Contemporary fiction with a speculative element
Date Published: May 14, 2020
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
No one knew it at the time, but April 19, 2011, was the most important day in the history of the world.
After his only friend and colleague, John Manta, disappears without a word, Dave Randall further entrenches himself in the humdrum life of an unenthusiastic lawyer. But once he begins to understand what happened, he embarks on a journey to uncover the deeper meanings and implications of John's fate.
Accompanied by Peaches the cat, Dave uproots his life and reinvents himself in the midst of his search. Along the way, he is haunted by his piecemeal understanding of John's fate and what it means for his existence. Little does Dave know, his journey of self-discovery will have ramifications that extend far beyond the borders of his own little life.
Excerpt
prologue
No one, let alone me,
realized it at the time, but April 19, 2011, was the most important day in the
history of the world. Probably of the entire universe.
As I lived it, though, the day actually kind
of sucked.
My morning
started in a packed courtroom in Jamaica, Queens, filled with attorneys donning
cheap suits ranging from dark blue to dark gray—a rainbow for the colorblind.
The day would have been considered hot in July, but it was downright inhuman
for April, and many of the lawyers in the room (particularly those on the
heavier side) were trying (and failing) to will themselves to stop sweating. As
I waited for the judge to emerge and the calendar call to begin, I found myself
wedged on a long bench in the gallery between two such attorneys. The lawyer to
my right had given up any pretense of dignity and was furiously using his tie
to mop his damp forehead. I squirmed in misery and glanced down at the thin
file I was carrying, noting the plaintiff’s name: Abramson, Jack. At least I’ll be one of the first to get called, I thought, assuming an
alphabetical call. I could have confirmed
this by checking the calendar that the clerk had posted by the door to the
courtroom, but that would have involved climbing over a number of attorneys to
get out, and I wasn’t that curious
about where my case sat on the court’s schedule.
Justice Marder,
a thin, stern-looking judge who looked to be in his eighties, eventually
hobbled out from his chambers to take the bench. He looked angry from the
get-go; the simmering fury of a man struggling to reconcile his significant
power with the fact that even he could not avoid spending the blistering
morning in a non-air-conditioned room (in a clingy black robe, no less). In the
silence that washed over the room as the judge limped slowly to the bench, I
suddenly heard a small plop, followed
by another. Looking down, I saw two dark spots slowly expand on the redweld folder
containing my litigation file—an inadvertent gift from the dripping attorney to
my left. Annoyed, I cocked my head and threw him a perpendicular glare, which
he seemed to receive.
“Hot in here,
right?” he whispered, chuckling nervously. I didn’t respond. I had a
longstanding rule of ignoring any comments made in my direction relating to
temperature or the weather.
The calendar was
finally and mercifully called. My case was not only one of the first to be announced, it was the first. Had I planned ahead a little better, I would have fought
harder for an aisle seat. But I didn’t, and, as a result, it left me with an
undignified climb over ten attorneys to escape the row and make my way to the
front of the courtroom. Even though it was a slightly longer route, I opted to
go left, solely for the opportunity to shove my ass into the face of the
attorney who had dripped all over my file.
I was surprised
when the judge directed me and my adversary to approach the bench rather than
take our places at the standard tables assigned for the plaintiff and the
defendant. When I arrived at the bench, my adversary—a kind-looking bald man in
his mid-sixties—stood waiting for me. “Kind-looking” isn’t typically a profound
description, but in this profession, it’s a rarity. The lawyer smiled at me and
actually threw me a wink, which I returned with a taut nod. Justice Marder
asked us about the status of the case, and the plaintiff’s attorney filled him
in. As he spoke, the judge’s eyes narrowed more and more until they were thin
slits of pure malice aimed squarely at me. It dawned on me that this would be
an unpleasant conference, and, like many other instances in my legal career, I
wished I were a little more prepared than I was, which was none. None prepared.
After he had
been caught up to speed, Justice Marder continued to stare at me with naked disgust.
I opened my mouth to speak in my defense, but he quickly shut me up with a
raised finger, and then he started to yell.
As the judge’s
tirade, punctuated by the occasional snicker from the rear of the courtroom,
washed over me, I felt myself sliding into a familiar state of numbness that
suffocated any emotional response I may have otherwise had at being publicly
chastised like a child. I was no longer an active participant in the scene; I
had stepped outside myself to become an audience member watching a movie
involving a man who just happened to look exactly like me, and who just
happened to be getting humiliated in front of a room full of strangers. I
recognized, at some level, that this detachment was a byproduct of depression,
but in that moment, it did not
bother me at all. I’d learned to work with the tools I was given.
