I woke up the next day at 4:30 a.m., the earliest I had been up in weeks, perhaps ever. I took a shower and then searched my closet for a certain something to wear and there it was – my only suit. I hated that thing more than myself at the moment. I would have never owned one, but my parents bought it for me when I was accepted to law school. How had it come to this? How could it be that I was about to interview for a law job? I wanted to be a writer, and now I was about to have my dad drive me to the E-Zee Express Bus that would take me to the train that would lead to the subway, so I could get out at the City Hall stop, and walk over to an office where I was going to sit across from Michael H. Goldberg and beg for a job. Holy Fucking Shit!
“C’mon let’s get cookin’,” my dad yelled upstairs to me.
I walked down the stairs as slowly as possible. “Dead man walkin’,” I whispered to myself. “Dead man walkin’.”
“C’mon, Dave, the car’s all warmed up and waiting for you. Let’s go!”
I got in the car and the automatic seat belt locked me in place. The doors automatically locked, too. I was trapped. My dad turned to me and began his work lecture.
“Son, first, you should hang up your jacket in the back here on this hook,” he pointed out the hook like a spokesmodel. “That way it won’t get creased while you are sitting in the car. Second, put your tie over the seat belt so that way it doesn’t get creased during the ride. Third –”
“Dad, it is six fucking thirty in the morning. I don’t care!” Was he kidding me?
He didn’t even hear me. “Third, I bought you a combination E-Zee Express Bus/MetroTrain/Subway monthly pass so you wouldn’t have to be bothered buying that today. You can pay me back later.”
“Dad, I’m going for an interview. I don’t have any job yet.”
“If you can’t get a job from a solo practitioner, then you better re-examine your life.” And with that, we were off.
He dropped me off at the Park and Ride at six forty-five.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
“Not today. I have a sales call to make in New Jersey. I’ll head into the office later,” he said.
“But . . .” I just stood there.
“David, you are twenty-five years old. Get your ass in line. I’ll see you later.” He shook his head and pointed at me to get in line. I heard him whisper to himself, “What the hell is wrong with this kid,” as he pulled away leaving me like a kindergartner alone on the first day of school.
I walked over to the line where a fine collection of cretins and misfits stood waiting. I could have made a fortune selling sideshow tickets.
“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, come see the freaks! Yes, they’re here in all shapes and sizes, heights and smells. Come one, come all! Don’t miss this show!”
The woman who got in line behind me looked as if she didn’t have any lips. The guy behind her was wearing some depressing, shit-brown suit that almost made me dry heave. God, this sucked. Standing there, I calculated the ratio of bad comb-overs to full heads of hair and it was extremely high. Even the bus driver got in on the act. His blue, bus-driver’s suit was so creased that one of the wrinkles almost poked out my eye as I showed him my monthly pass. I finally found a seat in the middle of the bus and just looked around. Help.
The EZ Express finally arrived at the train station around seven. The damn EZ bus was running late, so I had to run off the bus like a lunatic in order to get to the platform where the train would arrive in just two minutes. Problem was, a line was already forming on the bus even before it stopped. I didn’t have the patience for this. I had to make it to Mr. Michael H. Goldberg’s on time. I had to catch the train.
I felt kind of bad pushing some of the commuters aside as the bus door opened, but they didn’t go down easy. Disregarding the bad makeup jobs and comb-overs, this was a frisky bunch. They held their ground as I pushed, and I finally made it to pavement after a 300-pound beast, bedecked in orange, rolled her pumpkin ass out of the bus.
I ran for the train, up the stairs, across the platform, and down the stairs. I made the train just as the conductor screamed out, “All aboard!”
To my surprise, there were no seats. I was feeling a bit gamey after the mad dash to the platform, so I decided to take off my jacket and stand at the front of the car. Shit! I had forgotten to put on an undershirt under my starched, white, stiff-as-a-board, fucking dress shirt which had now become see-through since it was riddled with sweat. This was not starting out very well.
I arrived in the city about 7:30, so I ran over to Park Row at top speed, leading me to work up sweat number two in my swanky suit. 23 Park Row didn’t look that impressive. It actually looked like a dilapidated tenement with dripping air conditioners hanging out of the windows. I made my way into the “lobby” and found Michel H. Goldberg’s name on the roster of disturbed individuals who rented space in this rat trap. When I got in the elevator, and the doors closed, I was filled with fear that I would never move out of my parents’ house.
When I stepped into this moving box that was masquerading as an elevator, I feared for my life. The elevator was more of a coat closet that shook violently as it moved. It had faux wood paneling that looked 40 years old, and had a grimy, dirty, linoleum floor. It scared the shit out of me.
By the grace of God, the rickety elevator stopped at floor eleven, and I stumbled out. On the wall was a nameplate of sorts - a laser printout stuck on a piece of cardboard: “The Law Offices of Michael H. Goldberg, Esq.”.
I didn’t run, although every instinct in my body said to get away fast. I walked in and went right up to the secretary.
“I have an appointment at eight with Mr. Goldberg,” I said.
