Noa, Earl Grey in hand
Pound the Table | An X-Men Self-Insert
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Chapter Fourteen
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A/N: Alright, watching that clock tick down... it's midnight? Calendar date ticked over? It's March 17th now? Perfect!
Happy Birthday to me, have a chapter!
Pound the Table
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday, September 30, 1989
Rosh Hashanah
The morning of Rosh Hashanah came, and with it, I once again found myself avoiding the congregation out front. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time greeting all the various people I grew up around and catch back up with everyone. No, it wasn't that at all. What was it, then?
Well let's see. I was small and huggable, and that congregation was filled to the brim with Jewish mothers.
My glamour wouldn't last ten seconds.
So instead, here I was inside of the synagogue proper, setting prayer books and Rosh Hashanah specific prayer leaflets down on every chair. It was a tedious task, particularly since I couldn't really carry more than seven to ten sets at a time, but it did give me time to think about the elephant in the room.
Or, well, the elephant out front being introduced to the congregation and getting attention from fussy Jewish mothers in my stead.
I didn't get a chance to properly speak to Erik alone last night – the both of us were subject to the whims and ministrations of my parents, just in a different way. Really, there was a lot of bragging on my behalf from my father, which was… well, incredibly embarrassing, given Erik already knew about most of it. (Well, except for the part of DA Young possibly being the second shady district attorney I'll have had the pleasure of taking down a peg or twenty… story for another day.)
But all it really meant was that I couldn't sit Erik down and ask more than a few pointed questions that desperately needed answers. Questions about how coincidental our meeting really was. About what exactly he was intending to do. And about why he had let me call him a fake name for two damn years.
I sighed inwardly, setting down the last three prayer books as I did. A quick glance at the clock told me I still had about… fifty minutes? Let's see, fifteen minutes until we started letting people into the synagogue, another thirty minutes before services were ostensibly supposed to start, then the extra five minutes my father liked to give stragglers… perfect.
With one last (unnecessary) furtive look around the completely empty synagogue, I went out a side door and into the hallways, making my way past the conference and reception rooms, before finding myself in my father's office area. I closed the door behind me, went to the large glass-front display cabinet in the back, and opened it up. From within the cabinet, I picked up three polished, hollowed-out ram horns, and laid them out on the desk. And now… I delighted in childish glee at what fun I was about to have.
See, most kids, if they wanted to mess around with an instrument around the house? They had an acoustic guitar, or a piano if they were fancy. Me?
I had a shofar.
It might seem a little silly for a woman of my age to be sneaking into the back rooms to play with the instruments, and I would readily admit that it was. But blowing the shofar was a surprising amount of fun, and it wasn't exactly something I could just go and do at a synagogue in Manhattan. General practice with a shofar dictates that it must be a man who blows it during services, and, well… I didn't exactly qualify, now did I? The only place I actually got to use one was here in St. Louis, where nobody in the congregation had to know that a woman had gotten her hands on a shofar.
Speaking of…
I picked up one of the synagogue's three shofar, and wiped down the mouthpiece before raising it to my lips. I went for a short teruah just to see how out of practice I was, and was rewarded with a string of short, almost cut-off blasts of sound from the horn.
Well, I thought with a smile. That was as good a sign as any.
I went to bring the shofar to my lips again, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. I hurriedly checked the back of a hand to make sure my glamour was still holding strong before I said anything.
"Come in!" I called.
The door opened, and in walked exactly the man I'd been hoping to talk to, footsteps hesitant as he passed the threshold and closed the door behind himself.
"Your father asked me if I'd mind blowing the shofar during services," he said, worrying at the brim of the hat in his hands. "The only problem is… I do not know how."
"And he told you to ask me," I finished for him. "Was I close, Erik? Oh, I'm sorry," I said with a faked gasp, "would you prefer Max?"
Erik frowned, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he looked at me with an unknowable expression.
"It was not my intention to deceive," he said, setting his hat down on the same table the other two shofar sat upon. "I knew my old friend had a daughter, but believe me, it comes as a surprise that said daughter is you."
"Quite the friend then," I say, cleaning the shofar in my hands before setting it down alongside the other two. "I never saw your face, knew your name, or even heard any mention of your existence until we ran into each other. And even then, you can't even offer me your actual name."
"I did offer my name," he said. "You never met Max Eisenhardt because that man died long ago."
I frowned, unsure of what exactly he was saying. Just running down the possibilities of what that could mean in a world where Victor von Doom existed meant the list could include secret twin, clone, alternate timeline self, or any number of other things.
"Elaborate," I said.
"It's simple," he said with a frown. "The hunter became the hunted. And after that, it became dangerous for Max Eisenhardt to live."
"So you buried him."
"Beside his daughter," Erik said, leaning against the wall, staring into the hat he held. "Anya would've been a few years younger than yourself."
"I…" I paused. What else was there to say? "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said. "You couldn't have known."
"Still—" I stopped, thinking over what he said. "What about her mother?"
"A blood trail stopped between a ravine on one side and tire tracks on the other," Erik said. "I've held out hope for quite some time — but it has been twenty years. And at this point, I have accepted the most likely reality."
I could only sigh in response and agreement. Hope was nice and all, yes — but at some point, you had to stop holding onto the impossible and move on with your life.
That being said, as much of a sob story as this was, it failed to answer the initial question.
"So if you left Max dead for safety, why bring him back now?" I asked. "And why here? Why my father?"
By way of answer, Erik reached into his jacket's inside pocket and retrieved a well-worn, leather-bound journal. One that I recognized from our first meeting a few years ago, in Oregon.
"I remember most of the men who worked at Auschwitz," Erik said, flipping to a dog-eared page. "I hunted down the ones that Nuremberg did not punish myself. But most is not all, and there is a name here I do not recognize."
Erik handed the book over to me, turned to the page he'd dog-eared, and I saw a clear underline below a bit of text that was substantially newer (and inked with a different color) than the rest.
"So you're looking for this 'Herr SX'?" I asked.
"I am finding my fellow survivors, and seeing if any of them can remember this man," Erik confirmed. "Because while I may have forgotten, that does not mean they all have."
I snapped the journal shut, laid it on the table, and slid it back over to him.
"So you just… what?" I asked. "Show up after forty-odd years to dredge up everyone's worst memories?"
"I do not simply 'show up'!" Erik said, affronted. "I brought one Chanukah gifts for the grandchildren, I helped another build their sukkah, I gifted another a new set of Seder plates, and that's just three."
I simply gave Erik a Look (trademark pending), and let the silence press on a bit longer than was necessary. The moment he started to squirm was my signal that the Look had done its job, and I turned to face him with my arms crossed.
"You will wait until after Rosh Hashanah services are complete, and you will attend all of them in full," I told him. "And if I can't make it for whatever reason, then I expect to hear from my father that you were here for Yom Kippur as well. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Erik said, bringing his hat to his chest before offering a slightly sardonic bow. I frowned, but couldn't really say anything else. "Now, about the shofar?"
"Hm?" I turned to the three ramhorn instruments on the table, and finally remembered the initial reason my father had sent Erik my way. "O-oh, right! Uh… okay then, let's see." I picked one of the three shofar up and handed it to Erik before picking one up myself. "Now, there are three types of horn blasts you play on the shofar: tekiah, which is just a single long blast…"
(And for anybody curious — no, Erik did not learn enough to play the shofar that morning. All he managed to do was make a hideous sound I could only classify as "dying beached whale".)
Tuesday, October 3, 1989
"... tough on the mob, tough on mutant terror, and tough on crime! Lou Young: fighting to keep the city and streets safe, for you and me!"
I could only give a disdainful sniff at the advertisement playing on the radio, especially given what I was seeing in today's issue of the Daily Bugle. Young was down in the polls by thirty points compared to last month, with the one difference being that his spread of opponents had narrowed down to one candidate.
And that candidate promptly reminded everybody that he was not the man who got chewed out by Captain America on national television.
Thankfully, the city's worst campaign ad was short-lived, and they got right back to the morning news radio as I set the kettle on the stove. Once that was going, I pulled out the stepladder and went to one of my upper cabinets, from which I pulled out a tin of loose-leaf Earl Grey tea. I popped it open, and then immediately frowned upon seeing that it was… basically empty. Ugh. My hand went right back into the cabinet and pulled out the teabags of last resort, even as I marched over to my front door, grabbed my grocery list, and scrawled in 'loose leaf Earl Grey'.
Then I gave it a heavy underline for good measure, grumbling at the box of teabags in my hand.
What? I was allowed to be a tea snob, wasn't I? And I refuse to listen to any arguments that bagged tea tastes the same as loose leaf – no it does not, and you clearly haven't had it yourself.
Shopping list edited and teabag waiting in my mug, I pulled out today's work that I'd brought home from the office's mailbox yesterday: resumes and cover letters.
While I had already started some small-time work as a solo practitioner, I simply did not have the systems in place to do larger-scale lawyering. Thanks to Sam Lieberman, two of my larger clients followed me, so I had a steady stream of income. Furthermore, thanks to no longer being bound by a very intricate web of conflicts of interest, I was free to take on contract work for various companies, and had managed to get some income writing guidelines for compliance pending passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The thing had been introduced last year, and enough companies had seen the writing on the wall to start going about preparing for its implementation.
And given that I'd already written an article for the New York Bar Association on the necessity of the ADA and ease of compliance with it, I was more than happy to get paid for telling people how to make their office space comply with the current and expected wording of the law once it passed.
None of this, however, changed that this was small potatoes compared to what I actually wanted to do. I was a litigator, through and through. But a lot of litigation is paperwork, busywork, dotting i's, and crossing t's.
And if you are doing that all by yourself, and trying to do witness prep, depositions, motions, hearings, etcetera? You're not going to be able to sustain more than five or ten clients at a time. Which is unsustainable.
Which was why I was looking into hiring people.
I did not need much to start with, if I was being honest. I needed two people: a secretary, and a paralegal. The secretary helped manage the day-to-day, made sure things happened when they were supposed to, and served as an important point of contact.
Paralegals, on the other hand, handled the annoying busywork you didn't want to burn more time on than necessary. Prepping materials and motions from a template, simple research, compiling case notes into a single document, collecting and preparing evidence binders… a good paralegal increased efficiency more than anything else by just handling all of the time sinks. These time sinks were utterly unavoidable too, but if you had a paralegal handling them, you could deal with the things that required an actual lawyer's attention instead.
I separated out the applications that came through my fax by the subject line on their cover sheets. When I put out the hiring information, I didn't bother saying anything like "competitive salary". No, I went ahead and put the salary down… and made sure it was $2,500 or so higher than the rest of the competition. Part of this was because I wanted to pay people fairly for the work they were going to be doing.
A more cynical part of me put the payment offer higher because that would hopefully hook in the ones who were on the fence due to my being a mutant.
Sure enough, offering higher pay than the competition worked. I wound up with almost a dozen faxed job applications for secretary, and another seven for a paralegal. First up came the secretary applications.
Two of them misspelled my last name on the address line of their cover letter, and a third addressed me as "Mr. Schaefer".
They went into the shredder immediately.
Of the remainder, four of them had potential, one of them I would give a chance based on what I saw in her cover letter, and the last one…
I paused, took a sip of my tea, and read it over again.
Then I picked up my pen, put a star at the top of this one, and underlined a part of her resume that I really wanted to talk about in an interview.
So that made six interviews I needed to schedule, and that I could hopefully get done early next week. With any luck, I would emerge from those with either a couple candidates for a follow-up interview, or even a new secretary ready to start within a week or two. The possible hires went into a stack with a post-it note saying "call & schedule interviews" on it. Then I turned my attention to the paralegal resumes.
And my train of thought immediately crashed to a halt when I read the two sentences on a mostly blank piece of paper that should have been a cover letter.
… why would…?
No, no. I needed answers, and I had a phone number. I went out to my living room, grabbed the phone's handset, and punched in a number I knew all too well. Two rings later, a familiar voice picked up on the other end.
"Sam Lieberman here," my old boss said. "Make it quick."
From the half-distracted tone of voice, and the faintly audible scratch of pen on paper, I could tell he was working on something. Probably case notes, given he waited until the second ring to answer.
"Would you like to explain why I have a paralegal application ostensibly from your son, but really from you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. "And why there's a note to call you?"
One Mississippi, I counted. Two Mississippi.
And then, a deep, put-upon sigh.
"The original plan was for him to work under Loeb while he worked on his Master's part time," Sam said, sounding more tired than I think I'd ever heard him. "After you got fired – and let's not beat around the bush, the schmucks can pretty it up all they like and say what they will, they fired you – well, it didn't seem like such a good idea to have Loeb in charge of… well, someone like Joshua."
"Your gay son," I said simply. "You can say the word, Sam. There's nothing wrong with it."
