Noah's Law (4 page)

She cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Well, your height's misleading. But you're still a high schooler.' ‘You only just finished year twelve. You aren't exactly a senior citizen.' ‘Well, girls are more mature than boys. That's a scientific fact.'

‘Oh, great,' I said with a laugh. ‘Don't tell me you're one of those hairy-armpit feminists who doesn't shut up about women and men being equal by pointing out all our differences.'

‘My armpits are perfectly hairless, thank you very much,' she said and then giggled.

‘I have two sisters and a tree-hugging mum. I also have five-year-old twin half-sisters who insist on being served first at dinner in the name of feminism.'

‘Teach them when they're young is what I say.'

‘So whatever you plan to say about males and females won't be original. I've heard it all before so save the Germaine Greer speeches for uni.'

‘How many sisters did you say you have?'

‘Four.'

‘That explains a lot.'

‘Anyway, if you hate all this so much, why do you do it? At least I'm forced to be here.'

‘I'm going to study law, so it's ideal to be working at a law firm. It'll look great on my CV. I will have seen how a law firm works from the inside.'

I picked up a piece of paper. ‘Duplicating trees? Sounds like a great way to learn about the law.'

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, I know. It's mind-numbing stuff. Got to start somewhere, I suppose.'

‘What are you copying anyway?'

‘Discovery.'

‘What's that?'

‘We've got to exchange documents with the other side.'

‘So why the urgency?'

‘We're on a court timetable.'

‘Does the court order you to exchange documents?'

‘Yeah.'

‘How does it know which ones are important?'

She let out a laugh. ‘Are you cross-examining me? What's with the million questions?'

I shrugged. ‘What's this case about?'

‘I'm not sure. I just copy.'

I shook my head and flicked through the contents of the manila folder opened in front of me on the photocopier. ‘Aren't you even curious? You're the one who wants to be a lawyer – well isn't this your chance to see how it all works?'

‘Look, I don't have time to read through the files. Casey dumps them on me all the time. I do know that they're usually personal injury cases. You know, people slipping on a spilt milkshake in a shopping centre and hurting themselves. Losing a finger in a machine at work.'

‘Ouch.'

‘Getting stuck in a turnstile in the entrance to a shop and pulling a back muscle.'

‘Woah. Can you imagine how fat that person would have been to get stuck in a turnstile?!'

‘I saw her actually. She
was
huge . . . God, that's mean.'

‘So this file I'm copying now. What's it about?'

‘You can read – check it out yourself. But we're on a deadline. Casey needs this all by tomorrow or we're seriously in trouble. You haven't seen her mad.'

‘So what I've seen so far is
happy
?'

‘No, she doesn't do happy. She does frustrated, stressed, annoyed, condescending, dismissive and mad. If you can get her on a frustrated day, count your blessings. It's her best mood.'

Jacinta kicked the photocopier and swore. ‘I hate it when it jams!'

‘Casey sounds like my maths teacher. Move over, let me have a look.'

‘I'm fine,' Jacinta muttered, and crouched down to fix the paper jam.

We didn't talk much for the rest of the afternoon. I found out some things in the small pockets of time we had to chat. Jacinta grew up in Canberra. Her dad was born in Indonesia, and he worked as a lawyer with the Indonesian embassy. Her mum had an Italian background and was a teacher. Jacinta was enrolled to study law at Sydney University and had moved to Sydney in late November getting a job at Aunt Nir-vine's firm shortly after she arrived. She'd been renting a flat with another girl in Surry Hills. The only problem was that the girl had a pet rat she kept in a cage in the kitchen
and
she had a chronic case of BO (the flatmate, not the rat), so Jacinta was on the hunt for a new place and a rat-free, odourless flatmate.

That was about all the information I got out of her. She was right. There was a heap of documents to get through. Sometimes the photocopier jammed and I felt like hurling it against the wall. By four o'clock I'd had enough. I went into the kitchen, got a tablespoon, grabbed the tin of Milo, sat down at the table and crammed mouthfuls of crunchy chocolate into my mouth. John, one of the lawyers I'd met earlier in the day, walked in, looked at me and chuckled. I gave him a sheepish smile. My teeth were full of chocolate and I guessed my mouth was smudged with chocolate too.

‘Healthy,' he said as he made himself a cup of herbal tea. Apparently he was the youngest lawyer in the firm and had only been practising for two years. ‘So how was your first day? I suppose Casey's breaking all the award minimum standards?'

‘I don't know what that means,' I said, helping myself to another spoon of Milo, ‘but I know that you've all got the most boring jobs on the planet.'

Amused, he said, ‘Let me tell you something – most of us started at the photocopier. You've got to see it as an art form. Getting the image at an exact angle. Avoiding smudges. Making sure the staples are at perfect right angles.'

I laughed. ‘Right, perfect right angles. I knew I was missing something. So do you like working here?'

