The She-Hulk Diaries

by Acosta, Marta

  The leader of the pack, which looked like a cross between a Rottweiler and a Kodiak bear, went straight for her jugular, as the other dogs circled. Shulky embraced the dog and laughed.

  The beast recognized Shulky as an alpha, and in seconds she’d placed him on the ground and was giving him a vigorous tummy rub.

  “I’d love to play with you all night, Fido, but there’s business to take care of.”

  She went to the dog door, which wasn’t wide enough for her linebacker shoulders, and grabbed on to the corrugated steel edge of the roll-down gate. She pushed, but not so hard as to make the metal crumple. The chain mechanism ratcheted loudly as the gate rolled up a few feet, and she dropped to the ground and rolled underneath and into the warehouse. The Rottiak followed her.

  She could see well in dim light, but the shop was pure black, so she set the illuminate function on her aPhone to the “ambient” level. Cardboard boxes were stacked almost to the ceiling. She opened one and saw the biodegradable cup lids featuring Joocey Jooce’s PLAY NICE! logo with its graphic of stick figures on a seesaw.

  She opened other boxes at random. They also contained lids, and she found cartons of paper straws, too. She made her way between stacks to a corner of the shop that was set up with lab tables and chemistry equipment.

  Shulky went to the side door and listened, which was very discreet since she enjoyed kicking her way into places. When she didn’t hear anything, she opened the door to an office space. The industrial carpeting was grooved from where the space had once been partitioned, and two Steelcase desks and file cabinets were shoved to one side.

  A simple wood crucifix hung on one wall, and another wall had an altar with oranges and incense to the Buddha. A small prayer carpet faced the north wall. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves on the final wall, and books filled every inch.

  Shulky scanned the spines of religious texts in many languages and translations. There were books on philosophy, math, chemistry, physics, medicine, metaphysics, and veterinary care. Shulky opened drawers and file cabinets and found paper clips, legal notepads, and a pencil sharpener. Initial sketches of the PLAY NICE! logo filled the pages of one notebook.

  “Weird, huh?” she asked the Rottiak, who was following her. “Someone’s feeding and exercising you, right? Cuz you look fabulous.”

  She went back out to the shop and discovered an alcove with food and water bowls, a garbage bin filled with kibble, chew toys, and clean bedding.

  She suspected that there were living quarters on the second floor, but she decided not to explore further, in case there were any alarms. Also, I was panicking that she’d been here too long, and I kept whining, “Let’s go!” inside her head.

  Shulky left the building safely, loped across the lot, and flipped over the fence, landing gracefully on her feet. She threw her arms in the air and whisper-shouted, “She-Hulk nails a perfect landing! Ten! The crowd goes wild!”

  She was heading back to the car, thinking of where she’d like to go, when I shouted, “No, no, no! Let me out!”

  “Chillax. No work tomorrow,” she said as she took out her aPhone and began scrolling through Tweets. “Yes, dancing with Katy and Rihanna would totally be fun!”

  I sat back and hoped she wouldn’t get herself in the news again. Or wreck the car. Or hook up with a sleazebag. Or trash a hotel. Or decide to take a road trip to Tijuana for an X-rated tattoo. Any or all of the above. Again.

  As she headed to parts parties unknown, I wondered about my PFLOML’s tenant, Adam, a “heck of a nice guy” who read philosophy, studied religion, kept guard dogs, conducted chemistry experiments, and thought it was okay to pay rent in store coupons.

  ASSUME

  FEBRUARY 7

  VALENTINE’S DAY RESOLUTION

  COUNTDOWN: 1 WEEK TO START

  Everyone is calling to wish me luck! Amy called, my cousin called, and Holden left a message saying we should meet next week and “regroup.” Ruth called and promised to route all situations to other superheroes unless absolutely necessary and said, “About Fashion Week…”

  I felt Shulky brooding inside me, and I said, “Shulky understands why she was blacklisted after that fiasco with Mr. Lagerfeld.” I smiled remembering how the small man had faced down Shulky and been mad or brave enough to call her wardrobe “vulgar,” her behavior as deplorable as that of “a parlor maid who discovers the brandy,” and her walk “graceless.”