"... that," Sam said. "Regardless. I don't want Loeb in charge of him anymore, and there are too few people I'd trust to treat him fairly. So I'm calling in… let's say three of the favors you owe. Talk to him. If you think he could be a good fit, give him a chance."
I mulled it over in my head for a moment. I'd run across Joshua Lieberman a few times at the firm, mostly at holiday functions – he always had this look of just wanting to be anywhere but there, especially when some of the younger associates tried to schmooze him for brownie points with his dad. It never worked, and if anything it docked them a few points in Sam's eyes. Never stopped them from trying, though. The few times I encountered him at work, he'd been quiet, efficient, and no-nonsense. Not quiet in the sense of being soft-spoken, but quiet in that he just… didn't talk much. He also wasn't the most patient sort, and had a problem with fidgeting, from what I could recall.
But a paralegal wasn't necessarily a public-facing position, and even when they were seen by clients, they generally didn't really speak to them. The people a paralegal usually had to talk to was opposing counsel, their paralegals, and judges' clerks.
And if what I'd heard from Sam talking about his son over the years was accurate, he was maddeningly polite to them. The 'kill them with kindness' approach, as I'd heard it be called. Which essentially meant that Joshua Lieberman had a public face and a private face.
Given what I knew of him, that made sense to me. And that was something I could work with.
"Alright," I told Sam. "I'll sit down with him, but I make no guarantees of hiring. And even if I don't hire him, this still drops me down to four favors owed, understand?"
"Of course," Sam said. "Thank you, Noa."
"Don't thank me yet," I told him. "And also, don't think I'm ignoring the nepotism here. You know I don't like that, and are asking me to do it anyway." The huff at the other end of the line was enough to tell me that Sam got the message. "Now, since this isn't as formal as a regular job interview would be, and I wager you told your son you're doing this by networking, do you know of anywhere we can meet where he'd be more comfortable?"
"Well… ah, about that." Sam's voice sounded… sheepish? A little hesitant? All I knew was I hadn't heard this tone of voice from him before. "Have you heard of the Stonewall Inn?"
I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing into the handset, and kept going for a good half a minute before I could calm myself down.
"Okay, um," I said, pausing to let out another giggle. "Tell him Thursday of next week, an hour before trivia night. I'll ask Shelby to set a table aside for me." Hold up, I thought. "Unless they're Sheldon this week. Regardless, he'll know when, but tell him he can call if he has any questions."
With that, I set the phone down, just in time for the laughs to come again.
Oh, oh God. I needed that.
Once the laughter subsided, I went back to the kitchen, poured the water into my teacup to steep, and picked up the secretary applications. Time to call and schedule some interviews.
Joy.
Tuesday October 10, 1989
I'd gotten through three interviews for a secretary, and so far, I wasn't particularly jazzed about any of them. Oh sure, all of them had been competent – they were legal secretaries already, just looking for better pay.
But one of them couldn't stop looking at my horns, one of them outright asked me if I was a demon, and trying to talk to the third was about as pleasant as watching paint dry.
Not having my glamour on was turning out to be a bit of a double-edged sword here. Yes, it let me know what these applicants really thought about my being a mutant: whether they were actually fine with that, or if they just assumed the higher pay I offered would be enough to ignore it. But at the same time, there was no way to acclimatize people to who I was as a person before slapping them in the face with "mutant". I wasn't necessarily looking for a long-term hire – I just needed a secretary quickly so that I could get things running. Once things got going, I could easily hire a second that I liked more, and 'let go of' (read: fire) the first with a generous severance, then install the second as the main secretary.
But if I didn't have to do that, I wouldn't.
The lunch break I'd afforded myself had come and gone. A couple breath mints (wintergreen!) helped remove the scent of Jamaican jerk chicken from my breath, hopefully, and the next interviewee was due to arrive in about five minutes. I had on my desk a copy of her resume and cover letter, upon which I'd put a star in the top left corner. This was the applicant I'd been most interested in, just due to what she had on her resume, so I had some high hopes.
Two minutes before the appointment time, I heard the front door to the office open, and then close just a few seconds later. I smiled; just early enough, in my books. After all: early is on time, on time is late, and if you're late, it's better to simply not show up, make an excuse, and reschedule.
I waited until one PM on the dot, then opened the glass door to my office.
The middle-aged woman in the waiting room wore a charcoal gray skirt suit, 80's power shoulders and all, paired with a simple white blouse, sheer hose, and smart two-inch pumps. She had her red locks in one of those classic 80's 'big hair' styles, but it managed to not be quite so ostentatious as others I've seen, and it suited her. She was a tiny bit on the heavier side, but she wore it well, and her clothes fit, which is about as much as I cared.
"Sophie Walsh?" I asked.
"That's me, yes!" She stood, turned towards me at the door – and gave a heavy blink. I could see her eyes flicking from my horns, to the scales on my neck and the back of my hands, to where my tail extended from under my skirt.
But to her credit, that was the extent of it.
My estimation of this candidate climbed higher, and I allowed myself to hope a little.
"Come right in," I said, holding the door open for her. She offered a polite 'thank you' as she stepped into my office, and of the two chairs I had set in front of my desk, she immediately made her way to the left. I let the glass door close and walked around the desk myself before taking a seat. A moment later, another copy of Mrs. Walsh's resume and cover letter slid across my desk, already turned so they were right-side up for me.
Bringing another copy of your materials so your interviewer has the info in front of them at all times? I mentally bumped my estimation of this woman up another notch.
"Thank you very much for coming in today, ma'am," I said. "Before I go any further, is it Ms. or Mrs.?"
"Mrs. Walsh," she confirmed for me, smiling. "Sophie Kelly Walsh."
"Your maiden name also works as a normal middle name, convenient," I remarked, sliding the additional copy of her materials underneath the existing one. "So, Mrs. Walsh. I assume you already know what you're getting into, but just for the sake of being thorough, let me describe the position. I am looking for a secretary for a law firm, who will be responsible for handling various tasks: managing both the office and the schedule; maintaining communication with judges' chambers and opposing attorneys' offices as required; contacting persons and facilities for evidence and expert reports; assisting the paralegal with trial prep." I paused.
"General secretarial work, then, just with more politics?" Mrs. Walsh asked, and I nodded. "Nothing I haven't handled before, then. Just with bigger egos."
"Exactly!" Then a thought came to me. "Oh. And playing the role of rubber ducky when I need to test arguments," I said with a sheepish smile. "It doesn't really work when you're trying it on another lawyer. You need somebody who's closer to a juror."
"Oh, the boys use the cats for that," Mrs. Walsh said, smiling. "But I think a person would be better for that."
"Less likely to chase the laser pointer?" I offered with a smile of my own.
"Exactly!"
"Of course," I said, glancing back down at Mrs. Walsh's resume. "Now, I see here that you did spend three years as a secretary for Bear Stearns, but that was… twenty-odd years ago. How much do you remember of what you did during your day-to-day there?"
"Well if I'm being honest," Mrs. Walsh began, "it's hard to forget because that kind of work never stopped. I went from being paid to act as secretary for eight people, to not being paid to act as secretary for four." She favored me with a smile. "With quite a few extra duties besides. Secretaries only have to set the coffee occasionally, I did quite a bit more than that daily."
"On that topic…" I looked down to the largest block on her resume.
Stay-at-Home Mother.
This. This was the single tidbit about her resume that had me the most intrigued. A lot of people I'd spoken with in the past five to ten years, particularly the men working at LL&L, had disparaged stay-at-home wives and mothers, even as they somehow expected their own spouses to be exactly that. What these people didn't seem to realize was that it was a full-time job, and one without sick days, time off, or any pay whatsoever. A household is a hell of a thing to manage, and if what I'd gathered was correct…
"The largest and most recent block on your resume lists stay-at-home mother as your occupation," I said, maintaining my smile. "Ordinarily I wouldn't ask questions about family and home life, but as that is somewhat mandated by this entry, I hope you don't mind my asking how large your household is?"
"Oh, it's no problem!" Mrs. Walsh said, waving off any possible faux-pas of the question. "It's myself, my husband, and our three sons."
"And how old are each of your sons?" I asked, readying a pen in my hand to scrawl ages (and time frames) on the resume, just for my own reference.
"Oh, they're triplets," she said nonchalantly.
… wait.
I glanced up at Mrs. Walsh. Then back down at the resume. Then back up at her, then back to the dates on the resume. She stopped working at Bear Stearns… five months before the entry of "stay-at-home mother" began.
"A-and are they identical, or—"
"Oh no, thank God!" Mrs. Walsh said with a laugh. "Juggling all three of them was hassle enough, now imagine if they all looked the same!"
Oh, I could imagine it. I'd met identical triplets.
The sheer amount of shenanigans…
"So three sons," I said, taking a breath to recover. "So that would include… doctor's appointments, school, report cards, driver's ed, possibly synchronizing differing schedules based on their various extracurricular activities, scheduling vacations around their various social activities and free time…"
"And three sets of college admissions," Mrs. Walsh supplied, saving me the awkwardness of having to ask that particular question. "That's why I'm looking to go back to work, actually. All three of my boys are off at college now, they're sophomores now. I spent most of last year horribly bored, so I told my husband I was going to try and go back to work."
I stopped there, and looked up at her.
"And you sent an application to the brand-new law firm of a somewhat notorious attorney."
Mrs. Walsh shrugged.
"Well after raising triplets, I needed to try and find something almost as interesting," she said with a smirk.
… you know what? She could have that one.
The rest of the interview proceeded apace. I put forth some hypotheticals to try and test out her intuition regarding legal ethics issues that could embroil the secretarial staff. She answered those admirably, and did much the same for the rest of the questions I fielded her. And then, when it was her turn to ask questions, she immediately played hardball and threw my most recent case and DA Young at me.
"So, I remember seeing you on the news pretty much every night for a week and a half this past summer," Mrs. Walsh led off, a disarming smile on her face. "Let's say I'm working for you, you get another case as big as that one, and public pressure starts to spill over to your employees. What do they do, and what do you do?"
This was a good question, if I was being honest. With a big firm behind me, backlash against other people sort of just… didn't really stick. I was just a very expensive lawyer doing my job, and that was very hard to assail personally. As a one woman operation, on the other hand, I had sole deciding power for which cases to take – which, of course, meant that people could read more deeply into which clients I chose to take on. And any criticism I received would flow downhill to the employees under me.
And should a case have a major outcry, that could spell bad times for my employees.
"First would be to speak out against involving employees in this," I began. "They are only doing their jobs, and didn't make the decision to apparently champion one issue or another, as it were. As for employees, should that pressure start to spill over to the actual work site, I would give my employees paid leave until things calmed down, or find a way to let them work off-site until the office was safe." I shrugged at that, drumming my fingers on the desk. "So long as the work actually gets done, and confidentiality is maintained, it doesn't matter where or how that work takes place."
"On the topic of work getting done," Mrs. Walsh said, seizing the initiative, "that leads into my next question. Say you hire me, and a few months down the line, you ask me to do something outside of the scope of my position…"
Ooh. Oh, that was a clever one.
After three bad to lukewarm interviews, one like this was just an absolute treat. And after a few more questions like this, probing the devilish little details that could plague a workplace, it eased up, and transitioned from less of an interview to more just… conversation.
Which was quite the relaxing change of pace. I could practically feel the tension bleed out of my shoulders when the topic changed to the merits of coffee versus tea.
Unfortunately, the little timer I set at the corner of my desk started to beep, reminding me that I still had other appointments today.
"As much as I would like to continue, we're about out of time. Before we conclude though, there is something I'd like to say first." I took the copy of Mrs. Walsh's resume I started with and spun it around to face her, so she could see the star in the corner and my underlining of one particular item. "I was incredibly hopeful coming into this interview because you had the wisdom to recognize that being a stay-at-home mother is a full-time job, and the moxie to put it on a resume. You have no idea how gratified I am to see my hopes borne out. Feel free to take the weekend to think it over, but if you want the job, it's yours."
If she said yes, then I would still do the other interviews just out of politeness, but…
"Well if that's the case," Mrs. Walsh asked, all smiles. "When do I start?"
Thursday, October 12, 1989
The Stonewall Inn had trivia night every Thursday at 8pm EST. People had argued for it to be pushed up to 7pm, and for it to be pushed back to 9pm, or even all the way til 10pm. But despite quite a bit of push from either direction, trivia night remained stubbornly at 8pm.
I loved trivia night because it was just fun. Sure, I'd only actually won once or twice, but there was a bit of a secondary game to it: who could come up with the funniest wrong answer to any particular question. I wasn't particularly good at that, either, but the people who were showed up every week, without fail, and always made sure people had a good time.
I made the appointment with Joshua Lieberman before trivia night, just so that I could participate.
At roughly 6:30pm, I pushed open the door to the Stonewall Inn and took off my heavy coat, both annoyed and glad that a bout of unseasonably cold weather made me pull it out of the closet. Annoyed because I got cold very easily.
