The She-Hulk Diaries (10 page)

I stepped into a small windowless room with a low-pile rug, an armoire, and a sofa long enough for me to nap on, which is probably what the partners thought I’d be doing here. The armoire could hold several outfits and I could change easily here in an emergency. “Thanks, Bailey. It’s perfect.”

I got my office passkey, ID badge, and an employee manual. As I was introduced around, I felt a rising panic. Everyone was so sophisticated and fancy, and I was just a girl who’d liked to spend quiet evenings with her dad cleaning guns while her mom made a pan of brownies.

Quinty dropped by my office just as the HR manager was leaving. He sat in the leather-and-chrome chair across from my desk. I tried to very casually check out those features that Ellis had inherited, and I hoped Amber hadn’t told him, “Her credentials might not be too shabby, but you do know that she was a trashy little slutty groupie, right? You’ll definitely want to disinfect anything she sits on.”

Quinty was wearing the same tweed jacket and had a monocle dangling from his pocket. “Have you got everything all sorted out?”

“Yes, sir.” I tried not to stare at the monocle.

“I just wanted you to know that it’s official. We’ve got the ReplaceMax suit, and I’m putting you on lead.”

My heart did a flip. “Thank you, sir! I won’t let you down.”

“I hope not. In fact, we hired you especially for this case. If you hadn’t approached us, we would have gone to you, since Dr. Sven Morigi, our client, greatly admires the work you did at GLKH. He’d like to meet you this week to talk about the case.”

“Yes, sir. It’s an amazing opportunity for me. What’s the catch?”

He raised his bushy white eyebrows. “Hmm?”

“I’m not here for one day, yet I get a case that any of the partners would kill for. There’s got to be a catch.”

His laugh boomed through the room. “The first one is that Amber expected to be lead, and she won’t be happy being second chair. If you make any mistakes, she’ll use them against you and she’ll be unforgiving.”

“I’m glad to have a second who is watching for anything I might miss, because I want the best for our client.”

“Good attitude. The second catch is not really your concern. Amber has the appearance of conflict, which is why I agreed to allow a new hire to be first chair.” He frowned and then shrugged. “My son, Ellis, is good friends with Maxwell Kirsch, the CEO of ReplaceMax, and he doesn’t want us to take this suit. Ellis has always been ruled by his heart, so that’s to be expected.”

Was he telling me that Ellis was in love with Amber, so don’t get any ideas? “I appreciate your caution, sir. It’s always best to avoid even the suspicion of compromise.”

“Amber and I have met with Dr. Morigi to fully apprise him of the situation,” he said. “I know Amber well enough to trust that she won’t allow a personal relationship to influence her professional conduct.”

Was this code for “because she conceded to letting us hire you even though you’re a skanky ho”? Maybe.

Quinty sighed deeply. “No, I would bet my bottom dollar that Amber would never let a human emotion sway her dedication to the big win. If
she did, we’d have to eliminate our business relationships with a good portion of the female population.”

Quinty winked, and I knew that my skanky ho-ishness was official. “Sir, I just want to say…”

He held up his hand and said, “No need. I gather that you and my son met when you were both graduate students. We all have private lives, including me.”

I tried to smile, but my muscles might have been making another expression entirely. “Anything else, sir?”

“A few of our witnesses are terminally ill, so we need you to get an expedited trial date. By expedited, I don’t mean in a year. We need to try the case
within
the year.” He pulled his monocle out of his pocket and swung it by the gold chain. “You’re going to tell me that it’s impossible.”

“No, sir. I’m going to tell you that’s improbable, because I don’t think anything is impossible. I’ll do all I can to schedule a trial date ASAP.”

“That’s what I hoped to hear. Well, every second counts!”

When I walked through the front door of my building, Claude was waiting for me, ecstatic that he’d received a check by special delivery. “Joocey Jooce paid all the back rent for my tenant!” He clutched my hands, saying, “Thank you, Miss Jennifer, thank you!”

He told me the amount of the check, which was more than what the tenant owed even at the current market rate, let alone the original monthly rate. “They must value your tenant’s work to pay so much and so quickly,” I said to my solvent PFLOML.

Either things were coming too damn easy for me, or my luck had changed. And I didn’t believe in luck. Satisfied with the resolution to his rent problem, I told Claude to contact a tax attorney to take care of the error on his filing.

“But you’re my lawyer!”

“Okay, as your lawyer, I strongly advise you to see a tax specialist. I’ll give you the name of a friend of mine who’ll take good care of you.”

“I guess she’ll have to do, Miss Jennifer. But you’re the best, you know.”

It was funny how the appreciation of a doorman meant just as much to me as a big win in court, but it did.

I changed into black sweats and a hoodie and tied my hair back. I love this city at night, even on cold, wet nights. It’s so charged with energy, and the millions of lights glow and glitter and shimmer against the darkness. I hit a fast pace, so that by the time anyone noticed me, I was already gone, baby, gone.

In a few minutes, I’d warmed up. I felt strong. Not superhuman strong, but really good anyway, and almost hoping that ninjas would leap out from a doorway and attack so I could throw a few moves at them while shouting “Bam! Kapow!”

After I put in seven miles, I loped over to the Mansion’s garage. I sighed as I passed by all the gleaming muscle cars, shiny roadsters, and beefed-up trucks, and chose a beat-up Toyota, which wouldn’t attract attention. I checked out the tricked-up features: the car had the standard invisibility shield and a nice hydroplane function, but sadly no sideways rotation or flamethrowers. Because you never know.

When I asked for the key, the guy, whose name really is Guy, said, “Sorry, Ms. Walters, but you need to sign the release to take it out and you aren’t permitted to race, do stunts, or to transform in it.”