  Ruth said, “I know how much she loves Fashion Week, but she probably shouldn’t have suspended him from the rafters. Anyway, the AMAZING news is that she’s been invited to be a celebrity guest at an interseasonal show in April, and I wanted to tell you to…”

  “To placate her so she won’t crash the main show. Duly noted. Thanks, Ruth.”

  “You know how I hate seeing her left out of things just because… she’s so enthusiastic! The show’s for a new mystery designer. Shulky’s ensemble will be delivered with the invite for the show and the wrap party.”

  The invitation was enough to pacify Shulky, which was great since I don’t want her to do anything that might leave a negative impression should I ever meet my imaginary gay boyfriend Tim Gunn.

  Dahlia called me between appointments.

  D: Knock ’em dead, Jen. But not literally since your hands are licensed weapons.

  ME: I didn’t take you literally.

  D: Speaking of literature…

  ME: We weren’t.

  D: Yes, we were. I’m sending you another poem from your rock star lover, circa several years ago.

  ME: Don’t! I want to be calm and collected when, I mean, if I happen to see him.

  D: With his clothes on.

  ME: Yes. No, not with his clothes on! I mean, don’t—

  D: Oops, Rodney just sent the link with his tiny little paws! He’s so tech savvy.

  ME: I’m not going to listen to it.

  D: Sure, you are. He describes the perfection of your titties and how your lady bits are like—

  ME: Dahlia!

  D: A client just caught fire under the dryer. Gotta go!

  I am not going to listen to the song. I am not going to listen to the song.

  4:27 P.M.

  Left a message for Dr. Alvarado and canceled my appointment because it conflicted with my job. “I’ll be in touch to reschedule when I have some availability.” Nevah!

  Five minutes later he called me back, his voice all crushed blueberries and organic oatmeal sensitivity.

  RA: Jennifer—

  ME: Ms. Walters.

  RA: Ms. Walters, your sessions are stipulated in the settlement. [blah blah blah]

  ME: I will take your opinion under consideration, but my employment is a priority.

  RA: You had time to go out dancing with celebrities!

  ME: Not me, Shulky.

  RA: When are you going to take responsibility for your behavior in your She-Hulk persona?

  ME: Dr. Alvarado, I know it must seem very important to you to hear a patient’s inner thoughts, but I’m working on a case in which children’s lives are at stake. If you will examine the settlement agreement, you’ll see that this exempts me from attending sessions for an indeterminate period.

  RA: That wasn’t in there.

  ME: It’s in the amendments.

  RA: You wrote those!

  ME: As I advise my clients, “A contract is a mutual agreement, and you should always negotiate for terms that are most beneficial to your side. It’s perfectly legal to cross out or amend conditions.” If you have any further questions, please submit them in writing for my review.

  RA: This is for your sake, not mine. You are mentally ill, Jennifer!

  ME: It’s Ms. Walters, Rene, and have a nice day.

  7:30 P.M.

  Back from the gym. Azzan was glad that I can continue my private classes, but disappointed that poverty wouldn’t force me into life as an international sexy times assassin. When I tried out a few “kapows!” he flipped me flat on my back, so I shut up and foc
used.

  It’s making me crazy thinking that Ellis might have sung about my breasts. I will only listen to a few seconds of “Gin Tsunami,” the house party anthem, to assure myself that D is entirely wrong about the lyrics.

  The tidal wave rolled over me

  Her wavelength was longer

  My reactions so much stronger

  I rode the wave train and couldn’t forecast

  Destination or destruction,

  Rising waters, deep induction

  Because I was drunk with Gin

  Caught in the riptide of Gin, sweet sweet sin.

  Raise a toast to Gin, of Gin!

  Swear to sin with Gin to the brim,

  Slip and slide and ride the tide with Gin!

  I stopped the song and thought, OMG, how much mental effort had I expended deluding myself that it was a drinking song when I knew the dirty, dirty truth?