Glad, because having to bundle up so much meant I didn't need to put my glamour on to go out the door. I was covered with so much cloth that only a particularly attentive stare would have caught that the white on my face were scales, and not just from poor circulation.
And as for my horns… well, those were both hard to notice when I had on a beanie under a big hood, and easy to mistake for earmuffs. It had worked so far, at least.
I didn't bother putting my massive jacket on the coat rack, instead looking to Shel…by? No, that was a button-up with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a tight-fitting vest over the top, what looked like five o'clock shadow, and slim-fit slacks. Okay, it was a Sheldon day. Instead, I looked to Sheldon, who pointed me to the table he'd set aside.
"The usual?" he asked.
"Yes please," I said, dropping a twenty on the bar as I walked past and sat at the table, hanging my purse off of my chair. Yes, a single cocktail wouldn't cost that much, but I would probably have one more during trivia night, and any remainder was Sheldon's tip.
Shel was a fun conundrum. As far as I could tell, people had all given up trying to figure out what sex they were assigned at birth. My personal theory was…
… that I'd only cared enough to be slightly peeved when I asked Sheldon about his sister, only to have the three other locals seated at the bar laugh uproariously at the question. I was new to the Stonewall at the time, and that embarrassed me more than a little.
But, this was a place where I could openly be myself in every way, so it was rather easy to look past a little early goof and settle in for the long haul. I'd been coming to the Stonewall Inn almost every week for the past eight or nine years, so suffice to say I was a familiar face.
At least, on Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays.
Which would explain how I'd managed a ships-in-the-night with the young man I was about to have a very informal interview with.
I didn't bother to bring Joshua's resume with me. I already knew I would be giving him the job if he wanted it. But that was the whole crux of this – finding out if he actually wanted the job, or if his dad was pressuring him into taking this.
Not long after I came in, Sheldon came by with a coaster, then placed my drink on it: mojito, extra mint, a little more sugar than average, and a lighter pour on the rum. I had a sweet tooth, and just wasn't big enough to handle much alcohol. And I liked fresh mint. This let me indulge myself a little, and was a tall enough glass that I could sip it a little bit at a time, as opposed to other cocktails.
I took a sip, gave Sheldon an appreciative nod, and settled in to wait.
Ten minutes later, the door to the Stonewall opened again, and in walked a man swaddled in a heavy coat, most of his face obscured by the combination of a beanie and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He shucked the coat, revealing a younger man. He wore… shockingly similar clothing to what Sheldon was wearing, actually. A button-up shirt with no tie, whose sleeves he wasted no time unbuttoning and rolling to over his elbows. A vest hugged his torso, and well-tailored pants showed off his legs. He pulled a small comb out of his pocket to fix up his hair and expose the single earring in his right ear, but that went back into his pocket no more than three seconds later.
I recognized him instantly. I don't think he was able to do the same at this distance, not with what he was doing. He went over to Sheldon, who pointed him towards where I sat at the table, facing the bar. He turned to face me, did a double-take, and then I saw this moment of realization come over him.
Joshua Lieberman moved from the bar over to the table, pulled out the chair opposite mine, and sat down, that look of surprise still on his face.
"How long have you been coming here?"
That was the first question out of his mouth when he sat down.
"It's nice to see you again Joshua," I told him, taking a sip of my drink before I kept speaking. "I'm doing well, thank you for asking. A little annoyed that the weather turned, but that happens. Oh, and since well before you could drink," I added.
His eyes flicked towards my horns, to the scales on my hands, down to where my tail was visible for but a moment as I flicked it to the side.
"And, uh…" He swallowed, nervous. "Do you come here because you're a mutant, or…?"
"Both," I interrupted.
It was a valid question; since the early 70's, gay bars had been a haven for mutants. Many set aside a section for mutants to not have to worry about being hit on by the same sex, and while some argued that this had the air of discrimination or segregation, everybody eventually agreed that it was much more comfortable not having to guess.
"So before we go any further," I said after taking another sip of my drink. "A few things. Obviously I'm looking for a paralegal, and you're more than competent enough for that task. But this isn't exactly a formal job interview, and you're not just any candidate, so we're going to just dispense with all the usual formalities. What I want to know is this: was applying to be my paralegal your idea, was it your father's idea and you went along with it, or did he do this and then proceed to pressure you?"
"The second," Joshua said. He was about to answer until Sheldon came by with his drink. I raised an eyebrow at his choice.
"Southside?" I asked. "You could've just gotten a mojito. More drink for the same money."
"Don't like rum," he said after taking a sip. "Or club soda."
"Fair enough," I said with a shrug. "Would you like to elaborate on your answer?"
Joshua mulled over his thoughts for a moment before answering.
"Working under Isaac Loeb was… fine? I guess?" I raised an eyebrow, and Joshua scowled. "Fine. It sucked. Man is a pain in the ass, ego bigger than his waistline. And while Dad's casual bigotry is unconscious, and he's getting better about it? Loeb just doesn't care."
"Let me guess." I set my fingers on the rim of my glass, and tipped it ever so slightly side to side as I thought. "Consistently says shiksa and schvartze, calls people like us 'fag' or 'dyke', and defaults to slurs and pejoratives the moment he's not in so-called 'polite company'." I took a sip of my drink. "I worked under your dad for most of a decade, Joshua. I've heard several of your rants secondhand through him. Which leads into the second question: why now?"
"Because I don't want to work for a man like that anymore," he said. "I know it's a better-paying job than most people my age can get without showing any interest in a law degree, but I don't want to work for such a… a—"
"Schmuck?" I supplied.
"That," he said. "Yeah. I mean, even if he found out I'm gay, he couldn't fire me like he and Lewin did to you, but that's just cause of my dad. He could still make things miserable for me."
"Right, right…" I frowned, and took another sip of my mojito to fill the silence. "Obviously you aren't happy at LL&L, and you don't want to risk working there for too much longer. Now: I am offering you a position, Joshua. It is yours if you want it, for however long you want to stay. I owe your father that much. All that matters is if you actually want to take it."
"I do," he said, frowning. "I just… I know Dad would have been happier, but I don't want to be a lawyer. I'm just doing this while I finish my Master's because I know how to do it, and it's easy for me."
"Speaking of," I said, realizing something. "What exactly are you getting your Master's in? I realize I never asked."
"Computer engineering," he answered without missing a beat.
I could only blink. A master's in science?
"And your dad has you working as a paralegal?"
Joshua shrugged.
"There's a reason Dad put me under the patent guy," he said.
Well… there was that.
"Okay," I said. "The position is yours. You start on Monday the 23rd since that keeps pay periods easy. I'll have all the documents drawn up for you, and if there's anything you think will help you do the job better, you just let me know. Computer, gadget, whatever, if you can convince me it'll help, I can get it. You would know better than I do about that."
"That's… thank you," Joshua said. Then he looked at the bar, which had slowly started to fill up as we talked. "You know… since we're already here. Team up for trivia night?"
I shook my head, laughing.
"Most of us trivia night regulars have our usual partners already," I told him as I stood from my chair, picking up my purse and jacket to move to the other end of the bar. "Remember: a week from Monday!"
And with that, I finished my drink, and left Joshua alone at the table. Trivia night was starting soon. And maybe, just this once, I'd win the funniest wrong answer prize.
(I didn't.)
Monday, November 6, 1989
So as it turned out… having staff made things run much more smoothly. Whereas before I was barely able to get all the mandatory filings for two cases in on time, with the assistance of just a secretary and a paralegal, things were proceeding apace! I had two cases pending a motion for judicial intervention, a third moving into discovery, a fourth in settlement discussions (right, I needed to reply to opposing counsel's settlement demand, what was a polite way to say they were full of shit and there was no way my client would pay just shy of the full amount demanded on an early settlement… note to self, get that done!). And I even had a case pending a Huntley hearing! Oh, that was going to be a treat!
The phone on my desk beeped, and I picked up the handset.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Your two o'clock is here," Sophie said. "Intake interview."
"Send them to me in two minutes, would you?" I asked back, opening a desk drawer to pull out a small prism and a small flashlight. Sure, I could just produce the light to reapply my glamour myself, or use regular old unrefracted light, but I found it was faster and easier to just use a prism.
"Of course," Sophie said, before the phone clicked as she hung up the intercom. With a brief moment's respite, I reapplied my glamour, cleared most of the random junk off of the top of my desk and into the large main drawer, then pulled out a fresh pad of paper and pen. Then I read over the notes Joshua had prepared from the phone call… and had to reread it.
This man was asking for plaintiff-side work. Why was he coming to… oh. Oh. Ooooh. Oh that made sense now, especially if… oh my.
Once I did my once-over of the case notes, I stood up and walked out from behind the desk to greet the man.
Jacques Canter, apparently a now-infamous tennis star, stepped into my office. He wore a Lacoste polo shirt, khaki trousers, and well-worn tennis shoes, a heavy athletic jacket and a well-loved, very floppy cap held in his arms. He was a tall man, probably a bit over six feet (although my estimation with heights was never that great), and just as well-muscled as you would imagine a professional athlete to be. Despite it being the beginning of November, he held a tan still, though I could see separate tan lines underneath his shirt sleeves and at his wrists. His black hair was cut short, just long enough to run his fingers through, probably to not get too sweaty under a cap, and deep bags hung heavy under tired brown eyes.
"Mr. Canter," I said, extending a hand as he stepped through my door, letting it close behind him. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Noa Schaefer, and with any luck, I'll be taking your case."
"T-thank you." Jacques extended a hand to shake my own, which he did so with great delicacy. His hand was more than twice the size of my own, and with just how soft his touch was, I wagered he was worried about breaking my hands if he squeezed at all. "I… thank you for speaking with me. Everybody else I've tried has turned me away, and…" Jacques' shoulders tensed up, his fists clenching as he worked his jaw.
"Well, why don't you take a seat," I told him, pulling out a chair as I approached my desk. He sat down, and I made a note to have Sophie look into larger chairs for the front of my desk; Mr. Canter clearly looked uncomfortable in a chair that was just not large enough to properly hold him.
I circled around to my side of the desk, picked up my pen, and looked Mr. Canter in the eye.
"Now, before we begin, there are a few formalities to get out of the way," I told him.
Then I went into my little spiel about the attorney-client privilege, legal advice, when the privilege begins, how far it extends, etcetera. He stated that he understood, and I gave a little nod.
"In that case," I said. "Why don't you tell me what's brought you here today."
"Well…" Jacques' hands worried at his cap, which he'd picked up from atop the athletic jacket on the chair beside him. "How familiar are you with professional tennis?"
"Not particularly," I said, idly noting that he had a very slight French accent. It was only particularly noticeable with his 'r' sounds, but I also heard it when he said 'tennis'. "Just assume I know nothing and spell it out."
"Right, well…" Jacques chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment. "The US Open started in late August. I was a qualifier, not somebody people expected to do very well. But I…" Jacques gave a rueful laugh. "I played the best tennis of my life at that tournament. I had the racquet in my hand, and everything was perfect. Somehow, I made it from a group of 128 to the top sixteen. Then I made it to the quarterfinals. And then I was in the semifinals. And then the finals. And then… and then I won."
"This was your first major win?" I asked, looking up, to which Jacques nodded. "Any minor tournament wins?"
"I was eliminated in the quarterfinals in the Queen's Club Tournament three years ago," he said. "I was eliminated in the semifinals in the Paris Masters, two years ago, and came second in the Canadian Open last year."
"So some high finishes, but no wins," I confirmed. "This was your first major tournament win. How high had you placed in others of these majors?"
"I barely made it to the top sixteen in Wimbledon, earlier this year," Jacques said. "And that was the highest I'd gotten in one of the Grand Slams before then. And then… I won the US Open."
"And how many tournaments do you normally compete in per year?" I asked, as a follow-up.
"Thirteen," he said, with zero hesitation. Which was interesting, I noted to myself.
"And you've been an active tennis pro for how many years?"
"Five," Jacquess said.
Okay, let me think… it was best to assume that thirteen per year was the norm, given just how quickly that answer came, and how sure of the answer Jacques was. So in five years, he had played 65 tournaments. And of those tournaments, he had made it to a notable finishing position… four times.
And on only his fourth high-placing tournament finish, he outright won in one of the biggies. I was starting to see a picture come together, and I both loved and hated what I was seeing.
"So let's fast forward," I said, drawing in an underline on my notepad to separate the line of thought. "You did it. You won the US Open. What happened next?"
"I was… I was on cloud nine," Jacques said, his tone wistful. "I was giving interviews to sports journalists, taking sponsorship offers. I had never been so elated in my life!" His face turned dour. "And then three weeks later, it was all gone. Boris went to the press, called me a mutant, and said I'd cheated. I tried to say something back, but he was Boris Becker, and I was a nobody. He'd already won Wimbledon and the French Open that year, and I hadn't even made it past two rounds. Of course they believed him." Jacques let out this sad, disbelieving chuckle. "Two days later, that was it. I was stripped of my title. Dropped by my sponsors. Banned from all ATP tennis tournaments."
