Michael stared across the table at a sad face, which in turn stared out the dining room window. The face looked darker than it ought to have. Under her eyes swung dark, tired bags of exhaustion. Her cheeks drooped like a dog’s jowls. He was sure she had been a decade younger only a few weeks ago. They were all growing old, too old, too fast. Life was so short, and it was impossible to be happy. In the end, as the Preacher wrote, all is vanity. Michael didn’t remember much from the Bible, but that he remembered. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
“I’m sorry, Mira,” he said. Every word felt tired.
Mira peered at him through a confused expression. “What for?” she asked.
“You tell me. Whatever’s making you so miserable.” His voice sounded tender and inviting.
Clyde raised her eyes, which had previously been examining the designs etched into the edge of her plate. Now she scrutinized Michael’s face. Even though his attention was still on Mira, Michael saw Clyde out the corner of his eye. And Ted, from the head of the table, momentarily stopped carving the Thanksgiving ham. He too inspected his friend’s face, just for a moment. Then he returned to the block of ham before him.
Mira looked like she was about to say something, but in the end, she kept perfectly quiet.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it,” Michael said. “I was just trying to make conversation.”
Clyde spoke up. “It was still a sweet sentiment.”
Ted paused his carving again.
It may have sounded sweet, but it was really just mental exhaustion. He didn’t feel like being the star of the show tonight. And he would never be sweet enough to earn the affections of the small, sensitive woman with sleek, black hair and dark eyes.
“See,” Ted said. “Now, why was that sweet?”
“Because I’m too tired tonight to be an asshole,” Michael said.
The two women giggled, and Michael felt his spirits lift a smidge.
Ted resumed carving. He had sliced up about a third of the ham, and he was close to having enough for everyone to eat.
Michael sighed. He breathed in rich aromas of about ten different gourmet recipes, ably prepared. Clyde had done it again, as usual. It was a wonderful spread, even if only the four of them had showed up to the party. Yeah, some party, Michael thought. If this is a party, I’d hate to see the funeral.
“This sucks,” Michael said.
“Well, thank you,” Clyde said. “I love you too, Michael.”
“No, I mean, this is a party. We should be laughing it up and having fun. And we’re not, and that sucks.”
Then he added, “The food is the only part that doesn’t suck.”
Mira snorted and grimaced and resumed staring out the window.
Clyde said, “I don’t think many of us much feel like laughing right now.”
Ted set down the carving knife.
Michael leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, I don’t much feel like it myself, to tell the truth.”
Silence permeated the room for a moment.
“That sucks, too,” Mira said.
Damian was alone in the office when the big man in the brown leather jacket returned. This time, the man had two others with him. They barged in, and without a word the two grabbed Damian by the arms and yanked him to his feet, almost pulled his arms out of their sockets, dragged him to the wall, held him there, while the big man shouted at him. It all happened so fast, Damian only caught bunches of words.
“I told you to lay off… still in my way… still interfering with business… I asked nicely… not nice anymore…”
Damian protested. He had done what was asked. He just wanted to be left alone.
The man wound up and punched him in the gut, and Damian thought his insides were going to come out his mouth. He heaved in pain. The two men yanked him up, and the big man slugged him again, in the same spot. Damian wailed. The man hit him again.
Then the man grabbed Damian by the cheeks with one hand. “Look at me!” the man yelled.
Damian did his best to see between the tears. The man spoke through clenched teeth, just inches from Damian’s eyes.
“So innocent. You ever had your face messed up?”
He was still holding Damian’s face with one hand while the man’s other fist, clenched, hovered inches from Damian’s nose. It began to pull back, and Damian braced himself.
The experience was not what Damian expected. There was pain, yes. But mostly he felt his head jerk with an odd jarring sensation, followed by disorientation and dizziness.
Through the haze, a gun cocked.
“Stop right there,” Jay said from the entrance, “unless you want to lose the use of that arm.”
Damian could see nothing, but he could sense every word and every action. Jay was aiming his black, semi-automatic pistol at the big man.
“Except that I’m not as good a shot as I probably should be,” Jay continued. “There’s no telling what I might hit.”
The man slowly turned around.
