CHAPTER FIVE


Where else was there to go but home? I found myself back at my parents’ house, upstairs in my room, in daily contemplation of my next move. Thus far, law had not worked out as planned. On the bright side, I did have a new record on my hands for the longest time I had ever worked. I was now up to four hours, and if you counted the commute, seven.

The weeks went by, as I stuck to the same routine of faxing and emailing my resume to any and all firms advertising for an attorney. By this time my parents had begun to question my ability to function as an adult.

“What the hell are you doing with your life? All I ever see you do is write in that damn notebook. What the hell happened at the last job? You couldn’t stick it out?” This was Dad’s typical question.

“I spelled Jamaica wrong. I now know there’s an “I” in there.”

“That’s why you left? You had a job, David. You don’t just leave!”

“The guy yelled at me.”

“Yelled at you? Yelled at you!,” my Dad was now yelling at me, “Grow the fuck up. Everyone gets yelled at. Maybe, one day, you’ll yell at someone yourself. If you stay at a job for more than a couple of hours. Everyone starts somewhere.”

“But-”

“No ‘but.’ Get your ass another job, and stop acting like a child.”

I was grateful he hadn’t thrown me out of the house yet. I would explain that I was trying to get a job, emailing and faxing my little heart out, looking for that big break, but deep down inside I wanted to do something creative. Maybe write a book or a screenplay. These seemed like viable options to me. What seemed almost unnatural, was becoming a lawyer.

 

I met Lisa at the only bar in our town that had cheap drink specials - a joint called The Donkey. Lisa and I walked in, and looked around for seat, but it’s a crowded, quirky, place with 50’s style bar stools up against the bar and small booths. There were clothes lines running across the ceiling with figurines of donkeys hanging from it. After pushing our way to the middle of the place, we found a booth and ordered dollar drafts.

“What am I going to do? My parents are flipping out on me,” I complained.

“You have to find another job,” she said.

“Yeah, no shit. On top of everything, I owe my dad $250 for the super-commuter pass.”

“I’m sure you’ll get a job. Just keep trying. Look, I’ll ask around Hobart for you, and see if there is anything available. You never know.”

“Man, I don’t know if I can work in a place that corporate. Don’t you all just sit in cubicles breathing in the sterile air all day? I’d go nuts,” I said.

“Look, if something comes along you better take it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Don’t you want to move into the city? Don’t you want to move out of your parents’ house? If you keep heading down the road you’re going, you’ll be at home forever. Is that what you want?”

“You’re right. I need to get a job. Then I need to get a life. If I’m lucky, maybe I can work on getting a girlfriend, too.” That was my next priority.

“Well, having a job can’t hurt. Moving out of your parents’ house wouldn’t hurt your odds, either.”

Lisa was right. I wasn’t going to get anywhere until I got a job. I went home and continued to send out my resume.

 

As my third month at home drew to a close, I received a phone call. “Ehhhh, this is Avi Chyman, I am, ehh, responding to, eh, a resume you sent in. I would like to talk to you when you get a chance, ehhh, please give me a call back at your earliest convenience. Okay.” I had to listen eight times before I could decipher this message.

So, now I had a decision to make. Either I could call back Avi, and schedule an appointment to meet him, or I could ignore the message and live in my parents’ house for the next ten years. I opted to call.

“Hello, can I speak with Mr. Chyman please?” I said to the secretary.

“Mr. Chyman is indisposed at the moment. Can I take a message?”

“Yes, can you please tell him David Michaels cal-“

“Ah, Mr. Michaels, Mr. Chyman asked me to set up a time for you to meet with him this week. How does tomorrow sound?” She was an eager beaver.

“Tomorrow sounds okay. Can we do the afternoon? Around one?”

“One p.m., it is. We’re located at 37 West 34th Street. Second floor,” she said.

“Great, see you tomorrow at one.”

 

Mr. Early got into the city at 12:30, primped and primed, for his meeting with Avi. I headed down 34th Street and figured I’d get there a little early to show how interested I really was in the job. As I walked down 34th street, I realized I couldn’t find building number 37. I saw 35, and then I saw 39, but, inexplicably, number 37 was missing. I backed up a bit and then started over. Okay, here was number 35. I took a few steps forward and looked for 37. I didn’t see it. All I could see was number 39, Dunkin’ Donuts, next door. Mother Fucker. I took a step back to number 35 and looked really hard this time. There was the door to the shit-hole clothing store with the 35 on it. I walked up to the door and to my surprise, behind the grate used by number 35 to close up shop at night, there was a small pathway. I followed the path for a couple of steps. Lo and behold, there was an elevator and a very sad-looking sign under glass that had Avi Chyman spelled out in off-white, block, stick-on letters. Was this guy a squatter? This was definitely not a normal, commercial building. Hey, what the fuck? For the second time, I was about to come face to face with the wonderful world of law.

I got off on the second floor and came to a door. I rang the doorbell, and a 350-pound woman opened the door.

“You must be David. Please have a seat,” she sat me down in front of her desk that was littered with paper.

There was the secretary’s desk right by the door. Ten feet from her desk was a cubical partition with a hole cut out so the secretary could see right through to what I assumed was the attorney’s office that was 15 feet from her desk.