  FEBRUARY 8

  VALENTINE’S DAY RESOLUTION

  COUNTDOWN: 6 DAYS TO START!

  First real day at QUIRC!

  Suit neat and lint free

  Glasses cleaned, ponytail straight

  Extra panty hose and identical glasses in attaché

  Black pumps clean and polished

  Framed diplomas and photo of Mom and Dad

  Favorite UCLA pens

  Garment bag with extra suit just in case

  Lucky LAWYERS DO IT ON A TRIAL BASIS mug

  When I went downstairs, Claude looked at me and tipped his cap. “Looking mighty sharp this morning, Counselor.”

  “Thanks, Claude. First day at the new job and I’m a little nervous.”

  He winked—but in a friendly ye-olde-fashioned way—and said, “Just be yourself and everyone will like you.”

  “Easier said than done.” Planning to be myself was one thing; staying myself was a whole nuther thang.

  Cabbed it to QUIRC. I arrived at the reception desk at precisely 8:20, ten minutes early, but the offices were already busy.

  The receptionist said, “Good morning, Ms. Walters,” and politely reminded me of her name (Penelope). “Your paralegal, Donna, is already here and will help you with anything you need.”

  I thanked her and went down the hall, glancing into open doors. Outside my office, a fortyish man who looked like a 1940s accountant was sitting at the assistant’s desk with an old-fashioned typewriter on it. I introduced myself and asked him to point me to Donna.

  “Donner. I’m Donner. Pleased to meet you…”

  I said, “Call me Jennifer.”

  He stood to shake hands and I towered over him. He had dark brown skin, horn-rimmed glasses that made his hazel eyes look huge, and very short waved hair, and wore a bow tie and a herringbone tweed jacket.

  He saw me peek at the typewriter and pointed to a screen behind it. He said, “It’s wired to the system. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not as long as the work gets done.”

  “The joke is that everyone at QUIRC has quirks.” His hand went to his chest. “I didn’t mean to imply that you have any!”

  Rather than say, “It’s okay,” I smiled neutrally. As I always tell my clients, “A response may be seen as tacit agreement and used against you in litigation. If you are in doubt, simply look pleasant and remain silent.”

  A large arrangement of flowers was on my desk with a welcome note from Quinty and the senior partners. Donner brought me a frothy cappuccino and ran through basic company protocol. He asked me about my likes and dislikes. (Likes long evenings by a crackling fire reading case histories! Dislikes mean people delivering injunctions!)

  “Got it,” he said. “Any business contacts or special friends or family you’d like routed through quickly?”

  “Client calls are my top priority. Everyone else knows to call me on my private line.”

  He smiled. “I know you did superhuman law for GLKH. I bet you have some stories.”

  “More than a few! But the truth is that New York State law is even more complex than superhuman law, because superhumans understand legal shortcuts like crashing a chair on someone’s head to make your argument.”

  “We’re a little quieter here. Guess it’s time for you to meet the General.”

  I tried to recall anyone on the QUIRC roster with a military background as I followed Donner down the hall to an office with a handwritten sign hanging from a string that said, THE GENERAL IS IN!

  Donner knocked and opened the door without waiting for a response.

  We walked into a huge room that was filled from top to bottom and side to side with tables, books, file cabinets, and computers. Colored three-by-five cards covered a standing bulletin board. It took me a moment to see the pudgy middle-aged woman peering at us around a stack of legal texts.

  “Morning, General,” Donner said. “This is Jennifer Walters. She’ll be lead on ReplaceMax.”

  I went forward to say hello, and the woman looked up at me with small, sharp gray eyes so light they were almost silver. She had freckled cheeks and a pretty rosebud mouth, which didn’t smile. I held out my hand. “Good morning, General.”

  She puffed at a wisp of russet hair that was loose from a crooked ponytail and reached out to shake my hand. In a calm, sweet voice, she said, “That’s not my real name. It’s a joke. My name’s Genoa Lewes, and I’m the associate assigned exclusively to your case.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Genoa,” I said, as I noticed the numerous action figures posed on her desk and shelves. I automatically searched for Shulky or any of my friends, but all she had were dolls in Regency dress. “Who is this?” I said, picking up a brown-haired doll and using it to point to a yellow-headed one.

