'You too, Andy.'
The next door over had a small window that was marked 1514? South Congress. Painted in black script at the top of the window was 1514?-A VIOLIN STUDIO and painted in red script at the bottom was 1514?-B TRAFFIC TICKETS. Andy removed the helmet, unlocked the door, and entered. He did not teach the violin.
He was a lawyer.
Andy Prescott did not practice in state trial or appellate courts and certainly not in federal court. He did not represent major corporations making deals or rich people getting divorced or even personal injury plaintiffs suing over automobile accidents. He practiced in the municipal court of Austin, Texas. He represented irate drivers fighting traffic tickets issued by the Austin Police Department.
He oversaw his legal empire from a tiny office above the tattoo parlor. He sublet half of the upstairs from Ramon; the other half was sublet by the violin teacher. Fortunately, most of her students were advanced.
He leaned the bike against the wall just inside the door. Max bounded up the stairs. Andy followed and entered his office, which measured only ten feet by ten feet but had a nice view overlooking Congress Avenue. And he had a good landlord: Ramon charged him only $200 a month including utilities and allowed him use of the tattoo parlor's restroom and computer.
He propped open the window; the place had no air conditioning, but Andy enjoyed the sounds of SoCo. He sat in a swivel chair behind the folding card table that served as his desk. He had graduated four years before from UT law school with straight Cs, the same grades he had earned in college at UT. He had been admitted to the law school only because he was a faculty kid. But faculty kid status could not guarantee a job. Upon graduation, his classmates had gotten six-figure jobs with big law firms in Houston and Dallas or five-figure jobs with the state and federal government in Austin.
He had gotten a diploma.
Which was hanging on his wall. The University of Texas School of Law. Andrew Paul Prescott. Juris Doctor. Lawyer. He had somehow passed the bar on his third try; as his father always said, 'Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.'
So far this year, Andy had earned just over $13,000. George the guitar man was in a higher tax bracket than Andy. His clients paid him in cash, but Andy reported every penny of his income and paid his taxes, which was only the 15.9 percent social security tax. But this was a major bite out of his disposable income, especially since he didn't expect to live long enough to collect social security-not with his trail biking practices.
He drank his coffee then opened the Chronicle and turned to the personals. Women seeking men. Men seeking women. Women seeking women. Men seeking men. A million people in Austin, all hoping to love and to be loved; one half-million looking for the other half-million. Young people, old people, lonely people. People without someone to wake up to, go home to, or belong to.
Like Andy.
Sure, he had had a few dates along the way, but nothing that would qualify as a relationship under any definition of the word. Floyd T. was right: men needed love. But Natalie was also right: women wanted men with ambition. Someone who could give them the life they dreamed of. Andy could not. He couldn't even give Max the life he dreamed of. But he had good buddies and a good dog. He had both his parents, at least for now. He had his trail biking, if not a trail bike. And he had his work.
Such as it was.
But traffic court supported his passion-trail biking-and his dream-a Slammer. He glanced at the American IronHorse motorcycle poster tacked to the wall. He could feel the massive engine beneath him and the wind on his face as he took that monster ride out west on 290 and opened the throttle and let the big dog run, leaning into the lazy curves as he climbed the escarpment, the machine just eating up the highway. Now that would be the mother of all adrenaline rushes, that would be the life…
'An-dy, you're gonna be late.'
Floyd T.'s voice from outside. Andy checked his watch: 8:56. Traffic court convened at nine sharp. Damn, daydreaming again. He jumped up, stuffed that day's tickets into his backpack, then grabbed the old blue sports coat hanging on a nail and put it on. He strapped on the helmet, inserted the sunglasses, and exited the office. He hurried down the stairs, grabbed the bike, and went outside. Max followed.
'Judge won't like you being late,' Floyd T. said.
Max ran alongside Andy as he rode back down the sidewalk. When they approached Guero's, Max bolted ahead and bounded up onto the front porch where Oscar was smoking a cigarette.
'Oh, what? You'd rather eat a burrito than come to court with me?'
Max barked back.
'Some loyalty. What about 'man's best friend'?'
'I'll watch him,' Oscar said. He pointed his cigarette at the Huffy. 'You steal a kid's bike?'
'Long story. When you get tired of Max, send him down to Ramon. And no bean burritos-they give him gas.'
Andy pedaled fast toward downtown.
FOUR
Andy was late for traffic court. So he pedaled like a maniac north on Congress Avenue, raced through a red light at the Riverside intersection, and stood on the pedals to power up the incline leading to the bridge across the Colorado River.
Sailboats and kayaks and the UT women's rowing team on shells glided across the surface of the green water that flowed west to east through Austin. In town, the river was called Lady Bird Lake; it had been renamed in honor of Lady Bird Johnson after she died, an honor bestowed by the same people who had protested the Vietnam War back in the sixties when they were students at UT and taunted her husband, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, with chants of 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' whenever he had dared show his face in Austin. Andy's mother had been one of the protestors.
Today, the river divided Austin as distinctly as the war had America back then. North of the river was a miniature version of Dallas. South of the river was Austin the way Austin used to be. But for how long? How long could SoCo stand against the inexorable force of money flowing south across the river? The money was insatiable; it wanted all of Austin: the greenbelt, the river, the springs, the heart, the soul. SoCo was the soul of Austin, and the money wanted SoCo. And one day, it would own SoCo. The money always won.
Andy crossed Cesar Chavez Street that ran along the northern boundary of the river and entered the darkness that was downtown Austin: not a figurative darkness of rich developers and shady politicians and their crafty lawyers making backroom deals that lined their pockets and screwed the citizens-well, it was all that, too-but downtown was literally a dark place. The skyscrapers, hotels, and condo towers that lined Congress Avenue created a canyon at street level and blocked out the sun as effectively as a solar eclipse; except for the one hour each day when the sun was directly overhead, downtown Austin was plunged into shadows. Only the pink granite state capitol that stood on a low rise ten blocks due north where Congress dead-ended at Eleventh Street was free of shadows; basking in the morning sun, the capitol dome looked like the light at the end of a tunnel.
For some reason, that sight always gave Andy hope.
A construction site had traffic backed up at Second Street, so Andy bunny-hopped the curb and rode on the sidewalk. He weaved around office workers wearing suits and dresses, poor people waiting for buses, vagrants packing their possessions on their backs, and drunks sleeping it off on benches. He dodged a pedicab and an eastbound bus and ran the red light.
Once across Second, he bounced back down to the street to avoid a group of slow-moving tourists on the sidewalk. He stood on the pedals again and swerved in and out of northbound traffic. Angry drivers honked their horns; they were inching forward in their luxury automobiles while he blew past them on the little red bike. The exhaust fumes were so thick he could taste the global warming. A siren wailed somewhere. He came upon another traffic jam at Fourth Street. He again hopped the curb and hammered the sidewalk-'Coming through! Coming through!' — past the Frost Bank Tower that looked like something out of Spielberg's Minority Report. He carved the corner at the Mexic-Arte Museum and turned east on Fifth.
