Mark Gimenez: The Common Lawyer

"That's what gives me hope."

"Andy," Natalie said, "her hair is bleached, she could stand to lose some weight, and in case you didn't notice, those are implants."

"What's your point?"

"My God, Andy, she's drinking a supersized soda. That's three hundred forty calories. She'll be a size ten in two years."

"Two years? Natalie, my relationships usually last two hours."

Natalie sighed in resignation.

"Then go over and ask her out."

Andy sat up. He considered doing just that. But she wasn't alone. Rejection would be a painful public humiliation. A train whistle sounded in the distance; the park's miniature train was about to leave the station. Andy lay back down.

"And get shot down in public? I have my reputation to consider."

Tres laughed. "What reputation?"

"Andy," Natalie said, "you've got to date to have sex… well, maybe not with her, but with classy girls you do, like the kind you meet at Pangaea."

"That's the place with the safari theme? Girls dressed like Tarzan's mate dancing on the tables? Natalie, I can't get past the velvet rope at places like that."

The beautiful people of Austin now frequented the trendy new lounges springing up in the warehouse district a few blocks west of downtown. Andy was not and so did not.

"A guy from New York opened Pangaea," she said. "They've got tribal spears and shields on the walls, and the ceiling is draped like a tent. It's fabulous."

"It's expensive," Tres said.

Natalie rolled lusciously toward Tres and gave him a little kiss.

"But I'm worth it."

Andy tried not to admire her body in motion, but he couldn't resist. But then, she and Tres weren't married yet, so it wasn't as if he were committing a Ninth Commandment violation.

She rolled back and said, "So when was your last date?"

"Last year."

Natalie sat up, squirted a line of suntan oil onto her right thigh, and rubbed it in with long smooth strokes.

"When last year?"

"April."

"April of last year? Andy, it's August of this year."

"I'm working on it."

"Anyone answer your ad?" Tres said.

Natalie now rubbed oil on her left thigh.

"What ad?"

"Andy put an ad in Lovers Lane."

Lovers Lane was the online dating venue of the Austin Chronicle, the weekly alternative newspaper in town.

"Any responses?"

"Nope. Every 'woman seeking man' wants a guy who's smart, rich, and looks like Matthew McConaughey. They don't want regular guys."

McConaughey was Austin's resident movie star.

"Which is why they're alone and putting personal ads in the Chronicle," Tres said.

"Which is why they're not going to answer my ad-I'm not smart or rich and I don't look like McConaughey."

"Andy," Natalie said, "don't sell yourself short. You're sort of smart."

That amused Tres almost as much as the old lady's "Does it relieve constipation?"

"I'm a regular Joe looking for a regular Joan."

"So lie," Tres said. "Everyone in those ads lies."

"But that defeats the whole purpose of personal ads: you can be honest."

"Andy, no one's honest. I know. I work for the IRS."

Tres had hired on with the Internal Revenue Service after law school at the University of Texas; he had been a B student, so the best he could do was a government job. But he hoped to parlay his inside knowledge into a big firm job in a few years. He didn't need the money-there was the trust fund-but he needed a station in life.

Andy said, "I'm honest."

Tres: "And poor."

Natalie: "With no girlfriend."

Andy: "Which requires money."

Tres shook his head. "It's a vicious cycle."

Natalie gave Andy her "wise mother" look, which told him she was about to offer more unsolicited personal advice. The fact that she was two years older than Andy apparently gave her standing.

"Andy, classy girls don't want slackers."

She graciously omitted the implied "like you."

"They want guys with ambition," she said. "Like Arthur."

"He has a trust fund."

"Or that. They want someone who can give them the life-the house on the lake, the cars, the country club, the nightlife, the wardrobe, the accessories. Someone with money, or at least the ambition to make money."

She squirted oil onto her upper chest and smoothed it over the exposed portion of her beautiful breasts.

"Andy, if you want a girlfriend, you need ambition."

Andy turned away from Natalie's oily body and said, "I need a beer."

La cerveza mas fina.

Andy drained the Corona longneck and waved the bottle in the air until he caught their waitress' attention at the far end of the porch. Ronda was working the sidewalk tables fronting Congress Avenue that Sunday night. She was twenty-five, sweet, and a lesbian; her black hair sported purple and green streaks, and colorful tattoos covered every square inch of her visible skin surface, most of which was visible since she was wearing only a blue jean miniskirt and a red halter top. From that distance, the tattoos blended together and made her look like a walking Jackson Pollock painting. She held up four fingers and raised her pierced eyebrows as if asking, Another round for the table? Andy nodded and pointed at Tres behind his back. Tres didn't know it, but he was buying.

Andy Prescott couldn't afford to buy a round for the table.

At twenty-nine, his financial condition should be a major life concern. By now, he should be contributing to a 401(k) plan, saving for a down payment on a mortgage, and planning for a secure future. Why wasn't he? Why didn't he have a burning ambition to make a lot of money, like Natalie said? Was it just a stubborn refusal to grow up? Was it genetic, an inherited trait like his brown hair and eyes? Or was it a character flaw? Why didn't he care more about such mature matters instead of "Jesus, Tres, check her out."

A gorgeous girl glided past their table and into the restaurant, but not before giving Tres a sly glance.

Andy yelled to her: "He's taken! I'm not!"

Natalie had given Tres the night off-she was at home researching the "rent a womb" business in India-so they were drinking Mexican beer with Dave and Curtis, two buddies from their UT days, who were in deep conversation on the other side of the table.

"She got back to the condo," Tres said, "jumped on the computer, hasn't budged since. That magazine article at the pool today really got her hormones pumping."

"You really thinking about doing that? Outsourcing your baby to India?"

"Not until Natalie compared the costs. With an American surrogate, you're looking at a hundred thousand total out of pocket. In India, it's only five grand."

"You paid more than that for your trail bike."

"Yeah, but that's a fortune in India. Natalie said a third of the population lives on a dollar a day. An American surrogate makes fifty thousand, an Indian twenty-five hundred-but that's like seven years' pay over there."

Andy scooped salsa onto a tortilla chip and stuck the whole thing in his mouth, an act he immediately regretted: the salsa was seriously spicy. He turned his beer bottle up and tried to shake a few cold drops out onto his hot tongue. No luck. So he grunted and pointed at a cute coed behind Dave and Curtis; when they swiveled their heads around to check her out, Andy grabbed Curtis' beer and drank from it, then replaced it without Curtis being the wiser. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Nine months at twenty-five hundred dollars? That's what, three hundred a month?"

"Two seventy-seven," Tres said.

"She's renting her womb for nine bucks a day?"

"Yeah, and they've got better quality control. The clinic boards its surrogates for the entire nine months, makes sure they get proper pre-natal care and nutrition-they eat better than they have their whole lives."