Marcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

  “So, what does all this have to do with the picture you found? When the Sisters came to see me about Ixtel, that’s the name of the girl in the picture, and when I found out that your father’s law firm was handling the case, I remembered those poker games and the conversation we had that night. I thought I’d try the personal letter approach. Give it a shot. Oh well.”

  “You wrote Arturo a letter.”

  “Didn’t you see the letter when you found the picture? The picture was attached to the letter.”

  “No.” I decide not tell him that I found the picture in the box marked “Trash.”

  “Hold on. Let me see if I can find the copy.” He opens up the file cabinet, the one that partially appears in the picture. Then he returns to where I’m sitting and gives me the letter. “Take your time reading it. I need to step outside and tell the folks to come back later this afternoon, and then I’m going to go down the hall and pee.”

  This is what I read:

  Dear Art:

  Do you remember me? Harvard Law. Poker games at Rudy’s (I forgot his last name) apartment on Friday nights? You guys always got mad at me because I came in with only twenty bucks and walked out with a hundred or more?

  You’ve done well. I was floored when I saw who was representing Vidromek. Sandoval and Holmes. Your own firm! Cabrón! I got this solo practice here in Jamaica Plain making a buck here and there. You or any one of your lawyers ever caught driving under the influence, give me a call.

  I tried to phone you but your secretary wouldn’t patch me in to you. You’re an important guy, I understand. I’m better at writing anyway. Here it goes. I represent a sixteen-year-old girl by the name of Ixtel Jaetz (great name, huh?). She and her mother were driving a car with a Vidromek windshield. A Coca-Cola truck in front of them suddenly stopped and they rammed into it. They hit it at about twenty-five miles an hour. The car did not have airbags, but both mother and child were wearing seat belts. The Coca-Cola driver says he hardly even knew his truck was hit. But Ixtel was pierced on the side of the face just below the left cheekbone with a shard of glass from the windshield. The mother was okay. The windshield, as you know, should not have done this. Ixtel was taken to Mass General Hospital where the shard and fragments of window were removed and her face was temporarily patched up.

  I am enclosing for you a picture of the girl that I took a couple of weeks ago. When I saw you were representing Vidromek, I thought I’d try a personal appeal here. I could sue you, but why fool ourselves? You’d kill me with depositions and other bullshit discovery that you know a solo practitioner like me can’t handle. So I’m proposing something radical here: Let’s do the right thing! I won’t go after pain and suffering and all those other damages that I might be entitled to, and in return your client pays for the cost of the reconstructive surgery plus my twenty percent contingency fee, which comes to about sixty-eight thousand dollars. A drop in the ocean for Vidromek, wouldn’t you say?

  These are poor people, Art. Mass General waived the hospital charges under their Good Samaritan program. The girl is with the Sisters of Mercy at a home in Lawrence. Ixtel’s mother died a few months after the accident from liver cancer. The father, who was from Hungary originally (hence the name Jaetz), died when the girl was two. The Sisters were named legal guardians since there was no other family. They’re only asking for the cost of the surgery. By the way, the reconstructive surgery will not only somewhat restore the girl’s beauty, it will also allow her to speak clearly, chew, and alleviate the pain she feels whenever she eats or tries to speak now.

  What do you say, Art? You want to do the right thing? Call me.

  Yours truly,

  Jerry García

  I look up when I finish reading and see Jerry García sitting in front of me. “Ixtel. What is she like?”

  “She’s been through a lot.” Jerry García frowns. “No father. Face gets disfigured. Loses her mother. She went kind of wild there for a while, but now she’s on the right track. I don’t know, even with her face there’s kind of an inner beauty that shines out.”

  Jerry García’s words jolt me. It is as if he has given a name to what I could not name.

  “Would you like to meet her? Lawrence is about an hour from Boston. I can take you there. I try to go at least every other Saturday. I get a kick out of the girls who live there and the Sisters are a blast. Most of them are from El Salvador and they barely speak English.”

  I am silent. If the picture had such an effect, what would the real person do to me? Finally I say, “Yes, I would like to meet her someday.” I feel at that moment that I already know her.

  “Well then, I’ll arrange it.” The phone rings again. “Don’t worry, it’ll go straight to my secretary.” He winks at me.

  I realize that the telephone has been ringing constantly since I sat on the sofa. It rings once (that must be when it goes to voice mail), then after thirty seconds, another ring. Behind every one of those rings there is a person with a problema.

  “You said you got a response from my father to your letter?”

  “Yes, he wrote me back.”

  “May I see the letter?”

  I can see Jerry García hesitating, but he gets up and takes a piece of paper from a folder on his desk. He hands it to me. This time he sits in front of me while I read.

  Dear Jerry:

  I see you are still doing God’s work (?). Please consider this a response to your “personal” letter. Vidromek will not pay for any injuries to your client.

  Regards,

  Arturo Sandoval

  I understand now beyond any doubt that my father knows about Ixtel. He saw her picture and read Jerry García’s letter. If the letter came to him and the picture was attached to the letter, it is through him that the picture found its way to the box labeled “Trash.”

  “What does a question mark in parentheses mean?”

