Downstairs in the building’s courtyard, Gregg the Super’s bare arms rose above the coppice of faux Christmas firs worshipping the sun, and then down. He crawled inside the tiny fake forest and knitted his legs into a full-lotus position as his mushy cat stretched and yawned atop a beam of rotted fencing. I entered the shower of brown tiles. Attempted to think up a poem. About cirrhosis of the spiritual gallbladder. About an almost empty bottle of dandruff shampoo, bobbing in the shoals of mildew. I exited the shower and stood naked before the mirror, afraid to examine my mouth, lest I spot some white dot of incontrovertible oral cancer. From all that going down on women, as reported by the New York Times. I wiped the bathroom mirror and examined my receding hairline. Mei appeared, looking back at me, the woman on the other side of the fog.
“Stephen.”
“Mei.”
“I’m sick.”
“I know.”
“I’ll stab you.”
“Then back you go.”
“To where?”
“To the planet of malfunctioning women.”
I stepped on the lever, tossed a clump of my hair into the trash can, and commenced struggling with the wrapper of a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast bar. I got dressed, felt hot, dizzy, a bit drunk still, opened the window and breathed in damp cold air as the pan-Asian flute of Gregg’s morning meditation coursed through the courtyard and now up through my window, as if transported by a clear plastic tube.
“Stephen,” Gregg said. His torso swept left, his torso swept right, as if holding a medicine ball, now preparing to launch a javelin. His bald ponytail swished in the opposite direction of his kinetic body. “Would you like to savasana?”
I told him no thank you.
“I think it would be good for you.”
Instead, I lit the tawny butt of a hand-rolled cigarette and blew smoke out the window. Habemus Papam. Opened the swish messenger bag and removed the Thomas file and scanned the memo I wrote in preparation for today’s conference. I couldn’t read it. Either because I knew it or I could fake it. Besides, Fleeger would do the talking. All I had to do was sit there and not fall into a black hole while pretending to take notes. Which was always possible, especially after drinking.
“Stephen?” Gregg asked. He climbed the fire escape and stood outside my window, his bushy black armpits emitting an effluvium of sage. “I haven’t seen you around. Busy at work?”
I told him I was.
“Come practice with me?”
“I don’t downward dog.”
He peered into my apartment.
“You know you’re impeding your mindfulness with all this clutter.”
“The garden looks good,” I said.
“You know God was a positive thinker.”
He was always telling me what I knew. I blew more smoke out the window. We said goodbye and I closed the window with too much vigor and he paused before descending the fire escape. My shoes still soaking wet from yesterday’s night walk home, I rummaged through the bottom of the closet for another option and uncovered a box of footwear with a padded logo. Euro shoes designed for both office and gym. A gift from Mei. I wore them once to brunch, maybe to a party. Having no choice, I laced them to my feet, grabbed my swish messenger bag, took one final shot of Tropicana grapefruit juice, and extricated myself from the glue trap of the apartment, feeling podiatrically reborn.
6
PUMPING ELBOWS AND HIPS, I speedwalked to the courthouse, glands activated with sweat and anxiety to guarantee my arrival on time. The city’s grid now part of my endocrine system; from point X to point Y in exactly Z minutes. A flawless space-time machine fueled by high-protein, high-fiber breakfast bars. Tiger in my tank, I cruised through Chinatown. Past wooden shelves of glass pharmacy jars filled with roots and powders. Cartons of dried duck parts. Schools of saltwater fish half-buried in chipped ice. Five-gallon buckets of crab. Dragon fruit. Durian fruit. Jackfruit. Red sauce jars with green lids. Frozen stiff cardboard boxes. Mexicans in yellow boots bearing garden hoses. Bubble tea. Eyeglasses. Hello Kitty. Lucky Cat. Chinese men fist-smoking Shuangxis and Chinese grandmothers smacking their thighs and doing jumping jacks. Try Falun Gong for better circulation. Midstride the proboscis of a lost European tourist poked me in the chest.
