The Neon Lawyer

by Victor Methos

  “Well, that’s good. My granddaddy was a lawyer. I ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Yup. Civil rights lawyer down south in Mississippi during all the bullshit when that was goin’ down. They killed him for it, man. He was walkin’ out of a grocery store one night and pop. They shot him in the head. One shot. Killed him ’cause he didn’t think black folk should be beaten by the police. I remember him, though. He used to tell me that the Good Lord always lets justice win in the end, that’s what he’d say. ‘Good Lord’ll let justice always win in the end.’ I remember that much about him, but them boys that killed him got arrested and then acquitted by a white Mississippi jury.” He zoned out a moment, his eyes glazing over as he stared at a spot on the wall. “Don’t see how justice won, there.”

  Brigham thought back to his own grandfather, a convicted felon and con man. Brigham remembered the smell of the jails when he’d visit his grandfather—sweat and Lysol. The only thing his grandfather had ever taught him was how to put electrical tape on a dollar bill and feed it into a vending machine, then pull it out at the last second: buy a soda, and keep the change.

  “Was your dad a lawyer too?” Brigham asked.

  “Nah, he didn’t have the head for it. Me neither. My daddy was a car mechanic and I ended up out here, man. But I ain’t complainin’. I put in a good twenty and my retirement is set. I can leave any time.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Since Mandy died, I don’t wanna be alone. Sandwiches and TV is all I got waitin’ for me at home.” He finished his beer and rose with a groan, placing the bottle back in the plastic bag to be taken home. “You take tomorrow off, and go find yourself a job, you hear?”

  “I will. Thanks, Rick.”

  Rick placed his hand on Brigham’s shoulder as he left. Brigham waited a few minutes, then finished the beer and headed home. He would have a long day tomorrow.

  Home was nothing more than a studio apartment in an area of the city known as the Avenues. The streets were so narrow and the stop signs so confusing that he could never see which direction cars were coming from. Traffic lights seemed to be placed at random, and every day or two, Brigham would hear the metallic crunch of an accident.

  He rode his bicycle up the streets toward an old Victorian house. It had been split into five apartments and he rented the basement—the cheapest space. His apartment was down a hallway and a set of winding, dilapidated stairs. As he rolled his bike inside, one of the other tenants in the house opened her door.

  June was dressed in a black Depeche Mode T-shirt and black jeans, with a white beanie on her head. Her glasses were thin and warped and looked like they might fall off her head any second.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  “Working late?”

  “Had to take a couple of hours off today, so I stayed late to make up for it.” He hesitated, but had to tell her. The pressure was building up inside him, and he might explode if he didn’t. “I got sworn in to the Bar today.”

  “No way! I thought that was, like, next year.”

  “No, it was today.”

  She hugged him, and he could smell her body wash.

  “Seriously, congratulations, Brigham. You going out to celebrate?”

  “Um, no. I thought I’d just hang out.”

  “What? No way. We’re going out.”

  “You don’t have to, June.”

  “Bullshit. We’re going.”

  “Lemme change, then.”

  Brigham took a quick shower and changed into jeans and a button-down shirt. June was sitting on his couch watching television. She rose and fixed his collar. June had been fixing his collar since he’d moved into the complex. They would hang out, watch Battlestar Galactica together on Netflix, and go out for dinner sometimes when neither of them had plans. Never had it gone past that. She was literally his only friend right now, and sex had a way of ruining friendships. The cost wasn’t worth the benefit.

  They walked to a nearby barbecue restaurant as the sun set. It was right next to a vegan restaurant, and legend had it that the owners had once gotten into a fistfight.

  Several people were walking dogs, and a few joggers were out, too. The Avenues wasn’t a place to raise a family, so instead there were couples with dogs.

  The waitress seated them at the window next to some football players from the university, and June ordered bruschetta. The restaurant was always packed with the college crowd, and the football players already had several empty beer bottles on their table. They were loud enough that the waitress asked them if they could quiet down.

  “So what now, Brigham? Conquering the world one case at a time?”

  “I don’t know about that. There’s no jobs. You got two law schools here pumping out lawyers in a state that doesn’t need any more. It’s the same story nationwide. It’s a dying profession, I think.”

  “There’ll always be lawyers. People can’t settle arguments by themselves. Besides, all the politicians are lawyers—they’re not going to let the profession disappear.”

  “Maybe.” He tried some of the bruschetta. It was so oily that it dripped onto his shirt, and he dabbed at it with a napkin. “What about you? That art degree’s gotta come in handy somewhere.”

  “I think the people who major in dance have better prospects than art majors. I may have to—”

  “Hey!” one of the men at the next table shouted. “Hey, boo, what’s your name?”

  Brigham glanced over. The men were eyeballing June as if she were sitting at the table by herself.

  “Ignore them,” she said.

  “Hey, boo, come over here. Have a drink with us. Don’t be all shy.”

  Brigham turned to them. “She’s with me, fellas. We’re good.”