She finally spoke, “David, I’m sorry, but the attorney won’t be able to make it in today. He’s in court, so if you don’t mind I’m going interview you.”

“What?” Where the fuck was Avi? I wanted to leave, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I pussed out, “I guess that’s okay.”

She started asking me about my experience. Well, genius, judging from my resume, I don’t have any. Then she told me what Avi does here in the office. He practiced general law. Basically, taking any cases with a paying client. Fifteen minutes later, she offered me the job, “This job pays $10 an hour, which will come out to four hundred dollars a week. You’ll work nine to five. Is that okay?”

By now, you all know that it was okay, and I agreed to start the next Monday. Luckily it was already Friday, so I didn’t have a chance to get too excited.

Since I was a working man now, I bought myself another monthly bus/train/subway pass, which cost a cool $250 with money that I borrowed from Lisa. But I was confident this time. Things were going to last. With my new found independence, I slipped into work at 8:45 Monday morning raring to go. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I rang the bell or buzzer or whatever the fuck that button was on the side of the door and got the same result. I popped a squat, and twenty minutes later the secretary arrived.

“Waiting long?”

“No, just a few minutes.”

“Oh, we don’t get here a minute before nine.”

Oh, whoop-tee-doo for you.

“Well, let me show you to your work area.” She took five steps to the cubicle wall and pointed to the desk barely large enough to hold the computer that sat upon it. “Here you go. You can hang your jacket on the back of your chair. So, have a seat and get acquainted with your computer. There may be some legal stuff on it, so take a look. The attorney also wanted me to give you these folders. He wants you to go through the files and get acquainted with them. I’ll be over there,” she said, pointing to her desk five feet away, “and if you need anything just dial 477 and I’ll be there to help.”

Dial 477? She was five feet away. If I stretched my legs, I could make it over to her desk in one step. This woman has got to be kidding. I spent the next hour going through the files and playing on the computer. There was basically nothing in them. One had a bill receipt for $200. The other had a bunch of papers that, when read together, made no sense. I turned to the computer. There was nothing on it. By 10:15, I was ready to kill myself, when in walked a totally fucking, disheveled immigrant. He stopped at the Secretary's desk and and said, “Eh, anything up?” This had to be Avi.

“David, eh, what’s happening, my friend. Glad to have you aboard. Give me, eh, a minute, then come into my office and we’ll get a chance to, ehh, know each other a little better,” he said as he passed by.

I could see him getting settled because there was a sliding piece of glass that separated my “work space” from his office. I was fiddling on the computer when I heard the secretary’s phone buzz.

Out came Avi’s voice, “Can you send David in, please.” I quickly turned to Avi and saw him talking into a phone, then quickly turned to see the secretary talking to him. I was sitting right next to Avi. Why was he buzzing the secretary?

“Yes, Mr. Chyman.” Then my phone buzzed. “David, Mr. Chyman would like to see you now in his office.”

I sat there utterly bewildered. Then I heard my voice eek, “um, okay. I’ll be right there.” I got up and made my way to his office. It took three steps.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Have a seat, David,” he sat back in his chair. He went on to tell me all about the firm. I was busy looking at Avi. He was a short man, a very tan man and a man that wasn’t the best shaver in the world. He had a little bit of stubble left on both cheeks. The few, odd strands looked like cat whiskers. I pictured Avi sipping milk from a bowl on his desk. Then I pictured myself rolling a ball of yarn under his desk and him batting it around with his pudgy, little hand-paws.

He droned on, nothing interesting. Then he tells me that he is going to need me to follow up on the cases that he doesn’t have time for. I tell him that sounds great and he says, “I assume Ann has given you the files to peruse. (Oh, that’s the moron’s name - Ann.) Ehh, First thing is we are going to, eh, need to get back that $200 for Mr. Thomas. He left his wife’s fur coat at, ehh, the fur, eh, vault. Now they are charging him, ehh, an extra two bills because he left it an extra week. You are going to write a letter. Got it?”

So I went back to my seat, started writing a letter, looked up some law regarding holding property in one of the 10 legal books he had in his legal “library” and, 15 minutes later, I was done. Avi’s shades were drawn on our glass partition, so I couldn’t interrupt this man’s private time. Ann also made it clear that when the blinds were drawn Avi was not to be disturbed, so I spent the next hour staring into space as I waited for an opportunity to show the letter to Avi.

Finally, the blinds went up. Here was my chance. I knocked on the glass window to get Avi’s attention, then asked if he had a minute. He walked over to my desk, and I handed him the letter. He took a minute to read it, hovering over me.

“How did you know how to do this?”

“What?”

“How did you know what to say in the letter? I mean, you say something here about a bailment,” he pronounced bailment as if he had never heard of that word before.

“I don’t know. I know how to write a letter.”

“Yes, but how did you know what a bailment was?”

“Umm, I went to law school. You usually learn things like that there. Then I looked up the relevant law and put it in the letter.”

“Relevant law? Where did you find that?”

“Umm, right here in the books behind you.”

“How did you know how to do that?”

“I told you, I went to law school. You learn things like that. You’re a lawyer, didn’t you learn things like that in school?”

He looked at me, completely perplexed. He nervously chuckled, “Of course. Yes, of course, I did. Very good.” Then he ran into his office, closed the door and pulled down the blinds so I couldn’t look in.

Holy shit.