On Friday morning, Mr. Lecroy gave a dramatic reading of the musical cast list over the intercom during announcements. This was a big surprise! I hadn’t had a chance to tell Mr. Lecroy that it probably couldn’t work out for me to be the mayor.
Maggie didn’t sit next to me in English. I figured she was pretending not to be in love with me so that we could fool the world and surprise them when we got married. Our baby could be the best man in a little tux or the maid of honor in a poofy, lacy dress, but then after English out in the hallway, Maggie kicked my ass. She literally kicked me in the ass! Which inflamed my almost-healed coccyx, which I hadn’t thought about in a few days, even during my split at musical tryouts.
Pain fired through my nether regions when her pink Chuck Taylor high-top made contact.
I cried out in pain.
“Shut up,” Maggie hissed. “You’re in the musical?”
“My ass!”
“Have you found a job?”
“It’s only been a couple days since I knew I needed one.”
“How are you going to get a job to support our…” Maggie got very quiet and looked around to see if anyone was looking at us. Of course, every damn monkey in the hallway was staring. She whispered, “To support our habit?”
“Our what?”
“Habit,” Maggie said louder.
“Habit?”
Maggie just glared.
“Jesus. Leave it to me,” I said. My ass hurt so much that I thought I was going to cry, and that jacked me up pretty hard. “You listen,” I said with full-on frying anger because she had hurt my butt and my heart so badly, “You just watch me do my thing. Because I’ll do it. But for now I’m going to calc.”
As I limped through the halls, I thought about how my dad wasn’t interested in anything except football and beer and how I liked football and dancing and musicals and track and how lucky that baby was to have such a well-rounded dad. Maggie could suck it because I could handle all my responsibilities, and I would do all these activities because my baby deserved awesomeness for a role model.
I got to calc, like, two minutes late, and Mr. Edwards’s eyeballs shot daggers at me while he finished giving instructions for working on a problem set. My ass was throbbing so much that I could hardly concentrate.
While we were supposed to be working, Brad Schwartz leaned over. “Are you on drugs? You and Maggie? That would explain a lot to be honest.”
“What?” I asked.
“Katie Faherty texted me because she heard you have a habit.”
“Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Keller, please shut your mouths,” Mr. Edwards said.
“My dad’s Mr. Keller!” I shouted. “Call me Taco!”
Mr. Edwards was not pleased by my clarification. He told me to stand in the hall for ten minutes to get my shiz under control. I saw a couple teachers I liked while I was out there and said hi to them, which made me think about how those same teachers wouldn’t say hello to Maggie because she was not friendly like I was. Clearly it was another indication that I was a good person and not her. Why would I have such feelings about the girl I love? My ass killed.
And, yes, dingus, I was pissed at Maggie. And now everyone thought we had a “habit,” and I was supposed to go to Nussbaum’s law office after school at the same time I was supposed to be at the first musical practice. I’m a good person but not capable of time travel or being in two places at one time.
Plus, my ass hurt.
I am a lucky Taco though. That first day of musical practice was just an organizational meeting that only took like twenty minutes. Mr. Lecroy handed out a schedule of rehearsals that began the following Monday and ran right up to Christmas break (with a few optional meetings during the break) and through early February, when we would perform the musical for two weekends in front of God and Bluffton and also the kids in middle school.
During December, as Mayor of Munchkinland, I’d only have to be at rehearsal a couple times a week. Finding a job? Doing my young lawyering? Seemed sort of possible if I could slide getting a job past Darius without him punching my nose. I’d deal with January when January happened. I had a primo role, so I had to figure it out.
Thank God Sharma was just leaving the building as I was because my ass was grass from Maggie’s foot, and the notion of hoofing two miles downtown to Mr. Nussbaum’s law office nearly knocked me back on my ass. Sharma drove me in his brand-new Honda Civic.
On the way he asked, “What are you two junkies for? Methamphetamine? That would make sense given your oddly energetic behavior. You certainly don’t seem the barbiturate type.”