“Wall Street?” he asked.
I bounced in place in my Euro sneakers. He was me. He looked just like me, but for his whiteout slacks and white shoes. He recognized this too, began bouncing as well. Must be the magic shoes, I thought. We bounced, synchronized. I stopped bouncing and he reverted to himself, someone other than me. I told him to keep walking that way, gestured with my hand, down Water Street. In that vicinity. Fifteen minutes tops. Follow the cops and the blockades. And watch out for the protestors. They’ll target those pants of yours with their rotten projectiles.
My hustle resumed, I again checked the phone. No word yet from Fleeger. A tincture of tartar-fighting mint and bile bubbled and arose from the other side of my epiglottis at the thought of him stranding me in court to handle the conference alone. This dreaded incessant phobia of falling apart, now sans benzo life preserver, last one popped for an extra buzz. Self-sabotage via panic attacks and shot nerves hours before the main event commenced, the consequences of failure augmented by age. Jesus, man up. This would be nothing. Is nothing. There would be a court conference with Fleeger before a judge involving other people’s money and Lazlis. Lazlis being the lowest shade on the threat spectrum, ultrapurple, myself being the highest, Kilauea red. My involvement would entail little more than jotting notes on a legal pad while Fleeger bickered with Lazlis about what WorldScore would refuse to pay Thomas.
Value for money.™
I cleared invisible hurdles through the canyons of old Gotham. Past jailhouse guards crowding young black men, some dressed as women, into a prison bus with grated windows. One of them blew me a kiss and I felt a slight tickle. Because he hit the bull’s-eye. I pinged the tickle against every preconceived notion of myself and came up straight, but also wondering if and when the line would veer off into another dimension. I entered the courthouse’s stiff copper doors and heaved the tickle down a black hole, where it smashed atop last night’s lacquer box. A US marshal watched me as I struggled with myself, which likely did something suspicious to my face.
“I only eat the sausage,” he said to his colleague, still watching me, chewing something. “The rest are too damn sweet.”
The conveyor belt took away my bag. I emptied my pockets into a small gray hand bucket and passed through the hulking metal detector and the guard pointed at my shoes.
“What do you call those?” he asked.
“I don’t think they have a name,” I lied.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite a pair. How much you get them for?”
“They were a gift.”
“They look comfortable. Think I’m going to get some.”
I refrained from telling him what they probably cost—get out of here—and bounced across the foyer restuffing my pockets, past Lady Justice bandaged blind and two stories tall, as though salvaged from the prow of a decommissioned aircraft carrier.
“Fuck.” I exhaled and entered the elevator, exited the elevator, rounded sharp marble corners, and pressed open the courtroom’s heavy wooden doors. I took a seat near the back and watched from the shadows.
Up front, before the bench, huddled the commercial lawyers of the Anthropocene era, combing through their accordion files and litigation bags. Commercial plaintiff to the left—pink parboiled cranium. Commercial defendant to the right—resembling a frilled lizard. While throughout the courtroom sat members of the New York Bar awaiting their turns before the court. Proud. Shifting. Clearing their throats, separate but synchronized, like brass-bottom dolls tolling Carol of the Bells. They nodded to one another at about the same time.
“Hey buddy,” Lazlis said, standing above me. I stood and shook his hand. He was short, with a spherical protruding belly. Blackheads dusted his nose. “Do
n’t you work at Kilgore with Robert?”
I told him I did, and that we met before, at last year’s Risk Rewards dinner. He wore a copper bangle around his left wrist to cleanse his blood of impurities.
“Well, like I told Robert yesterday, I’m sorry to do this to you.”
“Do what to me?”
“But then again you didn’t really give me a choice.”
I asked him again.
“Robert didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That we filed an emergency motion yesterday afternoon to compel WorldScore’s immediate payment of uncontroverted benefits to my client?”
A yawning chasm cracked open behind me and I pitched backward and disappeared into the void.
“It went up on the electronic docket yesterday afternoon. Aren’t you attorney of record for this case?”
