by Norman Crane
Johnson turns it’s too late for me to look away:
“Charlie!”
I take a deep breath. “Mrs. Johnson.”
“Can I join you?”
I smile in lieu of an answer, hoping to twist my mouth into an expression of sarcasm, but it either doesn’t work or Mrs. Johnson is wilfully oblivious because she wastes no time dropping into the chair opposite mine.
“I sure as heck didn’t expect to see you here,” she says.
“A pleasant surprise.”
She eyes my plate. “I see you got yourself a bran muffin there. I don’t like those myself. I prefer something with a little more flavour that satisfies my sweet tooth.”
Considering her mood when I saw her on Friday, Mrs Johnson is oddly chipper. I therefore proceed with caution. “I’m watching my waistline. Can’t afford to buy a new suit,” I say.
It must dawn on her I’m not wearing one. “I knew there was something different about you.”
I look like you, I think. I say, “Casual Saturday.”
“You look…” She pushes her cookie into her mouth and chews. “You look like you could be the one going to see a lawyer today, not the one being one.”
“A real person with real problems?”
She scratches her head through her green hat. “Yeah, just like that,” she says, and her subsequent smile is the opposite of sarcasm. “I’m not here to take up your time, though. Don’t worry about that. I just wanted the company.” She pauses, before saying in a single breath, “Jack and I decided to mortgage the house to have enough money to keep suing the hospital.”
I want to tell her that’s a rash decision. I want to tell her the law moves slower than a tortoise through condensed milk and she has plenty of time to make up her mind. I want to tell her not to mortgage the house! But I’m no longer drunk, which means I’m back in control of my honesty, which means I’m no longer honest unless it suits me, so I bite my tongue, then scald it by drinking hot coffee, and nod stupidly, repeating to myself Winterson’s legal mantra: advise your clients but don’t make decisions for them.
“I’m really not here today as a lawyer, Mrs. Johnson,” I say, borrowing some of Rosie’s formality. “But if you want to proceed with the case, we’ll proceed with the case.”
We finish our pathetic meal in silence.
I bid Mrs. Johnston goodbye at the door, weaving out of the way to let a group of Goth teenagers amble by, and turn my back on her. I’m far from home and don’t feel like walking anymore, but somehow calling a cab is even less appealing. I might catch a glimpse of my face in its rear-view mirror. Plus, it’s still a beautiful summer day and the sidewalks are still empty. Making use of them will be my act of rebellion for the day. Tiny and insignificant, it’s all the independence I can handle. Any more and I might just break my back. Because although I’m not spineless yet, I’m getting there. One of these days I’ll have to learn to slither home.
I don’t realise just how sour my mood is until I re-enter the apartment. Rosie’s not back yet and the entire place reeks of sweat and alcohol. I turn off the air conditioner and open all the windows. When that doesn’t immediately help, I take a shower. Then I change the bedsheets and bring the dirty ones down to the laundry room. Waiting for the laundry, I hop upstairs, intentionally ignoring the elevator, and end up taking out my aggression on the sofa cushions while trying to rearrange them. I retrieve the wash, wondering what it is I’m angry about. Maybe Rosie was right. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to be a lawyer. What if I lack the mental toughness? Rosie would tell me to leave work at the door. Mrs. Johnson’s life is not mine and beyond this line only my life enters. But Rosie’s at work. I pass a miserable Saturday evening binge-streaming The Good Wife and when Rosie finally gets back, we eat a reheated dinner and go to sleep with our backs facing toward each other and our attentions elsewhere.
Sunday morning dawns. Rosie and I take turns showering, brushing our teeth and making food. I brew tea, Rosie fries eggs. The breakfast smells overtake the lingering odour of drunkenness and when I finish eating, wiping my plate with my last piece of bread, I feel at ease again. I shouldn’t get so emotional, I conclude. Rosie flips virtual pages of the New York Times on her tablet and when she speaks it’s with her eyes cast down. She responds to everything I say but doesn’t say anything on her own. Despite the lack of attention, which I still ascribe to Friday night, I desire more than anything to make her laugh. I’m unsuccessful, so I wash the dishes instead. She keeps reading. I ask her what’s happening in the world. She pronounces the words of a headline. I ask her if anything’s the matter. She pronounces the word “no”. “Do you regret what happened?” I ask. She reminds me that I’m supposed to meet with Boris and Oliver. I didn’t even know she knew about that. “Call me on your way back from the pool party,” she says, pointing at my phone, “and I’ll make dinner.” I dress in an old pair of dress pants and a shirt, and take a pair of swimming trunks just in case. Looking outside, I see the sun burning its way through the atmosphere, changing the world to jelly. Boris was right. It’s going to be another hot day.
