“Right. The other was what you call in professional circles a ‘minority hire.’ Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“What? There is something you didn’t actually learn at Paterson?”
Sarcasm is very difficult for me to detect except when Wendell uses it. “There are many things,” I say.
“A minority hire is someone whose descendants are from another continent or country, whose skin is darker than the majority of folks, someone not born lily-white. A firm hires these people to show how broad-minded and compassionate they are.”
“I do not understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. The concept is not really relevant to the story. Let’s just say that for some reason these two lawyers did not like each other. There are various accounts floating around as to the origin of their animosity. One of them, the one I am most partial to, is that Minority Hire turned out, unexpectedly, to be an excellent lawyer. Not just in the sense of being super-proficient in his area of the law, but in his entrepreneurship. He went out and brought clients to the firm. Big, rich clients. What Minority Hire did was actually kind of brilliant. He traveled to Mexico and other countries in Central and South America on his own and found scientists who were working at universities or small laboratories, scientists who were inventing new chemicals and gadgets. Minority Hire promised them that if they became his clients, he would get their inventions patented in the United States and he would help them find companies that would produce their inventions and everyone would make loads of money.” Wendell raises his glass. The waiter nods. “Are you following me so far?”
“The person you call Minority Hire is my father,” I say. Aurora has told me the story of how Arturo became successful, but she did not tell the story quite the way Wendell is now telling it.
“Wonderful. I don’t care what anyone says—I think you are brilliant.”
“Thank you,” I say, even though I believe that to be sarcasm as well.
“Well, the other lawyer, let’s call him the Mayflower Lawyer for ease of identification, was consumed with jealousy of Minority Hire. That’s my theory anyway. It’s only speculation, but I have reason to believe in its accuracy because, how shall I say it, I am privy to insider information.” The waiter comes with another martini. “Any questions so far?”
“Is the Mayflower Lawyer your father?”
“Yes.” I expect him to say more but he doesn’t. It may be the first time that Wendell has answered one of my questions with a single word.
“Your father and my father are partners,” I say. “They work together and own the law firm together.”
“Yes. Fifty-fifty. Equal partners. But we are getting ahead of the story. The real interesting thing here, the conundrum that needs to be deciphered, is why these two lawyers who disliked, even hated each other—yes, I don’t think hate would be too strong a word here—why these two individuals who hated each other so much nevertheless decided to be partners.” Wendell stops. There is a crease in the middle of his forehead and I can tell he is thinking hard, perhaps trying to find the answer to the conundrum, as he calls it.
“They need each other,” I say.
Wendell beams at me. “Marchelo, you never cease to amaze me.”
“MAR-SE-LO,” I say.
“Whatever. You are absolutely right. But what does it say about that need when it can overcome hate?”
“Hate is when you want to inflict harm on someone,” I say. “Arturo and your father do not want to harm each other.” Then I remember what Arturo said to me on that first train ride to work. “You can be friends with someone and still compete with them.”
Wendell smiles. I have seen that smile before but I don’t know where. It means that someone knows something that you don’t and they are not telling you what it is. “Well, the story goes that after a while Minority Hire did not want to share all the money he was making from his new clients with the big law firm, so he took his clients and started his own firm. But you can’t have a good patent practice without a litigation department. When others develop products that copy the ideas you patented, you have to sue them. Minority Hire needed the best litigator around. He also needed someone with powerful and prestigious connections, and that was the Mayflower Lawyer. It was a perfect match. So he offered the Mayflower Lawyer fifty percent ownership in the new firm. And the Mayflower Lawyer, knowing that he would make much more money partnering with Minority Hire than in the prestigious firm, swallowed his pride and joined him. That’s the story. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say. There are in fact many questions to ponder in that story. I make a mental note to replay Wendell’s story and reflect on the conundrum, but right now I am wondering whether the telling of the story means that Wendell and I will continue to be friends.
Wendell tips the glass so that the last drop of martini falls on his tongue. I can feel him staring at me. He is sitting on the edge of the chair and I can tell that as soon as he finishes saying what he is about to say, he will get up and leave. “I am going to let you think a little more about your decision not to help me,” he says.
“Jasmine.” He is talking about my refusal to help him “get” Jasmine.
“My father and your father, despite their hatred for each other, have never betrayed their bond—based on mutual need to be sure, but a bond nevertheless. What we have at the law firm is kind of a balance of power between two forces. The enterprise runs smoothly so long as the power remains equally balanced. The thing is, in a patent law firm, after a while, if there is no new patent work coming in, the litigation department can become more important. Take, for example, the litigation I am working on right now, Vidromek. Vidromek is the firm’s biggest client. Your father’s biggest success story. He brought Vidromek in when Vidromek was just a couple of chemical engineers working in the back of a house someplace in Mexico. But now it is my father and his team who do all the legal work related to Vidromek. What keeps my father from doing something that will make Vidromek totally his client? What prevents my father from moving beyond the fifty percent boundary into your father’s side, or wiping your father completely from the playing field? If, for example, the people at Vidromek were told about a big mistake your father made…they could decide that he is no longer needed.”