Tournament favorite loses his shot at a Grand Slam to an upset by a much newer, less experienced player? Someone who had never won any tournament before, let alone a Grand Slam?
One more question would determine this.
"And what about his accusation?" I asked Jacques. "He accused you of being a mutant. Are you, in fact, a mutant?"
"No." Jacques' answer was immediate. "I am not! And I have tried to prove it, but nothing I try works! I worked with a coach to reproduce all of the shots Boris said were impossible, and even had an ATP ref there watching, but it didn't work! All he said is that it was more proof I was a mutant, when all I want to do is prove that I'm not!"
"There's the first problem," I said. "Legally speaking, you cannot definitively prove that somebody is or isn't a mutant."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour crumbled away, leaving Jacques wide-eyed and surprised at the sudden change.
"At the moment, there are only two tests that can prove somebody is a mutant. One of them is so inaccurate that the tester could take a sample I provided, run it through the lab, and have a better chance of knowing if I was a mutant by flipping a coin."
"A-and what about the other one?" Jacques asked, hopeful.
"Oh, it would tell you I was a mutant for sure," I said. "But it would also send me to the hospital. At best, I would have a bad enough reaction to hospitalize me for a couple of days. At worst, it causes severe internal bleeding and organ damage. This test is not legally recognized due to the issues of medical ethics involved with administering it." I shook my head, pushing my notepad to the side. "I looked into this a fair bit ago, Mr. Canter, because it was directly relevant to me. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law at least, there exists no test to prove that you are not, in fact, a mutant. And while other sources of superhuman abilities do exist, they are so much less common that the most likely assumption would, again, be 'mutant'."
"Then what do I do?" he asked.
"Mr. Canter, if the notes I have from your initial phone screening are correct…" I skimmed over it for a moment. "You are looking to sue Boris Becker, the US Tennis Association, the Association of Tennis Professionals, and the sponsors that put out public statements about your alleged mutancy after dropping you, for defamation. There exists an absolute defense to defamation, which is the truth: if they can prove that their allegations are correct, your suit dies immediately. Now, as I've just told you, this is impossible, which means you have a fighting chance. And," I added with a smile, "I have an idea."
Jacques looked up, confused, but hopeful.
"To oversimplify this, Mr. Becker accused you of being a mutant because you played impossibly well, is that correct?"
Jacques nodded.
"Well then Mr. Canter," I said, reaching into my desk and pulling out a contract of retainer. "I am pleased to inform you that I am willing to take your case."
Happy Birthday to me, have a chapter!
Pound the Table
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday, September 30, 1989
Rosh Hashanah
The morning of Rosh Hashanah came, and with it, I once again found myself avoiding the congregation out front. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time greeting all the various people I grew up around and catch back up with everyone. No, it wasn't that at all. What was it, then?
Well let's see. I was small and huggable, and that congregation was filled to the brim with Jewish mothers.
My glamour wouldn't last ten seconds.
So instead, here I was inside of the synagogue proper, setting prayer books and Rosh Hashanah specific prayer leaflets down on every chair. It was a tedious task, particularly since I couldn't really carry more than seven to ten sets at a time, but it did give me time to think about the elephant in the room.
Or, well, the elephant out front being introduced to the congregation and getting attention from fussy Jewish mothers in my stead.
I didn't get a chance to properly speak to Erik alone last night – the both of us were subject to the whims and ministrations of my parents, just in a different way. Really, there was a lot of bragging on my behalf from my father, which was… well, incredibly embarrassing, given Erik already knew about most of it. (Well, except for the part of DA Young possibly being the second shady district attorney I'll have had the pleasure of taking down a peg or twenty… story for another day.)
But all it really meant was that I couldn't sit Erik down and ask more than a few pointed questions that desperately needed answers. Questions about how coincidental our meeting really was. About what exactly he was intending to do. And about why he had let me call him a fake name for two damn years.
I sighed inwardly, setting down the last three prayer books as I did. A quick glance at the clock told me I still had about… fifty minutes? Let's see, fifteen minutes until we started letting people into the synagogue, another thirty minutes before services were ostensibly supposed to start, then the extra five minutes my father liked to give stragglers… perfect.
With one last (unnecessary) furtive look around the completely empty synagogue, I went out a side door and into the hallways, making my way past the conference and reception rooms, before finding myself in my father's office area. I closed the door behind me, went to the large glass-front display cabinet in the back, and opened it up. From within the cabinet, I picked up three polished, hollowed-out ram horns, and laid them out on the desk. And now… I delighted in childish glee at what fun I was about to have.
See, most kids, if they wanted to mess around with an instrument around the house? They had an acoustic guitar, or a piano if they were fancy. Me?
I had a shofar.
It might seem a little silly for a woman of my age to be sneaking into the back rooms to play with the instruments, and I would readily admit that it was. But blowing the shofar was a surprising amount of fun, and it wasn't exactly something I could just go and do at a synagogue in Manhattan. General practice with a shofar dictates that it must be a man who blows it during services, and, well… I didn't exactly qualify, now did I? The only place I actually got to use one was here in St. Louis, where nobody in the congregation had to know that a woman had gotten her hands on a shofar.
Speaking of…
I picked up one of the synagogue's three shofar, and wiped down the mouthpiece before raising it to my lips. I went for a short teruah just to see how out of practice I was, and was rewarded with a string of short, almost cut-off blasts of sound from the horn.
Well, I thought with a smile. That was as good a sign as any.
I went to bring the shofar to my lips again, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. I hurriedly checked the back of a hand to make sure my glamour was still holding strong before I said anything.
"Come in!" I called.
The door opened, and in walked exactly the man I'd been hoping to talk to, footsteps hesitant as he passed the threshold and closed the door behind himself.
"Your father asked me if I'd mind blowing the shofar during services," he said, worrying at the brim of the hat in his hands. "The only problem is… I do not know how."
"And he told you to ask me," I finished for him. "Was I close, Erik? Oh, I'm sorry," I said with a faked gasp, "would you prefer Max?"
Erik frowned, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he looked at me with an unknowable expression.
"It was not my intention to deceive," he said, setting his hat down on the same table the other two shofar sat upon. "I knew my old friend had a daughter, but believe me, it comes as a surprise that said daughter is you."
"Quite the friend then," I say, cleaning the shofar in my hands before setting it down alongside the other two. "I never saw your face, knew your name, or even heard any mention of your existence until we ran into each other. And even then, you can't even offer me your actual name."
"I did offer my name," he said. "You never met Max Eisenhardt because that man died long ago."
I frowned, unsure of what exactly he was saying. Just running down the possibilities of what that could mean in a world where Victor von Doom existed meant the list could include secret twin, clone, alternate timeline self, or any number of other things.
"Elaborate," I said.
"It's simple," he said with a frown. "The hunter became the hunted. And after that, it became dangerous for Max Eisenhardt to live."
"So you buried him."
"Beside his daughter," Erik said, leaning against the wall, staring into the hat he held. "Anya would've been a few years younger than yourself."
"I…" I paused. What else was there to say? "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said. "You couldn't have known."
"Still—" I stopped, thinking over what he said. "What about her mother?"
"A blood trail stopped between a ravine on one side and tire tracks on the other," Erik said. "I've held out hope for quite some time — but it has been twenty years. And at this point, I have accepted the most likely reality."
I could only sigh in response and agreement. Hope was nice and all, yes — but at some point, you had to stop holding onto the impossible and move on with your life.
That being said, as much of a sob story as this was, it failed to answer the initial question.
"So if you left Max dead for safety, why bring him back now?" I asked. "And why here? Why my father?"
By way of answer, Erik reached into his jacket's inside pocket and retrieved a well-worn, leather-bound journal. One that I recognized from our first meeting a few years ago, in Oregon.
"I remember most of the men who worked at Auschwitz," Erik said, flipping to a dog-eared page. "I hunted down the ones that Nuremberg did not punish myself. But most is not all, and there is a name here I do not recognize."
Erik handed the book over to me, turned to the page he'd dog-eared, and I saw a clear underline below a bit of text that was substantially newer (and inked with a different color) than the rest.
"So you're looking for this 'Herr SX'?" I asked.
"I am finding my fellow survivors, and seeing if any of them can remember this man," Erik confirmed. "Because while I may have forgotten, that does not mean they all have."
I snapped the journal shut, laid it on the table, and slid it back over to him.
"So you just… what?" I asked. "Show up after forty-odd years to dredge up everyone's worst memories?"
"I do not simply 'show up'!" Erik said, affronted. "I brought one Chanukah gifts for the grandchildren, I helped another build their sukkah, I gifted another a new set of Seder plates, and that's just three."
I simply gave Erik a Look (trademark pending), and let the silence press on a bit longer than was necessary. The moment he started to squirm was my signal that the Look had done its job, and I turned to face him with my arms crossed.
"You will wait until after Rosh Hashanah services are complete, and you will attend all of them in full," I told him. "And if I can't make it for whatever reason, then I expect to hear from my father that you were here for Yom Kippur as well. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Erik said, bringing his hat to his chest before offering a slightly sardonic bow. I frowned, but couldn't really say anything else. "Now, about the shofar?"
"Hm?" I turned to the three ramhorn instruments on the table, and finally remembered the initial reason my father had sent Erik my way. "O-oh, right! Uh… okay then, let's see." I picked one of the three shofar up and handed it to Erik before picking one up myself. "Now, there are three types of horn blasts you play on the shofar: tekiah, which is just a single long blast…"
(And for anybody curious — no, Erik did not learn enough to play the shofar that morning. All he managed to do was make a hideous sound I could only classify as "dying beached whale".)
Tuesday, October 3, 1989
"... tough on the mob, tough on mutant terror, and tough on crime! Lou Young: fighting to keep the city and streets safe, for you and me!"
I could only give a disdainful sniff at the advertisement playing on the radio, especially given what I was seeing in today's issue of the Daily Bugle. Young was down in the polls by thirty points compared to last month, with the one difference being that his spread of opponents had narrowed down to one candidate.
And that candidate promptly reminded everybody that he was not the man who got chewed out by Captain America on national television.
Thankfully, the city's worst campaign ad was short-lived, and they got right back to the morning news radio as I set the kettle on the stove. Once that was going, I pulled out the stepladder and went to one of my upper cabinets, from which I pulled out a tin of loose-leaf Earl Grey tea. I popped it open, and then immediately frowned upon seeing that it was… basically empty. Ugh. My hand went right back into the cabinet and pulled out the teabags of last resort, even as I marched over to my front door, grabbed my grocery list, and scrawled in 'loose leaf Earl Grey'.
Then I gave it a heavy underline for good measure, grumbling at the box of teabags in my hand.
What? I was allowed to be a tea snob, wasn't I? And I refuse to listen to any arguments that bagged tea tastes the same as loose leaf – no it does not, and you clearly haven't had it yourself.
Shopping list edited and teabag waiting in my mug, I pulled out today's work that I'd brought home from the office's mailbox yesterday: resumes and cover letters.
While I had already started some small-time work as a solo practitioner, I simply did not have the systems in place to do larger-scale lawyering. Thanks to Sam Lieberman, two of my larger clients followed me, so I had a steady stream of income. Furthermore, thanks to no longer being bound by a very intricate web of conflicts of interest, I was free to take on contract work for various companies, and had managed to get some income writing guidelines for compliance pending passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The thing had been introduced last year, and enough companies had seen the writing on the wall to start going about preparing for its implementation.
And given that I'd already written an article for the New York Bar Association on the necessity of the ADA and ease of compliance with it, I was more than happy to get paid for telling people how to make their office space comply with the current and expected wording of the law once it passed.
None of this, however, changed that this was small potatoes compared to what I actually wanted to do. I was a litigator, through and through. But a lot of litigation is paperwork, busywork, dotting i's, and crossing t's.
And if you are doing that all by yourself, and trying to do witness prep, depositions, motions, hearings, etcetera? You're not going to be able to sustain more than five or ten clients at a time. Which is unsustainable.
Which was why I was looking into hiring people.
I did not need much to start with, if I was being honest. I needed two people: a secretary, and a paralegal. The secretary helped manage the day-to-day, made sure things happened when they were supposed to, and served as an important point of contact.
Paralegals, on the other hand, handled the annoying busywork you didn't want to burn more time on than necessary. Prepping materials and motions from a template, simple research, compiling case notes into a single document, collecting and preparing evidence binders… a good paralegal increased efficiency more than anything else by just handling all of the time sinks. These time sinks were utterly unavoidable too, but if you had a paralegal handling them, you could deal with the things that required an actual lawyer's attention instead.