“Is that gun registered?” he asked, coolly.
“Yes,” Jay said, “it’s registered.” That was a lie. “What about these goons? Are they registered?”
“Hey,” the man said, “there’s no need to let this get out of control.”
“Too late,” Jay said, teeth clenched, and he cocked the gun’s hammer. “Now let my brother go!”
The two men released Damian.
“Come here, Damian,” he heard his brother call.
Damian staggered in his brother’s direction and collapsed against a wall.
“Now we’re going to call the police,” Jay said.
“No,” Damian rasped, weakly. He could feel his senses beginning to return.
“Yes,” Jay said. “This ends here.”
With the gun still pointed, Jay reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped it open and started to key “911” with one hand. As if by magic, the three assailants had disappeared through the inconspicuous door in the far corner of the room, a door Damian rarely even thought about. It led to a utility-and-storage area, and to the emergency exit.
Jane rolled effortlessly down the road in her dark green minivan. She had finished work for the day, and she was now looking forward to meeting her kids after school. Her heart felt relieved and carefree, until she saw a car pulled over on the side of the road. The car had been pulled over by a cop, whose flashing lights still warned of danger. The car’s driver stood, spread-eagle, with his hands flat on the car’s roof, while a tall, athletic, uniformed officer stood nearby.
Jane didn’t know the specifics of the situation. She didn’t know why the man was pulled over. She didn’t know why he was ordered out of his car or whether he would be arrested. And none of that mattered. Because ever since October, ever since her close friends and next-door neighbors had been harassed and arrested for something they had not done, she had felt a growing fear. The experience had hit too close to home. What she felt wasn’t a rational fear, nor was it a healthy respect, as people sometimes say fear is. What Jane felt was terror, helplessness. Her gut tightened, and she couldn’t breathe. She saw herself as the driver who was pulled over, harassed, humiliated, and abused. She had to choose between fight and flight. And she didn’t know which to choose.
“I’m incompetent,” Ted said, in an uncharacteristic moment of inner confession.
Michael squinted his eyes at him from across the table of the hole-in-the-wall café. “You’re one of the best litigators I know,” he said.
“Thank you for the complement, but I already know I’m a competent litigator.” Ted sipped his coffee.
Michael finally got it. Ted was no good at being a people person. He was a litigator, and arguer. He loved being right. So Ted loved arguing arguments, and he loved winning them. But a people person Ted wasn’t. A people person needs to lose arguments sometimes, just for the sake of getting along. Ted was no good at that.
But Michael didn’t care. It took all kinds, was Michael’s philosophy, and he got along with Ted just fine. In fact, Michael got along with Ted more than with most arguers he knew. Michael sometimes thought Ted underestimated himself.
“Don’t worry about it,” Michael said. “Everyone’s incompetent at something. That’s what I’m here for.”
“To be incompetent at something?”
“Right.” Michael went along with the joke, but after a second, he thought maybe Ted didn’t get the joke. “No, what I’m here for is to be incompetent at different things than you, because it takes all kinds of people to make the world complete. I’m yin to your yang.”
Ted took a breath. “Except that you’re actually yang to my yin, to carry the metaphor through to its proper conclusion. And my problem is that I would like to be the yin once in a while.”
Michael needed to get at the bottom of this if he was going to help his friend. Whatever the problem was, it was rooted in Ted’s self-esteem. But Ted was normally confident and headstrong, even when he didn’t actually know what he was doing, and Michael had no idea what triggered Ted’s self-doubt.
Normally, Michael would wait for Ted to tell what was bothering him, because pushing Ted on issues of the psyche put him on the defensive. Then it was impossible to get anywhere with him. Normally, Michael would wait for Ted, but this time, he sensed that Ted wanted to talk about it and didn’t know how to begin.
“Where is this coming from?” Michael asked.
Ted took another sip of coffee and savored it.
Michael backpedaled, as he leaned back in his chair. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It just seemed like you wanted to.”
Ted swallowed and nodded. “I don’t know how to analyze this problem.”
“What problem is that?” Michael realized he was letting his own coffee get cold. He picked it up and sipped. It was no longer piping hot, but not lukewarm yet, either.