“Who?” I asked. “What?”
“You and Maggie Corrigan, meth heads. You know, because you’re drug addicts.”
Oh, I wanted to tell Sharma the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, but I’d promised Maggie I’d keep a lid on the baby, so I lied. “Yeah, we’re total meth fiends. I’m learning to cook it too.”
“I can’t tell my parents. They won’t let me help you with calc anymore.”
“No, don’t. It’s better they don’t know,” I said. Oh, I hate lying, dingus, but shouldn’t Sharma know better? Did I look like a meth head?
Three minutes later we were on Main Street, and Sharma dropped me off at the Nussbaum Law Office. He asked if Nussbaum was helping Maggie and if I launder our money to avoid prosecution. I told him Nussbaum didn’t know about our drugs or our production capacity.
Sharma is a bright dude generally. How could he buy all this we take drugs crap?
“I’m here for you if you need help,” he said. “I can give you a ride to rehab anytime.”
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
Then into Nussbaum’s I limped. His office was up above Pancho Steinberg’s Mexi-Deli, and I had to climb a long flight of stairs to get there. Never let anyone tell you your butt is not important. Your butt is very, very important to general motility.
Mr. Nussbaum’s office had dark wood-paneled walls like a TV law office from the olden days. The first room had a reception area where there was a little desk with fake flowers and pictures of babies on it. No one sat there. I stood in that room for a few seconds and then called out, “Halooo?”
“Hey, hey! Taco!” The Nussbaum voice called from another room. (There were two doors—one on the right of the reception desk and one on the left.) “Come on back here!” he called.
I wasn’t sure where his Nussbaum voice was coming from, so I tried the door on the left. The room was dark and smelled like old paper, coffee, and cigars. This, I was to find out, was the file room, which included a coffee station where I would make coffee after I uncovered the coffeemaker, which was buried in unfiled paper—just like the floor and everything else. I shut that door and hobbled around the desk to the door on the right. That was where I found a shirtless, big-bellied Mr. Nussbaum.
“You made it!” he shouted. He sat behind a huge wood desk. There were two leather chairs across from him—leather chairs waiting for clients who would talk serious law business with him.
“You’re naked!” I shouted back.
“I have on pants!” he shouted. “Gets so hot in this room that I sweat through my shirts. So I work like this…unless there’s mixed company around.”
“Is your receptionist gone for the day?”
“Mallory? She’s gone for three months. She had a baby right before Thanksgiving. By statute I only have to pay her for six weeks though, so I got that going for me.”
“Yeah. Righteous,” I said.
“Sit down here. Let’s have a chat, Taco.”
I eased myself into one of the leather chairs, and my coccyx nestled in the most delicious leather cloud an ass might ever find.
“What a chair!”
“Yeah. Nice, right? These are the spoils of war, my friend.”
I nodded and smiled, though I had no idea what he meant, and Mr. Nussbaum took off at the mouth.
“Taco, I’m a small business man. I wouldn’t do a public service just out of the kindness of my heart. You understand?”
“Yeah?” I didn’t though.
“Good. Just so we’re straight on the matter. You’re not going to be dinking around here, flirting with my secretary. No, sir. You’re going to put your nose to the grindstone. You’re going to be my secretary. Got that?”
“Yes. Completely,” I said.
“This is a real job, amigo. You will make me coffee on Saturday mornings while I am working. You will run out to get me dinner if I’m working late on a weekday. You will file the reams of paper I get buried under every single day. If you’re smart, you’ll photocopy cases, read them, highlight important information. And last but not least, you will make this office sparkle—and not just with your personality but with sponges, soap, the vacuum cleaner, and elbow grease. Comprende?”
“Claro que sí,” I said. But oh my, I wasn’t even sure I knew what I’d just said. “You know I have to go to school, right?” I asked.
“Of course! We’re on the same page, amigo,” Mr. Nussbaum said. “Now let’s get to the business at hand.”