I had no intention of transforming in the car because She-Hulk’s head would rip right through the roof like a green jack-in-the-box. “Don’t worry. I’m only using it for surveillance. I’ll bring it back in one piece.”

The attendant cringed back as if he thought I was going to punch him. “I’m really sorry, but I’m just following the rules: no signature, no car.”

“Fine.” I signed the release, which I had drawn up myself, including provisions and exclusions that might come in handy. As I always advise my clients, “Allowing your legal opponent to set the terms of a contract is like hiring a fox to design the security system for a chicken coop.”

I drove to Queens and parked down the street from my PFLOML’s warehouse. The building was dark and I hoped no one was in. There was an alley that ran behind the warehouse, and I slipped in beside a stack of pallets and quickly yanked off my sweats. I tucked my glasses into one of my shoes for safety.

I was wearing one of Shulky’s favorite black bodysuits beneath, and it sagged at my boobs, hung at my crotch, and pooched at my butt, ugh! But as I transformed, the fabric stretched taut. I felt my body growing large and solid with muscle, my vision sharpening, my blood moving through my arteries as I acquired her incredible strength.

And then I felt the roar of She-Hulk’s personality—the bravado, the swag, and sexiness. There was a sharp moment when we coexisted, when I was She-Hulk and She-Hulk was Jennifer Walters, and it always felt amazing, like pure shimmering joy, like utter rightness and balance and perfection, and the universe stopped for that moment.

Then it was gone, and I existed like a shadow within her.

Shulky left my shoes and clothes by the pallets and rambled back to the fence. While I’d never break and enter, she had different rules. She sprung up in an easy standing back flip, clearing the vicious concertina wire just as the guard dogs tore out of the building.

The leader of the pack, which looked like a cross between a Rottweiler and a Kodiak bear, went straight for her jugular, as the other dogs circled. Shulky embraced the dog and laughed.

The beast recognized Shulky as an alpha, and in seconds she’d placed him on the ground and was giving him a vigorous tummy rub.

“I’d love to play with you all night, Fido, but there’s business to take care of.”

She went to the dog door, which wasn’t wide enough for her linebacker shoulders, and grabbed on to the corrugated steel edge of the roll-down gate. She pushed, but not so hard as to make the metal crumple. The chain mechanism ratcheted loudly as the gate rolled up a few feet, and she dropped to the ground and rolled underneath and into the warehouse. The Rottiak followed her.

She could see well in dim light, but the shop was pure black, so she set the illuminate function on her aPhone to the “ambient” level. Cardboard boxes were stacked almost to the ceiling. She opened one and saw the biodegradable cup lids featuring Joocey Jooce’s
PLAY NICE!
logo with its graphic of stick figures on a seesaw.

She opened other boxes at random. They also contained lids, and she found cartons of paper straws, too. She made her way between stacks to a corner of the shop that was set up with lab tables and chemistry equipment.

Shulky went to the side door and listened, which was very discreet since she enjoyed kicking her way into places. When she didn’t hear anything, she opened the door to an office space. The industrial carpeting was grooved from where the space had once been partitioned, and two Steelcase desks and file cabinets were shoved to one side.

A simple wood crucifix hung on one wall, and another wall had an altar with oranges and incense to the Buddha. A small prayer carpet faced the north wall. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves on the final wall, and books filled every inch.

Shulky scanned the spines of religious texts in many languages and translations. There were books on philosophy, math, chemistry, physics,
medicine, metaphysics, and veterinary care. Shulky opened drawers and file cabinets and found paper clips, legal notepads, and a pencil sharpener. Initial sketches of the PLAY NICE! logo filled the pages of one notebook.

“Weird, huh?” she asked the Rottiak, who was following her. “Someone’s feeding and exercising you, right? Cuz you look fabulous.”

She went back out to the shop and discovered an alcove with food and water bowls, a garbage bin filled with kibble, chew toys, and clean bedding.

She suspected that there were living quarters on the second floor, but she decided not to explore further, in case there were any alarms. Also, I was panicking that she’d been here too long, and I kept whining, “Let’s go!” inside her head.

Shulky left the building safely, loped across the lot, and flipped over the fence, landing gracefully on her feet. She threw her arms in the air and whisper-shouted, “She-Hulk nails a perfect landing! Ten! The crowd goes wild!”

She was heading back to the car, thinking of where she’d like to go, when I shouted, “No, no, no! Let me out!”

“Chillax. No work tomorrow,” she said as she took out her aPhone and began scrolling through Tweets. “Yes, dancing with Katy and Rihanna would totally be fun!”

I sat back and hoped she wouldn’t get herself in the news again. Or wreck the car. Or hook up with a sleazebag. Or trash a hotel. Or decide to take a road trip to Tijuana for an X-rated tattoo. Any or all of the above. Again.

As she headed to
parts
parties unknown, I wondered about my PFLOML’s tenant, Adam, a “heck of a nice guy” who read philosophy, studied religion, kept guard dogs, conducted chemistry experiments, and thought it was okay to pay rent in store coupons.

Everyone is calling to wish me luck! Amy called, my cousin called, and Holden left a message saying we should meet next week and “regroup.” Ruth called and promised to route all situations to other superheroes unless absolutely necessary and said, “About Fashion Week…”

I felt Shulky brooding inside me, and I said, “Shulky understands why she was blacklisted after that fiasco with Mr. Lagerfeld.” I smiled remembering how the small man had faced down Shulky and been mad or brave enough to call her wardrobe “vulgar,” her behavior as deplorable as that of “a parlor maid who discovers the brandy,” and her walk “graceless.”