“Every day,” Ted said, “I gain a new appreciation of what you do for a living.”
Michael sipped his coffee again, and listened.
“Your expertise is in getting people to do what they wouldn’t otherwise do, to get inside their heads and push them to act in the way you want them to. I fear it’s a skill I will never master.”
What do you say, Michael wondered, when a man proves he hasn’t the first clue as to what he’s talking about? Where do you begin?
Michael closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. Then he looked straight into Ted’s eyes and said, “Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. Firstly, how many jury trials have you done?”
Ted looked surprised. “I don’t know.”
“A bunch?”
Ted nodded. “Yes, a fair number.”
“And how many did you win?”
“But that’s different.”
“And how many judges have you appeared before?” Michael ignored Ted’s objection and continued.
“Judges aren’t people. They care about facts.”
Michael chuckled. “You think so?”
Ted paused a moment. Then he said, “No, I don’t. Judges don’t care about facts any more than anyone else in the world.”
“That courtroom is your domain,” Michael said. “And you need to bring it out here into the real world— No, scratch that. You need to get over this mental block you have that’s getting you down. It’s all in your head.”
From the instant the words left Michael’s lips, he knew how stupid and condescending they sounded. Still, they were what he really believed. And he had learned through countless hours of conversation that Ted responded best when he shot straight. So he said what he thought.
“There are two problems with that,” Ted said. “Firstly, you can’t argue with results. You constantly tell me that. And my performance in my personal life is measurably less than my performance in the courtroom.
“Secondly, what I do in court is different than what you do. I can’t make a judge or jury do I what I want them to? The law gives them limited options, and all I can do is to find out what their values are and to tailor my presentation to take advantage of those values. In other words, the best I can do is to give them an excuse to lean toward the opinion I want them to have. But I can’t implant an idea in their heads that wasn’t there to start with. Every time I try, I fail.”
“So stop trying,” Michael said.
“Very funny, my friend.”
“I’m serious,” Michael continued. “Do you think when I write an ad or a press release that I’m somehow manipulating people’s minds?”
“Yes, I do,” Ted said.
Before Michael could object, Ted continued, “And if I had that skill, I wouldn’t be in such a slump right now.”
Michael peered quizzically at his friend. “What happened?”
“Halloween happened.”
Confusion overtook Michael. “That was over a month ago.”
Ted nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“Where have I been?”
Ted stared back at him. “You’ve been right there. But I’ve been hiding from you.”
“Behind a mask?”
“Yes…” Ted surveyed Michael’s face.
“Mask? Halloween?” Michael said.
“Right.” Ted continued. “Remember the man who was arrested for holding up a liquor store?”
“And they dropped the charges because they arrested the wrong guy,” Michael said.
“Yes, him.”
“That was weird,” Michael interjected.
“I’ve seen stranger,” Ted said. “I paid his bail, never got a dime of that money back, and when I tried to talk to him, he wouldn’t even say hello.”
“Sounds like an ungrateful bastard,” Michael said.
“Something I said turned him off.”
“I doubt it.” Michael’s coffee had cooled substantially now, and he took a large gulp.
“Clyde said he was frightened. And maybe he was, coming from Pakistan. I don’t know what he expects from the legal system.”
“Your coffee is cold.”
“Yes, I know,” Ted said. “That’s not the first time I couldn’t get through to someone who needed me. And he was short-changed because of it.”
“I thought you said the charges were dropped.”
“They were,” Ted said. “But it was my responsibility, and I didn’t come through.”
“That’s not your fault. And everything worked out alright in the end.”
“He picked up and moved back to Pakistan,” Ted said.
“Who’s complaining about it, besides you?”
“You see?” Ted said. “This is why I don’t like to talk about these things. No one gets it. I’m not—”
Ted cut short what he clearly wanted to say.
“You’re not what?” Michael said.
“Nothing,” Ted said.
“Uh. Yes. Something!” Michael said this in a sing-song voice, as though he were taunting his friend. And in a way, maybe he was. He was tired of getting the official run-around, and now he didn’t care what the fallout would be. If Ted was going to drag him out for coffee and talk, he was going to talk. Michael was sick of beating around the bush.
