At some point she came in. “Would you like a sandwich or something?”
At some point she came in. “Would you like a sandwich or something?”
“No, that’s okay.” I was under the desk trying to blow gunk out of the fan, crawling around with the giant dust bunnies that lived down there.
“It’s getting quite late. Won’t your parents wonder where you are?”
“I live with my aunt, and she doesn’t get off work until ten tonight. How’s it going with the lawyer?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Let’s have a race and see who gets done first.”
“Deal.”
~ ~ ~
When I finally got it up and running, I went out to the kitchen, where she was jotting notes on a big yellow pad, holding a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. I waited as the pen flowed across the paper. She had filled the page with orderly lines. Her handwriting was old-fashioned, all the letters linked together in a flowing line of blue ink, threads of words crossing the page, though it was a little fragile looking, like old lace that’s stating to fall apart.
She was using lawyer language, asking questions that included lots of Latin, then writing, writing, writing. As I eavesdropped, I rinsed out my tea cup and got myself some water from the tap. “Ridiculous!” she said, and “what arrogance.” Then very loudly, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” At that point I almost dropped my cup, but she didn’t even look embarrassed.
“Yes,” she said. “All right. That’s perfect.” She put a period down at the end of a sentence as if she was pinning it down firmly. “Thank you, Luisa.”
She got up from her chair, disentangled herself from the coiled telephone wire, and hung the receiver up on an old-school telephone fixed to the wall.
“What?” she asked me, and I realized I was staring.
“That’s your phone?”
She looked at it, then at me. “What else would it be, a hair dryer?”
“But it’s on the wall.”
She stared back at me.
“That’s really cool. Was that your idea?”
She took a deep breath. “No. In ancient times, telephones were frequently attached to walls. Have you got my computer running?”
“Does my brother have a lawyer?”
She glanced at the clock over the sink. “He had one nearly an hour ago. I win.”
“Wait. Is it a good lawyer?”
“A very good lawyer.”
“What’s her name? Luisa what?”
“Luisa Cruz, but she’s a 3L assisting with the case. Is the computer working?”
“What’s a 3L?”
“A law student in her third year.”
“What? That’s bullshit! Wilson needs a real lawyer, not some student.”
“He needs an entire legal team,” she said firmly. “And he now has one, which includes Luisa Cruz, who has a gifted mind and is willing to work on Friday evening when most people her age would be having fun. Now, I’d like to see that video, if the computer is capable of playing it.”
“Course it is.” Somehow she’d made me feel embarrassed that I had been yelling. That never happens. Well, yelling happens, but feeling bad about it doesn’t. That calm, confident voice made me feel a weird mix of being ashamed and stroked at the same time.
She followed me into the study, where I had a browser open. “Okay, I went with Ubuntu for the operating system.