by Norman Crane
both exhausted and expunged. Through the silence that follows, I wait impatiently for the one sentiment I’m desperate to hear, that I so selfishly crave above all else.
“Damn. That’s rough. Those cunts,” Frank Delaney says.
I need this.
“They fucked you over.”
Sympathy. Being told I’ve been wronged. Knowing that someone cares about and understands my side of the story. It fills with me energy, and I don’t care how temporary or superficial it is. I see the world sharply again. I get off the hood of my car, stand on the asphalt and realise that for the first time I know exactly what it’s like to be the voice on the other end of the telephone call, the nail biter waiting in reception to complain to a lawyer about the injustice done to him and seeking to be made whole. I always knew what the client needed. Now I also know what he wants; and how easy and disgusting it is to take advantage of that to make money.
“Have you planned your next move yet?”
“Not yet.”
I hear the crumple of paper, a drawer closing, footsteps. “And this video they got, think you can get it taken down?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m poison,” I say. “No firm in the city will take me on.”
“So try a different city.”
“Maybe.”
“Hey, Charlie?”
“Yes, Mr. Delaney?”
“Call me Frank. Also, you have to get those fuckers back.”
I stay quiet. “Revenge,” he clarifies. “If they want to play life by business rules, we’ll play life by business rules. How lucky for you that I’m a businessman, eh? Listen, you ever hear of Vlad the Impaler? Actually, you know what? Never mind.” He gives me an address. “Meet me here in an hour. Just make sure you’re not being tailed.”
He hangs up before I can decide if he’s being serious or deadpan, but the address is legitimate. I look it up on Google Maps. It’s in an industrial district and looks to be some kind of storage complex. Because I figure I’ve got nothing left to lose, I start the engine and go.
Frank Delaney is already waiting when I arrive. He waves to me with his bandaged hand, which thankfully is no longer stained with blood, and I pull up slowly, taking in the landscape of low, long buildings, before stopping my car beside his. There’s not a third person in sight. I could have driven to the moon or into the post-apocalypse, for all I know.
“Your old office,” he says. “Can you still get inside?”
I’ve already handed over my key, but Winterson did say I have until the end of today to get my belongings. “I should be able to,” I say. The “Why?” is implied.
“Great.”
I follow him down an alley between two rows of numbered storage buildings to #11. Like its neighbours, #11 is divided into a dozen sections, A through L. Frank Delaney kneels before C, inputs a code, unlocking its orange, garage-like door, and pulls the door up—revealing: shining guns mounted on a wall rack.
My bones stiffen.
Before I can say a word, he ducks into the storage shed, removes one of the guns and points it at the wall.
“Frank,” I manage to say.
Even if I wanted revenge, which I’m not sure I do, because I’m not sure of anything other than wanting to be told I’ve been cruelly mistreated in the Holy Trinity of love, friendship and employment, I surely don’t want this flavour of it. Whatever Frank Delaney’s planned, it’s insane. Events have blown by me and are rocketing farther and farther forward, leaving me alone and behind. I need a place to stay, for Christ’s sake, not a weapon!
“Watch this, Charlie.” He pulls the trigger.
The gun barrel spits out a metal shaft topped with a white flag that unfurls lazily, revealing the message “Bang!”
My skeletal systems remains intact.
“Ever been to The Joke’s On Us downtown?” Frank Delaney asks, pushing the shaft back into the gun. It resists.
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s a gag store I bought into a few years ago. The owner, Bob Bittlesworth, keeps his excess merchandise here,” he says, finally succeeding in returning the fake gun to its natural state. He hangs it back in its place. “Bob’s got some real gems stashed here. Some of them not exactly legal. But, cross my heart and hope to die, I believe we’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.” That’s unlikely, because I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I don’t say that and, instead, let Frank Delaney show me object after silly object. He explains the use of each in tender detail: from the obvious, like stink bombs, to the more technologically advanced, like tiny speakers that moan in sexual ecstasy, as if you’re watching porn. I’m relieved he doesn’t want me to threaten, injure or kill anyone. In the end, I leave storage shed #11C with a wide sampling of gadgets for what Frank Delaney calls “our first salvo against the enemy”.
