Marcelo in the Real World (18 page)

She is flustered and now she turns toward her computer and begins typing. I believe that she regrets telling me so much. It seems that lately I have been interpreting people’s gestures correctly with more frequency than ever before. But how does one
ever know if those interpretations are truly correct without actually testing them out, either by asking how a person feels or by doing something else that reveals their state of mind? I decide not to pursue this line of questioning any further. I don’t know why I even asked Juliet. And why did I lie when I told her that I wanted to know what the boat was like? What was it that I really wanted to know? There was a sense of relief when Juliet said that many others had been on the boat. There is something about Jasmine not being singled out by Wendell that is comforting.

“Are you going to stand there all afternoon?” Jasmine used to ask me that question when I got lost in thought in the middle of a task. But there was humor in the way Jasmine said it. In Juliet’s voice there is only annoyance.

“The note said that Juliet was going to tell me what to do.”

“And I’m a babysitter too?” She stands up and walks to Wendell’s office. She doesn’t tell me to follow her, but I suppose that’s what she wants me to do.

She stands at the doorway. “Wendell wants all the boxes out of here. Move them down to where you are going to be.”

“Where I am going to be.”

“Do you always repeat what people say?” Before I can answer she starts walking again. Juliet walks as if she had a stack of plates on her head. We stop three offices down from Wendell’s office.

“The lawyer here is out on vacation, and when he comes back he’s going to be fired, so you can use this office. Just put the pictures and stuff on his desk in a box. Don’t go through any of his drawers. He can do that himself. He’s going to get axed the minute he comes in.”

I stand there looking at a desk full of pictures of children. “Fired. Axed.” I am not sure what these words mean, but because I am going to use his office, I suspect that it means that the lawyer will be dismissed from the law firm.

Juliet is looking at me as if I were an idiot. I probably am in her eyes. She has told me so before. “Fired. Axed. As in you’re out of here. As in, to put it in a language that you would understand,
hasta la vista,
baby.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t have what it takes. He did not measure up to expectations. He was too soft.”

Listening to Juliet talk requires additional effort. At the risk of getting her upset again, or more upset than she is, I ask, “What does it mean when a person is too soft?”

She starts to walk back to her office. I walk behind her, thinking that she is not going to answer my question, but then I hear her speak and I speed up so I can walk next to her. “People hire Sandoval and Holmes when they want the meanest and the toughest. When other firms know that we are on the case, they know our client is out to win. You want to succeed here, you need to be merciless, go for the jugular. The guy in that office didn’t have it. He thought too much. He was always in Mr. Holmes’s office, bugging him about whether a course of action was correct. He had nerve to question Mr. Holmes, I’ll give him that. But he was soft.”

Juliet is looking at me with a look of disgust. I know she thinks I am soft as well, as she has just defined it. After all, doesn’t Marcelo think about things too much? “Is being soft the same as being meek?”

“I don’t know what that means. What is ‘meek’?”

I hesitate. Should I break the rule and tell her the religious uses of this term: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount or “the meek shall possess the land and delight themselves in abundant prosperity” from Psalm thirty-seven? I decide not to respond, even though Juliet is waiting for an answer. For the first time I have doubts that the meek will ever inherit or possess anything.

Juliet goes on, “Meek or weak or whatever, he’s gone. You need to move all the boxes in Wendell’s office to his office. When you finish that, come see me. I have some filing for you.”

I move all the boxes into Robert Steely’s office. The good thing about this is that, in the privacy of Robert Steely’s office, I will have the opportunity to look for a file that goes with the girl’s picture. But how do I go about doing this? There are so many files. I decide to look first in the two boxes that I used when working with Wendell’s assignment.

I find the boxes. I place them on top of the desk and proceed to go through each file. I don’t know what I am looking for. Another picture of the girl? Maybe the picture ended up in the trash box because it truly was a duplicate. There are twelve files in each box, each one full of hundreds of pages. I go through every single file, every single page in that file. Nothing. I look for pages that have paper clips with nothing attached. None.

