Quid Pro Quo (2 page)

Lots of guys from her class were going to Toronto or Vancouver or one of the fancy law firms down on the Halifax waterfront. Andy went on and on about how that grossed her out, about how she wouldn't stoop to work for “a bunch of corporate ‘imbeciles' whose only interest in the law is to see how much money they can squeeze out of their sleazy clients,” but I didn't really believe her. I think she was pissed off she didn't even get a job interview with any of the big firms. She hates it when people think they're better than she is.

Me, I was just glad she got any job. Her marks were okay, but I bet she stank in the interviews. I know what she's like with “people in authority,” especially people in authority she needs something from. She gets all snotty, like they're the ones asking for the favor.

I guess that didn't bother Atula Varma. She hired Andy as her articling student. That's sort of an apprentice. Everyone has to work in a law firm for, like, a year before they can become a real lawyer. You don't get paid very much to article—especially if you're articling for Atula.

I'm not saying it's Atula's fault. It's just the way things are. Those giant law firms make tons of money, so it's no big deal for them to pay their articling students a living wage. Atula had this one-woman law firm in this really cheesy part of town. Her clients were poor. They couldn't pay her much, so she couldn't pay Andy much. But who cared? It was a lot more than Andy was making babysitting the upstairs neighbor's kid.

Atula's kind of like Andy actually. She's one of those people who say what they're thinking even if other people aren't going to like it, one of those people who seem a lot worse than they are. She doesn't smile much, but that doesn't mean she isn't nice.

She was always giving me clothes her son had grown out of. She even gave me this Hilfiger sweatshirt that I really liked until Andy made me cover the brand name with hockey tape because no kid of hers was going to be “a walking advertisement for some huge multinational corporation.”

Typical Andy.

It's not okay to wear a brand-name sweatshirt, but it is okay to eat at McDonald's every night. Like McDonald's isn't a huge multinational. Andy just likes their fries better than the ones Camille Dubaie makes at his fish-and-chip shop downstairs.

Atula has this big social conscience too, but at least she's reasonable about it. Like I said, she let her kid wear brand-name clothes. She does mostly immigration law—you know, helping new people get into the country—but she'll pretty much take on any legal problems her clients have.

And they've got a lot. You wouldn't believe how screwed up their lives are. These aren't the kind of people who are suing each other for big bucks because their real estate deal went bad. They're fighting with their ex-boyfriend over who gets to keep the VCR.

Or they're fighting with their landlord over the stain on the hall carpet.

Or they're fighting with the government to get thirteen more dollars on their welfare check.

Or they're trying to get somebody to help them cover the cost of drugs for their kid with the kidney problem.

That wouldn't amount to a lot of money to most people, but it does to them. These guys have got nothing.

I mean, nothing.

You're probably wondering how I know so much about Atula's clients.

Simple.

My mother's insane.

chapter
four
“Non compos mentis”
(Latin)

A legal term meaning “not of sound mind”

I
mean it. Andy's insane.

Nuts. Wacko. Certifiable. I'm amazed nobody's locked her up yet.

Okay, well, they have. But that's different. I'll get to that later. Anyway, last summer I thought was going to be the sweetest summer ever.

Now that we were “rich”—ha ha—Andy wanted to get a babysitter for me, but I managed to convince her that twelve-going-on-thirteen was too old to be babysat. And no matter what she said, I was not going to go to that stinking day camp again for like the tenth year in a row.

It wasn't easy, believe me. She's so paranoid. Normally, the only thing she lets me do by myself is go to the bathroom, and even then half the time she hovers around outside the door. I don't know what's the matter with her. It's like she thinks if I'm out of her sight for one minute, I'm going to start smoking crack or get a girl pregnant (like that could ever happen.)

Anyway, she must have been really happy about starting her new job, or maybe she just wanted to try something different and be reasonable for a change, but this time it worked. I whined and sulked and wouldn't play cribbage with her for about two weeks straight, and she finally caved. She gave me, like, 147 rules of appropriate behavior—but who cares? In the end, she actually agreed to let me look after myself for a while.

I had the two best weeks of my life, hanging out at the skateboard bowl with Kendall Rankin. It was great. I finally learned how to do an ollie, and my pop-shove-it was getting excellent. This one girl even said “wow” when I did it. Runts like me don't usually get that kind of reaction from girls like Mary MacIsaac.

Then Andy found out Kendall wasn't spending the summer with his father in Moncton like I sort of suggested he was, and that was the end of that. I don't know what she had against Kendall. She decided he was a bad influence on me. So what if all he wants to do is skateboard? Like that's so criminal? At least he's good at it. At least he's not taking drugs and hanging out with losers, like she was at his age (unless of course she considers me a loser.)

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're 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.