Even in my
emotional cocoon, though, the unfairness of the situation was not lost on me.
While I stared at the screaming judge, all I could think to myself, in a whiny
interior monologue, was that this wasn’t even my case.
It was like
this: The prior evening, around 7:15, I was working in my cramped office,
trying to finish writing a motion to dismiss that was due at week’s end, when a
fellow associate named Mark Foster appeared in the doorway. Mark, holding a
thin file, wore a sheepish grin that I imagine he thought was charming. With
his artificially whitened teeth and out-of-season tan, Mark was regarded by
most in the firm as the good-natured office idiot. I happened to like him more
than I liked most of the other associates I worked with, which really was not
saying anything at all.
“Hey, Doctor!”
Mark said. Mark had taken to calling me “Doctor” because of my name—Dave
Randall—or, more specifically, my “DR” initials. As noted, Mark was not a
clever boy.
“What’s up,
Mark?” I asked flatly. Mark seemed momentarily surprised at my ability to
divine that something was indeed “up,” but even a dope like him could interpret
the tone of my question: Get to the point.
“Ah …” he
started, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. “One of my buddies from
law school just called, and they’re all going down to Atlantic City for the
night. I was going to go with them and stay over, but I just remembered that I
have this compliance conference tomorrow …”
“And you’d like me to cover it for you,” I
finished.
Mark blushed. At least, I
think he did. His fake tan made it hard to tell. “Yeah … I would have asked
someone else, but this place is pretty empty
now. I already tried John, but he said he has a deposition tomorrow.”
I believed Mark
when he said that I was his last resort. It took me years to build my
reputation as the office grump, but I had finally pulled it off at the
relatively young age of thirty-one. One of the perks of my unofficial title was
that it was rare for coworkers to come nosing about looking for favors.
Unfortunately, Mark’s dopiness, coupled with his desperation, was enough to
make him immune to my lack of charm. But I refused to give in so easily.
“I have a
deposition tomorrow, too,” I told him, which was actually true. Granted, it was
scheduled to start in the afternoon, so there was really no reason I couldn’t
cover his appearance in the morning and then head to my deposition afterwards, other than the
fact that I didn’t want to. Unfortunately for me, Mark came prepared for my
rejoinder, as evidenced by the hint of a smirk that touched his lips at my
response.
“Yeah, I checked
your calendar before I came in,” he said quickly. “Your deposition starts at
2:00, right? In midtown? My conference is in Queens at 9:30, so it should be
perfect. You can go straight to your deposition from court.”
Afterwards, I
would think of a half-dozen excuses I could have offered to get out of covering
Mark’s appearance. I need to prep for my
deposition in the morning, or, Sorry,
but I have a motion due Wednesday that I have to finish. Hell, Mark was so
dumb that I probably could have told
him I had an appointment with my gynecologist and gotten away with it. But it
was late, and my mind at that hour was sluggish at best. With a reluctant sigh,
I reached for the file, which Mark was more than happy to pass off to me.
“Thanks, Doctor!”
he said. “I owe you. And the appearance should be easy. Nothing’s really going
on in the case.”
I came to
realize the following morning, as Justice Marder’s rant-induced spittle sprayed
my face, that Mark’s assessment—nothing’s
really going on—was entirely accurate. What Mark left out was that a lot should have been going on. Much to my
embarrassment, I learned (along with the judge) that Mark had blissfully
ignored nearly every directive that Justice Marder had given him at the last
court conference—an act of gross negligence that I was paying for through public
humiliation.
Of course, I was
tempted to interrupt the judge’s tirade by screaming, “It wasn’t me! This isn’t
my case!” But I knew that excuse wouldn’t fly. I was in court as a “proud”
representative of the law firm of Sanders, Martucci & Lyons, and when one
of us misses a deadline, as far as the court is concerned, we all missed the deadline. Still, in that
moment, it seemed unfair that I was the only one from my firm being drenched in
judge spit.
“Do you know
what this is, Counselor?” Justice Marder demanded, waving a piece of paper at
me.
“Yes, Your
Honor. It is an order,” I replied, feeling even more absurd at being forced to
become an active participant in the judge’s performance. A snicker from
somewhere in the gallery behind me confirmed that my embarrassment was
warranted.
“Yes, it is an order. That means you are legally
obligated to comply with it. Did they teach you that in law school?”
