The phone bleated at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. I had been asleep, but I was worried enough about Maggie to zombie roll out of bed and answer. It wasn’t my lady friend. It was Mr. Nussbaum. “Would you like a ride to the office, amigo?” he asked.
“You bet your pants,” I said, although I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on because I was still half asleep.
“I’ll be at your pad in ten minutes,” he said.
“My pad,” I repeated.
I hung up the phone and crawled back into bed. Except instead of drifting back to dreamland, I sat up. This was real. This was not a dream. It was 7:00 a.m., and Mr. Nussbaum was just minutes away from the suite. I don’t remember getting dressed. I don’t remember brushing my teeth, but I’m sure I did. Fresh breath was a priority for this guy. The next thing I knew, I was riding in Mr. Nussbaum’s fine Caddie, and we were cruising to do some law.
“You ready for action?” Mr. Nussbaum asked.
“Going to put a dent in those files for sure,” I said, wishing I was still putting a dent in my pillow.
“Not today you’re not. Saturday’s my busiest day. We have a full docket of clients coming in. You’ll need to meet and greet them, run in some coffee periodically, and maybe run out for some rolls or a sandwich or two. Today you’ll be my face, my feet, and my hands.”
I looked at my hand and said, “You are Mr. Nussbaum’s hand.”
“Ha-ha!” Mr. Nussbaum shouted. He’s a peppy guy.
Mr. Nussbaum parked behind the building a half block off Main Street in front of a sign that read, “Da Hound Dog.” Underneath in smaller letters, it said in parentheses, “(Nussbaum’s Spot, Not Yours, Unless You Want to Get Your Butt Bit.)”
“You like my sign?” he asked. “Mallory got it for me last Christmas. She is a funny one.”
“Whacky,” I said.
Mr. Nussbaum slapped my thigh. “You’re getting to know all about the world of Nussbaum, aren’t you?”
The hall outside his office wasn’t nearly as scary in the daylight, although I took note of some major-league spiderwebs in the corners. Mr. Nussbaum opened the office door, and in we went. He headed directly for the majesty of the law file room, and I got a little scared because I hadn’t really done anything other than make piles. But he wasn’t mad at all. In fact, Nussbaum was the exact opposite of mad.
“Taco! Aren’t you an industrious fellow. Were you here all night?”
“Well, until past ten,” I said.
Mr. Nussbaum’s eyes got kind of moist. “Everybody told me you’re a great kid.” He began to nod. “Now I know it’s true. This…” He gestured to the majesty of my stacks of papers. “This would’ve taken Mallory a week or more.”
In my hour of labor the night before, I had unburdened the coffeemaker from also serving as a bookshelf for more paper. The thing was killer gross, pal. It was moldy and musty, but Mr. Nussbaum showed me where the cleaning supplies were, and I cleaned the coffeemaker. Now it wouldn’t kill someone who had coffee from it. Then he showed me how to make coffee.
Four minutes later, coffee brewing, me seated at the reception desk (on a leather chair for maximum coccyx comfort), Nussbaum’s first client arrived. Mr. Thomas Wrightman was a gristly seventy-three-year-old dude in dirty khaki pants that were falling off his skinny butt. Wrightman was suing his neighbor because the neighbor’s dog would pee in Wrightman’s yard so much that his grass, which he loved, started turning brown in patches.
It was a cold December, and all of Bluffton’s grass was brown at that point. But I wanted to show my support. “That’s a crime!” I commiserated.
“I will be compensated for my loss!” Wrightman cried.
“Big-time!” I said. “Stacks of cash!”
Mr. Wrightman smiled at me. He told me that I was not as pretty as Mallory but a whole lot more fun to talk to.
Every half hour another client visited. It turns out that the majesty of the law mostly involves resolving fights with neighbors, fights between business partners, fights that cause divorces (affairs and money and bad personal hygiene), and people who drink too much and do dumb things, ranging from running over stop signs in their cars to throwing rocks through their neighbors’ windows. Fantastic!
I checked in the sad sacks, made small monkey chatter, brewed pot after pot of coffee, bought some sandwiches, ate a sandwich or two, played with a little kid whose mom was after cash from his deadbeat dad. The day rolled by fast.
About dinnertime Mr. Nussbaum shook hands with his last client (college kid who’d whipped rocks through a window) and escorted the sap to the door. Then he turned to me and said, “I got several positive comments about the work you did today, amigo. You’re just what this office needs. A little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Every day is the best day I ever had,” I pointed out.
Mr. Nussbaum laughed. He didn’t drive me home though. He had to go to the VFW to play some cards. That was a cold-ass walk in the Wisconsin December air, but I felt pretty good. Pretty damn great actually. I felt as if I brought a lot to the table, mostly because Mr. Nussbaum said I brought a lot to the table.
A talented and friendly fellow like me was certain to find work that could support Maggie Corrigan and my baby, right?