  He laughs. “I think he’s questioning whether I’m really doing God’s work or just trying to make a little money.”

  “Which is it?”

  “What can I tell you? I have to live.”

  “You never asked me why I came to see you,” I say after what seems like a long time.

  He waves a hand at me. “I know why you came.” He waits until my eyes meet his. “I know. Trust me. I know. The other day I called again and talked to Holmes’s son, what’s his name?”

  “Wendell.”

  “An arrogant little prick. A shame. For one so young, I mean. I understand they get that way eventually, but usually not before they graduate from law school.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “I deal with people like him a hundred times a day. They look at me and naturally assume I’m not as smart as they are. God help us. But think about it, it’s a tremendous tactical advantage, not to mention personally liberating, to have others think I’m a dummy.”

  “I found the picture in a box marked ‘Trash.’”

  Jerry García raises his hand for me to stop. “You saw the picture of Ixtel and you wanted to find out more about her. That is why you’re here.” He stares at me. “I’ll take care of Ixtel, don’t worry. I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

  The telephone rings again. I stand up and stretch out my hand. I am not sure what just happened, but there does not seem to be a need for further talking. “I should go.”

  Jerry García stands up as well and takes my hand. “Marcelo,” he says, “if you want to help Ixtel, all I need is a clue.”

  “A clue?”

  “Vidromek and…its lawyers, they claim they shouldn’t pay because they had no knowledge that the windshields were defective when they made them. Even now, they are still making them the same dangerous way, because if they fix the problem they would be admitting there was a problem. What we have to do to stop this is find a document that shows they knew the windshields were not safe and they kept on making them nevertheless. They have to have known. It is impossible for them not to. Somewhere in the Vidromek document
s there is a document proving this prior knowledge.”

  “There are boxes and boxes of documents.”

  “I need something that will take me to the document or something that will show them that I know it exists. If there is such a document, and I know that there is, it’s not right to hide it. Whoever’s working on the Vidromek litigation knows about it.”

  I think of Stephen Holmes and Wendell and Robert Steely. I remember Jasmine telling me that Arturo looked at every document associated with Vidromek.

  “If you find a clue and you decide to give it to me, I’ll do what I can to protect you and your father, but I can’t make any guarantees.”

  “He would lose the case.”

  “Maybe. Most likely his client will lose some money.”

  “Sixty-eight thousand dollars.”

  “It’ll be more now. They’ll have to pay more for playing games with me.”

  “Your fee will be higher.” As soon as I say this, I wish I hadn’t.

  “You better believe it. Maybe I can get my secretary back. Think about it.”

  “I will need to decide.”

  “Hey, whatever you decide, you would still be able to help Ixtel. You can take her and the other girls to your school to ride the ponies. I’m going to give you the address of the Sisters in Lawrence in case you can go see her. I’ll let her know about you and let the Sisters know you may be coming. This friend of yours at work, Jasmine you said, does she drive?”

  “Yes.” I know because Jasmine has told me that she drives to Vermont to spend weekends with her father.

  “She can take you then. Or give me a call and I’ll take you. Or, you know, it would be great if you can get your father to take you.”

  We smile at each other. We know this is not likely to happen.

  CHAPTER 20

  I get back to the office around one o’clock. I just completed a trip in the city on my own and I should be happy but I am not. Deflated. That is the word that comes to mind.

  “That was some doctor’s appointment,” Juliet says when I walk past her.

  For a moment I do not know what she is talking about. Lying requires an incredible amount of mental effort. “There were many people waiting,” I say.

  “Speaking of waiting, Wendell has been waiting for you. He needs you to do an errand for him.”

  I have seen very little of Wendell in the past two weeks. He calls Juliet from somewhere, his boat perhaps, and dictates to her what I am supposed to do. I now understand that I have been doing his work. Still, I am glad that he has been away. Every time I do see him, he asks about the boat ride. I have not brought myself to tell him no. It is such a simple word, but uttering it means that Wendell will be my enemy. I am afraid of what that will feel like—to be hated by someone. Then there is Paterson. To say no to Wendell is to say good-bye to Paterson. Wendell will make sure of that.

  So I keep stalling and he keeps insisting. He is losing patience. But now I have another reason to stall. I need to be around the Vidromek documents so that I can look for the document that will help Ixtel. But to find such a document would also mean the end of Paterson.

  “Marshello, Marshello, where have you been? I leave you alone for a few days and you lose all your good work habits.” Wendell is typing very fast and hardly looks up at me. His arms are golden-brown from the sun. There are small flakes of skin peeling from the top of his forehead.

  “I had a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He looks up and winks at me. “Listen, I’m only here for a few minutes. I gotta take advantage of Daddy-o being away. You need to do something. Do you know that guy Robert Steely, the one that got canned last week?”

  “Yes.” Canned. Another mysterious figure of speech. I think of fruit being put into cans. What is the relationship between “canned” and being asked to leave a job?

  “You need to take this letter I’m typing to him. Father just called from someplace in Italy and asked me to do it. He wants me to deliver it personally. But you can do it. All you need to do is make sure that he signs a copy of the letter where it says, ‘Receipt acknowledged.’”