I separated out the applications that came through my fax by the subject line on their cover sheets. When I put out the hiring information, I didn't bother saying anything like "competitive salary". No, I went ahead and put the salary down… and made sure it was $2,500 or so higher than the rest of the competition. Part of this was because I wanted to pay people fairly for the work they were going to be doing.
A more cynical part of me put the payment offer higher because that would hopefully hook in the ones who were on the fence due to my being a mutant.
Sure enough, offering higher pay than the competition worked. I wound up with almost a dozen faxed job applications for secretary, and another seven for a paralegal. First up came the secretary applications.
Two of them misspelled my last name on the address line of their cover letter, and a third addressed me as "Mr. Schaefer".
They went into the shredder immediately.
Of the remainder, four of them had potential, one of them I would give a chance based on what I saw in her cover letter, and the last one…
I paused, took a sip of my tea, and read it over again.
Then I picked up my pen, put a star at the top of this one, and underlined a part of her resume that I really wanted to talk about in an interview.
So that made six interviews I needed to schedule, and that I could hopefully get done early next week. With any luck, I would emerge from those with either a couple candidates for a follow-up interview, or even a new secretary ready to start within a week or two. The possible hires went into a stack with a post-it note saying "call & schedule interviews" on it. Then I turned my attention to the paralegal resumes.
And my train of thought immediately crashed to a halt when I read the two sentences on a mostly blank piece of paper that should have been a cover letter.
… why would…?
No, no. I needed answers, and I had a phone number. I went out to my living room, grabbed the phone's handset, and punched in a number I knew all too well. Two rings later, a familiar voice picked up on the other end.
"Sam Lieberman here," my old boss said. "Make it quick."
From the half-distracted tone of voice, and the faintly audible scratch of pen on paper, I could tell he was working on something. Probably case notes, given he waited until the second ring to answer.
"Would you like to explain why I have a paralegal application ostensibly from your son, but really from you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. "And why there's a note to call you?"
One Mississippi, I counted. Two Mississippi.
And then, a deep, put-upon sigh.
"The original plan was for him to work under Loeb while he worked on his Master's part time," Sam said, sounding more tired than I think I'd ever heard him. "After you got fired – and let's not beat around the bush, the schmucks can pretty it up all they like and say what they will, they fired you – well, it didn't seem like such a good idea to have Loeb in charge of… well, someone like Joshua."
"Your gay son," I said simply. "You can say the word, Sam. There's nothing wrong with it."
"... that," Sam said. "Regardless. I don't want Loeb in charge of him anymore, and there are too few people I'd trust to treat him fairly. So I'm calling in… let's say three of the favors you owe. Talk to him. If you think he could be a good fit, give him a chance."
I mulled it over in my head for a moment. I'd run across Joshua Lieberman a few times at the firm, mostly at holiday functions – he always had this look of just wanting to be anywhere but there, especially when some of the younger associates tried to schmooze him for brownie points with his dad. It never worked, and if anything it docked them a few points in Sam's eyes. Never stopped them from trying, though. The few times I encountered him at work, he'd been quiet, efficient, and no-nonsense. Not quiet in the sense of being soft-spoken, but quiet in that he just… didn't talk much. He also wasn't the most patient sort, and had a problem with fidgeting, from what I could recall.
But a paralegal wasn't necessarily a public-facing position, and even when they were seen by clients, they generally didn't really speak to them. The people a paralegal usually had to talk to was opposing counsel, their paralegals, and judges' clerks.
And if what I'd heard from Sam talking about his son over the years was accurate, he was maddeningly polite to them. The 'kill them with kindness' approach, as I'd heard it be called. Which essentially meant that Joshua Lieberman had a public face and a private face.
Given what I knew of him, that made sense to me. And that was something I could work with.
"Alright," I told Sam. "I'll sit down with him, but I make no guarantees of hiring. And even if I don't hire him, this still drops me down to four favors owed, understand?"
"Of course," Sam said. "Thank you, Noa."
"Don't thank me yet," I told him. "And also, don't think I'm ignoring the nepotism here. You know I don't like that, and are asking me to do it anyway." The huff at the other end of the line was enough to tell me that Sam got the message. "Now, since this isn't as formal as a regular job interview would be, and I wager you told your son you're doing this by networking, do you know of anywhere we can meet where he'd be more comfortable?"
"Well… ah, about that." Sam's voice sounded… sheepish? A little hesitant? All I knew was I hadn't heard this tone of voice from him before. "Have you heard of the Stonewall Inn?"
I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing into the handset, and kept going for a good half a minute before I could calm myself down.
"Okay, um," I said, pausing to let out another giggle. "Tell him Thursday of next week, an hour before trivia night. I'll ask Shelby to set a table aside for me." Hold up, I thought. "Unless they're Sheldon this week. Regardless, he'll know when, but tell him he can call if he has any questions."
With that, I set the phone down, just in time for the laughs to come again.
Oh, oh God. I needed that.
Once the laughter subsided, I went back to the kitchen, poured the water into my teacup to steep, and picked up the secretary applications. Time to call and schedule some interviews.
Joy.
Tuesday October 10, 1989
I'd gotten through three interviews for a secretary, and so far, I wasn't particularly jazzed about any of them. Oh sure, all of them had been competent – they were legal secretaries already, just looking for better pay.
But one of them couldn't stop looking at my horns, one of them outright asked me if I was a demon, and trying to talk to the third was about as pleasant as watching paint dry.
Not having my glamour on was turning out to be a bit of a double-edged sword here. Yes, it let me know what these applicants really thought about my being a mutant: whether they were actually fine with that, or if they just assumed the higher pay I offered would be enough to ignore it. But at the same time, there was no way to acclimatize people to who I was as a person before slapping them in the face with "mutant". I wasn't necessarily looking for a long-term hire – I just needed a secretary quickly so that I could get things running. Once things got going, I could easily hire a second that I liked more, and 'let go of' (read: fire) the first with a generous severance, then install the second as the main secretary.
But if I didn't have to do that, I wouldn't.
The lunch break I'd afforded myself had come and gone. A couple breath mints (wintergreen!) helped remove the scent of Jamaican jerk chicken from my breath, hopefully, and the next interviewee was due to arrive in about five minutes. I had on my desk a copy of her resume and cover letter, upon which I'd put a star in the top left corner. This was the applicant I'd been most interested in, just due to what she had on her resume, so I had some high hopes.
Two minutes before the appointment time, I heard the front door to the office open, and then close just a few seconds later. I smiled; just early enough, in my books. After all: early is on time, on time is late, and if you're late, it's better to simply not show up, make an excuse, and reschedule.
I waited until one PM on the dot, then opened the glass door to my office.
The middle-aged woman in the waiting room wore a charcoal gray skirt suit, 80's power shoulders and all, paired with a simple white blouse, sheer hose, and smart two-inch pumps. She had her red locks in one of those classic 80's 'big hair' styles, but it managed to not be quite so ostentatious as others I've seen, and it suited her. She was a tiny bit on the heavier side, but she wore it well, and her clothes fit, which is about as much as I cared.
"Sophie Walsh?" I asked.
"That's me, yes!" She stood, turned towards me at the door – and gave a heavy blink. I could see her eyes flicking from my horns, to the scales on my neck and the back of my hands, to where my tail extended from under my skirt.
But to her credit, that was the extent of it.
My estimation of this candidate climbed higher, and I allowed myself to hope a little.
"Come right in," I said, holding the door open for her. She offered a polite 'thank you' as she stepped into my office, and of the two chairs I had set in front of my desk, she immediately made her way to the left. I let the glass door close and walked around the desk myself before taking a seat. A moment later, another copy of Mrs. Walsh's resume and cover letter slid across my desk, already turned so they were right-side up for me.
Bringing another copy of your materials so your interviewer has the info in front of them at all times? I mentally bumped my estimation of this woman up another notch.
"Thank you very much for coming in today, ma'am," I said. "Before I go any further, is it Ms. or Mrs.?"
"Mrs. Walsh," she confirmed for me, smiling. "Sophie Kelly Walsh."
"Your maiden name also works as a normal middle name, convenient," I remarked, sliding the additional copy of her materials underneath the existing one. "So, Mrs. Walsh. I assume you already know what you're getting into, but just for the sake of being thorough, let me describe the position. I am looking for a secretary for a law firm, who will be responsible for handling various tasks: managing both the office and the schedule; maintaining communication with judges' chambers and opposing attorneys' offices as required; contacting persons and facilities for evidence and expert reports; assisting the paralegal with trial prep." I paused.
"General secretarial work, then, just with more politics?" Mrs. Walsh asked, and I nodded. "Nothing I haven't handled before, then. Just with bigger egos."
"Exactly!" Then a thought came to me. "Oh. And playing the role of rubber ducky when I need to test arguments," I said with a sheepish smile. "It doesn't really work when you're trying it on another lawyer. You need somebody who's closer to a juror."
"Oh, the boys use the cats for that," Mrs. Walsh said, smiling. "But I think a person would be better for that."
"Less likely to chase the laser pointer?" I offered with a smile of my own.
"Exactly!"
"Of course," I said, glancing back down at Mrs. Walsh's resume. "Now, I see here that you did spend three years as a secretary for Bear Stearns, but that was… twenty-odd years ago. How much do you remember of what you did during your day-to-day there?"
"Well if I'm being honest," Mrs. Walsh began, "it's hard to forget because that kind of work never stopped. I went from being paid to act as secretary for eight people, to not being paid to act as secretary for four." She favored me with a smile. "With quite a few extra duties besides. Secretaries only have to set the coffee occasionally, I did quite a bit more than that daily."
"On that topic…" I looked down to the largest block on her resume.
Stay-at-Home Mother.
This. This was the single tidbit about her resume that had me the most intrigued. A lot of people I'd spoken with in the past five to ten years, particularly the men working at LL&L, had disparaged stay-at-home wives and mothers, even as they somehow expected their own spouses to be exactly that. What these people didn't seem to realize was that it was a full-time job, and one without sick days, time off, or any pay whatsoever. A household is a hell of a thing to manage, and if what I'd gathered was correct…
"The largest and most recent block on your resume lists stay-at-home mother as your occupation," I said, maintaining my smile. "Ordinarily I wouldn't ask questions about family and home life, but as that is somewhat mandated by this entry, I hope you don't mind my asking how large your household is?"
"Oh, it's no problem!" Mrs. Walsh said, waving off any possible faux-pas of the question. "It's myself, my husband, and our three sons."
"And how old are each of your sons?" I asked, readying a pen in my hand to scrawl ages (and time frames) on the resume, just for my own reference.
"Oh, they're triplets," she said nonchalantly.
… wait.
I glanced up at Mrs. Walsh. Then back down at the resume. Then back up at her, then back to the dates on the resume. She stopped working at Bear Stearns… five months before the entry of "stay-at-home mother" began.
"A-and are they identical, or—"
"Oh no, thank God!" Mrs. Walsh said with a laugh. "Juggling all three of them was hassle enough, now imagine if they all looked the same!"
Oh, I could imagine it. I'd met identical triplets.
The sheer amount of shenanigans…
"So three sons," I said, taking a breath to recover. "So that would include… doctor's appointments, school, report cards, driver's ed, possibly synchronizing differing schedules based on their various extracurricular activities, scheduling vacations around their various social activities and free time…"
"And three sets of college admissions," Mrs. Walsh supplied, saving me the awkwardness of having to ask that particular question. "That's why I'm looking to go back to work, actually. All three of my boys are off at college now, they're sophomores now. I spent most of last year horribly bored, so I told my husband I was going to try and go back to work."
I stopped there, and looked up at her.
"And you sent an application to the brand-new law firm of a somewhat notorious attorney."
Mrs. Walsh shrugged.
"Well after raising triplets, I needed to try and find something almost as interesting," she said with a smirk.
… you know what? She could have that one.
The rest of the interview proceeded apace. I put forth some hypotheticals to try and test out her intuition regarding legal ethics issues that could embroil the secretarial staff. She answered those admirably, and did much the same for the rest of the questions I fielded her. And then, when it was her turn to ask questions, she immediately played hardball and threw my most recent case and DA Young at me.
"So, I remember seeing you on the news pretty much every night for a week and a half this past summer," Mrs. Walsh led off, a disarming smile on her face. "Let's say I'm working for you, you get another case as big as that one, and public pressure starts to spill over to your employees. What do they do, and what do you do?"
This was a good question, if I was being honest. With a big firm behind me, backlash against other people sort of just… didn't really stick. I was just a very expensive lawyer doing my job, and that was very hard to assail personally. As a one woman operation, on the other hand, I had sole deciding power for which cases to take – which, of course, meant that people could read more deeply into which clients I chose to take on. And any criticism I received would flow downhill to the employees under me.
And should a case have a major outcry, that could spell bad times for my employees.