  Her mouth set defensively. “You’re holding Elinor Dashwood and the other one is her sister, Marianne, of Sense and Sensibility. I know most people follow the superheroes, but I prefer characters with rich emotional lives, even if they are fictional.”

  “You don’t think Tony Stark has a rich emotional life?” Donner asked. “Wouldn’t he look dashing in a cravat!”

  Genoa blushed all the way to her forehead and reached for the Elinor doll.

  I thought it was unusual for a paralegal to tease an associate, or maybe he was pretending to tease her in order to introduce the subject of Tony. I had managed to drag him to a few lawyer parties when we dated and everyone was all, “Tony Stark! May I kiss your fabulously firm and amazingly wealthy ass!”

  I said, “Tony Stark’s a genius. I wish I could invent something, but all I can do is admire how brilliant he is.” He’s extremely brilliant for a horse’s ass.

  Genoa gave me a grateful look and began talking about one of Tony’s latest projects. She quickly got to a level of technical detail that I couldn’t follow. “Oh, you’ve lost me! I think even a patent attorney would have trouble understanding that.”

  Donner smiled and said, “Now you know why we call her the General. She has a wider and deeper range of information than anyone else at QUIRC. She’s the best.”

  “Glad to have you on my team, Genoa. You’ll need to get me up to speed on organ-cloning technology, but in layman’s terms. These high-tech cases are confusing enough to juries, and ReplaceMax will try to baffle them with science.”

  Genoa grabbed a thick binder from a stack nearby and handed it to me. “I’ve prepared preliminary information about the ReplaceMax process, and I can bring in experts to give you seminars.”

  “Thanks, General. Or do you prefer Genoa?”

  “I like both,” she said and ducked her head again.

  I was taken to lunch by one of the junior partners, Fritz Durning, an intense man with a close-cropped brush of sandy hair, blue-gray eyes, and a hard, sleek physique. He was a typical type A, talking a mile a minute and ordering boneless, skinless chicken with a wedge of lemon and steamed veggies. He was attractive, but I suspected he’d had his teeth capped, and his nose was a little too perfect.

  He tried to pry GLKH intel from me and became annoyed when I wouldn’t tell him any backroo
m gossip. Before we were done with our first course, he was treating me like a prom date he wanted to dump so he could meet up with his cool friends.

  And that’s when I realized that I should have been scoping him out as a PFLOML just in case my budding relationship with Claude didn’t work out. So I smiled and said, “Of course, Fritz, there are things I can tell you about GLKH that wouldn’t violate confidentiality, but let’s save that for another occasion when we have time to relax and talk!”

  He looked pleased. And then I finally noticed the gold band on his ring finger, which was a bad omen for our future love life.

  Another bad omen was my relief to get away from Fritz and spend the rest of the afternoon reading up on ReplaceMax and finding out:

  Our client, Dr. Sven Morigi, had approached ReplaceMax with a formulation for rapidly growing entire organs in a laboratory. Until then, they’d specialized in skin and bone grafts.

  When Dr. Morigi had reported problems with the lab-grown organs, he’d been shown the door despite holding the patent for the process.

  In addition to a higher than average rate of mortality for ReplaceMax transplant cases, there were nearly two dozen of their patients in serious condition, all with malfunctioning replacement organs. The youngest was an eight-year-old girl who’d had four months of health before organ deterioration.

  Dr. Morigi still owned shares in the company, and he wanted the usual fines, the president’s resignation, and to buy out the company.

  I took the General’s binder home, changed into my jammies, and spent the evening studying it and making notes. Before I knew it, the hours had flown by and I hadn’t even checked my aPhone for chatter from Shulky’s friends.

  I wonder what Ellis is doing tonight. I am not going to revisit all his songs to look for clues about us. If there had ever been an opportunity, it was long gone and by his choice.