‘Sure,' he said enthusiastically. ‘Good bunch of people, interesting work. We have our good times, dude. Swing by my office later this week. I'll give you some real legal work.'

John wasn't so bad. But using the word ‘dude' just said nerd all over.

‘So when will we be meeting for lunch?' Dad asked me at dinner.

‘We won't,' I said, attacking my chicken. I was starving. All that photocopying had worked up my appetite.

‘And why not?'

‘Because it's not very cool, Dad,' Nadine explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘No, it's not that,' I said. ‘You're punishing me for six weeks. I'm not at Aunt Nirvine's because I want to be so I can't pretend we can just casually enjoy lunch and talk about the weather when being at that firm is the last place I want to be during my school holidays.'

‘Hmm, that puts it in perspective,' Dad said. ‘I appreciate your honesty. Well can you at least share with us how your first day in the adult working world went?'

‘It was slave labour. Trust lawyers to violate human rights and international law.'

‘Oh, I'm sure it wasn't as grave a situation as that.'

‘A practising lawyer called me
dude
.'

Dad clucked his tongue. ‘Appalling,' he said, trying to hold back a smile.

‘So is this Jacinta girl good-looking?' Amit asked me on the phone later that evening.

‘Yeah. She's half Indonesian, half Italian, and totally hot. She has a nice smile too. But she doesn't smile that often.'

‘So, she's seventeen?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Ah . . . older women. They're so much better.'

‘You moron, you haven't even been out with a girl before let alone an
older woman
.'

‘Hey! What about Rachel?'

‘Primary school doesn't count. Far out, Amit, can we focus here? My life is over. It's nine o'clock and I can't keep my eyes open. I'm thinking about whether I've got a shirt ironed for tomorrow and I'm stressing about whether I stuffed up the pagination on the photocopies. This isn't right. I shouldn't be feeling like this for at least another ten years! What the hell is going on?
Ironed shirts
, Amit!
Amit
, you moron, are you there?'

‘Yeah, yeah, give me a sec . . . Mum, I'm on the phone! No I didn't leave the towel on the floor, it was Siraj! Sorry, Noah. She's on my back because Siraj and I've been home all day and the house is a mess. I was too busy watching the special edition De Niro DVD collection to clean up. Did you know that De Niro is a method actor? That means—'

‘Alright, I get it. Talk about rubbing it in. I've got to get to bed.'

‘You can't be serious. It's still early.'

‘There's a huge deadline tomorrow so Jacinta wants me in at eight to help her before she heads off to a house inspection.'

‘Are you getting paid for this?'

‘Dad wanted it to be voluntary but Aunt Nirvine said she'd pay me fifty bucks a day.'

‘Woah. Unreal.'

‘That works out to be about six bucks an hour. Your cousins probably get paid more in the factories in Bangladesh!'

‘Oh, I don't know, man. My aunt and uncle
own
a factory in Bangladesh. Do you want me to find out how much they pay their workers?'

‘I'll talk to you tomorrow, Amit. I'm going to bed.'

 

‘Hey, this case is pretty interesting,' I said to Jacinta the next morning while we were at the photocopiers.

‘I don't have time for interesting. I've got to be at a house inspection in forty minutes.'

‘Sheez. My mum keeps going on and on about how it's us guys who can't multi-task. So copy
and
listen.'

Jacinta chuckled. ‘Fine. I'm listening. Just don't expect me to gasbag all morning. If I miss this inspection I'm dead. Do you know how many people are in the rental market now? You could advertise a dog kennel and you'd get a queue of potential tenants.'

‘Well it says here that this woman went to the movies and decided to get some popcorn halfway through. When she got back she forgot to pull the seat back down before she sat and she fell, which would have been hilarious to watch by the way. So Casey's suing the movie theatre for not putting a warning sign. What does she expect the sign would say?
Warning: Idiots May Fall
?'

‘I once smashed into the glass doors of a shop. Do you think there should have been a sign?
Warning: Highly Effective Cleaning Products May Cause Injury.
'

We got the giggles.

My phone beeped, indicating I had a message. It was Amit.

Morning waves @ Coogee r sick. Make like u got the ?u and come

ova.

Great. Just what I needed for motivation. There were still hours left until five. Meanwhile, I'd be copping paper cuts while Amit was riding waves and working on a tan. The self-pity was choking me.

‘Okay, enough messing around,' Jacinta said eventually. ‘And that's probably too much cynicism for one morning. We're at a law firm. Of course there'll be bogus claims and genuine ones. Now let's shut up and finish or we won't have a job. Well,' she added, noticing how relaxed I was, ‘I'll have no job. You're probably wishing you'd get the sack.'

‘I could easily manage that. Problem is I'm not sure what Dad would have in mind as my next punishment. His capacity for thinking up ways to ruin my holidays is terrifying.'