“My father does not make mistakes.” This I say with certainty. Again I feel the heat of anger rise as it does whenever someone says something bad about my father. The anger clouds my mind. I do not know how the story he just told relates to Jasmine. Moreover I am afraid. The tone of voice that Wendell uses is menacing.
Wendell is speaking in a softer voice now. “I will tell you what prevents your father and my father from stepping over the fifty percent line: the bond. You can have bonds based on hate, you know. I’m sorry. You look like you are totally lost. Let me make things simple. The bond between our fathers extends to you and me. Keeping that bond, that balance of power, is extremely important. We keep the bond by putting each other first above anyone else. It doesn’t mean you have to like me more than anyone else. You can hate me if you wish. It doesn’t matter. We keep the bond by helping each other. If you asked for my help with something, I would give it to you. It’s part of the bond.”
Wendell stands up slowly. I start to stand but he motions for me to sit down. Then he sits down again too.
“Tell me something that you want.”
“Want.”
“Yeah, what do you want the most?”
“Like Wendell wanting Jasmine?” I have never experienced a want like that.
“Anything. It doesn’t have to be ‘wanting’ another person, as you so crudely but not incorrectly put it.”
The answer is suddenly obvious. “I want to go to Paterson next year. I want to go to Paterson and train the ponies.”
Wendell narrows his eyes. He is concentrating. “Explain.”
“Arturo, my father, said I could go to Paterson for my senior year of high school if I succeed at the l
aw firm this summer.”
“There you go. I can help you with that. Easy.”
“Help me.”
“I will.”
“I mean, help Marcelo how?”
“We’ll ask your father to let you help me with the Vidromek litigation that I’m working on. Your father will agree because…he just will. Then we tell your father how well you have done. We’ll make sure he’s proud of you. In fact, I can guarantee to you that if you help me get what I want, you will get what you want. I guarantee it! One hundred percent!”
“Jasmine needs me.”
“What you do in the mailroom anyone can do. We’ll get Jasmine a temp or something.”
I feel uneasy. I like working side by side with Jasmine, even though sometimes hours go by and we don’t say a word to each other.
“I know,” Wendell says. “I wouldn’t want to give up working with Jasmine either.” How does Wendell do that—read the thoughts inside my mind? “Okay, we pull you away from Jasmine just for a couple of hours, once or twice a week, in a way that allows you to do all your work in the mailroom first. What? Tell me. What are you thinking?”
“I am confused.” I have never been so confused in all my life. It is all so complicated, so much to consider. My brain is a wad of sticky bubble gum.
“Well, think about it. You help me and I help you. The Sandoval and Holmes alliance at work. The bond.” He stands up quickly. “I think I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off,” he says. “Do you mind going back by yourself?”
I feel embarrassed saying it, but I say it anyway. “I do not think I can find my way back to the law firm on my own.”
“Robert will give you directions.” He points at the waiter. “You will consider what I said?” he asks.
“Consider.”
“You will consider helping me. That is my understanding. Is it yours as well?”
“Maybe.” I say this automatically, without thinking.
“Maybe will do for now. I’m thinking that later this week, we should take the afternoon off and just go for a boat ride, you and me.”
But before I can say anything, Wendell has turned around and is walking out of the room.
CHAPTER 14
I leave the club and start walking in what I believe is the direction of South Station. I’m not going back to the law firm. I’m going home. Once I get to South Station I will wait for the West Orchard train, and when I get there I’ll sit on one of the benches by the tracks until Aurora gets home from work, and then I will call her and ask her to pick me up.
I walk with my head down, looking at my feet take one step after another. It has never been hard for me to stop my brain from thinking. My brain is like a water faucet that I can turn on or off. Only now there is no off and the water of thoughts just flows.
I want to sit down and write some of the words expressed by Wendell, but there are so many I don’t know where to start. There are ways to make feelings disappear for a while…Need that overcomes hatred…She’s been around…balance of power…Bond…Minority Hire…No one says no to me…Fuck. This last word is one that Wendell never used, but it is the one word that is loudest in my mind—a blaring, honking, angry word that blasts at me. It seems to be the one upon which everything else hinges.
I walk as if bedazzled by the word, trying to feel what Wendell must be feeling, to want Jasmine as he does, for fucking. Jasmine asked me once if I was greedy about something and it must be that what consumes Wendell is like the greed I feel for a CD, only more desperate and reckless. Want. Maybe this “want” for another human being is love, something that I have never felt before because of who I am.
I realize I am lost. Actually, I knew that I was lost almost as soon as I left the club. Only now it begins to matter. I don’t recognize where I am, and the buildings on the street I’m walking on prevent me from seeing the tall outline of the law firm’s building, which I hoped to use as a landmark to guide me. What kind of seventeen-year-old gets lost only four blocks away from his destination? In some way, the strange-looking streets are simply a reflection of my thoughts. It seems perfectly natural to be lost outside when that’s the way I am inside. No landmarks anywhere.
