Boutique cynicism.
“There’s a saying that goes,” says the lawyer, “if you want a million-dollar verdict, start with a million-dollar client.”
The party of the first part is definitely a million-dollar client. Without giving away specifics that I can’t give away, let’s just say that through pretty much admitted negligence on the part of the party of the second part (do they really write like this, lawyers?), something horrible happened to the party of the first part, and I’m not on the jury that’s deciding how much the party of the first part will get, in economic and non-economic damages. (We are instructed not to consider punitive damages, though the party of the second part ought to have it coming.) Instead, I’ve been hired for the day to sit on a fake jury, so the lawyers for one part or another can figure out just how the case is likely to play out. And it’s a good temp job, as temp jobs go, and there’s something engaging about sitting in a room with five other people and laying out why you think thus-and-so, and listening to other people say why they think this-and-that, and figuring out where the boundaries are and the middle ground and the size of the ballpark, and then figuring out what game you’re playing in it, and everybody being more solicitous than usual in such circumstances, hearing each other out and paying attention, because even though this is fake, it’s still close enough to something we were all taught was holy, in a secular sort of way. (No one’s been sued, among the six of us, that I know of. I doubt anyone’s been arrested.)
But we are basically deciding what the party of the first part gets for the trauma; for having this event occur, and affect them. The economic damages—lost wages, medical expenses—are undisputed. It’s merely the bonus money, in a way. It’s not like something like this happens every day; there’s no going rate for this event. We have to pluck a number, pretty much out of thin air. (How much longer will the party of the first part live? How much does that break down to, per year? What’s a good, round number?) We get hung up, arguing over the final amount—we have our good round number, but some want the agreed-upon economic damages added to this number; others want the economic and non-economic to add up to the number, which the jurors of the first part claim is unfair, as, if the party of the first part had made more money, say, the economic damages would then have been higher (more wages to have been lost), and the non-economic damages thereby lower—in effect, punishing the party of the first part for being a more productive member of society. (And in fact, the lawyers for one part or another were curious as to the possible effect the relative affluence of the party of the first part might have on this aspect of the proceedings.)
—The book I’d brought with me was The Royal Family, which I’m re-reading for whatever reason, and I’d been in the middle of the “Essay on Bail” when the paralegal came down to let me into the building. So maybe I’m worrying overmuch about the price of everything and the value of nothing, but it seems to me we’re dealing with a singular event, here; I don’t want this to have a going rate. (I don’t want it ever to happen again.) It seems to me important, then, to signal this (somehow, but to whom?) by joining the jurors of the second part. Let it be a flat number, overall. What does it matter, at this level? I don’t think we ever settled it, but the basic questions had been answered, so we were free to go. Here’s your check.
It wasn’t until today, reading “The False Irene,” that I remembered the three guys in the toy store. Coming around the corner, looking for the Legos, and hitting the—smell, that was the first thing: sweet, but the sort of sweetness I used to smell when I had the problem with my ingrown toe and couldn’t afford to have it looked at. It’s a high, bad sweet smell, the sort of smell that reminds you sugar is a poison. There’s a sour roundness to it, a saltiness almost, approaching that corn-chip smell of old socks—a stale, burring undertone to the high strange keening of that sweetness. The smell coming off these three, or one of the three, I don’t know: a man with a mustache, black hair shining unwashed under the lights, a black jacket, smeared; he’s throwing boxes of Legos to the floor, laughing. Two—kids?—one was a middle schooler, I think; the other older. I do not have a clear picture of them. (He wasn’t throwing Legos to the floor. He knocked one box down—on purpose, I think—and picked it up, shaking it. Shaking it in the face of the older kid. “I broke it,” he said, rattling the Legos around inside the box. “I broke it.”) —But that smell; that smell. I’m wondering, now, later, how much he would have gotten. Had that event, you know, happened to him, instead.
(As a side note: Vollmann’s Amazon page currently notes that customers who bought titles by William T. Vollmann also bought titles by these authors:
- Marcy Sheiner
- Penthouse Magazine
- Caroline Lamarche
- Rick Moody
- Paula Fox
(I somehow think he’d be amused.)