“Robert is.”
“You guys don’t communicate?”
There was nothing I could say.
“Well, here’s my daily act of grace. Ave Maria.”
He reached in his bag and handed me the papers.
“I got an extra copy of the motion. Good thing my client’s still downstairs, otherwise he’d skin me alive for helping you.”
“He’s here?”
“Yup. Drove up last night from White Haven. Said he wouldn’t miss this for the world given that his life depends on it. Now he’s arguing with the marshals about letting him carry his tactical folder into the courtroom.”
“His what?”
“It’s a pocket knife of some kind. He keeps it clipped inside his pants pocket. Some kind of chic redneck thing. Says he won’t go anywhere without it, even more so because he’s not permitted to carry a concealed firearm in New York. Hey, don’t worry, young man, he won’t be armed by the time he gets up here. There’s no way the judge will allow it.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Look, I’m telling you what I told Robert yesterday. This guy is a fucking lunatic. You’ll see it in the report attached to the motion. Which is why I really, really want to settle this one, OK? He’s literally calling my office every day asking when he’s going to get his money. Telling me not to mess with the ice bear.”
“The what?”
“The ice bear.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have no idea. But it’s starting to freak me out and my secretary doesn’t want to answer the phone when he calls. He’s picked up on that too and now he’s calling from unlisted numbers. Because he knows I don’t want to speak with him five times a day. But he keeps calling, as if harassing me will get him paid quicker. He might be right, which is why I’m whining to you about it. First, I could manage him by explaining there was a process and that we had to follow the process and blah blah blah but eventually he would get paid. But I’m running out of scraps to toss him. And, truthfully, you guys aren’t helping. It’s been fourteen months since WorldScore cut him a disability check. Which is why I had to file this motion. And which is why Judge McKenzie now has to hear this motion. You think I like writing motions? I hate writing motions. So how about you guys do me a solid and give him something now, OK? It doesn’t have to be a lot. Just what he’s entitled to under the regulations. That way he won’t come after me.”
He winked.
“Let’s settle this one today. Settle this one and I’ll throw my next shitty client who sues WorldScore under the bus and you’ll look like a hero and I can move on and keep my secretary from leaving me.”
I lacked the authority for this. Any agreement to settle now would constitute high treason against Queen Celeste.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Don’t give me that, young man. Robert knows me. We’ve done hundreds of these cases together. He knows I’m not too greedy. Just get WorldScore to authorize some kind of modest income stream soon so we can keep this whole thing moving forward without me having to file any more motions and before my client blows up a kindergarten.”
I told him I would get back to him on the settlement despite knowing it was a nonstarter and thanked him for the copy of the motion. He pawed my shoulder and took a seat near the front of the courtroom and propped a stack of papers against his ample belly, which he proceeded to study.
The motion possessed heft. What remained of the blood in my veins that had not yet turned to vinegar and sweated through my armpits returned as newer, richer blood. I texted Fleeger—“Did you know there’s a motion?”—and jotted billing notes to the top right corner of Lazlis’s memorandum of law. 444/15 RF/SH: in re court appearance; in re study/review plaintiff’s memorandum of law; in re prepare for oral argument against motion to compel payment re comp benefits. Time spent preparing for oral argument while studying the file in court double-billable. Like rolling double sixes. A trick Fleeger taught me. Incapable of processing Lazlis’s sloppy boilerplate syntax, I flipped to Exhibit A, Thomas’s neuropsych evaluation performed by Dr. Henry Spectrum, chief military psychiatrist at the Philadelphia VA.
Here was Thomas in print. Pack of Marlboros and four-plus beers per day. Wild boar and deer hunts. Refurbishing straight-sixes. A contentious custody dispute over his thirteen-year-old daughter. This I underlined to investigate further. A cuckolding ex-wife and his second wife pilfering his pain meds. Sundays with the Baptist band. From 2001 to 2007: Piloting C-130s in and out of Bagram and Baghdad with the Air Force. Two medals for valor and three commendations for marksmanship. Special dispensation upon honorable discharge. From 2007 to 2013: Kabul District Assistant Manager for tactical operations at FreedomQuest. Thomas increasingly agitated by FreedomQuest’s failure to protect him and his men, until the home office just didn’t want to deal with him anymore. Same as Lazlis.
