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MITCH BERMAN |
To These Guys |
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“Not my type,” she told me simply over instant coffee at my desk. Blue was blond; her surnames were Spanish. He liked guns. I had had the urge once or
twice to put my arm around her, but some I didn’t know much,
but I knew I didn’t, and I knew Monica knew more. Born a WASP, adopted
by Jews, runaway at sixteen to a series of Catholic marriages, to addiction,
prostitution, prison: beside her, I was a baby. But Monica’s life
hadn’t hardened her; it had worn the hardness off her: when my grandfather
died, I was frozen, unable to respond, but Monica cried. Though she rarely
allowed me to see the edges of the chronic depression that was the basis for
a disability claim amply documented by our consulting psychiatrists and
several stays in the When Monica got disability and
a six-month retroactive check, she took me out to her favorite bakery, the
Court of Two Sisters. We sat down on the And then she dropped out of
sight for three months. Turnover at Legal Aid had landed me twenty new cases,
a raise, and an office with windows that faced the back of Jack-in-the-Box
and its vents that belched great clouds of beefy steam into the canyon
between the old concrete buildings. I had tried to find Monica, but
she’d moved again. I would sit at my desk with her file spread out in
front of me, as if a clue to her whereabouts would rise up magically from the
papers that bore her name. I wondered whether she’d discarded me now
that I’d got her on disability; I checked periodically with the A Monday in late January. I
dragged in late, signed the time sheet and waved hello to Sandy, the
receptionist, who had dealt with each of the permutations of human life while
raising six children and spending fifteen years at our front desk, and who
was now answering three phone calls at once. She covered the mouthpiece with
a broad age-speckled hand to warn that I had a “new one” waiting
for me. “Call 911 if he’s any trouble,” she added. An
office joke; 911 was I opened my door a crack. There at my desk sat the new one, a slender Mexican man in his late twenties with a wide-brimmed densely woven white Panama hat and a black cane across his knees. The hat brim lifted back with slow insouciance, and dark sullen eyes, a hooded challenge, appeared below it. “Mike ... ?” It was Monica’s voice, coming from out of view. “Mike, I want you to meet Ray Rodriguez, my husband.” “Husband?” I said, moving awkwardly into the room. “Well congratulations!” Monica flung her arms around me and kissed me full on the lips. I extended my hand to Ray Rodriguez; he let his eyelids droop and allowed his hat brim a slight dip of acknowledgment. |
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