Quid Pro Quo Read online

  Don’t even get me started talking about Kendall and Andy. All I’m saying is that for some crazy reason (i.e., she’s crazy) I couldn’t hang out at the bowl anymore. I had to go to Atula’s and help out at the office.

  Unpaid, of course.

  So that’s how—despite my best efforts to pretend they didn’t exist—I got to know so much about Atula’s clients.

  I spent virtually all last summer in this unbelievably gross office. Just to give you some idea what it was like, the “Varma and

  Associates” sign was a piece of green Bristol board taped to the door. Atula’s printing was pretty neat, but still, a magic-markered sign?!? It doesn’t really give the best first impression, especially when there’s this note scrawled below it that says, “Please keep your voices down! This is a law office5!” Like that would really make you feel like you’re hiring top-notch legal counsel.

  I guess, though, by the time you made it upstairs to see the sign, you’d know not to expect any three-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer. For starters, all you could smell when you walked in off the street was—I don’t know. Something gross. Like pee. Or a tuna sandwich left in a locker, maybe. Or a dead rat. It was enough to make me gag. I always took a big breath before I opened the door and then just bolted up the stairs to the office.

  Anyway, my job was to answer the phone. At least, that was my official job. What I was really doing was keeping the clients out of Atula’s hair so she could get some work done. I sat in this little waiting room behind a big wooden desk that had a can of chicken noodle soup holding up one leg. When the phone rang, I was supposed to get all the details I could from the client. If it was urgent, I had to knock on Atula’s door and tell her the phone was for her. If it could wait, I was supposed to get the person’s name and number and say that Atula would call back later.

  The first couple of days I was knocking on Atula’s door every time the phone rang because everybody said their problem was REALLY, REALLY URGENT67 Atula wasn’t too pleased.

  “What is the matter with you, Cyril? Can you not see that I am very busy? This is not an urgent call. Now close the door, and please try to use your head in the future.”

  Andy glared at me like this was some stupid prank I dreamed up to bug Atula. Trust me. I had lots of things I’d rather be doing—if anybody would let me do them. But that didn’t seem to dawn on Andy or Atula. So I just rolled my eyes when they weren’t looking and started taking messages.

  By the end of the day, my hand would be all cramped up. Sometimes I’d go through about ten of those pink memo slips for a single message. Nobody ever just said, “It’s only me, Darlene Zwicker, calling to see how my divorce papers are coming along.” It was always these big long, long stories about all the bad things that had ever happened to them in their entire life. They’d just ramble on and on. “Tell Atula I REALLY got to find out about my petition TODAY because last week Freddie and me was back together and everything was goin’ really good so I told her to lay off on the divorce proceedings and all that, then I got my pogey cheque, eh, and it was gonna pay for the rent and everything because when Freddie and me was havin’ our troubles back in March—hold on, no—it wasn’t March. It was February. I remember now because he quit drinkin’ and everything and … Are you gettin’ all this?”

  Yeah, yeah.

  I just copied it all down. I’d let Atula figure out what was important and what wasn’t.

  When I didn’t have the phone glued to the side of my head, I had to deal with the clients in the waiting room. People would show up, whether they had an appointment or not, and just sit around and wait until Atula or Andy could talk to them. By noon the waiting room was packed, and I know it really stank too because whenever I ran out for a sub, I’d come back and the smell would hit me like someone had just thrown a big juicy perspiration cream pie in my face. No wonder Atula couldn’t keep a receptionist.

  I don’t know how she handled it before Andy kindly volunteered my services, because the place was like that every single day all summer.

  Hold on. No, it wasn’t. How could I forget? August 20. My birthday. Hardly anybody showed up that day. It was the best present I got—but that’s not why they all left me alone. The old Masons’ Hall burned down that day. I guess your legal problems don’t seem so urgent when there’s a big old fire to watch and barbecued bits of people being carted off in ambulances and everything.

  But like I said, the office was usually nuts. Sometimes I’d have to break up arguments over who got the last chair or whose turn it was to read the one and only People Magazine, but usually I just had to listen.

  More sob stories.

  More clients demanding to see their attorney immediately! (Who do these guys think they are?)

  Some people who were really apologetic about not being able to speak English very well, and others who just kept hollering away at me like I was only pretending not to understand Korean. Students used to come in too, and artists, and this one guy who was writing a screenplay and clearly thought he was too good for us.

  And then there were the crazy people.

  I’m not just saying crazy the way you say your homeroom teacher or your mother is crazy. These guys were nuts. Like, scary nuts. You know, talking to people who aren’t there. Ranting away about how Osama bin Laden is spying on them. Claiming they were Madonna’s personal trainer and that she would be really upset if Atula didn’t do something about their problem with the welfare department RIGHT NOW8!!

  I used to make fun of Atula’s clients when Andy and I would go out for our nightly burger and fries. It seemed perfectly fair to me. These people were ruining my summer. They at least owed me a couple of laughs.