I sit down in Robert Steely’s chair to think about what my next step should be. Now that I started looking for the file, the need to find out about the girl has increased. It is as if the act of looking has confirmed the rightness of my quest. I look at the pictures on the desk. In one picture, two small children sit underneath a beach umbrella. In another, the same children, but older, are
wearing Mickey Mouse hats and holding on to Robert Steely. Seeing his picture reminds me of the times I saw him in his office on my mail delivery runs. Juliet said he thought too much. He questioned Stephen Holmes about what was correct. I wonder if that included what was right or wrong. I never noticed anything different about him other than that he was one of the few lawyers who was not afraid to talk to me. For some reason he and I would find ourselves going to the bathroom at the same time. “We seem to be on the same kidney schedule,” he said to me once.

I am not supposed to, but I open the top drawer of his desk. There are pen refills, paper clips that have been extended and can no longer serve their function, lots of pennies, business cards, a menu for a Thai restaurant, a small ball made from rubber bands, a drawing of a spiderweb on a sticky, a magnifying lens, three plastic spoons, a napkin, dental floss, a cough drop that is stuck to the bottom, a dozen Pepto-Bismol tablets.

I take out the picture of the girl again. I wish so much that she had a name. I want to call her by her name. Her hair is black and short like Jasmine’s. Her eyes are black. The eyebrows are thick and form arches over her eyes. It is not a color picture, but her skin is dark brown like Abba’s or Aurora’s or Yolanda’s. My skin is more like Arturo’s, a beige color, a little browner than white but not dark brown. Abba came from Mexico and Arturo’s great-grandparents did as well. I wonder if the girl or her parents are from there too. Maybe the fact that she is like me in that respect is what is drawing me to her.

I had not noticed the background behind the girl. The picture was taken inside. It looks like an office because I can see the edge of a filing cabinet on one side of the girl and on the other side,
behind her, there is a calendar. I can tell because I can make out the sequence of dots that represent the days of the month.

I remember the magnifying glass in Robert Steely’s top drawer. I take it out now and look closely. It is a calendar. The girl’s face covers most of it but I can tell it is a month with thirty days. On top of the numbers there seems to be a picture of a tree in autumn. Below the calendar days there are some letters. Maybe it is like the calendar that Aurora gets from the hospital every year—at the bottom is the name of the hospital, the address, and a statement about the excellent work they do. Here all those words are obscured except for two words and five numbers. Even with the magnifying glass I cannot make out the words or numbers, but maybe I can take the picture to the mailroom and enlarge it. I grab the picture and am about to go out when suddenly the door opens.

All of the following happen simultaneously: My heartbeat accelerates. I quickly do what I can to turn the picture against the side of my leg. I expect to see Juliet. I start to think of what I can say to explain what I was doing with the door closed in Robert Steely’s office.

But it is not Juliet. It is Robert Steely. “Oh,” he says, jumping back. “Oh,” he repeats again. He is speechless and so am I. Then he sees the boxes occupying almost every inch of his office. “What is this?” he says without any surprise in his voice. He is expecting to receive a rational explanation. He is carrying a briefcase in his hand and it is clear he just arrived at the office.

Juliet said that he would be fired as soon as he returned. I don’t know how getting fired works. I imagine someone tells you that you can no longer work at the law firm. It is not something that I would mind happening to me, but maybe it would be
different for Robert Steely. Where will he get the money to feed his children?

“The Vidromek boxes,” I respond.

I look around the office just as he does and see that I left his magnifying glass on top of his desk. He will know that I opened his top drawer. I am about to say something about that, but then I see him drop his briefcase on the floor. He turns around and sits on the edge of the desk, looking at the door. His shoulders are slumped and he has turned white. “Bastards,” he says under his breath.

Now he is hiding his face with his hands. I wonder if I should put my hand on his shoulder, but I have never done this before and am afraid. Then he shakes his head and rubs his eyes with his coat sleeve.

“You know,” I say.

He nods. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon. I thought I had at least until the end of the year. I thought I’d get a few months to look for another job.”

