White Man's Problems (13 page)

“He has a photo of Jacques Derrida in his bathroom?”

“A little one. I know. Good God, right? I mean, who even knows who he is? I wonder if Brandon knows who he is,” she said, drifting for a second. “So,
anyway
, it's till eight twenty with the dog, and then he eats some super-healthy breakfast—berries and grain or something. He did make me coffee. I think he was turned off that I had coffee…that meant I wasn't a super-healthy eater. Then he goes to his Pilates class, then the dry cleaner, and then he's home. He takes a shower, and then he's off to a ‘Saturday lunch.' He always has lunch on Saturday with someone—I think it's where he conducts his real long-term plans. Lots of Hollywood people. That's his big plan, whether he admits it or not, like everybody out here. He just won't admit it yet because it would make him like every other schmuck out here. Plus, those guys all do shit jobs at the beginning.”

I couldn't take it anymore. “How could you stomach having sex with him?”

“Oh, stop.” She gave me a bent-knuckled middle finger. “You fucking baby.” She smiled. She was brilliant. She got so disappointed in me at times like this, and it was at times like this that I loved her best.

She became wistful. “You know, my father says we sometimes end up spending a lot of time throughout our lives with certain people—and we just look up one day and realize we don't have a good reason for it. They may have been people we were assigned to or knew in a past life, or maybe we just saw them at magic hour one day when they were beautiful.”

“But what happens?”

“Maybe we're just too lazy to shake them off.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said.

She was still wistful and looking away. “It's really hard for girls, you know.” She was always looking away from me. “You just look back sometimes and think of a guy and say, ‘Did I really blow him?'”

“I think you need to get out of LA.”

“I do, too. The guys here are terrible.”

“Since when do you define yourself by men?”

“Oh, please…nice try. Tell that to my mother.”

“What about Brandon?”

“You guys are all on one of two roads. It's boring.” She put on her sunglasses—the big kind—and we cleared our trays. “Come with me. I have to pick up fucking panty hose—can you believe it? The Judge makes us come to court in hose. Walk with me?” As she grabbed my arm, she lost her balance for a second and accidentally rubbed her breast on my arm. It was one of those awkward moments that electrifies a guy and can't be shrugged off. We locked eyes for a second. Then she said, “C'mon, tough guy. Walk with me.” And she pulled me away.

***

As the time for my appointment drew near, I looked around my office. There were five boxes of Amy and Andy's case files filling up my half of the space. They made Rothbart nuts, because he had those Felix Unger instincts. They made me crazy for a different reason. I had represented for months that I had been reviewing them—that I had encyclopedic knowledge of their contents. A hedge fund somewhere had probably paid eighty thousand dollars for the phony hours I had billed to those boxes. Even making a master list was hard for me because I was so bored and scattered: bank documents, loan agreements, copies of deeds of trust, promissory notes, UCC-1 filings, and lengthy, contentious letters between banks and law firms about the underlying loan documents and deeds of trust and UCC-1s and promissory notes.

Every time I opened one of the boxes I was overcome with powerful confusion. I stared at the words and saw my death amid the death of the imagination they represented. When I read promissory notes, I felt my body flying backward, pulled toward the window, then out in the sky above Figueroa Street, and finally into one those black-and-white death spirals you saw in old movies. I talked to myself, saying things like “a real promissory note is
I will love you forever
” and “the goal of the law is to kill all ambiguity.” The truth was that I was nothing but ambiguity and romanticism and hadn't figured out my life. I wasn't ready to kill all ambiguity. This was a world that allowed no creativity, no flirting with juror number three, and no songs—none. This was the business world, and it was for greedy cunts like Oscar.

Rothbart came flying back into the office, his hair wet from the lunch workout. “Cameron had an interview at Disney. Can you believe it? Lucky prick. I knew it. I knew he wasn't serious about this place.”

“Is that a good job?”

