"Oh... Great. Great." I felt beads of sweat running out of my hairline and into my sideburns. "Just let me, uh... Get my client."

I darted down the hallway to the men's room. It was an ancient courthouse, with tight small bathrooms done in yellow block tile. The doors to the stalls were rickety, the locks didn't work and the coat hooks had long ago succumbed to vandals or rust. Not as bad as a train station bathroom, but hardly dignified. I held the door shut with one hand, struggling to hold my jacket with other while keeping balance and of course, just as everything was set and I was as comfortable as I was going to get, somebody came in and started walking around. He didn't use the urinal. He didn't run the water. He didn't even pull out a few hand towels and blow his nose. The prick was checking his hair. Probably an old bailiff who'd been carrying a thin plastic comb in his pocket since the 50s, a remnant of his glory days a second string high school running back. I sat and waited. And waited. All of it in horrible pain and then, finally, after what felt like days I heard the soles of the man's shoes turn on the tile and the door open and shut behind him. Finally, privacy.

By then the perspiration was coming out of every pore in my body. And you'd think nature would be kind after that torture and gift me with easy dispatch - a clean, quick christening of a chocolate submarine. Wrong. I won't disgust you with anything descriptive beyond this - "Carvel Soft Serve." The "A" Section of the New York Times uses less paper than I did in that stall. Ten minutes later, five pounds lighter and understanding the "burning" referred to in Preparation H commercials, I ran back down the hall, scarlet-faced, breathless and pretending to be looking for Martin.

"Sorry for the delay. I'm having trouble finding my client."

"He's in the courtroom." The judge's clerk smiled.

"Isn't that crazy?" I wiped sweat from my brow.

"Where were you?" Martin asked when he saw me come into the room.

"I had some serious issues there." I pulled him aside and guided him down the center aisle.

"How are your hemorrhoids?"

"You want me to tell the judge you're also a child molester? Sit here and just follow along." I pointed to the first spectator's row.

"I don't sit next to you?"

"Not unless you want to be asked questions. Just sit up straight and look remorseful." Martin wore the All American Kid look - blue blazer, rep tie, white shirt, khaki pants - as though he'd been born in the outfit. The jacket and shirt weren't a size too big or cheap looking, as though a lawyer had sent him to buy the outfit for the court appearance. He was impossibly white bread, a perfect image in a suburban courthouse.

"What's remorseful look like?"

"Like you're at a wake."

He looked downward and let his face drop. "How's this?"

"Perk it up a little, like it's a wake for someone you only knew from work." I slid into the defense counsel chair and arranged my papers on the table. "You know, I was thinking in the bathroom..."

"You're not going to say I need treatment, are you? I don't want to fuck around with that act."

"...Is there even such thing as a left handed monkey wrench?"

"Turn around." Martin whispered through his teeth.

"The Honorable Clifford McDonald presiding." The bailiff shouted as the judge walked to the bench and everyone stood.

The judge was 50ish, 6'0, neatly composed and well spoken, and he cut straight to the action. "I understand the issue here. But I'd like to hear the State first, so I get a little more background."

The prosecutor was quick, reciting the law and how the license suspension penalty was mandatory. The judge smiled and listened though he'd heard it a million times before. "And Your Honor, it's just the law. Loss of license for one year."

"Thank you, counsel." The judge turned to me. "Now we'll hear from Mr. _________."

"Good morning, Your Honor... At the outset, I have to admit, we can't dispute what the prosecutor said. There was a plea, but my client requires his car for work purposes and without it he won't be able to work, which would be an unfair penalty. I understand the state's interest here but the fact is, my client has already suffered punishment in Arizona and now he finds himself subject to punishment again here. Twice... Being punished a first time, then punished a second time. Once there, once here. Two times, for the same crime.

...It's really redundant. Almost double jeopardy."

"But not." The judge smiled.

"True."

"I tend to get that one right." The judge looked Martin up and down and adjusted his microphone. "I understand your position, but what can I do? The applicable statute is very clear on the penalty."

"Your Honor, if my client loses his employment, that would kick off a downward spiral of problems and I can't understand what benefit anyone realizes from forcing a person who is trying to get back on track and overcome his demons to lose his job and spiral further down..." I took a deep breath and turned to look at Martin. He shot me a glance of confusion. Getting his life back on track? Demons? He was loaded on vacation. I had more 'demons' than he did. "It doesn't do him any good as far as his alcohol problems go if he can't work and if he gets caught in the downward spiral of the job loss and the spiraling problems and certainly the state doesn't want to send its residents into those spirals..." When I looked back again Martin had his face in hands.

At that point I realized I was fumbling, spraying furious verbiage all over the room. A little stumbling's okay when you're looking for mercy. Makes you look earnest. Nobody's in a hurry to do favors for a razor-tongued operator. But even with that leeway I was too disjointed. The argument I wanted to make wasn't coming out clearly because in my head it seemed like such an obvious self-serving lie. There's a bias every advocate has to overcome in a presentation or argument - that the audience comes to material from the same background as you do. Your perception is not objective reality, and what sounds ludicrous in your head might sound entirely normal to the person on the receiving end of your comments. Some people actually like Nickelback, love Leroy Neiman or believe they'll be "raptured" to Heaven. Some think 9/11 was an inside job. Others still wear briefs or have basic cable.