  “Hey, fuck you, queer. We ain’t talkin’ to you.”

  Whenever Brigham’s father was drunk, he would get the belt and take out his aggression on Brigham or Brigham’s mother. When he sobered up, he would cry and beg their forgiveness. Everything would be fine, until the next time he got drunk. Drunk bravado had a special place in Brigham’s heart.

  Brigham felt his anger rising, but told himself that when people drank, they weren’t themselves. The college students were just drunk.

  “How about next round’s on me, fellas?”

  “How about I fuck that skinny bitch in the ass and make you watch, yo.”

  Brigham smiled and turned away. He had a glass of water in front of him, and next to that was the plate of bruschetta.

  “Brigham, ignore them.”

  He grabbed the plate, twisted around, and hurled it as hard as he could. It slammed into the football player’s face, tomatoes slopping down onto his collar.

  “Time to go,” Brigham said, grabbing June’s arm and pulling her out of the restaurant.

  The three players were on their feet, so drunk that they nearly fell over each other. But even drunk, they were faster and stronger than Brigham. He turned the corner into an alley between the vegan restaurant and the barbecue place, still clinging to June’s arm, and made a dash for the street.

  The players were too fast and they were already on him, grabbing his arms from behind. One of them circled around—the one with the oily stains—as the other two hung back.

  “Problem here, boys?” came a new voice.

  A bald man stood with his arms folded, muscles bulging—he looked like a cage fighter. Clipped to his belt was the gold shield of a detective with the Salt Lake PD.

  “He saved your ass,” the football player said, shoulder-checking Brigham as he walked away.

  The detective paced the alley, waiting until the three men were out of earshot. “What the hell did you do to them, Brigham?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He threw a plate of bruschetta,” June offered.

/>   The detective shook his head. “In my restaurant?”

  “It was just tomatoes, Will.”

  “It’s assault, dipshit. You’re trying to become a lawyer—you can’t have an assault charge on your record. And I own this fucking place and have to go explain to my customers that it wasn’t a big deal. People want calm when they’re eating, not fights.”

  “Sorry.”

  Will shook his head again and headed to the kitchen door in the back of the restaurant. Brigham chuckled, and June pushed him in the chest with both hands, making him stumble back.

  “What?” he said.

  “They were going to kick your ass.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “But they were going to.”

  “But they didn’t. It’s fine.”

  She sighed as though having to explain something to a child for the fiftieth time. “It’s not fine, Brigham. You brought yourself down to their level. If you do that, you’re no better than they are. All you had to do was ignore it, and they would’ve lost interest. Why did you have to do that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, seriously—that was inconsiderate of me. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she appeared furious. Then, as quickly as it had come, the anger faded. She sighed again and took his arm. “Come on, dipshit. Let’s go watch a movie.”

  Five

  Brigham woke up early the next morning. He googled “law firms in salt lake city” and read down the list. At least thirty were within walking distance, and half a dozen were in the US Bank building that wasn’t more than a mile from his house.

  He only had one suit, which he’d bought secondhand from a place called Deseret Industries, and two ties. He wore his best white button-down shirt, which meant the only one without any stains, and shined his shoes with a damp paper towel. Brigham stared at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look one bit like a lawyer. He looked like someone imitating a lawyer, who was worried everyone would see through him. It didn’t matter, though—he had nothing else to do today.

  The bike ride was short and easy, predominantly downhill, so he didn’t even have to pedal and risk working up a sweat. The US Bank building was on Main Street, past the largest shopping mall in Utah, and across the street from Lamb’s Grill—a place Brigham had always wanted to eat at but couldn’t afford.

  He locked his bike to a newspaper bin, got out six résumés, and went in. The first floor was all glass and shine. An old security guard was asleep at a black desk. Brigham sneaked past him to the list of tenants and memorized the floors with the law firms. Then he hopped on the elevators and went to the highest one, on the sixteenth floor.

  The law firm had no walls, only glass. The carpets were white and clean and the windows went from floor to ceiling and looked down onto Salt Lake City. Noles, Valdo & Whittaker. Brigham strolled in confidently. It was fake confidence. He actually felt like he could vomit at any second. But he stood in front of the receptionist, who looked up at him without smiling.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to one of the partners, please.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever is in charge of hiring.”

  She looked him up and down as though he were a beggar asking for change. In some ways, he felt that way, too.

  She called someone on her phone and said, “There’s some guy here to talk to whichever attorney is in charge of hiring . . . Yeah . . . Yeah, okay.” She hung up. “Just a moment.”

  The lobby was plush, and the paintings on the walls all looked as though they cost more than the house Brigham lived in. He could see through the glass back into all the offices and saw men and women in suits hurrying around, their coats off and their sleeves rolled up. Two older men were in a conference room with boxes of documents, a large plasma-screen television at the front of the room showing a PowerPoint slide.

  “He’ll see you now,” the receptionist said.