“Yes, Your
Honor.”
“I’m so glad,”
the judge sneered sarcastically, drawing a few laughs from the horde of
attorneys at the back of the room. Keep
laughing, assholes, I thought. Your
cases will be called soon enough.
Justice Marder then proceeded, in slow, exaggerated fashion, to make a great show of putting on his reading glasses.
“Let’s see … did
you respond to plaintiff’s interrogatories by February 18 like I directed you
to?” he asked, reading from the order.
“No, Your Honor.”
“Did you
supplement your document production to provide your client’s work papers for
the 2003 audit like I ordered?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Did you
commence the third-party action that was discussed at the last conference?”
“No, Your Honor.”
Or so I assumed. It seemed consistent with Mark’s modus operandi for
litigating this particular case.
“Were party depositions
completed by March 18 like I ordered?” “No, Your Honor.”
Justice Marder
angrily slapped the order down on his bench and gave me a stare that was equal
parts bewilderment and disgust. In that moment of silence, the plaintiff’s
attorney—my adversary—cleared his throat.
“Your Honor, if
I may?” Justice Marder finally took his eyes off me and waved my counterpart on
impatiently. “I have called defendants’ counsel repeatedly regarding these
issues, but no one has ever called me back. I even sent a good faith letter
about two weeks ago in the hope that these matters could be resolved before
this conference, but I never received a response. I had been dealing with a
Mark Foster, who I understood to be the associate handling the case. I believe
that this is my first encounter with …” He stopped and looked at me.
“Dave Randall,”
I muttered, wondering where this windbag was going with all of that. It then
registered that he was trying to help
me, and I felt a stab of gratitude at that unexpected act of kindness. It is
relatively rare in the world of litigation. It was alien enough to me, at
least, that I almost couldn’t identify it even when it was right in front of my
face.
The judge
glowered, mulling his options. He had clearly been enjoying lambasting me in
front of a packed courtroom, but the revelation that I was not the correct
target for his rage seemed to knock the wind out of his sails.
“This
is what we’re going to do,” he said, finally. “You are going to give them all
of these documents in the next two weeks—by May 3. Do you understand?”
“Your Honor,” I
started, and the judge froze in shock at receiving a response that was anything
more than a chastened head nod. I tried to adopt a contrite face, but it felt
unnatural, like I was merely pushing out a pouty lip while fluttering my
eyelashes. “I apologize for our disregard of your last order. I am confident
that we will not need a full two weeks to complete all of this. We can
certainly have all of these documents sent to plaintiff’s counsel and in his
hands by this Friday.”
The judge stared
at me, shocked. So did my adversary. I can’t imagine they had ever seen an
attorney argue in court for a shorter
deadline to complete a task. But I didn’t mind a tighter discovery schedule
since I planned on throwing this file back on Mark’s desk the second I returned
to the office. I figured that by inserting me into this mess, he had more than
earned a few late nights of putting discovery responses together. I maintained
my best earnest expression and waited for the judge’s answer.
“Fine,” Justice
Marder snarled. “You get him this stuff by Friday. And I strongly suggest you
do not ignore this order. Do you
understand me, Counselor?”
“Absolutely, Your Honor.”
As soon as the
judge finished scribbling out an order, I took a carbon copy, pivoted, and
exited the courtroom, ignoring the various smirks lurking in my periphery. It
was one of the rules I had embraced regarding court appearances: Get out
as soon as you get a ruling you can live with. Only bad things can happen
when you dawdle. It was a solid
maxim, and one that had served me well in the five-plus years I had been
litigating. In fact, if I were to rank my rules regarding court appearances,
that particular one would have come in a solid second, only behind Don’t speak at all unless you have to. I
liked that particular tenet so much
that I actually adopted it in my
personal life as well.
I hurried out of
the courthouse and lumbered down the steps to the street. I later recognized
that I should have waited for that
other attorney to thank him for his help in keeping me from getting completely
steamrolled by the judge. But, of course, I didn’t. The path to acting like a
decent human being was, in general, something I could only see with the gift of
hindsight.
I crossed the
street and headed toward the paid parking lot where attorneys running late for
their own court appearances were still lined up in their cars, impatiently
waiting to pass off their keys to an attendant. One such attendant, overwhelmed
with the backup, hurriedly took my ticket and did a double-take after glancing at it, which was
followed by a death stare in my direction. It was the second such look I had
received that day, and it wasn’t even 10:15. “So, it was you,” he growled in an accent I couldn’t place.