Law professors and career coaches offer all sorts of techniques on how to give convincing arguments you don't believe in or know are flat out lies - "make good eye contact," "don't pause between phrases and say 'um' a lot"... "gesture with your hands to emphasize a point." Stagecraft for people who need it... The best bullshitters are born with the ability. Lying's second nature and they know the simple central tenet of the skill - to stop thinking and Just Say It.

Back in our salad days, what seems a lifetime ago now, Harris used to make up rumors - warped vignettes people would discount as baseless fiction coming from anyone else, but when told by him would circulate as accepted fact. The reason was twofold. First his delivery. He pitched the stuff with a dead straight face, never coming out of character and under complete suspension of disbelief. Second, the story always straddled that fine line between believable and ridiculous, where the listener would be thinking to himself, "No one could or would make that up." And the stuff was so well crafted people wanted to buy the stories no matter how suspicious they sounded. Anything that perfectly twisted deserved belief regardless of the merits.

I once watched Harris deliver a tale about two lacrosse players who lived in his girlfriend's dorm. The thing flowed out of his mouth seamlessly, not a moment of hesitation as he free-formed it on the fly...

Last night, I was walking into Melissa's building at about 3:00 am and saw Chad and Mark sitting on the floor of the TV lounge, both shirtless. Chad had his shirt tied around his eyes and Mark was drawing pictures or symbols on Chad's back with his finger and Chad was trying to guess what Mark was drawing. Both of them were giggling.

I never asked him where he came up with that one. I didn't want to know.

Two weeks later I overheard a gossip next door relaying Harris's tale almost word for word to a gaggle of sorority pledges.

"...And Mark was, like, running his fingers all over Chad's back and massaging him..."

"Oh, myyygodddd... What a shame. Chad is a total, total babe."

"Totally. Chad's on-fire hot. Such a waste."

Once I learned Harris' tricks, I could spot his work moments into hearing a second hand narrative through the grapevine.

"Did you hear that Candace McCarthy had two abortions in high school?"

"Tim Scully and Jon Patterson double teamed Katie Berman without condoms. And then, like a half hour later, she hooked up with Ted Hechtor, and he ate her out. How gross is that?"

"I heard Jon Casper and his sister had this deal in high school, where if either of them didn't hook up with someone when they went out, they'd have sex with each other."

Harris made up dozens of these tales over those years and to this day, some of them still circulate and are considered ironclad fact. It's a testament to his talent - that ability to mask the pressure of keeping up the joke, what would cause most us to break down laughing - as the malevolent enthusiasm all gossips have for the dirt they're dishing. The audience thought it was getting sordid inside information and all the while it was the butt of a joke.

I don't have a fraction of Harris's acting skill, and I'd usually shy away from trying to spin nonsense to the court, but Martin was a friend and there was only one course to follow...

"Your honor, my client lives in a rural area, and if he has no license, he can't drive to his alcohol rehabilitation classes, and if he can't drive to those classes he will be breaking a promise to the state of Arizona and his problems will spiral out of control. And beside all that, I personally vouch for this man. I've known him for a decade and he is of the highest character." In all the right ways. You'd want him with you in a foxhole... And on a weekend in Vegas.

The judge leaned over the bench. "I can't lessen the penalty. The law says he loses his license for a year. But what I can do is suspend the start of the suspension."

"That, Judge, would be fine with us."

"Well, that's what I'll do." Does the Commonwealth have any objection?"

The prosecutor stood up. "No, Your Honor."

"Fine then. We'll delay the license suspension for a period of six months. That should be long enough for those classes and whatever else he needs to do."

"Thank you, Your Honor." I stood in the well of the court as the judge exited, wondering what he'd been thinking. He could have asked Martin to verify my story about the rehab classes, but he didn't. And the prosecutor - he had to know that excuse was theatre...

Or maybe not. The idea Martin would be going to AA meetings seemed like a ridiculous story in our world, but we weren't the judge or prosecutor. Who knew what was plausible in their minds? They could be teetotalers or recovering boozehounds. They might have totally bought the story. Living as Martin and I did you forget a lot of people still view the surface systems around us as serious reality, or at least far more than occasional "lifestyle interferences"... I'd like to think the judge and prosecutor were just giving me a favor, saying "here, you deserve something, kid." ...Professional courtesy from comrades in the bullshit business.

I'll never know which it was, and though I'm curious, that doesn't really matter. All I know for certain is if we hadn't gone there, none of it would have happened.

"Let's clear out of here before someone changes their mind." I shoved our legal papers in my bag and headed for the door with Martin.

"Fine with me. I feel dizzy."

"Dizzy? That worked out as well as it could."

"You had me spiraling more than a fucking ballerina."

"So sorry you didn't like my argument." I held up my watch. "Look. It's almost noon. Presbyterian drinking hours. Let's stop at a bar and celebrate. Then you can drive home."

"Fuck you."

"And it's 'pirouette,' by the way."

"What's 'pirouette?'"

"Dancers don't spiral. They pirouette."

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 1:51 PM

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