lawyers

"He must be innocent." John Kilme said it because he needed to. He needed to believe his client didn't run over his own kid on purpose. John's slicked back hair was becoming less slick. Enter Gerald Root:

"He's not innocent, friend. No way. No how." Gerald was a man who wore scarves. He shouldn't have though. They made his neck look fat and caused him to sweat more than an average amount.

"Have you ever seen a man so distraught?" asked John, talking about his client Richard Neuman.

"Have I? I'm lookin' at him." Gerald was staring at John. He was making a joke, and had no sympathy for anyone, especially not for his clients.

"But if Richard was innocent..." John continued. Gerald stopped listening at 'innocent.'

"Sympathy is reserved for those who have done no wrong, but terrible things happen to them anyway," he said, wiping his sweaty, sweaty brow. "I, sir, have done no wrong. Our client. That mess of what used to be a man. He's a mess, a murderous mess."

It wasn't fair for Gerald to call his client a mess, especially since he looked so wet, salty water pouring from his pores. But life's not fair now, is it?

"Cold-blooded?" John's eyes bugged thinking of Richard.

Gerald turned to face the wall near the coat rack, his right hand on his hip, and left pulling at his dumb scarf.

"As cold as his nine-year-old was when his mother found him in the bushes." He stuck his tongue out to lick his lips; they hit the wall. He was very close to it. The wall.

Anyway, that's where Mrs. Neuman found her son, Jimmy Neuman, outside, behind one of those ugly bushes next to the garage. People always have those ugly bushes outside their homes. They block the street-viewers from seeing the foundation of the home. But the foundation is better looking than those bushes. It is.

Jimmy's hair was brown, made a dark red after the 'accident-non-accident,' like the kind after a bad dye job. Pun intended.  John's hair was graying everywhere. It was long and straggly. If it was short it would be sexy, but it was long, so it wasn't.

"There's gotta be something we're missing." John's hair looked terrible. He was pulling it from side to side, and now looked akin to Wolverine.

"Relax, guy," Gerald had begun smoking weed while John freaked out about poor Jimmy.

"Stop that!" John smacked the bud from Gerald's fingers. "You were holding it weird." It, being the dooby.

"Whatever, brother-man." Gerald was getting weird. But not the fun kind of weird, rather the kind that makes people who aren't high feel bored.

"I am so bored." That was Gerald, despite it seeming like John would say it, as he wasn't the high one.

This story took a turn.

"If you're not going to share, then you don't get to enjoy." It was a pretty good rule, a rule John had learned as a child at Kinderhaven, his precursor school to first grade.

Jimmy was a third grader at Jepperson Elementary. John remembered what he had been previously lamenting over.

"Oh, gees. How can we represent a guy we don't believe?"

"We --" Gerald paused for an inordinate amount of time, "don't believe him?"

"I thought we didn't."

"Does it matter?"

John wondered. Did it matter? Huh? He turned to look at the coat rack. His L.L. Bean jacket hung there limply. What sort of grown man wears an L.L. Bean jacket to the office? He wondered that, too. Italics. What sort of grown man wears an L.L. Bean jacket to the office?

"We're lawyers," said Gerald.

John picked up the joint. It had fallen under his classy leather desk chair. That's what he would call it when his secretary would ask where to put his coat in the morning: "The classy leather desk chair." When he picked up Mary Jane he swiped up some dust bunnies with it. They were everywhere, floating. John sneezed, so did Gerald. They were gross man-sneezes. Gerald's nose began to bleed. He thought about Jimmy.

"Yeah, we are."