"First would be to speak out against involving employees in this," I began. "They are only doing their jobs, and didn't make the decision to apparently champion one issue or another, as it were. As for employees, should that pressure start to spill over to the actual work site, I would give my employees paid leave until things calmed down, or find a way to let them work off-site until the office was safe." I shrugged at that, drumming my fingers on the desk. "So long as the work actually gets done, and confidentiality is maintained, it doesn't matter where or how that work takes place."
"On the topic of work getting done," Mrs. Walsh said, seizing the initiative, "that leads into my next question. Say you hire me, and a few months down the line, you ask me to do something outside of the scope of my position…"
Ooh. Oh, that was a clever one.
After three bad to lukewarm interviews, one like this was just an absolute treat. And after a few more questions like this, probing the devilish little details that could plague a workplace, it eased up, and transitioned from less of an interview to more just… conversation.
Which was quite the relaxing change of pace. I could practically feel the tension bleed out of my shoulders when the topic changed to the merits of coffee versus tea.
Unfortunately, the little timer I set at the corner of my desk started to beep, reminding me that I still had other appointments today.
"As much as I would like to continue, we're about out of time. Before we conclude though, there is something I'd like to say first." I took the copy of Mrs. Walsh's resume I started with and spun it around to face her, so she could see the star in the corner and my underlining of one particular item. "I was incredibly hopeful coming into this interview because you had the wisdom to recognize that being a stay-at-home mother is a full-time job, and the moxie to put it on a resume. You have no idea how gratified I am to see my hopes borne out. Feel free to take the weekend to think it over, but if you want the job, it's yours."
If she said yes, then I would still do the other interviews just out of politeness, but…
"Well if that's the case," Mrs. Walsh asked, all smiles. "When do I start?"
Thursday, October 12, 1989
The Stonewall Inn had trivia night every Thursday at 8pm EST. People had argued for it to be pushed up to 7pm, and for it to be pushed back to 9pm, or even all the way til 10pm. But despite quite a bit of push from either direction, trivia night remained stubbornly at 8pm.
I loved trivia night because it was just fun. Sure, I'd only actually won once or twice, but there was a bit of a secondary game to it: who could come up with the funniest wrong answer to any particular question. I wasn't particularly good at that, either, but the people who were showed up every week, without fail, and always made sure people had a good time.
I made the appointment with Joshua Lieberman before trivia night, just so that I could participate.
At roughly 6:30pm, I pushed open the door to the Stonewall Inn and took off my heavy coat, both annoyed and glad that a bout of unseasonably cold weather made me pull it out of the closet. Annoyed because I got cold very easily.
Glad, because having to bundle up so much meant I didn't need to put my glamour on to go out the door. I was covered with so much cloth that only a particularly attentive stare would have caught that the white on my face were scales, and not just from poor circulation.
And as for my horns… well, those were both hard to notice when I had on a beanie under a big hood, and easy to mistake for earmuffs. It had worked so far, at least.
I didn't bother putting my massive jacket on the coat rack, instead looking to Shel…by? No, that was a button-up with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a tight-fitting vest over the top, what looked like five o'clock shadow, and slim-fit slacks. Okay, it was a Sheldon day. Instead, I looked to Sheldon, who pointed me to the table he'd set aside.
"The usual?" he asked.
"Yes please," I said, dropping a twenty on the bar as I walked past and sat at the table, hanging my purse off of my chair. Yes, a single cocktail wouldn't cost that much, but I would probably have one more during trivia night, and any remainder was Sheldon's tip.
Shel was a fun conundrum. As far as I could tell, people had all given up trying to figure out what sex they were assigned at birth. My personal theory was…
… that I'd only cared enough to be slightly peeved when I asked Sheldon about his sister, only to have the three other locals seated at the bar laugh uproariously at the question. I was new to the Stonewall at the time, and that embarrassed me more than a little.
But, this was a place where I could openly be myself in every way, so it was rather easy to look past a little early goof and settle in for the long haul. I'd been coming to the Stonewall Inn almost every week for the past eight or nine years, so suffice to say I was a familiar face.
At least, on Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays.
Which would explain how I'd managed a ships-in-the-night with the young man I was about to have a very informal interview with.
I didn't bother to bring Joshua's resume with me. I already knew I would be giving him the job if he wanted it. But that was the whole crux of this – finding out if he actually wanted the job, or if his dad was pressuring him into taking this.
Not long after I came in, Sheldon came by with a coaster, then placed my drink on it: mojito, extra mint, a little more sugar than average, and a lighter pour on the rum. I had a sweet tooth, and just wasn't big enough to handle much alcohol. And I liked fresh mint. This let me indulge myself a little, and was a tall enough glass that I could sip it a little bit at a time, as opposed to other cocktails.
I took a sip, gave Sheldon an appreciative nod, and settled in to wait.
Ten minutes later, the door to the Stonewall opened again, and in walked a man swaddled in a heavy coat, most of his face obscured by the combination of a beanie and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He shucked the coat, revealing a younger man. He wore… shockingly similar clothing to what Sheldon was wearing, actually. A button-up shirt with no tie, whose sleeves he wasted no time unbuttoning and rolling to over his elbows. A vest hugged his torso, and well-tailored pants showed off his legs. He pulled a small comb out of his pocket to fix up his hair and expose the single earring in his right ear, but that went back into his pocket no more than three seconds later.
I recognized him instantly. I don't think he was able to do the same at this distance, not with what he was doing. He went over to Sheldon, who pointed him towards where I sat at the table, facing the bar. He turned to face me, did a double-take, and then I saw this moment of realization come over him.
Joshua Lieberman moved from the bar over to the table, pulled out the chair opposite mine, and sat down, that look of surprise still on his face.
"How long have you been coming here?"
That was the first question out of his mouth when he sat down.
"It's nice to see you again Joshua," I told him, taking a sip of my drink before I kept speaking. "I'm doing well, thank you for asking. A little annoyed that the weather turned, but that happens. Oh, and since well before you could drink," I added.
His eyes flicked towards my horns, to the scales on my hands, down to where my tail was visible for but a moment as I flicked it to the side.
"And, uh…" He swallowed, nervous. "Do you come here because you're a mutant, or…?"
"Both," I interrupted.
It was a valid question; since the early 70's, gay bars had been a haven for mutants. Many set aside a section for mutants to not have to worry about being hit on by the same sex, and while some argued that this had the air of discrimination or segregation, everybody eventually agreed that it was much more comfortable not having to guess.
"So before we go any further," I said after taking another sip of my drink. "A few things. Obviously I'm looking for a paralegal, and you're more than competent enough for that task. But this isn't exactly a formal job interview, and you're not just any candidate, so we're going to just dispense with all the usual formalities. What I want to know is this: was applying to be my paralegal your idea, was it your father's idea and you went along with it, or did he do this and then proceed to pressure you?"
"The second," Joshua said. He was about to answer until Sheldon came by with his drink. I raised an eyebrow at his choice.
"Southside?" I asked. "You could've just gotten a mojito. More drink for the same money."
"Don't like rum," he said after taking a sip. "Or club soda."
"Fair enough," I said with a shrug. "Would you like to elaborate on your answer?"
Joshua mulled over his thoughts for a moment before answering.
"Working under Isaac Loeb was… fine? I guess?" I raised an eyebrow, and Joshua scowled. "Fine. It sucked. Man is a pain in the ass, ego bigger than his waistline. And while Dad's casual bigotry is unconscious, and he's getting better about it? Loeb just doesn't care."
"Let me guess." I set my fingers on the rim of my glass, and tipped it ever so slightly side to side as I thought. "Consistently says shiksa and schvartze, calls people like us 'fag' or 'dyke', and defaults to slurs and pejoratives the moment he's not in so-called 'polite company'." I took a sip of my drink. "I worked under your dad for most of a decade, Joshua. I've heard several of your rants secondhand through him. Which leads into the second question: why now?"
"Because I don't want to work for a man like that anymore," he said. "I know it's a better-paying job than most people my age can get without showing any interest in a law degree, but I don't want to work for such a… a—"
"Schmuck?" I supplied.
"That," he said. "Yeah. I mean, even if he found out I'm gay, he couldn't fire me like he and Lewin did to you, but that's just cause of my dad. He could still make things miserable for me."
"Right, right…" I frowned, and took another sip of my mojito to fill the silence. "Obviously you aren't happy at LL&L, and you don't want to risk working there for too much longer. Now: I am offering you a position, Joshua. It is yours if you want it, for however long you want to stay. I owe your father that much. All that matters is if you actually want to take it."
"I do," he said, frowning. "I just… I know Dad would have been happier, but I don't want to be a lawyer. I'm just doing this while I finish my Master's because I know how to do it, and it's easy for me."
"Speaking of," I said, realizing something. "What exactly are you getting your Master's in? I realize I never asked."
"Computer engineering," he answered without missing a beat.
I could only blink. A master's in science?
"And your dad has you working as a paralegal?"
Joshua shrugged.
"There's a reason Dad put me under the patent guy," he said.
Well… there was that.
"Okay," I said. "The position is yours. You start on Monday the 23rd since that keeps pay periods easy. I'll have all the documents drawn up for you, and if there's anything you think will help you do the job better, you just let me know. Computer, gadget, whatever, if you can convince me it'll help, I can get it. You would know better than I do about that."
"That's… thank you," Joshua said. Then he looked at the bar, which had slowly started to fill up as we talked. "You know… since we're already here. Team up for trivia night?"
I shook my head, laughing.
"Most of us trivia night regulars have our usual partners already," I told him as I stood from my chair, picking up my purse and jacket to move to the other end of the bar. "Remember: a week from Monday!"
And with that, I finished my drink, and left Joshua alone at the table. Trivia night was starting soon. And maybe, just this once, I'd win the funniest wrong answer prize.
(I didn't.)
Monday, November 6, 1989
So as it turned out… having staff made things run much more smoothly. Whereas before I was barely able to get all the mandatory filings for two cases in on time, with the assistance of just a secretary and a paralegal, things were proceeding apace! I had two cases pending a motion for judicial intervention, a third moving into discovery, a fourth in settlement discussions (right, I needed to reply to opposing counsel's settlement demand, what was a polite way to say they were full of shit and there was no way my client would pay just shy of the full amount demanded on an early settlement… note to self, get that done!). And I even had a case pending a Huntley hearing! Oh, that was going to be a treat!
The phone on my desk beeped, and I picked up the handset.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Your two o'clock is here," Sophie said. "Intake interview."
"Send them to me in two minutes, would you?" I asked back, opening a desk drawer to pull out a small prism and a small flashlight. Sure, I could just produce the light to reapply my glamour myself, or use regular old unrefracted light, but I found it was faster and easier to just use a prism.
"Of course," Sophie said, before the phone clicked as she hung up the intercom. With a brief moment's respite, I reapplied my glamour, cleared most of the random junk off of the top of my desk and into the large main drawer, then pulled out a fresh pad of paper and pen. Then I read over the notes Joshua had prepared from the phone call… and had to reread it.
This man was asking for plaintiff-side work. Why was he coming to… oh. Oh. Ooooh. Oh that made sense now, especially if… oh my.
Once I did my once-over of the case notes, I stood up and walked out from behind the desk to greet the man.
Jacques Canter, apparently a now-infamous tennis star, stepped into my office. He wore a Lacoste polo shirt, khaki trousers, and well-worn tennis shoes, a heavy athletic jacket and a well-loved, very floppy cap held in his arms. He was a tall man, probably a bit over six feet (although my estimation with heights was never that great), and just as well-muscled as you would imagine a professional athlete to be. Despite it being the beginning of November, he held a tan still, though I could see separate tan lines underneath his shirt sleeves and at his wrists. His black hair was cut short, just long enough to run his fingers through, probably to not get too sweaty under a cap, and deep bags hung heavy under tired brown eyes.
"Mr. Canter," I said, extending a hand as he stepped through my door, letting it close behind him. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Noa Schaefer, and with any luck, I'll be taking your case."
"T-thank you." Jacques extended a hand to shake my own, which he did so with great delicacy. His hand was more than twice the size of my own, and with just how soft his touch was, I wagered he was worried about breaking my hands if he squeezed at all. "I… thank you for speaking with me. Everybody else I've tried has turned me away, and…" Jacques' shoulders tensed up, his fists clenching as he worked his jaw.
"Well, why don't you take a seat," I told him, pulling out a chair as I approached my desk. He sat down, and I made a note to have Sophie look into larger chairs for the front of my desk; Mr. Canter clearly looked uncomfortable in a chair that was just not large enough to properly hold him.
I circled around to my side of the desk, picked up my pen, and looked Mr. Canter in the eye.
"Now, before we begin, there are a few formalities to get out of the way," I told him.
Then I went into my little spiel about the attorney-client privilege, legal advice, when the privilege begins, how far it extends, etcetera. He stated that he understood, and I gave a little nod.
"In that case," I said. "Why don't you tell me what's brought you here today."
"Well…" Jacques' hands worried at his cap, which he'd picked up from atop the athletic jacket on the chair beside him. "How familiar are you with professional tennis?"