Mr. Nussbaum stood, took two steps to his left, and pulled a shirt off his coatrack. He pulled that puppy around his shoulders and strode across the room, through the reception area, and over to the paper/coffee/cigar room I’d poked my head into when I had first arrived. To follow Mr. Nussbaum, I’d had to jack myself out of that comfortable seat, and my ass didn’t agree to this sudden movement. Mr. Nussbaum shouted, “Get the lead out, Taco! Catch up!”
In the coffee room, Mr. Nussbaum flipped on the light—and what an amazing, amazing sight. Paper was everywhere—all over the floor, piled in stacks against the walls, covering the tops of the filing cabinets, jammed underneath the coffeemaker. Everywhere there could be paper, by God, there was paper. You could get buried alive in a room like that.
“Your first task, amigo? Get these documents organized and filed,” Mr. Nussbaum said.
“Organized how?” I asked. “Alphabetically?”
Mr. Nussbaum patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t know, son. I’m the lawyer, not the filer. Mallory was out on bed rest before she had her baby, so this is a good two months of paperwork to sort out. You’re going to figure out what the hell’s gone wrong in this place…because wrong it has gone. Any questions?”
“No. Got it,” I said.
“You are to put in twenty hours a week from now until the middle of February, when Mallory gets back. I want you here after school for a few hours every day and Saturdays for a minimum of eight hours. We’ll have to work some Sundays, but not all. By February, you’ll be a free boy. Fair?”
“When am I going to learn about the law?” I asked.
Mr. Nussbaum gestured to the mad stacks of paper. “The majesty of the law surrounds you.”
“What about musical rehearsals?”
Mr. Nussbaum squinted at me. “What musical rehearsals?”
“The school’s musical. I’m the Mayor of Munchkinland.”
“And I’m the Fresh Prince of your Freedom. You’d better figure it out. Now you might not understand responsibility, given that home situation of yours, but this…” Mr. Nussbaum gestured to the papers again. “This is your primary concern for the next few months…or else.”
“Or else?”
“Right. Or else,” Mr. Nussbaum said. He pointed at me and winked. Then he said, “I’m going to the VFW for a beer. Make sure the door’s locked when you go.”
“I don’t have keys.”
“I’ll leave you a set on Mallory’s desk.”
Mr. Nussbaum was gone in a blink, and I was left with this mountain of paper. If I could’ve gotten to the file drawers without stepping on paper, I’d have tried to figure out how all this “majesty of the law” was organized. But I couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping on paper. So I went out to the reception area, locked the door, lay down on the floor, and took a well-deserved nap. My ass sure hurt from Maggie’s mighty kick. Pain is exhausting.
When I woke up, it was pitch-dark, and I could hear drunk college kids screaming on Main Street.
It was 9:00 p.m. I spent the next hour just making neat stacks out of all the paper. From what I could see, this was important stuff. Like printed emails from judges and other lawyers and clients and crap. There were documents from actual court cases. Judgments and divorce decrees and lawsuits. Holy shiz. I didn’t actually file anything, but by the end of the hour, I’d made a path from the door to the cabinets.
Then I got seriously groggy. I had to call it a day.
I shut off the light and locked the door behind me. There was no light to show me where the stairs down to the street were, no light coming from any offices at the other end of the hallway. I couldn’t hear anything either, no noise from the street. It was like I’d been buried underground, though I was above ground. Dingus, I totally froze.
“Mom,” I said to nobody. “Help.”
A door creaked in the dark. I fumbled, bumbled, stumbled toward the stairs. I felt like someone was behind me. I found the stairs and scrambled down as fast as I could. I burst out to the cold street, which was lit with streetlights and loud with screaming sorority girls.
Whoa, dingus. Even in their puffy winter coats, you could totally tell how hot these girls were.
Even if I didn’t love all the piles of paper, I did love Nussbaum’s office location!
I love life.