We both look up when we hear the sound of Juliet’s high heels. She is at the doorway, standing very straight, her hands on her hips. “We didn’t expect you until Monday.”

“Obviously.” Now for the first time I hear anger in his voice.

“The person at the reception desk was supposed to direct you to Mr. Sandoval’s office.”

“She must have been taking a break, because I walked right in.”

“Mr. Holmes is not in, so you should go see Mr. Sandoval.”

Robert Steely looks at me and raises his eyebrows. How am I to interpret that look?
Look, see, this is who your father is?
He straightens himself up, takes a deep breath, and walks out.

“What’s that?” I see Juliet looking at the picture in my hand.

It has always been almost impossible for me to lie. The synapses in my brain usually travel faster than they should, but when it comes to lying, the same synapses freeze in place. I cannot think fast enough to come up with an alternative to the truth. So I answer Juliet’s question truthfully: “A picture.” Then I say something that comes as a surprise to me. “I found it under the desk. It belongs to Robert Steely.”

The deception works. Juliet does not ask to see it. She says, “I’m going to get someone to watch him while he collects his personal belongings. You should go to the mailroom and find him a couple of empty boxes so he can take his stuff.”

“I can help Robert Steely pack his things.”

“No. We need someone to make sure he doesn’t take any files that belong to the firm. He is only allowed to take his personal stuff. You can’t tell the difference.”

I think I can. Juliet actually thinks that I am stupid. I put the picture facedown on the desk, pretending that I am going to leave it there, and wait for Juliet to turn around before I grab it again. I can get to the mailroom without passing by Juliet’s desk.

“Hey, you back to work in the mailroom?” Jasmine asks. It feels like years since I last saw her.

“Juliet sent me to get empty boxes for Robert Steely. He is fired.”

“Gosh,” she says. “It seems like the nice ones never stay for long.”

“Juliet said he was soft. That’s why he is fired.”

“Juliet’s the one that’s soft.” Jasmine taps her head with her index finger.

I nod my head in agreement. I remember the picture in my hand and hold it out to her. “On the wall behind the girl there is a calendar. It is mostly covered by her, but I can make out two words and five numbers. Maybe the words and numbers can help us find the girl.”

She takes the picture from me and goes to the copying machine. I follow her. “Let’s try enlarging it one hundred and fifty percent.” From the side of the copying machine a blurry picture of the girl emerges. But now the words behind her are clear.

“Taquería
is a place where they sell tacos, right? Like a
cafetería
is place where they sell coffee,” Jasmine says.

“You know how to speak Spanish?”

“Three years in high school. Besides, I hate to tell you, but
taquería
is not that hard to translate. This picture could have been taken in any of the countless places in Spanish-speaking countries where Vidromek does business. Except that…”

“Except that.”

“Except that we only represent Vidromek in accidents that took place in the U.S. So if this picture is somehow related to a case we are handling, then this
taquería
is in the U.S., which doesn’t narrow the options all that much. Mmm.”

“What is it?”

“The numbers. So this is a calendar advertising a
taquería
somewhere in the United States. The advertisement would have an address for the
taquería,
right? And what usually goes in an address?”

It seems like an easy question to answer, but my mind is a total blank.

“Either a street address or a zip code. But since there are no words following these numbers, this is probably a zip code. Zip codes have five numbers,” Jasmine says.

“A zip code,” I repeat. I probably should feel dumb but I don’t. Probably because I’m so thrilled by the sound of excitement in Jasmine’s voice.

“Do you have to get back to Juliet?”

“I have to bring Robert Steely two boxes. To pack his personal belongings.”

“Do that. I’ll do a search
of taquería
and 02130 and see what I get. Take the boxes, and when you come back I’ll know more.”

I grab two empty boxes, the kind used for the copying paper, and I go to Robert Steely’s office. I put the boxes in the office. Robert Steely is still talking to Arturo, I suppose. How long does getting fired take? Perhaps Arturo is trying to be as kind as possible.