Trust--Fragile, Handle With Care
Altowiese MacMurtry suspects her wife, Jerezina Pavelitch, of adultery. The accusation is false. Luigi Bascom, Esq., to the rescue? Luigi tells the story.
I walked out of Schilo's sausage shop with my half-pound of Bauernwurst and my quarter-pounds of häringsalat and kartoffelsalat. That would be dinner, and there should still be a couple of cold ones in the fridge. I could use them.
My landlord, who was also my client, had ambushed me as I left my 300-square foot hole in his strip mall, the office he claimed I rented at "a real bargain rent, Lu, I promise you" (yeah, right). He told me that I was to be out in sixty days, out of the unrentable space where four successive small retailers had gone bust before I got there, and where no one ever could make a go of anything.
A big bank wanted the space for three ATMs, a stand-up desk (to be covered with wastepaper and pizza crusts from the next-door Papa John's, whose daily aromas were as much a part of my life as my fading law practice), a wastebasket (overflowing and tipped over), with three ballpoint pens chained to the wall (all out of ink, of course). And I should review the tenant's lawyer's fifty-page rider to my ten-page draft lease at once, so he could sign tomorrow.
Said fifty pages had been prepared by a first-year associate at a white-shoe Park Avenue New York City law firm (he went to Yale, you know), who had to bill two thousand five hundred hours per year at triple my billing rate, and who suffered from diarrhea of the word processor and delusions of grandeur. His magnum opus would have been appropriate to a Michigan Avenue or Rodeo Drive 10,000-square foot branch, glitzed and blinged to the max.
Our little strip mall couldn't bling if Jesus Himself walked in for a slice and a Coke at Papa John's.
I'd review it, all right, if it took all night. I'd e-mail a 20-page memo to my dear client-landlord, who would promptly ignore 49-and-a-half pages of the lease and my entire memo, and look at one short lease paragraph: the rent schedule. He'd sign everything but the check for lunch without reading a word, and if anything ever went south in the next 15 years, he'd blame me.
But don't get me wrong. I love my work.
Home is where the heart is, they say, and it might be, but it had better be where the beer is. As I turned into Palatine Street, I could almost taste it. The first sip is always the best.
Dumped food on kitchen table, turned on my man George Forman the Next Grilleration; I introduced George the Grill to the Bauernwurst, opened the salads and the refrigerator door. And cursed. And swore. And blasted out a stream of profanity, obscenity and blasphemy equal to my best from the day when I carried an M-60 and two boxes of 7.62 in one hand, in 110-degree heat, up the ladder to a guard tower, and dropped a motherfucking cocksucking sonofabitch bastard of an ammo box. And it just missed the First Sergeant. Oh, that was another great moment.
You guessed it. No beer. Diet fucking Coke. Fucking orange juice. Milk, for Chrissakes!
I ate dinner. I drank water. It really didn't matter. Then my cellphone rang.
I didn't have a landline, at home or office--too expensive, and I was never there when anybody called.
Omne meum porte mecum
and all that good shit, right? I answered; it was nearly my worst mistake that day.
"Lu Bascom," I said.
"Fuck you, my client says fuck you, and fuck your mother if you can find which whorehouse she's in."
"Ah, dear Molly, your ineffable charm brightens my otherwise drab evening."
"Look, shithead, I don't need your high-priced law school bullshit. You got no adjournment tomorrow. My client says no, so tell it to Bernie Bastard at nine a.m."
"Darling, what happened to the Chief Justice's new Civility Rules, and I quote 'Lawyers should be courteous and civil in all professional dealings with other persons'?"
"Let The Chief MILF ask me for an adjournment and I might be civil in denying consent. For shit like you and your client, the answer is no repeat fuck you."
"Molly, do you really think my client tore a hole in the side of a Boeing 737 and grounded 300 Southwest flights, stranding him in Lubbock Texas for three days, just to get out of appearing tomorrow?"
"I don't give a shit what your client, that pig, tore. I know I'm going to love watching Bernie Bastard tear you a bloody new asshole tomorrow morning." She hung up.
Molly Cohen is a delight; you can tell that just from her telephone manner. She looks like a beer keg with boobs, the kind of fat, floppy boobs with a sag that started when she was aged eleven and defeated Victoria and all her secrets ever since. She is ugly, abrasive, obnoxious, obscene and brilliant. She has booted my ass several times, most of which times she actually deserved to win (although my clients will never believe it).
His Honor the Honorable Bernardo Barcelona, known to those condemned to appear before him as Bernie Bastard, loves to eat lawyers for breakfast, lunch and dinner, even during Lent, which he otherwise rigorously observes. He is also ugly, abrasive, obnoxious and brilliant; he cannot, for religious and political reasons, be obscene, although I'm sure such abstinence galls him. He has the lowest reversal rate of any judge in our part of the State; the Supremes, especially Her Honor Chief Justice Ludmilla Hedwig Kovacs (she of the Civility Rules, also known as The Chief MILF), think the sun shines out his ass. Tomorrow morning will be a real treat, ya sure, ya betcha (can't get that beer out of my mind).
I washed dishes and George, sat down with rider and laptop. Three hours later, my memo was done and e-mailed.
It was really easy; "The lease provides that Tenant (hereinafter referred to as "Master") may forcibly sodomize Landlord (hereinafter sometimes alternately referred to as "My bitch" or "My slut", at Master's whim) whenever, from time to time and at any time, by what means soever, whether physiologically or by use or employment of any instrumentality or device, as brutally, and with as little, or no, lubricant, as Master, in Master's sole, complete, absolute, unrestrained and unfettered discretion, may choose."
I noted my time on my billing software, although I knew the client wouldn't pay. That was fine by me, as I wouldn't be paying him any more rent, and we both knew it.
Do I move my office back here, as I'd done when Rosabella died? Or do I find another hole? Or do I not give a damn, as I'd done when Rosabella died? Or do I go out and see if I can buy enough whiskey to stop the pain, as I'd tried to do ever since Rosabella died, except there wasn't enough whiskey then and there never would be.
My cellphone rang again. It wouldn't be Molly; she'd be in bed with a porn flick on her Blu-Ray and a vibrator up her ass--at least I hoped so. And, if God listened to a lawyer's prayer, the battery would die at the perfect moment. Hell, that would be better than how I'd spend the rest of my night. Maybe the fucking vibrator would short-circuit and fry her ass. Well shit, a man can dream, can't he?
"Lu Bascom."
"Lu, it's Jere Pavelitch. I'm outside. I've got to see you right now."
"Okay, Jere, I'm coming to the door."
Her hair was disheveled, her face was red as if someone had slapped her. She had obviously been crying, and the self-contained, assured athletic trainer was a wreck.
"Come in, sit down. What happened?"
