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“Rejoice, office laborer!” I announce. “I bring you bad tasting bean water, and also a drama, which shall provoke great merriment as well as offering valuable moral instruction!”
She turns around in her chair, obviously overwhelmed by my amazing Shakespearean acting performance. “Okay, the bean-water I can decode. What’s the drama?”
“It is more than a drama!” I cry, drawing my hand across my forehead. “It is a tragedy! A tale of great sorrow such as could only have been produced by one of the masters of the art! And to think dirge to the suffering of the human heart was sent to all of us in our work emails, free of any charge!”
“Oh, is this about that email asking us to use the printer less?” She turns back to pull it up on her email. “Yeah, I thought that was a bit overblown myself.”
It’s too late. I’ve already launched into my dramatic reading of the email, which arrived from the accounting office that shares our printer with us just today.
“A printer is not a toy, ladies and gentleman. It is not… a magic box from which pages appear as from aether! It is a complex machine, one whose every use is reckoned in paper and ink. Paper and ink that someone must buy! Also, if your office is next to this contraption, it is extremely loud and distracting. And yet, for all this, every day our wastebaskets are full of things which were printed without thought and without care! We can do better! Please, think before you print!”
She smiles. “I can feel the pathos in every word.”
I put my phone back in my pocket. “Verily, verily. Never was there a story of more woe than this of Max and his printer-fax combo!”
That one gets her to smile. I’m glad, because it’s one I’ve been thinking about for a while.
“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” she comments.
I shrug. I’m not really. There’s too much going on for that, but I’d certainly like for her to think I’m doing well. “I just enjoy finding the beautiful emotional moments in our everyday office humdrum.”
“I noticed that you’d found several moments to come talk to me,” she says.
The comment stings me. She’s right, of course. I have been coming out to talk to her a lot. I want her to like me. She’s interesting, and she’s also made getting her attention a lot harder than most paralegals, especially most pretty female paralegals. What I don’t like is having it pointed out to me like that.
“You make for good company,” I tell her. “Well, better company than most of the people around here.”
That jab is a little meanspirited, I know. Still, it feels good to make.
“Actually, there is something I wanted to talk to you about.” She opens the file she had been reading when I walked in. “It’s about this case. Cross vs. State of Illinois. I noticed that you rejected it, and I was just looking it over out of curiosity.”
That’s interesting. Most paralegals would wait for their second week before admitting that they were taking time away from their actual job to second guess their employer’s decision. I’m curious where she’s going with this.
“It’s an interesting case,” I say. “But the client doesn’t have enough money for how much time and effort winning it would take.”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” she replies. “It’s a very interesting case. There are some real constitutional issues here. I think the publicity from this might be worth it, even if we won’t make much from it up front.”
I shrug. “You’ve got a pretty optimistic idea about the kind of stuff the press is interested in. Complicated legal questions with big implications make for good articles, but they don’t sell papers.”
“I guess you’re right,” she admits, reluctantly. “But I guess I just feel like this case matters. This man had his constitutional rights trampled on, and he’s not gonna get the justice he deserves unless he has a really good lawyer behind him.”
I freely admit, I had been starting to tune out a little. I’ve met lots of young lawyers and paralegals who think they’re going to be the next Clarence Darrow, arguing the most complicated cases and proving to everyone how smart they are. But that’s not what she’s saying. She’s saying she cares about seeing justice done.
And that’s more interesting.
I pick up the file. “I’ll look it over again,” I tell her. “No promises. We still have to keep the lights on and all that. But… I’ll look over the case again.”
“You’re serious?” she asks. “You really mean that?”
It’s the first time I feel she actually likes me. It’s an almost intoxicating feeling.
“You know, I remember one time my father was talking to me,” I begin. Already, I feel awkward. I barely talk about my father with my brothers. Why am I talking about him to some paralegal?
“I had gotten in a fight at school because some kid was bullying another kid. And I remember my father gave me the whole lecture about how fighting wasn’t the right answer and I should try to solve things with my words, not my fists. And then at the end he looked at me and he said ‘But never lose that anger. Never lose that willingness to go to bat for someone else who doesn’t have the strength or the privilege that you do.’”
I pause for a moment, remembering that moment, and thinking about other things that have happened since. “You might not know from looking at me, but those words have always stuck with me.”
She smiles, gently. I’m surprised for a moment by how pretty she is. “They’re good words.”