And Ted did talk. He struggled with each word, measuring it carefully before uttering it, as though each one was trapped in a prison inside him, and he needed to free each word individually before he could say it.
“I’m… not… sure… I… get… it… myself.”
Michael looked him straight in the eye again. “You wanted him to respond for you, not for him. You don’t know that he got short-changed, because you don’t have any evidence. You just want to feel connected, and you don’t.
“But you can’t depend on other people for your self-esteem, because you can’t control how they feel and what they think. How you feel about yourself comes from within, regardless of what anyone else does. And the sooner you admit that, the sooner you’ll be able to change how you feel about yourself.”
Michael examined Ted’s face, but he couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Does any of this make any sense?” he asked.
Ted shook his head. “No, I don’t think it does.”
Michael couldn’t help but chuckle.
Damian was sitting at home reading a book when they knocked on his door. The radio was playing a jazzy rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The two children were playing downstairs in the basement. No one else was home, because his wife was still at work.
As he answered the door, he felt self-conscious about the bruise on his face. He had no broken bones, but his head and body still ached. Damian didn’t want anyone to see him this way, and he didn’t quite know why. Maybe because he was ashamed of being such a wimp, of getting beat up by the big kids. Yes, that was it. That had to be it, even though he knew in his head that he had nothing to be ashamed of.
It was strange. The police could not find the men who had beat him up, even though they all but identified themselves, and on camera no less. Damian wondered if maybe he would continue to feel ashamed until the situation was resolved. He knew he would continue to feel uneasy until it was.
He swung the front door open and shivered at the cold, dry breeze that wafted over his body. Greeting him just outside were two uniformed police officers. He recognized one of them from the day there had been an after-school fight outside his apartment. She was the officer whom he had talked to.
“Hello,” he said, and he smiled at her.
“Mr. Alvarez?” said the man standing next to her. He was taller than she, and tougher looking.
“Yes,” Damian acknowledged.
“We’re talking with families in this neighborhood about the fights around here lately.”
He eyed Damian’s face.
Damian said, “I only saw the one. That was the day we talked to you,” and he motioned toward the lady cop. “I didn’t even know about the others.”
“Hey, what’s that?” the man pointed into Damian’s apartment.
As Damian turned to look, the man shoved past. He strode in two steps to an end table and picked up something. He held up a baggie in which hung two marijuana cigarettes.
“Those aren’t mine,” Damian said. They really weren’t his. In fact, he was sure they weren’t even there on that table, and he didn’t understand how the cop had found them there.
“Yeah, sure. I haven’t heard that one before,” the lady cop said sardonically.
She ordered him to the floor, face-down, handcuffed him, and began to read him his rights.
“What about my children?” Damian said. “I can’t leave my children at home alone.”
“Can we ask one of the neighbors to stay with them?”
Damian shook his head. “No, their friends are away on vacation. I can call my brother. He can be here in a few minutes.”
“Officer Dietrich will stay here until he arrives.”
Damian shuddered at that thought.
“Will you stay with them?” He craned to look into her face. “Please?”
She thought for a moment. Then she looked at her fellow officer and said, “You found the evidence. You should take him in.”
He added, “One of us needs to search the apartment for more drugs and for paraphernalia.”
“I can do that,” she said. “What’s your brother’s number?” she asked Damian. “I’ll call him to come over.”
Damian never got a chance to make his phone call from jail. Officer Pamela Burns called his brother Jay, who immediately called Michael, because Michael had once told him about a good criminal lawyer he knew, who immediately called Ted.
Michael’s version of the story was more than Jay had told him. It included a scene in which Sam Baedes personally held up the investigation into the assault at the J&D office. And that lady cop, she was the same one involved when Mira got beat up by the Big Bully himself. This was more than just a coincidence, in Michael’s view. In Michael’s version of the story, the chief ordered her to plant evidence, in order to misdirect the investigation and further victimize Jay and Damian.
Ted refused to just accept Michael’s version of events, because Michael was clearly fuming at Baedes and not thinking logically. But after Ted spoke to Jay and Damian, he did agree that it was time for another special meeting of the Committee.