"Not particularly," I said, idly noting that he had a very slight French accent. It was only particularly noticeable with his 'r' sounds, but I also heard it when he said 'tennis'. "Just assume I know nothing and spell it out."
"Right, well…" Jacques chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment. "The US Open started in late August. I was a qualifier, not somebody people expected to do very well. But I…" Jacques gave a rueful laugh. "I played the best tennis of my life at that tournament. I had the racquet in my hand, and everything was perfect. Somehow, I made it from a group of 128 to the top sixteen. Then I made it to the quarterfinals. And then I was in the semifinals. And then the finals. And then… and then I won."
"This was your first major win?" I asked, looking up, to which Jacques nodded. "Any minor tournament wins?"
"I was eliminated in the quarterfinals in the Queen's Club Tournament three years ago," he said. "I was eliminated in the semifinals in the Paris Masters, two years ago, and came second in the Canadian Open last year."
"So some high finishes, but no wins," I confirmed. "This was your first major tournament win. How high had you placed in others of these majors?"
"I barely made it to the top sixteen in Wimbledon, earlier this year," Jacques said. "And that was the highest I'd gotten in one of the Grand Slams before then. And then… I won the US Open."
"And how many tournaments do you normally compete in per year?" I asked, as a follow-up.
"Thirteen," he said, with zero hesitation. Which was interesting, I noted to myself.
"And you've been an active tennis pro for how many years?"
"Five," Jacquess said.
Okay, let me think… it was best to assume that thirteen per year was the norm, given just how quickly that answer came, and how sure of the answer Jacques was. So in five years, he had played 65 tournaments. And of those tournaments, he had made it to a notable finishing position… four times.
And on only his fourth high-placing tournament finish, he outright won in one of the biggies. I was starting to see a picture come together, and I both loved and hated what I was seeing.
"So let's fast forward," I said, drawing in an underline on my notepad to separate the line of thought. "You did it. You won the US Open. What happened next?"
"I was… I was on cloud nine," Jacques said, his tone wistful. "I was giving interviews to sports journalists, taking sponsorship offers. I had never been so elated in my life!" His face turned dour. "And then three weeks later, it was all gone. Boris went to the press, called me a mutant, and said I'd cheated. I tried to say something back, but he was Boris Becker, and I was a nobody. He'd already won Wimbledon and the French Open that year, and I hadn't even made it past two rounds. Of course they believed him." Jacques let out this sad, disbelieving chuckle. "Two days later, that was it. I was stripped of my title. Dropped by my sponsors. Banned from all ATP tennis tournaments."
Tournament favorite loses his shot at a Grand Slam to an upset by a much newer, less experienced player? Someone who had never won any tournament before, let alone a Grand Slam?
One more question would determine this.
"And what about his accusation?" I asked Jacques. "He accused you of being a mutant. Are you, in fact, a mutant?"
"No." Jacques' answer was immediate. "I am not! And I have tried to prove it, but nothing I try works! I worked with a coach to reproduce all of the shots Boris said were impossible, and even had an ATP ref there watching, but it didn't work! All he said is that it was more proof I was a mutant, when all I want to do is prove that I'm not!"
"There's the first problem," I said. "Legally speaking, you cannot definitively prove that somebody is or isn't a mutant."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour crumbled away, leaving Jacques wide-eyed and surprised at the sudden change.
"At the moment, there are only two tests that can prove somebody is a mutant. One of them is so inaccurate that the tester could take a sample I provided, run it through the lab, and have a better chance of knowing if I was a mutant by flipping a coin."
"A-and what about the other one?" Jacques asked, hopeful.
"Oh, it would tell you I was a mutant for sure," I said. "But it would also send me to the hospital. At best, I would have a bad enough reaction to hospitalize me for a couple of days. At worst, it causes severe internal bleeding and organ damage. This test is not legally recognized due to the issues of medical ethics involved with administering it." I shook my head, pushing my notepad to the side. "I looked into this a fair bit ago, Mr. Canter, because it was directly relevant to me. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law at least, there exists no test to prove that you are not, in fact, a mutant. And while other sources of superhuman abilities do exist, they are so much less common that the most likely assumption would, again, be 'mutant'."
"Then what do I do?" he asked.
"Mr. Canter, if the notes I have from your initial phone screening are correct…" I skimmed over it for a moment. "You are looking to sue Boris Becker, the US Tennis Association, the Association of Tennis Professionals, and the sponsors that put out public statements about your alleged mutancy after dropping you, for defamation. There exists an absolute defense to defamation, which is the truth: if they can prove that their allegations are correct, your suit dies immediately. Now, as I've just told you, this is impossible, which means you have a fighting chance. And," I added with a smile, "I have an idea."
Jacques looked up, confused, but hopeful.
"To oversimplify this, Mr. Becker accused you of being a mutant because you played impossibly well, is that correct?"
Jacques nodded.
"Well then Mr. Canter," I said, reaching into my desk and pulling out a contract of retainer. "I am pleased to inform you that I am willing to take your case."
So uh... it's been a fair bit longer than I expected.
At the end of the last proper chapter, I mentioned I was dropping it right as FFXIV Endwalker dropped. I spent most of the next 48 hours getting put through the emotional wringer, with a major climax of crying my eyes out to this song while the game one-upped FF9's classic You Are Not Alone moment. In a quest with that exact title.
I was going through the expansion with 2 friends. All three of us had to stop and take, like, an hour plus to collect ourselves after that quest before we challenged the last dungeon and final boss.
Once FFXIV was done keeping its grip on me for a good long while... I got incredibly busy with life. Which was... not fun. Not fun at all.
And then I just... procrastinated. Which I am very good at. I've had this chapter (and the rest of the next arc) plotted and outlined out for a good long while... unfortunately, a couple of the scenes fought me pretty hard. But hey. At least it's here.
Once again, for any of you feeling particularly generous, or wanting to give some form of birthday wishes beyond just the dopamine from your likes and comments, here is, once again, a link to my Ko-fi page.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to try and get a green bandana onto my dog. (spoiler alert: I'm probably gonna get bit...)
At the end of the last proper chapter, I mentioned I was dropping it right as FFXIV Endwalker dropped. I spent most of the next 48 hours getting put through the emotional wringer, with a major climax of crying my eyes out to this song while the game one-upped FF9's classic You Are Not Alone moment. In a quest with that exact title.
I was going through the expansion with 2 friends. All three of us had to stop and take, like, an hour plus to collect ourselves after that quest before we challenged the last dungeon and final boss.
Once FFXIV was done keeping its grip on me for a good long while... I got incredibly busy with life. Which was... not fun. Not fun at all.
And then I just... procrastinated. Which I am very good at. I've had this chapter (and the rest of the next arc) plotted and outlined out for a good long while... unfortunately, a couple of the scenes fought me pretty hard. But hey. At least it's here.
Once again, for any of you feeling particularly generous, or wanting to give some form of birthday wishes beyond just the dopamine from your likes and comments, here is, once again, a link to my Ko-fi page.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to try and get a green bandana onto my dog. (spoiler alert: I'm probably gonna get bit...)
Chapter Fifteen
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pound the Table
Chapter Fifteen
Monday, November 13, 1989
When I arrived at the office this morning, there was a package sitting on my desk.
I peeked out past my glass door and looked at Sophie, who herself was en route to the conference room for a short meeting.
"Sophie, was this package here when you got in this morning?" I asked, slightly concerned.
"It was!" she replied. "Did you not see the letter that came with it?"
I looked back to my desk, and now that I was actually looking for it, I did see a letter. A nail under the flap had it open in moments, and I flipped the card inside open to see… barely anything, really.
Who says you can't speak ill of the dead?
—J.J.J
Well, if that wasn't a hint…
Instead of using a nail, I took a pair of scissors I kept in my desk drawer and used those to open the package. A paper envelope was one thing, but I was not about to ruin my nails on cardboard and packing tape. It was a good way to get your manicurist massively passive-aggressive at you – but more importantly it was galling, having my nails get cracked, chipped, and messy.
The package opened, and I was greeted by a fairly large frame, holding three newspaper articles and three small blurbs beside them, arranged vertically. A small brass plaque at the bottom bore a single word: Karma.
The first article held opposing pictures of a purpling Lou Young, juxtaposed with a suit-clad Captain America at the courthouse steps. Beside it was a poll showing Lou Young's approval numbers in the days after, which had fallen to a paltry 21.2 percent.
The second article covered the District Attorney race in more detail, and showed opposing photographs of Young and his challenger, our newest District Attorney, Max Collins. I didn't actually know much about Collins, save that he'd been a prosecutor for three years before resigning in protest, right around the time Young became DA. He was a fellow NYU alumnus, from twelve years earlier, so even though I probably hadn't spent more than five minutes in a room with him, he got my vote. Beside that article, a poll showed Collins leading in pre-election polls, 58% to 24%, with the remaining voters angling for some of the various non-frontrunner candidates.
And the third article?
Disgraced Judge Runs Down District Attorney
Blood on the courthouse… driveway?
In perhaps the most serendipitous example of coincidence, newly-retired Judge Philip Andrews, in his haste to leave court for the final time, fatally ran over District Attorney Louis Young earlier this afternoon—
And next to that? Lou Young's obituary.
I looked at the title again.
"Karma" indeed, John Jonah Jameson. Karma indeed. This was coming home with me, where I'd hang it on my wall. Also I was going to have to find the old articles from the end of DA Wallace's career, just so I could start my collection. Then keep track of DA Collins, and if his tenure started turning sour, maybe look for an opportunity to add that to the pile. After all, third time's the charm, and—
A knock on the glass door to my office pulled me from my musings, and I turned to see Sophie push it open slightly.
"Just waiting on you," Sophie said, poking her head into my office.
"Ah, sorry." I slid the framed articles back into the box, gathered up the folder sitting on my desk, and followed Sophie to the conference room. Joshua was already there, sipping at a massive mug of coffee, so full of cream and sugar that I could smell it from the doorway. I took my seat at the head of the eight-seat conference table, with Joshua to my left and Sophie to my right.
"Okay, let's get this started," I said, clicking my pen and opening the master copy of the case file. "Just a small meeting so we're all on the same page regarding what we're doing for this case."
"We got all the documents from Mr. Canter yesterday," Joshua said, looking over a checklist in front of him. "Financials, letters from his old sponsors, official communications from the USTA, ATP, copies of the letters Canter sent demanding retractions, the letter from his agent dropping him…" Joshua trailed off with a shake of his head. "Man. People suck."
"When there's money involved, people tend to be just as bad as cynics claim," I said in agreement. "Sophie, did you manage to find all the addresses we need? And where are they all?"
"We still need Becker's," she said, eyes on her own paper. "Prince is headquartered in Georgia, Adidas and Nike are in Oregon, the USTA is upstate here, and the ATP is in Florida."
"Damn," I said. "That means—actually?" I paused. "Joshua, where did Canter put as his home for his financials?"
"Uh…"
I ignored the rummaging of papers, and instead wrote the locations on my paper. GA, FL, OR, NY, and probably abroad in Germany on one side, so…
"San Diego, California!" Joshua said.
"Perfect!" I said. "Okay. This gives us complete diversity and an amount greater than $75,000, meaning we can file straight into federal court and not need to split the USTA off. And we get New York State law, which gives us a leg up from the get go…" I trailed off, eyes scanning over the documents Canter gave us, realizing something. The address and phone number he'd given us for case-related matters was in New York State, but it was about an hour and a half north of here (or three with traffic), if I was remembering my counties correctly. I glanced over at Joshua, and saw his eyes fixed on the same page, his pencil under the same bit of info I'd just cottoned onto. He raised one eyebrow, and I gave a slight nod.
Final nail in the coffin?
Yup.
"So what even is the argument here?" Sophie asked, rifling through the pages in front of her. "How do you even prove he isn't a mutant?"
"You can't, legally speaking," I said, not bothering to elaborate this time. "But the thing is that we don't need absolute proof here. All we need is to prove that it's more likely than not that Becker was pulling something out of his ass to purposefully make Canter look bad. Though actually," I added after a moment's thought, "that makes this case somewhat unique. Most defamation cases, whether slander or libel, revolve around something that can definitively be proven true or false, and the arguments tend to run along that line. So this is a bit different."
"Are we certain he isn't a mutant though?" Sophie asked. "He says he isn't, but he could be lying, no?"
"While I'm glad you cottoned onto rule one so quickly," I said, "as the mutant in the room, I can say with confidence he isn't. His reaction to seeing how I really look?" I reached down, wrapped my fingers around the tip of my tail, and pulled it above the lip of the table for emphasis. "Pretty much identical to either of yours. Trust me when I say other mutants don't react like that."
"He is hiding something, though!" Sophie insisted. "Two of my boys are obsessed with sports, and they both told me thirteen tournaments a year is small. So if Canter is as serious of a professional as he claims, then he should be doing more tournaments, yes?"