Upon Thomas’s termination the disability claims start rolling in, which FreedomQuest referred to their workers’ compensation carrier, WorldScore, who in turn controverted Thomas’s claims for failure to provide timely notice of injury to his employer; failure to file the proper forms with the Department of Labor; failure to establish the requisite nexus between the alleged ailments and his former employment; requisite nexus between job responsibilities and alleged ailments presented with insufficient particularity. Dr. Spectrum noting that WorldScore’s refusal to compensate Thomas could be a factor in his expanding profile of mental and physical ailments, for which the VA doctors had prescribed Thomas a daily cocktail of oxycodone, Klonopin, lithium, trazadone, Ambien, methadone, and morphine. Still, the doctor’s diagnosis under the PTSD criteria set forth in the DSM-IV as propounded by the American College of Psychiatrists: Thomas’s presentation as a severely disabled former military contractor employed by FreedomQuest was bona fide.
The ice bear cometh.
Fleeger was late. I checked my phone. Still no Fleeger. I texted him a ? Then, motion?
The little blue bar on the phone signaled the messages’ delivery. I scanned through the memo I typed yesterday. The words had grown fuzz. I resumed sweating at the thought of Fleeger not showing up, of me toe-to-toe against Lazlis. A maroon speck of light zipped around the courtroom’s cherry oak paneling, sunlight refracting through Lazlis’s class ring. Fordham. Boston College. Now at rest on the courtroom’s crown molding. Now moving across the ceiling. Now circling as Lazlis noted the pages propped against his belly.
A concussion of sudden knocks against the court’s hardwood door announced Judge McKenzie’s arrival. The commercial lawyers stood as the judge ascended his bench and flopped into what looked like a dentist’s chair. With a looping hand he scribbled notes, motioned for counsel to sit, and leaned into a Nerf-ball microphone.
“Ah yes,” the judge said. “A bona fide commercial matter. Ships. Money. Indemnity. Steel. None of it arbitrary and capricious. You’re both reasonable commercial men. No reason to go wasting the court’s time when we can quickly dispose of this matter. Keep my docket moving. So, counselors, where shall we begin? How about plaintiffs? Mr. Lomax, I presume?”
“Yo
u’re the boss, applesauce,” Lomax replied.
“What do you mean?” the judge asked, amused by the unorthodoxy.
“It’s an expression,” Lomax said, his spiking blood pressure crimsoning his already-pink cranium.
“Which means what?” the judge wanted to know.
Lomax was stumped.
“Don’t tell me you’re asserting something in this courtroom that you don’t understand, counselor. That would be foolish. I’ll ask my clerk. It’s queer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, judge,” the clerk said, fresh from law school with the serious demeanor of a privileged and intelligent young man who never smoked grass.
“I thought so.”
The lawyers in the courtroom mumbled, shifted under the weight of their massive pubic mounds, as the judge swatted at a plump, black fly circling his bench in erratic figure eights.
“Well let’s get on with it,” the judge said. “Plaintiffs? You first.”
Lomax thanked the judge for providing plaintiffs an opportunity to address the court. Defense counsel tapped his teeth with temples fashioned from the horn of an oryx, his Rolex requiring constant reclasping. Lomax handed the clerk a thin stack of documents and commenced spooning his case to the judge.
“The plaintiff, our client, American Pipe, Your Honor, is a Wyoming limited liability company. And now, Your Honor, when you buy steel pipe, especially steel pipe imported from the Orient, well, you need to survey that pipe before the pipe is loaded onto the ship. At which point you take possession of the pipe. FOB ship’s rails.”
All the Beautiful People We Once Knew Page 5
