White Man's Problems Part 6

After I pretended to work for a while, I tried to change the subject. "I watched The Last Waltz the other day. What do you think of Rick Danko? You know, from The Band."

"The one who was always so drunk?"

"They were all kind of drunk."

"True." I watched him mull it over. "I know who you're talking about. He sang 'It Makes No Difference.'" Rothbart zeroed in. "He was a drug addict. Killed himself, right?"

"No, that was one of the other guys."

"Well, he's a minor figure, and they were overrated." Now he made air quotes and said, in a mocking voice, "'The Band. Ooooh. They're so great.' Give me a break." He paused. "Dylan was probably at his worst with those guys."

"Perfect."

"Why? What do you think of him? You're going to tell me there's any other thing to think?"

"Well, yeah...I watch that movie and think, like...he was too sweet to live in this world."

He looked at me for a second and then jumped out of his chair. "That's it!"

"That's what?"

"That's your problem. You actually think that." He sat down and settled in for a speech with all the melodrama that office politics can offer. "Let me tell you something. We've been in this office awhile, but I don't really give a rat's a.s.s about you. I'm not your friend, I'm not your buddy, and, candidly, I think you have behavioral issues. But since I don't think I will be stuck with you much longer, I will give you one piece of sorely needed advice. Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

"Sentimentality is dead. It's for losers. Everything-art, politics, whatever-has moved past it. Look around you. You're in business. You should have learned this by now."

Some girls remind you of songs, and some girls remind you of bands. Joyce had straight blue and black hair with creamy brown eyes and a raspy voice from smoking cigarettes, all of which killed me dead. I'd had a crush on Joyce for nine years by now. We lived in the same dorm at Cornell and then ended up in the same cla.s.s at law school at NYU. She had been on the law review and got a job with a federal judge in LA, which caused her, too, to be stuck downtown. We were East Coasters who had been through a lot together, from Western civ to con law and from keg parties and bongathons to doing b.u.mps of c.o.ke in the bathrooms of Greenwich Village bars.

I met her a little past noon in the elevator lobby, and we descended into the bowels of the Citibank center to the food court, a circle of fast-food emporiums with names like Hunan Pride, Soup N Salad, Thai Dishes, and Uno Pizzeria. We rode the elevator with two highly accessorized black girls who threw their shoulders back as they walked. I said hi, and they smiled.

"Black girls in offices are always s.h.i.tty until you talk to them," I told Joyce as we walked. "Then they're nice."

"Shut up," she said. "Someone might hear you."

We sat on white plastic chairs at a white plastic table made yellow in a few spots by cigarettes. We were surrounded by receptionists, people from IT departments, accounts-payable reps, and secretaries. The other guys at the firm went to work out at lunch, trying to stay in shape until, through the magic of corporate time, they had to work through lunch or take business lunches. "That's why older lawyers get fatter," one of the secretaries once told me. I usually just went to the food court, not understanding the appeal of a quick sweat and a shower.

Joyce liked me-Jewish girls always do-but she didn't need me. When we were soph.o.m.ores, I had her shirt off in the backseat of a car on the way home from a concert in Buffalo, but she was drunk. Her friends took her home, and then she didn't look at me for a month. Our friendship soldiered on and was deep and complicated, and somewhere along the line we reached old-buddy status. Only I missed out on the s.e.x. She was smarter than me, and I could never get her. We fought like crazy over the years, and I think that is what prevented me from really getting into her pants. More than anything, she had to be right, and if she never f.u.c.ked me, she would always win.

But as we matured, we gained respect for each other. Unlike me, Joyce had a great work ethic. I breezed by in cla.s.ses without much work. She took great notes; I never took notes. I would come to her for study lists, and she would come to me for the right twist of phrase for a paper or a brief. We often talked about what we wanted to do. And now we were here in the inferno of the food court in the West, far away from our homes.

She had lousy taste in men. She had even dated Rothbart. Her first boyfriend in California was named Jay, and he was in television. He was five feet five, talked fast, and called me "brotha." She'd moved on to a new guy who worked at Paramount. I met him once, Brandon something, a few years older and from Beverly Hills. Like most of the Hollywood people I met, Brandon determined within thirty seconds of meeting someone whether anything was at stake, and if not, he moved on. I had no way of understanding these people, these rude and ruthless motherf.u.c.kers. They seemed like they must be kidding. I thought the whole town needed a good beating. I told Joyce we had not set out from Ithaca for her to end up with snivelers like this.

But I was at least happy she was no longer dating Rothbart, whom she had met with me at one of the many office functions thrown by the firm. To my amazement, they had a nice conversation, which led to an exchange of numbers and then several months of dating. I hadn't really let her off the hook for it.

"What was it like?" I asked.