“Are you serious? Business affairs at a studio like Disney? Everybody wants that—at least anybody who's awake. One hundred eighty-five grand to start, and with stock options. And you're in the game.”

“Yeah, but you'll still be a lawyer. I thought you wanted to be a real downtown lawyer—a person connected to the world of letters, flying to New York and all that crap.”

“You're an idiot.” He went back to the interrogatories.

“Wow, Oscar.” I had a creeping feeling that Rothbart had outsmarted me. “I don't believe you. I'm here listening to you all day—that is, the few hours I can stand to be here. And I guess, well, yeah, I did believe that at least you liked it here—I mean, enough to get here at seven and kiss ass the way you do.”

“Duuuude.” He laughed and stopped working. “Frankie. Big boy. I like it: you're so sincere.” He grinned some more, as if he were discovering something. “I like it.” He put his hands over his head and put his feet up. “I guess today is the day when it all comes out…you
must
be getting fired. That would explain all the drama.”

But he stopped right before he was going to lay into me. He went in another direction. “You know, there's this crazy thing that sticks in my mind every time I see you or think about you. Do you know what it is? It is so juvenile; I've always loved it. It's absurdist. It's like John Cage meets Keith Haring meets
The Benny Hill Show
. It captures so much while being so stupid.” He looked to see if any of this had registered. “I just have this memory of when Cornell came to New Haven for the football game my junior year. We had this guy who would walk around the Yale Bowl during that game with a sandwich sign—you know, front and back. The front says
The Big Red
, and then you see the back when he walks by, and it says
Gives Head
. Ha! How great is that?”

This is how bad it gets, I said to myself. “Look, dude, don't go down this road.” I was trying not to take the bait. “And you're avoiding my question. You want to work at a studio? That's it for you? That's the play for you? You have acted for the past ten months as though this job is your whole future. Are you serious about anything? Do you ever tell the truth? Do you know the truth?”

He raised his eyebrows in mock discovery. “My God, it is true:
The Big Red Gives Head
.” He was laughing. “Rick Danko. Christ, even the song is called ‘It Makes No Difference.'” He was laughing hard now. I was still hung over. “You're about to get fired, so I shouldn't even waste my time with you. But since we're such good friends, I will give you some even better advice.”

“More advice? Aside from the ‘no sentimentality' speech from this morning, you douchebag?”

“Right, Lord Byron. After no sentimentality, no self-pity, no drunkenness, no art, no Rick Danko, no ‘Papa's banquet wasn't big enough'—after all those things that define you, all the reasons why you're getting fired—after all of that, there's another rule. Maybe this one will help you in your next life.”

I knew on some level he was right about something. I had no defense but sarcasm. “Oh yeah, well, what's that, Oscar? Help me.”

“Don't be so sincere, Yates.” He was quiet, like he was really trying to help me. “It's always a mistake. Don't ever say what you mean. It opens you up to attacks. There's always a deeper truth to protect, chief. You think I'm staying here with these Pasadena fucks?”

***

Hank Dowling's secretary told me to come by at half past three. Her name was Connie, and she was a chesty California blonde pushing sixty. I saw a picture of her on the White House lawn in 1970, and she was smoking hot. She had gone to work in the Nixon administration in 1968, when guys from SC ran the world and banged secretaries who looked like Connie. She was a nice lady, and I had always gone out of my way to talk to her—to be decent, really. A secretary in a world given over to legal assistants, she ran Hank's life, and he ran everyone else's.

I was petrified by the thought of being fired. I was ok at the job when I focused; I just couldn't focus. I calmed myself by thinking of my assets. There were a lot of jocks at the firm, and I was a good ballplayer, so I had it pretty easy, as ridiculous as that was. I threw a guy out at third from right field in a big softball game when I was a summer clerk, and that made me golden. Afterward we would drink with Hank and Rusty and Dave Van Wyck at the John Bull Pub in Pasadena, and from then on I was part of that tradition. I now realize that, more often than not, if you scratch a partner in a big law firm or CEO or vice chairman, underneath you will find a ballplayer, especially in Southern California and especially outside Hollywood. Good ballplayers go a long way.

