I nod, knowing Angela fascinates him almost as much as she does me. One day last week I gave him a line-by-line account. To be such a screw-up himself, Dan is a good listener and fairly shrewd when he’s not talking about himself. Omitting the more graphic details, I bring him up to date.
He comments when I come to a stopping place, “If Angel baby had a happy marriage to that pig farmer, then I’m Judge Crater.”
I have begun to think the same thing. Angela talks about how great Dwight was, but she doesn’t talk about how much fun they had.
“He may have been so sick the last few years that’s all she remembers,” I say, happy to defend her dead husband now that his memory doesn’t seem like such a threat.
Dan leers at me.
“Well, she’s starting to make up for lost time now.”
“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” I say, thinking how odd Saturday was. Angela made up her brother-in-law’s bed, but she didn’t bother to wash the sheets.
“But she looked so damn good I couldn’t have resisted her if I had wanted to.”
“You should get her over here,” Dan advises.
“It sounds like she prefers somebody else’s bed to her own.”
I take out a rubber band from my drawer and pop it against the desk.
“She’s gonna have to do something. For some reason she feels obligated to sell out to his brother, but she doubts if he can pay her. I can’t help but feel bad for her.”
Dan snorts and wags a finger at me.
“Who you ought to feel bad about is Amy. If she put out a contract on you, I wouldn’t come to your funeral.”
Amy, Dan, and I were all friends in night law school. He is rightfully protective of her.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” I say, contritely.
“I called her the other day to see how Jessie is doing. She sounded okay.”
“Don’t you fuck her over anymore!” Dan orders, and pushes himself up out of the chair.
“If you’re through with her, leave her alone! Damn it, she’s crazy about you and this is killing her!
The stupid little fool.”
“I won’t,” I say quickly. Dan’s face is flushed, and he’s actually panting. With a look of disgust on his face, he huffs out of my office and slams the door. I give him five minutes to get over it.
One of Dan’s problems is that he can’t stay mad at anybody any more than he can lose five pounds.
Dan’s right. I shouldn’t have called her. It’s just that this is an unsettling time in my life. Taking this case in Bear Creek probably wasn’t a good idea. There is too much unhappiness over there, and I feel as though I am becoming sucked in by it. Still, things could work out for me and Angela. All she needs is time. My problem is that slowing down is not something I do well. Apparently, neither does Angela.
At four o’clock I get a rare business client, a young man who told me on the phone last week he wanted to come in to see me about a zoning problem. Len Chumley, a kid who can’t be much out of college, follows me back to my office, telling me that he knew Sarah his last year at the University.
“She was just a freshman,” he says respectfully as he sits down across from me, “but you could tell she was going to be special.”
“She’s doing fine.” Special in what way, I wonder, as I try to size up Chumley. This guy looks a little slick, but I have no handle on males his age.
Only a couple years out of college, he probably doesn’t have a lot of money, but he doesn’t mind putting it into the clothes on his back. He has on a black-and-white herringbone sports coat that looks to be silk and a dandy purple handkerchief poking out of the pocket.
“What kind of problem do you have?” I ask, deciding not to inquire about my daughter. He probably wouldn’t tell me the truth anyway.
“I’m primarily in the condom delivery business,” he says, not batting an eye. He whips out a business card and slides it across my desk. I put on my reading glasses. In old English script it gives Chumley’s telephone number and an address that I recognize as only a couple of blocks from an exclusive area of town. In the center it says:
CHUMLEY’S CONDOMS DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR.
Then below it: we come before you do.
“A business for the nineties,” I concede, thinking this kid will probably be a millionaire someday.
Chumley is short, maybe no more than 5‘6”, and already a bit thin on top, but he has the sales man’s way of using what assets he has to his advantage.
“They have a condom store in Fayetteville,” Chumley reminds me, “but for every person who isn’t embarrassed buying their rubbers in front of their neighbors, there are fifty in Arkansas who would prefer to have a conservatively dressed salesperson come to their house and show them a variety of products including condoms, sex toys, and videos.”
Maybe their neighbors will mistake them for Mormons.
“Sex videos, huh?” I ask.
“So it’s not just condoms?”
“Related products. In my marketing course at the University, I was always fascinated by surveys which show how difficult it is for the customer to say what it is he or she would really like to buy.
Even though the interactive video is revolutionizing the art of merchandising, there will always be a place for the Fuller Brush man and the Avon lady.”
I would hardly place French ticklers, dildos, vibrators, and porno movies such as Sore Throat and Full Speed Ahead in the same category as cosmetics, but maybe I’m out of touch. I can picture Sarah’s reaction when my picture shows up on the front page of the Democrat-Gazette defending the First Amendment rights of this little hustler. I ask, “Specifically, what is your problem?”
“They want me to take my “We Come Before You Do’ sign out of my front yard,” he says, his voice registering high with indignation.
“I work out of the house my parents left me.” He hands me a letter from the city warning me that he is in violation of city ordinance #1437. “All I’m doing is advertising a legitimate business.”
“Where do you live?” I ask, wondering who on the floor has a set of municipal ordinances. We have more laws in this country than ants.
It’s hard to believe that we need every single one of them.
“On the corner of Riverview and Dayton,” he says.
“Even though it’s zoned residential, there’s a lot of traffic by there in the day. You’d be surprised how many people see it.”
I don’t doubt that. I suspect that it hadn’t been up fifteen minutes before someone called city hall. This case is a loser, and I tell him so.
“There’re all kinds of eloquent arguments that can be made on behalf of free speech and the free enterprise system, but I suspect it would be so much pissing in the wind. You could wind up spending a fortune trying to get a variance and falling flat on your face.”
The kid gives me a sly smile.
“I was thinking maybe you’d barter your fees.”
I groan inwardly, thinking this is what my law practice has come to.
“Follow me,” I say, standing up and heading for the door. Dan, I think,
have I got a client for you!
At home Tuesday night Angela calls to tell me that she has been invited to Atlanta to spend a week with an old college roommate. She is driving down Thursday morning. I wonder if she is trying to avoid me, but she sounds friendly enough. I want to talk about Saturday, but I manage to restrain myself. The quickest way to make her back off is to crowd her, especially when she has asked me not to do so. I tell her what is going on in the case and that I will be back in Bear Creek Thursday. She is keenly interested in the details and reads to me an article in the Bear Creek Times about the case. For the only source of news in Bear Creek, it is amazingly succinct and reports only the barest outline of the case. My recollection of the news media in Bear Creek is that its primary business was advertising revenue, and distinctly not investigative journalism or crusades of any kind. Since most of the stores that must advertise in the Times are probably in some way associated with Paul, I shouldn’t be surprised.