I rest the box of junk I have picked up from Mays amp; Burton on the edge of the reception desk as I pick up my messages.
As crude as she is, Julia at least is honest. The receptionist at Mays amp; Burton, a young woman I had considered a friend, just treated me a few minutes ago as if I had joined a leper colony instead of having taken a client they never would have represented in the first place.
“Good for business, huh?” I say, fishing out four messages from my slot. Three are from women and one is from a guy at the county jail. Nothing beats free advertising.
She nods, unwrapping a stick of Juicy Fruit.
“Yeah,” she advises, and begins to work the gum vigorously as if it were a piece of candle wax.
“Listen, if you’re gonna be on TV, you gotta get some decent suits. Those pants yesterday were so shiny you could of signaled a cruise ship into dock with ‘em.”
From one clothes horse to another, I think, glancing down at her to see if she is serious. She smiles magnanimously, as if she had given me a sure tip on the ninth race at Oaklawn in Hot Springs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
“Maybe there’ll be enough money for both of us.”
A puzzled look comes over her face, making her mouth look like the dot at the bottom of a question mark.
“That woman’s here to see you,” she says, pointing with her pencil to the corner of the waiting room.
I follow her eraser. A slightly built young woman is eyeing me anxiously, “You’re Mr. Gideon Page,” she says, rising and coming toward me. She is in her late twenties, attired in baggy jeans, flip-flops that most people wear only around the house, and a black T-shirt that obscurely reads in script, “Let Being Be!”
Buoyed by the prospects of new clients and the absence of hostility from Julia, I want to say something really atrocious like “the one and only,” but manage instead, “And you are… ?”
“Mona Moneyhart,” she says, staring up at me with pale blue eyes the size of dinner plates. “My husband is suing for divorce. Can I talk to you right now? I have a summons.”
I mouth to Julia to hold my calls. Let being be? What the hell does that mean? Maybe this is how young, rich society matrons dress these days. Her last name sounds promising anyway.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, picking up my load.
“You want to follow me back to my office? We can talk there.”
Like a proud parent, Julia smiles happily as if she is seeing us go off on a first date. “Would you like some coffee, Ms.
Moneyhart?” she chirps.
I can’t believe my ears and don’t dare turn around. Julia offering to get coffee? Am I in the right office building?
“No, thanks,” my potential client says in a barely audible voice and then asks me shyly, “Would you like for me to get you some?”
“I’m fine,” I say, noticing Mrs. Moneyhart is no taller than a large child. How bad could she have been? And why divorce her? It might be easier to wait until she vanishes entirely.
“Thank you, Julia,” I call over my shoulder.
In my office she flips on my light switch for me and clears a spot on my desk. I’m tempted to ask her to fluff up my chair and take off my shoes.
“Have a seat,” I tell her, “while I read this.” This will be my first divorce case ever. At Mays amp; Burton the firm specialized in personal injury cases, and at the Public De fender’s Office, of course, we just had purely criminal cases, so I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I didn’t take domestic relations in law school; now, I wish I had. What courses did I take? Did I really go? I leaf through the complaint and summons and then force myself to go through it carefully. It looks straightforward enough: her husband wants custody of their three children, possession of the house, temporary child support, attorney’s fees, and court costs. Three children?
How can this woman have had one? Her pelvis is so narrow I can’t imagine how she could have given birth to even a credit card.
“I got the summons last week,” Mrs. Moneyhart says, still on her feet. She has edged around my desk and is hovering over me.
I put the papers down on my desk.
“I can read this better if you’ll just relax a little and sit down.”
Nervously patting her stringy brown hair, which is tied by a red ribbon behind her head, Mrs. Moneyhart whimpers apologetically in a wispy tone, “Sorry.” She sighs and flops back to the chair.
“I know you’re upset,” I say, wondering how to calm down this woman. She is beginning to get on my nerves.
Perched on the edge of her chair, Mrs. Moneyhart begins to cry.
“He wants a divorce because he thinks that I deliberately burned rats in the oven! That’s not fair!”
I put the papers down and rub my eyes. Is this really my first divorce client? She better have some cash. I lean back in my chair and try to keep from sighing audibly.”
“Did you,” I say, not believing I’m asking this question, “accidentally burn some rats in your oven?”
She pulls up the bottom edge of her tee shirt and wipes her eyes, revealing a milky-white waist no bigger than one of my thighs. For an instant I think she is going to pull her shirt over her head. I’ve got to get a box tissues for my desk, or I’ll end up being charged with some kind of sex crime.
She sniffs, “They must have started getting in through the back somehow. It was real cold this winter.”
I close my eyes. I don’t know much about ovens, but mine doesn’t have a special entrance for rodents. When I open my eyes again, Mrs. Moneyhart is on her feet once more, edging closer to my desk. I am beginning to feel claustrophobic.
“How could that possibly happen?”
Mrs. Moneyhart interlaces her fingers and holds them up in front of me.
“My theory is that this screw that held this metal strip around the base in the back came out,” she says, nicking her index finger at me, “and they worked in that way. Anyway, when I took out the pan there were these two humongous rats up to their necks in blueberry muffins, just cooking away. Steve said that was the last straw.”
I can imagine. If she gets any closer, I think I will start screaming.
“I don’t think,” I say honestly, “that I’m going to have the time to help you.” Nobody has that kind of time.
Abruptly, she pulls up her T-shirt again and snatches a wad of bills from under her bra, which I can’t help noticing is black. Her chest, already frail, visibly shrinks as she showers them on my desk. There must be a thousand dollars in fifties.
“I knew it was coming to this,” she says, her voice a shrill giggle, as she stands over me again, “so I cleaned out our cookie jar at the bank the day he moved out.”
I suppose she means her bank account. I think of the check I wrote on the Blazer this past weekend to Allstate Insurance.
No wonder they’re all smiling in their commercials. I’ve got to find some health insurance now, too.
“If you will just go take a seat,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the money, “I’ll check my calendar.”
An hour later I don’t know much more than I did to start, but. God forgive me, neither does my client. I don’t even own a set of Arkansas statutes yet, so I can’t do much more than listen and nod wisely. For his grounds for divorce, her husband’s complaint alleges only the barest legal conclusions, “general indignities,” as if his attorney, a man I’ve never even heard of, is too embarrassed to be more specific.
Try as she may, Mrs. Moneyhart, who has somewhat grudgingly consented to again trying to remain seated, can’t think of a single thing her husband has done to merit us filing a counterclaim. No affairs, no abuse, a good job, great in bed, her husband seems only guilty of bad judgment in having married a fruitcake.
Doodling on a yellow pad (since she has given me nothing to write), exasperated, I ask, “Can’t you think of anything bad about him? Doesn’t he have some annoying habit?”
Mrs. Moneyhart adjusts the ribbon holding her hair, tightening her skin in the process.
“Well, he’s started” she be gins to nod shrewdly “to complain a little about my cooking.”
After another fifteen minutes of mostly fruitless inquiry (she is happy to share custody of the children), I