I started to prepare myself for my new life should I get fired. I could try to get another job or even try something I was interested in, like teaching or writing. Just then, Connie called me. My life has been full of women like Connie, patron saints along the road—repayment for waving the incense as an altar boy, I liked to think. She told me to be there at half past three, but at 3:34 when I arrived, Hank was on the phone, so she said to have a seat on a chair outside his door. He had a coffee-table book on Salvador Dalí, and I turned to
Figure at a Window
. It's a painting of his sister at a window before an endless sea. Dalí did it before he went bat-shit crazy with eyeballs and melting watches.

As I sat waiting, Connie looked at me and said, “You're all right.” Then she went back to her typing. It was just a moment. I started wondering whether it was real or not—whether I had imagined it.

Connie's phone buzzed, and she said, “Go in. He's off the phone.”

Banks with bad loans, automakers with fuel-fire victims, and billionaires with mouthy mistresses—they all came to Hank Dowling. He was a huge guy from Nebraska who'd been a marine for two tours in Vietnam before going to law school and becoming a hometown prosecutor. He got restless and chased pussy to LA, where he settled into the business bog and became a successful defender of corporate malfeasance. He played rugby and went fly-fishing and had bona fide real-man credentials at a time when young men were being called metrosexuals. At cocktail parties he said “fuck” and drank brown liquor, and he made us feel like being a lawyer for international corporations was the best goddamn thing you could do. He was kind to custodians and secretaries and the shoeshine guy in the lobby.

“Come in, Frank. Sorry, that call took a little longer than I would have preferred.”

“Oh hey, Hank, no problem. You looking for me?”

“Yeah. Gotta talk for a sec.” He pointed at the door since he was already sitting back at his desk. “Shut that.”

Not the best sign, I thought to myself. I sat on his sectional couch and looked at the ceramic award on the end table, too nervous to ascertain what it was. Given my mental state, I was satisfied with identifying the object on some rudimentary, cerebral-cortex level as a curved shape. Hank's couch sunk in so that when you sat on it you were about three feet below him.

“Frankie, I have a memo here from admin that says you don't have your time sheets in for the end of March. Now, I hate this shit, and I hate doing time sheets, too…but goddamn it, they give it to me to handle. You get my drift?”

“Oh gosh, Hank—shoot. I'm sorry. That's a big fuckup. I had them into the girl in word processing, and…” Then I stopped. I realized this was all it was. “You know what? Forget that. No excuses; this is on me. I will fix it, and it won't happen again.”

He smoothed out. “Ok. Say no more.” He leaned back. “There
are
too many goddamn rules around here; don't get me wrong.” Smoother still, he said, “It's what happens with Democrats—I tell them that, the cocksuckers.” Now he was laughing. “And by Democrats I mean New York. And by New York…well, you know what I mean by New York. They know how to make money.” He shot me a wink. “Ah shit, I have fun with those guys—they're a little scared of me.” He laughed at himself and got up to walk me out. “But listen, pal, let me give you some advice.”

He had me by the arm at the door of his office. Then he put his mouth up to my ear and said quietly, “When you are a lawyer for a big firm, there is only one thing you must do. But you must do this one thing above all others.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do your fucking time sheets. It's how we make money. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. You're too good a guy to let these pricks get at you like that.”

“I got it. I got it.”

“Good.” He guided me out the door. “Hey, I can't play tonight, but I will stop by the Bull for a few. I want you to catch me up on Amy and Andy's case—may need you to step up on that while some things change at the partner level.”

“Of course.”

“I just settled that TCE piece of shit, and we're going to have to phase out some of the young lawyers to other firms. Don't worry; they can probably go with Van Wyck and Rusty because they're setting up a new shop.” He gave me a wink. “You're doing good.” He grabbed my shoulder. “Now keep this all between me and you, copy?”

“Sure thing. See you tonight.”