  Another trip? Today? And this one without all the preparation that went into the trip to Jerry García’s office? “I don’t know. I do not know where Robert Steely lives. We could get a messenger. We can ask Jasmine to call a messenger.”

  “Relax. Juliet is going to get you a cab. The cab will take you there and the cab will bring you back. Father wants someone from the firm to witness that this letter was given to him and that Robert Steely signed it. He’s being overly cautious as usual, but what are we going to do. We need to send someone who knows Robert Steely. And what better person than you? Who would ever doubt someone like you? There. Let’s print it, make a copy, and off you go.”

  We walk to the printer located in front of Juliet’s desk. “Juliet, if you can do us the favor of calling this gentleman a cab,” Wendell says. Juliet immediately picks up the telephone. She has the telephone number for the cab company memorized. Wendell takes the piece of paper from the printer and throws it on Juliet’s desk. “Make a copy and put it in an envelope, will you, sweetie?”

  Then Wendell looks at me. He looks stern. The jovial Wendell has disappeared in a matter of seconds. “Do you have an answer for me?”

  I know what he is talking about. It suddenly occurs to me that I am afraid of Wendell and that my refusal to say no to him is cowardice. “I don’t have an answer for you,” I say. I tell myself that I need to stall in order to be able to help Ixtel. But I know that I am lying to myself about this.

  “Next week. Any day next week. Jasmine needs to be on that boat next week. That’s it. If it doesn’t happen next week, the bond is broken. You do not want that to happen. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” I feel Wendell’s index finger on my chest and I swat it away. I have never ever in my life thought I could hit another human being, but just now I realize I can.

  Wendell glares at me and then, as if nothing happened, breaks into a smile. “Next week. Remember.” Then he looks at Juliet, who has been staring at us the whole time. “Make sure he brings back a signed copy of the letter.”

  I put the letter in my backpack. Juliet tells me that a cab will pick me up in the back of the building. All I have to do is stand there like a dummy, she says, and the cab will honk at me. I want to stop by the mailroom to see Jasmine but I am still breathing hard from the encounter with Wendell. “People will run over you if you don’t show anger,” Jasmine told me once. That’s what I feel like now, run over. Now I know why words like “hatred” and “enemy” are used at the law firm.

  It is only a few minutes before a cab pulls up and honks at me. I show him the address on the envelope that contains the letter to Robert Steely and we are off. There is a plastic divider between the cabbie and myself. It is not possible here in the real world, as Arturo calls it, to be protected by a shield of plastic. There does not seem to be a way to maintain throughout the day the peace I found when remembering. “Be in the world but not of the world.” The words are from Jesus. But I have not the slightest idea how to accomplish that or even if it’s possible. The world will always poke you in the chest with its index finger.

  Fortunately, Robert Steely lives a long way from the law firm. I say fortunately because it gives me time to breathe steadily again and to stop thinking about Wendell. I am thinking now about Jerry García and the calmness that he showed while he was talking to me. I see him taking his time with each of the people waiting for him. I think of his voice and how he spoke with a fire that did not contain any hatred.

  Robert Steely lives in a neighborhood where the houses are closer together than where I live. We travel slowly through streets with children riding bicycles. The cab driver stops to ask directions from a woman pushing a baby carriage.

  The cab driver points at a house. “That’s it.”

  Robert Steely’s house is a one-story house painted light green with shutters that are
darker green. The door is red. I knock on a brass knocker shaped like the head of a lion. Robert Steely opens the door.

  “Marcelo.” His voice is flat. There is no surprise in his face. “Come in.”

  “Wendell asked me to bring you this,” I say as I hand him the envelope. “I am supposed to watch you sign it and bring it back.”

  He tears an end, blows into the envelope, and takes out the letter. He shakes his head as he reads. “Unbelievable.” He looks at me. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “Come sit down.” He is gesturing toward a room cluttered with the kind of toys that small children play with.

  “There is a cab.”

  “Oh, the cabdriver is getting paid for waiting. This will only take a second. I just need to read this carefully. Sit, please.”

  In a corner of a room I see a red battery-operated keyboard that contains only eight keys. The sight of it reminds me of Jasmine and the conversation that we had in the cafeteria. She asked what takes more skill, to play music composed by someone else or to improvise. There are events that happen by coincidence, that appear out of the blue, unexpected. Here is one. I am here not because I thought of coming to see Robert Steely but because Wendell sent me. Robert Steely is the lawyer who did the most work on the Vidromek litigation. He is the most familiar with all the Vidromek files. He is sitting now in front of me and I see this now as a sign. Will he help me? Will he help Ixtel? The question is, do I have the skill to improvise?

  Robert Steely puts the letter on the coffee table. “In their hurry to get me out of the law firm, they forgot to get me to sign an agreement that I will not use any information I learned while working at the firm. As soon as I sign this, my last paycheck will be sent. In other words, if I don’t sign it, I don’t get my paycheck. Excuse me, I’m still a little bitter. I shouldn’t talk that way in front of you. You’re the boss’s son.”

  “My father canned you.”

  “Well, I worked with Stephen Holmes, but since Holmes was away, it fell upon your father to do the honors.”