Before I could
open my mouth to respond (likely with nothing more than a confused uhhhhhh …), he cut me off.
“You didn’t
leave your key! We had to move your car to another garage because it was blocking
all the other cars here!”
That’s impossible, I thought. How could he have moved my car if he didn’t
have the … My hand instinctively
went to my pants pocket, and I felt my key ring with my car’s keyless starter
attached.
Oops. I pulled out my set of keys and grinned
sheepishly. “I’m still not used to this
thing,” I offered lamely. The attendant remained uncharmed.
“Come on,” he
barked, striding toward a van without bothering to check that I was following.
I shuffled along behind him like a child and, at his prompting, sat in the
passenger seat. He hopped in and, after throwing a quick look of disgust at my
struggle to connect my seatbelt, drove off through the back streets of Jamaica.
I didn’t bother
trying to engage in small talk. Instead, I focused on how this ride would end. Do I tip him? As if reading my thoughts,
my surly driver announced: “Fifty-dollar surcharge for not leaving your key.” I
took out my wallet and was relieved to see that I had exactly sixty-two
dollars, which would cover the surcharge plus the base rate of twelve dollars.
It also rendered moot my concerns regarding the propriety of a tip under the
circumstances. I tried to take solace in the fact that the attendant was
already so annoyed that my stiffing him on a tip was unlikely to have any
material impact on our relationship.
We finally
arrived at a dark garage where my car sat alone in the driveway near the
street. “Thanks—” I started. My driver stared straight ahead, clearly trying to
will me out of his life. I was all too familiar with that look, although I wasn’t
used to being on the receiving end of it. With a sigh, I handed over three
twenties and two mangled singles and then hustled out before he realized I had
given him the exact amount owed, sans gratuity.
Everything felt
off when I entered my car. As I readjusted my car seat and mirrors (was the guy who drove it here eight feet
tall?), I realized I had a slight conundrum. It was almost 10:30, and if I
made the forty-five-minute drive back to my office, I’d have fifteen minutes to
kill before having to leave for my 2:00 deposition in Manhattan. On the other
hand, if I went straight to the city, I’d end up with over two hours to spare
there. Not loving either option, I decided upon the latter, reasoning that I could use
the extra time to study a bit for my deposition. Aside from filling a cardboard
box with a bunch of random documents I might
decide to use during my questioning, I really hadn’t prepared at all. Earlier
in my career, I tried to justify this lack of preparation as a conscious
strategy: Stay ignorant! Make the witness educate YOU! Over time, I
became more honest with myself and accepted
that my “stay ignorant” policy was really just a flimsy pretext for
run-of-the-mill laziness.
It was nearly
noon by the time I parked my car in midtown and lugged my cardboard box full of
“evidence” to the street. Time to cram.
I found a Starbucks and ordered a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato with the hope of
finding a quiet table at which I could study. Unfortunately, as I sipped my tub
of lactose, I noticed there was absolutely nowhere to sit in the packed café. I
tried to leave, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to simultaneously carry
both my drink and my unwieldy box. With a sigh, I forced myself to chug my iced
coffee just to free up both hands. After I disposed of the plastic cup, I took
my box back out to the street. I was in the same exact position as I had been
minutes earlier, only now I also had to contend with the very real threat of
diarrhea. I think I just enjoy a good challenge.
Before long, I
gave up on finding an indoor venue to prepare, and I settled for a bench in a
small park. It was less than an ideal place to get ready. The breeze threatened
to steal any documents I plucked out of my box to review, and it was a struggle
to jot down notes on my legal pad without a solid surface to lean on. Also, and
perhaps most difficult of all, I was sharing my bench with a homeless man
screaming profanities at no one in particular. “Those shitheads” seemed to be
his primary target, but I don’t think I was included in that category. I got
the vibe that he somewhat enjoyed my
company.
I eventually
gave up trying to prepare and embraced the prospect of just sitting and
relaxing in the sun for a few hours. My stomach was making alarming noises, but
I figured I would be ok if I skipped lunch. At some point, I apparently learned
to tune out my companion’s rantings because he managed to wander away without
my realizing it. Once I had my bench to myself, I tried to at least mentally
prepare for the deposition.
The case was a
boring one, even when compared to the other accounting malpractice lawsuits
that I handle. The extremely short version was that an accountant—my client—made a
mistake on a tax return that resulted in the IRS demanding nearly $250,000 in
back taxes, $64,000 in interest, and $10,000 in penalties. Everyone, including
my client, acknowledged that he made a mistake in preparing the return. If the
plaintiff had hired an intelligent attorney, it would have been an easy case to
settle.
