Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Wrong. The week of graduation, the dean whistles me in. 'Robbie, Robbie, what the fuck are we going to do with you? You didn't take Legal Ethics.' If it was just me, he'd have flunked out my fanny faster than I could scratch it, but there's about half a dozen other folks who've pulled the same stunt, including, bless his heart, a fella who's number three in the class. So the deal is, we can go to graduation. And take Legal Ethics over the summer, which means write a paper while we're studying for the bar exam. Pretty square deal. Frankly, I was so grateful I cried, because the idea of telling my mother she's not going to this law school graduation, for which both her sisters are flying in from Cleveland, that's inconceivable, that's like the idea of antimatter.

"So that summer, I'm working for Neucriss, who still hasn't firmly committed to a full-time job for me, and going to Legal Ethics and to a bar exam review course. I'm busier than a bunny in spring and then Peter got this case-it was a huge plaintiff's class, one of the first toxic torts in the country, even before Love Canal. I'm working with Neucriss directly, at the right hand of God, no sleep, and of course, I blow off the final paper in Ethics. All I know is this is it, once in a lifetime, bottom of the heap to the top, and nobody's taking it from me.

"So three weeks before the bar, it's back to the dean's office. `Jesus Christ, Robbie, we can't certify you for the exam, you've got an incomplete in Legal Ethics.'You know, I tried every angle. I'd donate organs and half my income for life if he'd just stamp the little blue sheet. No sale. `Finish the paper now, then you can take the bar in December with the group that flunks the first time.'

"And I don't know, I thought I was going to do that. Of course, there's no way in the world I'm telling Neucriss that I didn't get my law degree. And, naturally, all of this works to my advantage. Peter thinks I'm a Trojan, cause the other two clerks, they're wimping out to study as the bar comes up, and I'm like, I got it handled. I even came in the afternoon the first day the exam was given. Neucriss was really impressed!

"So I got the job. Now what do I do? The bar results come back. Everybody's crowing. And you know, the third of November the three new associates-Robbie from Blackstone and two hotshots from Easton and Harvard-get the afternoon off to be sworn in. The ceremony's just a cattle call over in the Supreme Court, eight hundred kids all standing on the front steps. So I raised my hand with everybody else. The only difference was that the rest eventually got mailed a certificate to practice law and I didn't. That's how it happened."

He sat in the leather club chair in front of my desk with an unfaltering, fawnlike expression, utterly compelled by his rationale for ridiculous behavior. He took no responsibility for the thousands of hours of work to which he'd laid waste-by Stan, by the agents, by Evon, by me-or the peril and pain to which he'd exposed himself and Lorraine. The Robbie I'd come to know and like was elsewhere, like a spirit released from a body and hovering in a corner of the room. Observing my reactions, he made a face and looked out the window.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You do stuff as a kid and then you're stuck with it. I was a kid."

He was a grownup, I pointed out, when he didn't tell me.

He brought a hand to his temple protectively. It was no later than 8 a.m. and he appeared to be watching the light crawl, like a gentle hand, down the sides of the big buildings along the river-anything rather than face me.

I asked if Lorraine knew.

"Nobody knows. No one."

I could take the usual consolation: my bills were paid. And I'd realized all along there were reasons we were each sitting where we were, on either side of the desk. Nor could I pretend that similar things, perhaps not on this scale, but not entirely unlike it, hadn't happened before: clients who lost their deals because they tried to hide money they were required to forfeit; an executive who'd recently gotten probation to testify against the grubby smack-dealer he'd scored from, and then blew his first monthly urine drop and spent a year in the pokey. There was no end to the way clients could disappoint you. But I'd seldom been as thoroughly taken in.

Feaver finally seemed to be absorbing the weight of it. He was slumped with both feet in his close-soled loafers flat on the floor. Eventually, he went to the door.

"Are you my lawyer?" he asked from there. It was the right question, not so much for focusing both of us on the pragmatic issues, but because the fragile look that accompanied it redeemed him somewhat. Robbie was an eternal beacon of need, like those dead stars which, even imploded, continue emitting a radio signal through space. But his baddog truckling made it seem that he actually cared about what I would answer, and not simply because it would represent a monumental inconvenience to him if I withdrew. I realized what had been implicit from the start: he had come to me not out of regard for my courtroom oratory or my connections but out of personal respect. I seldom thought of myself as an example, or of the valor of what I tried to do every day. I whisked him out the door with a backward wave and no answer, but I'd already settled the matter with myself. I was his lawyer. In the better sense of the word.

Near 2 A.M. the lobby buzzer had roused her, a honking duck in her dreams.

"This is your Uncle Peter," rasped a voice distorted by the intercom. `Uncle Peter' was the Project code word, a fail-safe i.d. for times of trouble. It was McManis who showed up at Evon's door. He was too proper to step any farther into the apartment. He just leaned back against the steel jamb.

"It's about Robbie," Jim told her. Her first thought was that he was dead. And he was, as far as she was concerned, once she heard the story.

"I was wrong," McManis said before he left. He was wearing a light suit spotted with rain. "I always said that Mort was the most dangerous person to the Project. Which was foolish. We knew where the risk was from the start and we forgot. Heck, that's why you're here. We knew he was a con. And he conned us anyway."

"Played us," said Evon. It was more impulse than humor, but Jim responded with his mild smile.

"There's never a bottom with these people. It's like facing mirrors. You just go down and down." McManis instructed her to skip the morning pickup, just go to the office, so she'd be at hand when they started to sort things out.

Around 9 a.m., Robbie appeared at the opening to her cubicle. His tie knot was already wrung down six inches below his open collar. He wanted to talk.

"I don't think so, Robbie."

"Look, I'm sorry. I want to say that." He was too weakened to raise his hands; he simply opened his palms at his side. "It was the past to me. A mistake in the past."

She propelled her chair to the credenza behind her and, waiting for him to leave, hovered over a phone-book-sized printout of hospital charges she'd been abstracting. But what was the reason for that? she thought suddenly. A case she didn't care about, clients who weren't really hers. The months, the time, the work, the hope for something of value-the staggering size of what had probably been destroyed, of what was being wrenched away from her, brought a whirling moment of desperation and, as ever, shame. He took a step closer.

"Don't be a jerk," she told him.

"A bigger jerk, you mean."

"You couldn't be a bigger jerk, Robbie. You're maxed. You busted the meter."

The cover occurred to her remotely, whatever it was worth now. They were out in the open here. Yet it fit. Lovers' tiff. If she wanted, she could throw something at him. Instead, when he tried to speak to her again, she stuck a finger in each ear.

In time, she felt his shadow move off her. She sat still, contending with her rage. Once lit, it could incinerate everything else, including normally reliable means of restraint. She tried to sit in this chair. be in this place, step aside, but it was useless. In a minute, she was tearing down the corridor.