"What was what like?"

"You know...going out with him. Being with him. You know."

"Oh Jesus, this again." She made a look like she was searching for the exit.

I pushed. "Did you ever get the feeling he was gay?"

"He's not gay." She thought about it a little more. "Who knows what he is? I thought he was cute. He is cute, Frankie. And, you know, he says Yale's not the best place for Jews. We talked about that. I thought he was, like, angry and vulnerable but couldn't show it. It was interesting to me. What can I say?"

I worked on not being bothered by it. Still, try as I might, I was obsessed: about his game, his rap, and what would make this beautiful, smart, and funny girl fall for it. I was ashamed of being so juvenile, but I had to know what convinced her to go for him.

"I've only told you ten million times it was a six-week mistake. The kind I always make." She waved her hand. "He is a freak. Every minute of every day is organized. I mean, you wake up on a Sat.u.r.day, and he's out of bed by eight. One time, we went to a club...like some techno club-"

"You went to a techno club?"

"I'm ignoring you. We were out till three, and he was still up at eight. He plays with the dog in his yard till eight twenty-it's that organized. Look, in that moment I was impressed, even hopeful, seeing that he even had a dog. It's not easy to think of him thinking of anything else. But then I got that, too-the dog is like a...like an artifice, y'know? There by design, like everything else-like the photo of Derrida in his bathroom."

"He has a photo of Jacques Derrida in his bathroom?"

"A little one. I know. Good G.o.d, 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 cla.s.s, then the dry cleaner, and then he's home. He takes a shower, and then he's off to a 'Sat.u.r.day lunch.' He always has lunch on Sat.u.r.day 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 s.h.i.t jobs at the beginning."

I couldn't take it anymore. "How could you stomach having s.e.x with him?"

"Oh, stop." She gave me a bent-knuckled middle finger. "You f.u.c.king 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 a.s.signed 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 sungla.s.ses-the big kind-and we cleared our trays. "Come with me. I have to pick up f.u.c.king 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 doc.u.ments, 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 doc.u.ments 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 c.u.n.ts 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 p.r.i.c.k. 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 c.r.a.p."

"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 a.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 f.u.c.ks?"

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 a.s.sistants, 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 a.s.sets. 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 Dal, and I turned to Figure at a Window. It's a painting of his sister at a window before an endless sea. Dal did it before he went bat-s.h.i.t crazy with eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 p.u.s.s.y 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 metros.e.xuals. At c.o.c.ktail parties he said "f.u.c.k" and drank brown liquor, and he made us feel like being a lawyer for international corporations was the best G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.t, and I hate doing time sheets, too...but G.o.dd.a.m.n it, they give it to me to handle. You get my drift?"

"Oh gosh, Hank-shoot. I'm sorry. That's a big f.u.c.kup. 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n rules around here; don't get me wrong." Smoother still, he said, "It's what happens with Democrats-I tell them that, the c.o.c.ksuckers." 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 s.h.i.t, 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 f.u.c.king time sheets. It's how we make money. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. You're too good a guy to let these p.r.i.c.ks 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 s.h.i.t, 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."

As the elevator transported me to my floor, I saw the alternatives, clear and unconfused. You may share an office, a bed, or a dorm room, but you don't share a coffin. I had done my time sheets for March, and I knew where Pasadena was. My hangover was gone, and I was ready for a beer. Amy and Andy were out, Joyce's clerkship would end, and no longer would I wonder if Connie had really spoken to me. I was safe, and if I wanted to, I could be safe for the next forty years. More than one door was open, and I could be as sincere or as sentimental as I wanted to be. Life would be good here in LA, far away from the East, New York, and Rothbart.

I walked back into our office. Rothbart looked up, dying for the news.

I stared at him. "You know, Oscar, I always wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah? What?"

"What was it like for you at Yale, you p.u.s.s.y?"

Miracle Worker.

I.

Eliot Stevens started each day with the obituaries. As his sixties took hold, he came to understand that his preferred sections of the New York Times changed with the stages of his life: he had jumped straight to the sports pages as a boy, grew into the headlines at Colgate, fought with the op-eds during law school at Columbia, and settled into the adult life of a New Yorker with the "Business Day" section every Monday through Thursday and "Weekend" on Fridays. Sat.u.r.days the paper was of very little import-it was leaner, and there were errands to run. Sundays were an altogether different business, a block of work that could not be knocked out in one sitting. Now, though, he was firmly in a new part of life. He went right for the daily bios of the freshly dead, which could be found behind the stocks, near the crossword-on Tuesdays with the chess. The obituaries were his quotidian launchpad, a strange kind of comfort food he took in from the breakfast table in his townhouse on Eighty-Fourth Street just off of West End.