Oliver’s father’s house sits in the hills on the outskirts of the city, where the snaking streets make it easy to lose one’s self, so I drive slowly, passing between sprawling green lawns and their imposing houses, set comfortably away from each other and well back from the street, keeping one eye on the fresh asphalt and the other, squinting, on the numbers and surnames written on gates, boulders and ornate mailboxes.
I honk as I pull in to what I believe is the correct driveway, but the gate is already open. I sense the gaze of cameras.
My tires roll.
A mansion approaches into view: crimson brick, white trim, black roof. I stop in front of the garage beside three other cars, all more expensive than mine, and get out. I don’t know if I should knock on the front door or not. My phone buzzes. The message from Boris tells me to come round the back. I suppose there are more cameras here. Their hidden but theoretically necessary existence disconcerts me, like dark matter. I put my swimming trunks under my arm and stroll along the edge of the house on a path of patio stones. The stones are perfectly placed. Not one blade of grass grows between them. Weeds are almost extinct in the hills above the city.
“Charlie!” Boris yells.
He and Oliver are sitting by the pool, whose still water shares the same vivid green as the grass, drinking beer. Oliver smiles and tosses a can to me. I drop my swimming trunks to catch it. Approaching, I scan the area for more people, but see no one. Not that I mind. Boris picks up a chair, snaps it open and places it beside his own. I snap open my beer, sit and take a sip. The taste stings with memories of Rosie’s face. One day, we, too, will have a place like this, I hope. Then I use my lawyerly confidence to transmutate that hope into a certainty. Although as Canadians we like to consider ourselves different from Americans, if there are two things we’ve picked up from our southern neighbours it’s an addiction to suing people and a sincere belief in the power of positive thinking. I think positively about owning a big piece of land with a big brick mansion on it. The beer stings a little less.
As three young professionals, naturally all we talk about is work.
“Ollie’s getting fed up with criminal law,” Boris says at some point, and Oliver nods his approval. “He says all his firm’s clients are depressing. I keep telling him that we don’t deal with the most upstanding people, either, but he says at least we get to go on the attack once in a while, and at least when we deal with corporate or institutional clients, they pay up, and I can’t really counter that line of argument. Can you?”
“Not at this point in time, your honour,” I say.
Oliver’s eyes twinkle.
Around senior lawyers, we keep our mouths shut and our opinions to ourselves—baby vultures hesitant to wedge their pink faces between the hardened wings of experienced buzzards pecking at a newly dead carcass—but when it’s just us, safe in our shared lack of wisdom, we banter and expound like nobody�
��s business. All the better if there are laymen around to hear us. We might even slide a business card into one of their pockets…
“Is that a problem particular to Stephenson Ashford or with defence work in general?” I ask, remembering how many long nights and weekend evenings Rosie’s been pulling because she wants to work at that firm.
“In general.”
Shirtless, sweaty and with a pronounced belly, Oliver resembles a plastic buddha.
“So would you recommend it to him?” Boris says.
Oliver’s belly deforms as he swallows a loud swig of beer.
“Recommend what?” I ask.
“Private civil practice,” he says.
They both stare at me. “It’s pretty good work,” I say, wondering how I would fare as a criminal lawyer, arguing at bail hearings and criminal trials, trying to convince a judge to lower a sex offender’s sentence, standing up in front of a jury and quoting from the constitution as if it’s the word of a God whose presence has been expunged from our courthouses and minds, replaced by the all-knowingness and infallibility of another supreme being: the Supreme Court of Canada.
Really, I know squat about criminal law. “Civil certainly pays better,” Boris says to Oliver, and they exchange devilish grins. “But Charlie knows all about that, having just settled a case worth some fine