“Just have a seat. Mr. Goldberg will be right with you.”
I sat down and waited. A minute later, a man, who looked as if he had been chewed up and spit out by a dog, walked out. Mr. Goldberg had on a brown suit - and I use that term ‘suit’ very loosely - complemented with what was once a white shirt and a brown tie.
“David. Please come in,” he waved his hand, inviting me into his office.
I sat down in the only available chair: a folding chair. This should have been a red flag for me to run for the hills, but I sat on this uncomfortable piece of shit staring at Mr. Goldberg’s law degree hanging on the wall behind him in this 2x2 office. My knees were jammed up against Mr. Goldberg’s crappy desk, but he didn’t seem to notice or care as he made himself comfortable in a plush, high-backed, leather chair that appeared to be the most expensive item in the office.
“So, David, tell me a little bit about yourself,” he jumped right into it.
“Well, I just graduated law school a few months ago, and now I’m trying to get myself a job, sir.”
“Let me tell you a little bit about what we do here. I practice personal injury law - you know, when you get in an accident and want to sue someone, you come to me. You slip and fall and want to sue the restaurant where it happened you come to me. You –”
I had a hard time not staring at this man’s comb-over. Did he think he was fooling anyone? He did have it combed in an interesting way. He didn’t have the usual part by the ear with the hair combed across the head. This man had hair coming from the back of his head across the top where it was laid to rest. Scary.
“So, does that sound like something you would be interested in?” he asked me. I honestly hadn’t heard one word.
“Quite interesting. It’s something I could really see developing into a career for me.” That must have been the magic answer because what came out next was a shock to me.
“Well, then I’d like you to start Monday. The pay is four hundred dollars a week and unfortunately, I can’t offer you benefits because we are a small operation.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you Monday,” Did I actually say “sounds good?”
It sounded horrible. Four hundred dollars a week. How in the hell was I going to move out of my parents’ house on four hundred dollars a week? “Sounds good” - those two words kept replaying in my head as I took the subway to the train, then to the bus, and only stopped when I got in the car with my Dad, who was waiting at the park and ride for me.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Good. I got the job.”
“That’s great!” He was excited.
“Yup, great.”
That night I called Lisa. I had met her on the first day of law school when she sat next to me and said, “Why did I sign up for this?” I knew we would become good friends. The weirdest part was that she was from my hometown, but I never knew her in high school. She was cute, a slender 5’4”, with brown hair and blue eyes, but it was hard to get a good read on her body with her dressed in a professional type get-up for the first day of school. Regardless, I wasn’t attracted to her. Maybe it was the fact that she never talked to me for four years in high school that irked me. Maybe she just gave off the “Just Friend’s” vibe. Or maybe it was her fat ass. You can’t hide that in your slacks.
I mean, I’m sure other men thought she was attractive, but for some reason I couldn’t really see it. But she was funny. Very funny. Since we sat right next to each other, she would reach over to my notebook and write me quick notes during class that would crack me up. Her favorite target was “Fonzi.” Of course, he was. Who wouldn’t love ripping on an immigrant, who looked like Elvis? And not cool, young Elvis, but Fat Druggie Elvis, who spoke broken English in a thick, Russian accent. Any woman who could make Civil Procedure class fly by was all right in my book.
Lisa had recently started a job at a big investment bank working in the legal department. She always wanted to do something with divorce law, but since her father didn’t know anyone getting divorced at the time, he did the next best thing. He called a guy he knew at Hobart & Klein. She scored an interview, got the job, and the next thing she knew she was in the “management training program.” This was code for reviewing contracts, on the hunt through huge, over-written documents for those few, offending words they were trying to find, and then removing them for $32,000 a year. Fun stuff. In short, she was about as happy as I was.
“You’re never going to believe what happened,” I told her.
“What?”
“I got a job.” I basically let those words fall lifelessly out of my mouth.
“You did! I’m so excited for you! Where? Doing what?”
“It’s at a solo practitioner’s office. I’m not really sure what kind of law it is. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too mesmerized by the guy’s comb over,” I said, looking up at the broken clock that I had hanging on my wall - What the fuck?...My parents never bothered to replace the battery?
“What is with you and comb overs? How could you not know what kind of law he practices? You went for the interview, didn’t you?” Lisa was perplexed.
“Yeah, but I just said okay when he asked me how everything sounded.”
“I know you would rather be writing, but you do know that you have to actually go to
work and try to make some money.”
Lisa was the only one who knew my secret. While I was in law school I submitted a short story in a country-wide competition, and it came in first place. It was one of the most shocking things that had ever happened to me. After that day, I never submitted another story for publication. This does not mean I stopped writing. In fact, I had written a ton of stories, but I felt that everything I wrote wasn’t as good as that first story.
“Believe me, I would rather be doing anything but working at Hobart & Klein, but I have to get the hell out of my parents’ house. You’ll see, everything will be okay. Just stick with the job and, before you know it, we’ll be living in the city. Trust me.”
I hung up the phone feeling a little better, but I was not very happy with how my life was shaping up.