  Andy would have a fit, of course. You should have heard her. She’d stick her bottom lip way out and squint her eyes at me and then just let rip. “How could YOU, Cyril … Floyd … MacIntyre— of all people!—talk about them that way? Has NOTHING I’ve taught you ever sunk into that THICK SKULL OF YOURS? Do you think these people CHOOSE to be poor? Huh? Do you? Do you think they CHOOSE to be sick? Or mentally ill? Or uneducated? Or abused by the system? Huh? Huh? C’mon, answer me, Cyril. ANSWER ME!”

  She’d go completely psycho. She’d be spitting food all over the place by the time she got to the part about how people used to look down on her too, pushing a baby carriage at fifteen and not having enough money to cover even “the bare necessities of life.” I probably should have known better than to start humming that song from The Jungle Book when she said that, but I could never help myself. That’s when the “So you think it’s funny?” part of the lecture started, and I knew she was going to go at me again until either the manager told her to keep her voice down or she had to go outside for a smoke.

  Andy thought her little “chats” were why I stopped making fun of Atula’s clients.

  Just goes to show how little she knew about my life.

  chapter

  five

  Cruelty

  The deliberate infliction of pain

  W henever Andy had to go to the law library or meet a client at the lockup, Atula would send me on some bogus errand near the skateboard bowl. She’d give me twenty bucks for a package of stamps or a box of staples and say, “Keep the change.” Then she’d wink and go, “Just make sure you return before your mother does, if you don’t mind. I prefer to remain on her good side.”

  So I’d tell all the regulars to do me a favor and not drive Atula crazy, and I’d take off. I’d pick up my board at the apartment, and a couple of big bottles of root beer at Toulany’s, and boot it for the Commons. It didn’t matter what day of the week it was or what time of the day, I could always find Kendall there. And since he was there, there were always girls hanging around the skateboard bowl too. But that was just a coincidence—or at least they tried to make it look that way.

  I usually checked to see that my hair wasn’t completely gross and that my shirt was on right, but I don’t think Kendall even noticed the girls. I guess when you’r
e six foot tall and look like he does, you get used to the most popular girls in school following you around.

  He’d say “hey” when I showed up, but he wouldn’t stop what he was doing. I’d slide down into the bowl, and we’d both work away on our own stuff. He’d do these incredible stunt moves, and I’d just try and stay on my board. We’d only stop when we got really hot. Then we’d lean against that big tree by the jungle gym for a while and chug pop. That’s when the girls would move in.

  I knew they were all just interested in Kendall, but c’mon! I wasn’t going to miss my chance. Not all girls go for the tall, good-looking, cool, athletic guys. For one thing, there aren’t that many to go around. And for two, there wouldn’t be any skinny, funny, short guys alive today if our skinny, funny, short grandfathers hadn’t been able to get a girl now and again. My entire species would have died out.

  So I started telling Kendall stories in this really loud voice about all the losers who hung around Atula’s. He laughed about Darlene and Freddie fighting over who gets the singing fish trophy when the divorce goes through—so all the girls started laughing too. I figured I was golden. Pretty soon they’d all have the hots for me, and I’d have to bribe them to show Kendall a little attention now and then. I just had to keep them laughing long enough that no one noticed I was built like a Chihuahua.

  So I started telling Kendall about Marge Whynot and her handicapped son Toby, who’s like thirty and always wants to go feed the duckies. I thought Kendall would find that hilarious, especially when I started doing that whimpering thing Toby does. I was licking my lips and slapping my leg and going, “Please,

  Mama, pleeeeeease!” and Dorianne and Alexa were killing themselves laughing until Kendall went, “Would you quit it? Would you just lay off?”

  I was still thinking I was so funny that it took me a second to realize he meant me. The girls all stopped so fast I had this feeling I’d just imagined them laughing. I was left standing there with this stupid smile on my face that would have made an amoeba look like a genius in comparison.

  I think I said, “sorry,” maybe, or “I was only kidding,” and then Kendall said something like, “I just don’t find it that funny. He’s happy. He likes to feed the ducks. So what?” The girls all looked at Kendall with these big, sad eyes. I knew they were thinking, Not only is he tall, good-looking, athletic and cool—he’s really, really sweet too.

  They looked at me like I’d just kicked a kitten into oncoming traffic.

  I felt like garbage. I couldn’t believe what a jerk I was. Like what kind of pig would make fun of Toby? But Kendall just put his helmet back on like nothing happened and said, “C’mon. You going to skateboard or what?” We both went back to working on our moves, and he never mentioned it again.

  Do you know what the really sad thing is? If Kendall had gone along with my little joke, I’d still be telling Toby stories right now. Anything for a laugh, eh?

  How pathetic is that?

  chapter

  six

  “Accusare nemo se debet” (Latin)

  A legal principle meaning

  no one is required to say anything

  to incriminate himself or herself

  John Hugh Gillis still reeked and was still lying about where he was on the night of September 17. Elmore Himmelman still gave me the creeps, and frankly I think he’d have been better off in a mental hospital than out on the streets, screaming at people who aren’t there and scaring the people who are. Darlene and Freddie still drove me crazy. Stay married or get divorced. I didn’t care what they did; I just wanted them to make up their minds and leave us alone.