The smell of fish reaches me and I take a deep breath. I like strong smells. A store has the fish laid out on ice, their eyes like buttons, looking cloudy and serene. They seem at peace, the fish. In front of the store with the fish there is an empty wooden crate. I sit there. It is strong enough to hold my weight. Chinese people walk by. They don’t pay any attention to me.
As I sit there on the wooden crate, I suddenly begin to hear Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The sound of the music is vibrating in my thigh. It takes me a few disconcerting seconds to realize that what I’m hearing is in the present and that the sound is emanating from the cell phone in my pocket. Aurora programmed it to play “Ode to Joy” for its ringtone. I remove the cell phone from its container, stare at it, and then decide to press the button that reads TALK.
“Marcelo, are you there?” It is Jasmine’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“By the dead fish,” I say, looking up to see where I am.
“What? Where? What are you doing?”
“I am lost.”
“What? Can you see the building?”
“No.”
“Can you read the name of the street?”
I stand up and walk to the corner. I think: Now I look normal like everyone else, walking and talking on the cell phone. I read the street sign to Jasmine. “It says ‘Ping On.’”
“Stay there. I know where it is. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t move from there.”
“No. I am going to sit on a crate. In front of the fish.”
“Right. Okay, ‘bye.”
I turn off the cell phone. I turn right and walk back toward my crate where I feel safe.
What I try to remember is the conversation that I had with Rabbi Heschel a few days ago. When is sex evil? Anytime we use another person as an object. But Wendell does not seem to be restrained by such considerations. He is unburdened. At this moment I wish I was like Wendell, and I realize that this is what envy feels like. There’s a part of me that envies Wendell and his freedom. Marcelo on the other hand is stuck in a mire of questions. It is as if Marcelo ate the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but Wendell was too smart to fall for the wiles of the serpent.
“Marcelo, Marcelo.” It is Jasmine standing next to me. She is breathing deeply and fast. “How did you end up here?”
“I walked.”
“Nooo!”
She is trying to be funny, I can tell, but I don’t smile.
“Let me catch my breath and we’ll walk back. What happened? Where’s Wendell?”
“He left.”
“Left where? Didn’t you go to lunch with him? You’ve been gone for two hours. I thought Wendell had taken you to one of his bars or…I thought maybe he was going to try to get you drunk.”
“We talked and then he left.”
“He left you alone?”
“I can walk alone.”
“You got lost.”
“It is hard to see the sun in the city. The buildings block it and cast shadows all day long.” I don’t want to talk about getting lost or being lost or about Wendell.
Maybe she understands that something bad happened, because after walking for about half a block she says in a quiet tone, a tone that doesn’t sound like worry: “Back home in Vermont where I grew up, the only shadows are from trees and barns. The clouds look so close you feel like you can touch them sometimes. The clouds here look like they’re part of the sky. Over there they look like they’re part of the mountains. You ever laugh or smile or anything?” she asks.
“When I am by myself,” I respond.
She giggles. “Me too. I always catch myself smiling or laughing by myself like an idiot. I guess that makes us bot
h idiots.”
“Idiots,” I repeat.
“That’s not a good word, is it?”
“It is not accurate. An idiot is a mentally deficient person having intelligence in the lowest possible range, unable to guard against common dangers and incapable of learning connected speech. Sometimes people think I am an idiot. It is only true in some respects.”
“Trust me, people think I’m an idiot plenty of times.”
“Juliet said you were an idiot once.”
“She said that to you?”
“Yes. The day before yesterday she came when you weren’t there and said, ‘Where’s the other idiot?’ She was asking about you. I was the idiot that was there.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s got an ego so big there’s no room for any brain cells.”
“We are not doing the three o’clock mail run.”
“After I called you on your cell phone I closed the mailroom and put up a sign. I told them I had to go to the courthouse and that the three o’clock and five o’clock would be delivered together. Patty at the reception desk can handle any packages that are delivered while we’re gone.”
“You lied so that you could come get me.”
“I thought maybe you had taken an early train, but I saw the next train was at four. Good thing you taped the train schedule to the wall in front of your desk.”
“It covered up the ‘Fuck yous.’”
I can feel her stare at me briefly. Jasmine and I are walking very slowly. I guess we are walking back to South Station and the reason we are walking slowly is because the next train to West Orchard doesn’t leave for another hour and a half. Still, I wish we would walk faster. I am afraid to talk to Jasmine because I feel something sad inside of me and I’m afraid this sadness will come out.
“I don’t want to work at the law firm anymore.”
“Why? What did you and Wendell talk about?”
“He said things that confused me.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You seem angry. What did Wendell say to make you angry?”
I recognize that along with everything else, there is also anger. I wonder how Jasmine could tell. What, of all the things Wendell said, caused me to be angry? “I don’t know,” I say.