  Brigham followed the receptionist to an office in the back where a portly man sat behind a large desk. Documents were scattered everywhere—stacked on chairs, piled high on the desk, and stuffed onto shelves. The man was rubbing the bridge of his nose between red-rimmed eyes with dark circles below.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  Brigham stepped forward. “My name’s Brigham Theodore, sir. I’ve recently been sworn in to the Bar, and I’m looking for employment.” He slid his résumé across the desk. “I’ve aced trial advocacy, as you can see. My grades aren’t the best, but that’s because I wanted to have a life, too.” Brigham smiled, but when the man didn’t, he stopped and cleared his throat. “Anyway—”

  “Let me stop you right there, son. Trial ad’s great, but no associates here go to trial. The partners handle that. Ten or fifteen years down the line, maybe we’d trust you with a trial. What we need associates for are research and writing—that’s it. And the best researchers and writers are those in the top of their class, and only from certain schools. We recruit mostly from Harvard and Stanford. I’m afraid you’d have to be quite exceptional to compete with them.”

  “I understand that, sir, but I’d be willing to work for nothing until—”

  “Sorry, we don’t need anyone right now.”

  Brigham nodded and put out his hand to shake, but the man had gone back to his paperwork.

  The next three law firms Brigham visited were nearly identical: mahogany paneling, attractive legal secretaries and paralegals, and attorneys who wouldn’t give him the time of day. He didn’t go to the right prep schools or belong to the right clubs. He wasn’t one of “them.” He was an outsider, and even offering to work for nothing wasn’t enough to convince them to hire him.

  So he decided to expand. He went to every law firm he could find—solo practitioners in basement offices, personal injury firms with offices just off the freeway and surrounded by billboards, social security disability firms that used clerks to do the work that attorneys should have been doing. No one was hiring. The only firm that showed interest, after he’d said he’d work for free, was a personal injury and medical malpractice firm operating out of a house that had been turned into offices. The man interviewing him, Matt something, was nice enough, and the offer of working for nothing perked him up.

  But in the end, even they turned him down when one of the other partners informed Matt that they already had three law students working for nothing, and didn’t need any more.

  By afternoon, Brigham had been to over thirty law firms and had heard the same thing over and over: business was down, no one was hiring. The ones that were hiring only recruited from the top ten schools, and only wanted a certain type of associate. It was a club you had to be born into and couldn’t join.

  Brigham ate a donut in front of the public library downtown. The building was far more futuristic than the surrounding shelters and government-subsidized housing would lead someone to expect. It’d been built when the Olympics had come to Salt Lake in 2002 and was primarily used by the homeless now as a place to waste away the hours of the day. Five stories of glass sloped at an angle to give the impression of falling. Brigham had spent a lot of time there when studying for the bar, and the place felt comfortable to him.

  As he finished the last of his donut, he glanced around and noticed a small set of offices. He’d seen them before and never taken notice. Now, they seemed like a glimmer of hope.

  There was a sign in front of the building naming the tenants, and they included THE LAW OFFICES OF TTB. He threw the donut wrapper in a trash bin and headed across the street.

  Above the entrance to the law firm was a neon sign that read ATTORNEYS AT LAW. Brigham stared at it a bit. It was an odd placement since the sign wasn’t really visible from the street. Someone had just wanted neon
above the door.

  He went inside and tapped the bell on the counter at the receptionist’s desk. After half a minute, an elderly woman stepped out from around the corner. She looked him up and down.

  “Yes?”

  “May I speak to the attorney in charge of hiring, please? Um, Mr. TTB if he’s available.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m a newly minted attorney and I’m here to offer my services.”

  She grimaced. “Hold on.”

  The woman stepped back around the corner, returning a moment later to tell him, “Go on back. First office to the left. Tommy is ready to see you.”

  Tommy, Brigham thought. Not Thomas. He liked this place already. He walked down a corridor and found the office, where a giant of a man sat at the desk. He was easily three hundred pounds, but not fat—not really; he looked more like a linebacker. His black cowboy boots were up on the desk and he wore a gold ring on every finger and both his thumbs. He had a ponytail despite the fact that the top of his head was balding. He had a phone against his ear. He held up one finger telling Brigham to wait, and then pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

  “Yeah,” Tommy said into the phone, “I get that. But he’s lookin’ at ten on the child porn charges anyway. So I don’t think the gun charges matter. We’re just gonna plead him. Yeah . . . yeah, okay . . . yeah, bye.” Tommy hung up and glared at Brigham a moment before thrusting out his meaty hand. “Tommy Lenin, pleased to meet you.”

  Tommy had a thick Russian accent but every word was pronounced correctly. Brigham guessed he had studied English intensively for some time.

  “Brigham Theodore.”

  “Brigham. I like the name, brother. So Kathy told me you’re a new attorney.”

  “Yes, sir. Been licensed one day.”

  He smiled and took a cigar out of the desk followed by a gold lighter, which he used on the end. “That’s great. Good decision, Brigham. Being a lawyer’s a lotta fun. You get to fuck the government every now and again. You like fucking the government?”