But, as these
things tend to go, the plaintiff instead hired an ambulance chaser named
Michael Terkle who was completely unfamiliar with the law relating to
professional malpractice claims. So, even though it was well-settled in New
York that back taxes and interest are not recoverable components of damages
(making the case worth nothing more than the remaining $10,000 in penalties),
the only settlement demand we had received prior to the deposition was for a
cool million, which was, not-so-coincidentally, the policy limits of my client’s
errors and omissions insurance. At the most recent court conference, I asked
Terkle how he could justify such a high demand. He scoffed and asked rhetorically,
“Do you have any idea what a Manhattan jury will do to your guy at trial? An
accountant who admits that he fucked up?” I didn’t answer but thought to myself
that it was also unlikely that a jury would fall in love with his client, a guy
who made his small fortune producing porno movies.
By the time 1:45
rolled around, I had accomplished pretty much nothing. Ignoring the growling
sounds from my stomach, I stood up and made my way to Terkle’s office with my
useless box of useless documents. I was somewhat surprised—and sickened—when I
arrived at his chic office, which was on the fortieth floor of a high-rise
looking out over Central Park. I had been under the impression that Terkle was
practicing law out of the back of a used van. I headed to his office suite and
was greeted by his receptionist—a tall, skinny blonde in her mid-twenties whose
bored eyes couldn’t quite bring themselves to look directly at me. She had me
take a seat (“Mr. Terkle is on a very
important phone call right now”) and await his pleasure.
Twenty minutes
later, Terkle emerged from a back room, smiling apologetically. “So sorry for
the delay,” he said. He arched an eyebrow at my box of documents. “Planning on
a long one?”
“We’ll see,” I
muttered, and he frowned. I certainly had no intention of conducting a long
deposition. Despite my asinine box, I didn’t think I’d have more than an hour
of questions. If I finished by 3:00, there was an outside chance I could beat rush-hour traffic
on my way back to Long Island. Still, I wanted to leave him with the uncertain
potential of a six-hour deposition ahead of him; it pleased me to plant that
seed of doubt in his mind.
I imagine that
seed grew into something more substantial when, despite my best efforts, the
deposition ended up lasting over five hours, caused almost solely by my scumbag
of a witness refusing to answer just about every question I posed to him, even
the routine introductory ones:
Q: What year did you graduate from college?
A: I don’t understand the question.
Q: How can you not understand that question?
MR. TERKLE:
Objection. He stated he does not understand the question. Can you rephrase?
Q: Did you go to college?
A: You mean as a student?
Q: Yes. Were you ever enrolled as a student in college?
A:
What do you mean enrolled? And so forth.
I did what I could to move it along: I made
my objections, I threatened to
move for sanctions. At one
point I demanded that we call the court to address the witness’s obstinance,
but the judge ended up yelling at me
for wasting his time. All the while Terkle sat impassively, his poker face
betrayed by his eyes sparkling with amusement at my mounting frustration.
Finally, after five hours of questioning, I wrapped up the deposition, having
established nothing more than that my client was hired by the plaintiff and
screwed up the tax return.
It was after
8:30 when I arrived back at my one-bedroom apartment in Malverne, Long Island,
which sat above my landlord’s house. I had neither the energy nor the
inclination to make dinner, so I stripped out of my suit, grabbed a half-empty
bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and plopped on the couch to watch the Mets game,
already in progress. It was an ugly combination of poor hitting and fielding on
the part of both teams and fittingly went into extra innings with the score
tied 1-1. I tried to stay up to watch the end, not so much out of any emotional
investment in the outcome as much as a desire to put off going to bed. I knew
that once I fell asleep, my next sensation would be waking up to a brand-new
day of the same old crap.
Shortly before midnight, with the game in the fifteenth inning, I lost my
battle with consciousness and drifted to sleep on my couch.
The day had been
lousy. Even sadder, it had not been particularly atypical, at least from my
perspective. But in time I would come to appreciate that was the day everything
changed.
April 19, 2011, was the day that my friend
John Manta became God.
About the Author
When he is not writing, Daniel Maunz works as in-house counsel for a major insurance company. He currently lives in Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, with his wife Lynne, their son Patrick, and their two cats: Admiral Meowy McWhiskers and Captain Cutie (or "Admiral" and "Captain" for short). Questions of Perspective is his first novel.
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