Armed with this weaponry of mischief, I approach Winterson & Partners.
It’s fitting I don’t remember the drive over here. I was on the moon, now I’ve stepped into a western. In my head, I’m wearing the white cowboy hat, and the black one, blown out of all proportion, rests crookedly on the building itself. Not only has Frank Delaney succeeded in sympathising with me but he’s also infected me with his boyish exhilaration of life. Truthfully, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’ve been an automaton since last seeing Rosie’s face, but automatism is a valid criminal defense in many common law jurisdictions, including Ontario, where it complicates the mens rea, or guilty mind, which along with the actus reus, the guilty act, is necessary to prove guilt. There are exceptions. We are speaking of the law, after all. The law excepts: this is the law. And I, of the white hat and fart spray in my pockets, am merely its humble servant, the lawman, whose justice shall be done to the tune of an Ennio Morricone score playing in my head…
“Good afternoon, Charlie,” Amanda says to me in reception.
The music stops.
Immediately, I sheepen.
“You already returned your keys. Are you here to see someone or did you forget something?” Perhaps she spies something unusual in my eyes, because she continues in a less formal and more maternal tone, “Talk with me a minute, hun.” She takes off her headset. She stands. We’re both standing, and she’s so much shorter than I am but she commands my attention. I take my hands out of my pockets out of fear of accidentally setting off a moan or an unpleasant odour. “Will you listen to a story?”
I nod, certain she’s figured me out. But how?
“Really, it’s not even a story. It’s about my sons. You’ve seen them, right?” I have. They’re big, wide guys who play football on college scholarships in the States. “And you also see me. Long ago, I stopped being able to force my sons to do what I want. You can’t scare seventh grade six-footers with an ear pulling if you can’t reach their ears. That would be ridiculous. Yet I couldn’t let them do what they wanted. That would have been irresponsible parenting. So do you know what I did?”
“You reasoned with them?”
Amanda’s phone rings. She picks up, does her standard greeting, and puts the call on hold. She moves her attention back to me. “No, Charlie. If I was good at reasoning, I would’ve become a lawyer. Besides, reasoning usually answers the question: what can I get away with? Sometimes you can get away with things you shouldn’t be doing. Life’s not always about consequences. When my sons were acting in a way I thought was wrong, I asked them merely to consider how their actions reflected who they were. Because unless you stop living, you can get rid of everything you own, end all the relationships you have, and move half way around the world to start over, but the one thing you can’t leave behind is yourself. So even when I couldn’t reach high enough to smack my sons upside their heads, I could still ask them: is this who you are. Is this who you are, Charlie?”
Her eyes are drills. “I’m a lawyer,” I say.
“That’s what you do, not who you are.”
But what we do is a fundamental part of who we are. It’s shorthand for class, education
, erudition, and a hundred other categories. Actions, the saying goes, speak louder than words. Though not all actions are dictated by our jobs, and that I’m a lawyer does not mean I have to act lawyerly in every sphere of life. And there are other spheres. Rosie was right to draw the border at the apartment door. Here the job ends, and private life begins. In theory. In practice, she became synonymous with her legal sphere, which obliterated her private life and encased her like a bubble. I don’t want to be like that. My mind’s a mess, but Amanda’s question cuts gracefully through all the gunk sliding down its walls. I answer more forcefully than I expect:
“I don’t know who I am.”
“Then it’s best you figure it out before committing.”
That night is the first night I spend sleeping in my car—or, more accurately, tossing and turning while parked next to the curb. The seat makes an uncomfortable bed, and I could easily afford a hotel room, but the dimestore romance of being on the street is too much to pass up. It’s an experience, a story to tell, and I need those in my life. Of course, the romance is tinged with reality. I’m finished as a lawyer and it’s easier to repeat that I don’t want to be one, leaving on my terms, than to accept that I can’t be one, at least not now and in this city. But that doesn’t change the outcome. At some dark hour of the early morning, as I’m flitting between dreams and cramped wakefulness, unsure if I’m out of job and out of Rosie or suffering a