drink of water, striking like a cobra in a cowboy movie, Hazel asks her first question.

  “What date did you say you lost your bank card?” Hazel asks.

  “October 27.”

  “And that’s the first date that you attempted to reach Devil Girl?

  “Yes.”

  “When you lost your bank card, what did you do? Did you go into your branch?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “On what day?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to go to the bank that day. I have a hard life!”

  “I’m not trying to upset you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “She has a right to ask these questions.” Justice Smith says this with a surprising tenderness, then looks back at Hazel and nods for her to continue.

  “When did you photocopy this cheque?”

  “Just before I mailed it.”

  “You made a photocopy of the cheque?”

  “I photocopy everything.”

  “When you lost your card, why didn’t you use another payment method? Did you try to pay online?”

  “I lost my bank card. You can’t get on without the number.”

  “You’re meticulous enough to make copies of your cheques, but you don’t have a record of your bank card number?”

  Mary pauses.

  Marvin studies his hands.

  Hazel continues, quietly, brutally. The inconsistencies Hazel points out are many. She points out that the number of the photocopied cheque is out of sequence with others Mary wrote that month. She asks why Mary only called Devil Girl twice, because she must have known that the cheque hadn’t been cashed, what with the $3,500 sitting in her bank account.

  “Is the $3,500 still there?”

  “Where?”

  “In your bank account.”

  “No.”

  “Was it ever?”

  “What?”

  “Was the money ever there, in your account, in the first place.”

  “Of course it was!”

  “Do you have a photocopy of a bank statement proving this?”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “Do you?”

  “You don’t get it!”

  “I have no further questions.”

  “I have a hard life!”

  “No further questions.”

  “It’s just not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair.”

  Someone, perhaps three or four passengers previous, has smoked in the taxi, but the smell of tobacco is distant and mixes well with the fall air. The radio is silent. My hands are in my lap, but unquietly so, since this puts them in close proximity to the crotches of both Sheila and Knausgård. But all of these sensory details, the wind coming in the open window, the copy of Cottage Life that for some reason is tucked into the pocket of the back of the passenger seat, do not seem nearly as present as the sound of Mary’s voice. I can still hear it. Her righteous indignation keeps playing in my mind as I sit between Sheila and Knausgård in the back of this taxi heading east down Queen Street.

  It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!

  The degree to which Mary’s stupidity, her utter lack of personal responsibility, reveals my own suddenly seems like the funniest thing I’ve ever experienced. Trying to suppress the laughter building up inside me just makes it worse and I am unable to stop a significant giggle from bursting out of me into the excessively uncomfortable quiet of the back seat of this cab.

  I have a hard life!

  “What?” Sheila is playfully impatient, glad to have something to un-awkward this silence, and I realize that she isn’t so cool and calm and collected. She’s nervous as well. I may be nervous to be in a taxi with Sheila—but Sheila is nervous to be in a cab with Knausgård.

  “What?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Tell me?”

  “Just something I saw in court today. Where are we going?”

  “I thought we’d go to the Hyatt bar.”

  “Yuck. It’ll be packed with European tourists. Let’s just go to Sweaty Betty’s.”

  “That’s a much better idea.”

  Leaning over me, Sheila pushes her small body into the space between the driver and passenger seats. She gives the cab driver the new coordinates and he makes a sudden U-turn that sends both her and me slamming into Knausgård. There is something about this accidentally forced proximity, an awareness that, regardless of literary merit, we are all still subject to centrifugal force, that chills all three of us out.

  Five minutes later, we walk into the Sweaty Betty’s, where the pervasive darkness is punctuated by Christmas lights. I enter this establishment flanked not only by Sheila Heti but Knausgård, currently the world’s most lauded literary figure. Nobody looks up. He goes unrecognized. Such is the glory of literary fame. The three of us sit at the bar, Knausgård in the middle. We have several drinks. We talk about surviving cold weather and semicolons and how the books we consider our best sell the most poorly, things all three of us have in common. At some point Sheila excuses herself and heads down the stairs to the washroom. When we’re alone at the bar, Knausgård leans closer to me.

  “Sheila tells me that your books are very good.”

  “That’s kind of her.”

  He nods at my wedding ring. “You have kids?”

  “Ten and eight.”

  “The best and the worst? I mean, more the best, of course, but you know what I mean?”

 
; “I do.”

  Knausgård shifts on the bar seat so that his shoulders hunch over. Without moving his head, he looks up at the Christmas lights suspended from the ceiling. He stirs his drink with a red plastic stick shaped like the CN Tower. He starts talking so quietly that it takes several moments before I realize he’s talking to me.

  “One of the first real conversations I ever had with my daughter—she was maybe three or four and could easily put sentences together, but not always paragraphs—happened while I was driving and she was buckled into her car seat. My mind has deleted where we were going, or coming back from, or why there were just the two of us. These things, which were most important at the time, have now proven themselves to be irrelevant. You know what I mean? Sometimes I think about this, that while I worry about phone bills and deadlines, the detail that will prove itself most significant appears to me as an annoyance. I don’t mean to tangent off.

  “So, that day she asked a question I didn’t really understand, so I turned the rear-view mirror so it reflected her and not the traffic.

  ‘What was that, sweetie?’

  ‘How do I do lion?’

  ‘You want to see a lion? You want to return back to the zoo?’

  ‘No. Be lion. I want to grow and be lion.’

  “The conversation continued like this for some time. I wanted to just give up and tell her that I understood what she was saying, even though I didn’t. You know how it is?”

  “I do.”

  “Eventually, it became clear that she was asking how she could turn into a lion. Somewhere, somehow, she had gotten the idea that as she grew, she could become a different animal. That part of growing up was choosing what animal you would become, that growing up didn’t mean you’d become a bigger human, but that you could shift species as well as size. Conversely, to her way of thinking, all of us, all the humans around her, were at one time different animals as well. That a turtle, or a horse, or a walrus decided that they wanted to become human when they grew up, and so that’s what happened.

  ‘So a lion. I’ll do lion, she was telling me from the back seat.’