  But after that thing with Kendall down at the skateboard bowl, I wasn’t such a jerk about Atula’s other clients. I’m not saying I’d want to hang out with any of them—except maybe Mr. Lucas, who was pretty funny for an old guy—but I sort of got to like them in a take ’em or leave ’em kind of way. Most of them were pretty nice. Nicer than me, that’s for sure. I mean, I felt really bad about Toby and Marge, especially when they came in with Timbits for everybody one day. I knew they didn’t have any money—that’s why they were at Atula’s, to get more money from the government—but they went out and spent $4.98 on Tim’s jumbo variety pack so none of their “friends down to the law office” would go hungry. I felt even worse because I had a bag of jujubes in my top drawer that I had no plans on sharing.

  Andy noticed that I was better with the clients and started talking about how I’d “matured” over the summer. She said it in a way that made it sound like she was this really fantastic parent— as if SHE had something to do with it—and that bugged me so much that I almost told her about Kendall. I would have loved to see her face when she found out I only “matured” because Kendall, the guy she hated, thought I was being a jerk. But I’m not that dumb: tell Andy about Kendall and she’d have known that Atula let me go down to the bowl, that I’d been lying to her and, most importantly, that I’d actually managed to have a little fun that summer. She couldn’t let that happen.

  So I just kept my mouth shut. Things were going pretty good. Andy had the perfect job (she got paid to argue with people). I had some freedom. We had some money.

  Too bad things couldn’t stay that way.

  chapter

  seven

  Malpractice

  The failure to perform

  professional services competently

  W e were playing Scrabble one night, and even though I was seriously beating her, Andy was in a really good mood. She’d just been to the official opening of this new Immigration Resource Center. She was making it sound like she was so happy because the center was finally built. Because needy people would finally have a place to go, someone to help them.

  Yeah, right.

  If that was her only reason, how come Andy was going on and on about her and Atula getting driven there personally by the center’s honorary chair and getting to sit at the head table and having him thank her by name in his little speech and BLAH BLAH BLAH?

  I’ll tell you why.

  Because it made her feel important. Like she was a big shot. A VIP (which of course she was—“Very Insane Person”). Can’t you just imagine how much Andy loved stepping out of the guy’s big green BMW just as James Monihan and those other stuck-up dorks from her law school class were arriving at the ceremony? It must have been one of the best things that ever happened to her. James goes to work at some fancy law firm while Andy goes to work at Atula’s, but she’s the one pulling up in a BMW! Life doesn’t get much better than that.

  I knew that’s what she was thinking, but I pretended I didn’t. I nodded at all the right places and acted like I was interested— then, when she least expected it, I put “defunct” down on a triple word score. Eighty-nine points, not counting the ten I got for turning “ax” into “tax.” She might get to sit at the head table, but that didn’t matter to the Undisputed King of Scrabble.

  That sure wiped the smile off her face. There was no way she was going to catch up now. Unless, of course, she cheated.

  Suddenly she was insisting that I go check the mailbox immediately.

  I knew it was only so she could see what other letters were left in the bag, and I said so. She, of course, was appalled.

  Cheat?

  Andy?

  Why it was the furthest thing from her mind! She just forgot to look in the mailbox that day, and she needed to find out if the War Amps had sent her keys back yet.

  That sure wiped the smile off my face.

  I couldn’t believe it. Andy had lost another stupid set of keys! She was worse than a kid. She was so disorganized! What was the matter with her? She was always losing things, forgetting stuff, making a mess of our life. How was she ever going to be a real lawyer if she couldn’t keep track of anything?

  I’m not kidding. It’s serious. If a lawyer loses a piece of evidence or forgets to file a document by a certain time or doesn’t show up at a hearing, she can get in really big trouble. She can
lose her case. She can get sued for malpractice. She can screw up bad enough that she gets disbarred and can’t work as a lawyer anymore.

  I knew it was just a set of keys, but it really worried me. I didn’t want Andy to mess up again. I didn’t want to go back to her babysitting and being unhappy all the time.

  I didn’t want to go back to us being just this juvenile delinquent mother and her loser kid.

  I knew if she saw my face she’d know exactly what I was thinking, and I really didn’t want to get into that with her right then. I took the bag of Scrabble tiles—so she couldn’t pick out the good letters—and went to check the mail.

  I opened the door to our apartment and practically swallowed my tongue. There was this longhaired guy right in front of me with his hand in our mailbox.

  chapter

  eight

  Tampering with the mail

  An offence under the Criminal Code

  T he guy was probably as surprised as I was, but he just went, “Hey. Yo,” like it was no big deal to be rooting through someone else’s mail.

  I said, “What do you think you’re doing?” Andy was in the kitchen so I could sound as tough as I wanted.

  He gave this big smile, and I knew right away that he considered himself a very charming guy. “Oh, sorry, man. Just making sure I was in the right place.” He handed me the War Amps envelope, like he was doing me a favor, and said, “Did you lose your keys?” I rolled my eyes. Did he really think that if he just kept talking, I’d forget he was trying to steal our mail?

  I guess so.