"So?" Joshua asked. "Muhammad Ali didn't take every fight that came his way. No reason Canter has to go to every open tennis court."
"If it was just that it wouldn't be a big deal!" Sophie insisted. "But there's this address upstate that he wants us to send everything to? That's a residential neighborhood! He's hiding something, and—"
""He's gay,"" Joshua and I interrupted at the same time.
Sophie closed her mouth.
She opened it a moment later, then closed it again.
Then her lips parted once more, only for her to not say a word, and close her mouth again.
"... how…?" Sophie's hesitance was frankly adorable, but I was more than happy to enlighten her.
"His clothes fit properly," I supplied.
"And they're color coordinated," Joshua added.
"His haircut actually fits his face shape."
"There was product in his hair too. Pomade, I think."
"Plus, his nails were clean and properly trimmed."
"Oh, and he was wearing just the right amount of cologne. Not too strong, not overpowering."
"And lastly, he didn't check me out even once. Not even a quick glance at my chest," I finished.
"He definitely checked me out though." Joshua got the last word, and when I went to give him the side-eye, he had a far-off look.
"Trust us," I told Sophie, who was caught looking between me and Joshua, some form of new understanding dawning in her eyes. "Once you know what to look for, it can be pretty obvious."
Sophie just blinked. A finger came up and pointed ever so slightly in my direction, before turning to point in Joshua's.
"... Everything you just said?" Sophie said. "That… sounds a lot like Brendan."
The names had come up enough times already for me to know who Sophie was talking about. Her triplet boys, Brendan, Kevin, and Michael.
Brendan was the youngest.
Joshua and I both turned to look at one another for a moment, and came to a silent agreement within moments. Yeah… not the time for that. Best to move the conversation along, and ignore what probably wasn't meant to be said out loud.
"Time for revelations aside," I said with a raised voice, drawing attention back to myself.
Well, mostly. Sophie still wasn't quite paying attention, unsurprisingly.
"Everybody is from different states, and we're above the dollar threshold. Federal court it is, but we get to use New York law. As for what else we're going to need… let me think real quick."
"Should I get any discovery requests prepped in advance?" Joshua asked.
"Oddly enough? Not really," I said. "Most of the evidence we could gather is public statements, and our client already provided us with copies of all the statements in question. But I do want to try and get a better idea of what the overall climate was in the sports sector before the defamatory statements came out. Which means doing a bit of research, but it's not something that needs to be done in the discovery process."
"Alright," Joshua said. "I'll draw up a template I can work from once they deny everything in their answers and you come up with seventeen new things to ask for, got it."
I favored Joshua with a stink-eye, but he offered a disarming smile in return.
"As for the actual evidence we need to make our case, I have an iron in the fire for that," I revealed. "I just need to wait on certain parties to get back to me, or follow up with them later this week."
"Another idea?" Sophie piped up, drawing eyes to her. "You just received a package from the Bugle, and you spoke face to face with John Jonah Jameson this past summer. If we care about public opinion in the sports sector, would it be worth reaching out to him about an interview with the client?"
I pondered that for a moment, then realized that she had a very good point. As much as I wasn't a big fan of media circuses… this was actually a case that would absolutely benefit from one. Especially if we managed to get a jury that read an interview from a favorable interviewer.
Such as John Jonah Jameson, who was famous for giving everybody a fair shake.
(Except for Spider-Man. Never Spider-Man.)
"I like that," I said. "Great idea, Sophie. I'll run it past Canter and get back to you."
"Thank you," she said. "I'll get that scheduled once we have permission!"
"Excellent. In that case, I think we're almost wrapped up."
I gathered up the files and papers in front of me, making sure they were sorted how I liked them.
"So, here's the plan," I said, standing up to draw both Joshua's and Sophie's attention. "The Australian Open runs from January 15 to 28. Depending on how long it takes to get the evidence we need, we file that same month, preferably on the eighth, otherwise on the fifteenth. We want to bracket the Australian Open, since that will give us the most attention. Preferably we get this in before the Open starts. That way, our case is the very next topic in line for discussion on the news."
"I'm sorry," Sophie said, hand half-raised to keep me from continuing to talk. "But why the eighth?"
"Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a defendant is given twenty-one days to respond to legal service of process," I answered, a small smile growing on my face. "So if we file on the eighth, that means the ATP and Becker both need to have their legal teams work on their responses during the Open, and means any hiccups either of them experience during the tournament will probably draw more attention to the suit.
"Now Sophie," I turned to her, still smiling. "If you saw somebody make constant mistakes when they normally didn't, and you'd just heard through the grapevine that they were being accused of something nasty, what would your first thought be?"
"I'd say that they were having a guilty conscience," she said with a shrug.
"Exactly." I gathered up my materials from the conference room table, and picked them up. "As for the rest of the plan. Joshua, keep working on our complaint, and feel free to use examples from other cases; unlike in academia, plagiarism isn't just allowed in the law, it's outright encouraged.
"Sophie, if you could work on getting back issues of the major Sunday papers' sports sections from the two months surrounding the US Open, or at least get me an appointment to go in and make copies of them myself, I would appreciate it. Other than that, just be on the lookout for a call back from either the NYU alumni office or the athletics program people. It'll be one of them."
"After I do a coffee run," Joshua said as he stood up and grabbed his jacket.
"Ugh," I wrinkled my nose. "Hot bean juice."
"And your hot leaf juice is so much better?" Joshua asked, all while Sophie hid her giggles at what was probably the… hm, was it the fifteenth or sixteenth time we'd had this debate?
"Yes," I said. "It at least tastes like something other than bitter."
"That's only bad coffee, and you can say the same of bad tea!" Joshua fired back.
And so the debate continued for another five minutes, during which nothing got done and nobody complained.
Saturday, November 18, 1989
Note to self: when hiring more people, do not tell them that I have a habit of working weekends.
All that did was give secretaries the idea that Saturday was an okay day to schedule meetings with people. Granted, this was a meeting with a reporter, who was busy working on a major Sunday newspaper. And I didn't exactly have anything planned for this time of day. Nor was there a major Jewish holiday this weekend, which would have seen me going to the synagogue, and then calling my dad to complain about the rabbi (again). But this was still a Saturday! It was the principle of things!
(And I lost my chance to scope out the department stores in preparation for Black Friday!)
Unfortunately, work waited for nobody, and so here I was, riding an elevator up to the Daily Bugle's offices at 10am on a Saturday morning.
But I did break out the one pantsuit I had in my closet, one that I'd had to pay an additional five hundred dollars to have a tail hole tailored into it, because if I was going to work on a Saturday morning, then to hell with the expectation that I wear a knee-length skirt this close to winter!
The elevator dinged, and I stepped out into a busy, bustling office floor. Phones were ringing off the hook, fingers hammered away at typewriters and keyboards, and I spotted a few harried interns carrying somewhere between three and four coffee pots at a time around the various desks. The air reeked of ink, printer toner, and worse: cigarette smoke.
I reached into my purse and pulled a couple of tissues out of a small disposable pack I carried, then held that over my nose. Cigarette smoke was one of the few things in this world I well and truly loathed. It reeked. It gave me headaches just smelling it. It irritated my eyes and made my contact lenses itch. And the worst part?
Cigarette smoke makes your boobs sag.
I eyed the floor, and looked over to the corner, where my destination lay. The chaos died down for a short instant, and I took my chance to swiftly walk through the space between desks towards the office space in the back.
A yelp sounded from behind me as I passed, and I realized that I must have stepped on someone's foot. With three-inch heels.
Oops. Maybe that would serve as a lesson not to have feet in walkways…
I did manage to make it unscathed to the far edge of the floor, and pushed past the mayhem into the eye of the storm. A stern brunette sat at the desk, her hair in a perm that was probably barely holding on two months ago but was now desperately in need of a salon, typing away on a keyboard, and occasionally reaching over to pick up a handset, press hold, and put it back down. The nameplate on her desk read "Elizabeth Brant" – but she didn't actually respond to that name, which was the first line of defense for actually getting to see the man in charge.
"Hello, Betty?" I asked, stepping up to the desk. Betty looked up at me, flicked her eyes down to the trousers of my pantsuit, and frowned.
I countered with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow. We both knew why I was here, and I wasn't going to let her judgment bother me. After all, she was the one who made the decision to get a perm, even knowing Jameson would have her too busy to maintain it.
Sure enough, Betty didn't even bother to greet me with words. She just stood up from her chair, walked out from behind the desk, knocked twice on the boss's door, and pushed it open.
"Sir, your ten o'clock is here," she said, pushing the door open wide enough for me to get past before just… letting it drop as she went back to her desk. Luckily for her, I was small enough to slip past her before the door even started closing, so I didn't have to say anything about that conduct.
"Huh?" The man at the desk in the corner office looked up from the bundle of papers in his hand, an unlit cigar in the other being used as a pointer. Once his eyes fell on me, his expression lit up, and a devilish smile crossed his face. "Schaefer! Pantsuit? Daring, I like it. Heard from your secretary my gift arrived. Couldn't have happened to a nicer man, could it have!? Go on, take a seat. Coffee?"
"Good morning, to you too, Mr. Jameson," I said, once he finally let me get a word in edgewise, and slid into one of the chairs in front of his desk, resting my purse on the ground beside the chair. "Thank you for the compliment, by the way. And no thank you for the coffee, but don't hold back from a cup on my account."
"Good choice. Robby's on coffee duty today, his brew tastes like ground dirt!" Jameson laughed, and I couldn't help but chuckle a little in return.
"And as for your little gift," I continued, "it's taken a place of honor in the front hall of my condo. Next to a framed copy of the article about former DA Wallace's resignation. Who knows," I said, inspecting my nails. "Maybe I will have to go for the hat trick."
"You'd best be sure to give me advance warning on that one!" Jameson crowed. Then he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk, and turned his head to look me in the eye. "So, Betty says your secretary was calling after the sports section. Let me guess, you're working for Canter, or however you say it," he said, pronouncing it 'Khan-Tay'.
"Close enough to the pronunciation. And yes," I confirmed. "I'm representing him in a defamation action."
"Pfft, had a feeling that shit was libel when we printed it," Jameson said with a scoff. "Hell, it looks worse for Becker if your man is a mutant!"
"How so?" I asked, curious about Jameson's take.
"Well let's put it this way," he said. "Either your guy isn't a mutant, and Becker is the world's biggest sore loser. Or your guy is a mutant, and Becker now has to contend with the fact that the only reason he's won anything in the last… how long has your man been active, four years?"
"Five," I corrected.
"Five!" Jameson said. "Either Becker's a sore loser, or the only reason he won any title in the last five years is because your man decided to not play at his best. Not a good look, is it?"
I shrugged. That wasn't exactly how I would put it, but I could see where Jameson was coming from. After all, what was worse: realizing that you were simply incapable of accepting a hard-fought loss, or realizing that every victory you'd attained was at the sufferance of somebody who was capable of trouncing you right from the start?
Personally, it was the former, because it spoke more about your character, or lack thereof. But that was just my take, perhaps due to the fact that I cared about my image more than most.
"Regardless," I said, "we're in the process of acquiring the evidence we need to prove our case and readying our materials. Our plan is to file right around the time of the next Grand Slam tournament, and I was wondering if, during the first week of the new year, the Bugle wanted an exclusive interview from a man who should have been competing, but isn't being allowed due to… let's call it organizational fuckery."
Jameson stared at me for a moment before he spoke, and I could see the gears turning over in his mind.
"You know, I'm not sure why I didn't expect this from you of all people, Schaefer," Jameson said, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. "That is dirty, and cutthroat, and I like it. Hell, I can even see the spin!" He raised a hand as if framing, moving it to the right as he spoke. "They got Canter, who's next? Jordan? Ali? Gretzky? Or better yet, who's next on Becker's hit list, McEnroe? Ha!"
"Oh trust me, Jordan, Ali, and The Great One are all slated for my opening arguments," I told him. "My client has already told me that he wants his case to make as much noise as possible. And that includes no settlement, not unless it comes with much fanfare and public shaming."
"Ballsy," Jameson said. "Taking the coin toss of a jury. I like it."
"I'm glad you think so," I said. "Now, obviously I'm not well versed on how to go about setting up an interview, or who you'd even want on it, so I figure it would be best to leave that ball in your court, as it were."
"Schaefer, I like a good pun as much as the next person," Jameson said with a sudden scowl. "But I swear to God, if the next words out of your mouth are anything other than 'pun not intended', then—"
A pair of loud knocks on Jameson's door interrupted his admonition, and I must admit that I jumped a little in my seat.
"What!?" Jameson yelled. "I'm in a goddamn meeting!"
The door opened, and I could hear Betty's failing perm rub up against the door.
"Sir, it's Parker."
And just like that, it was like a switch flipped in Jameson. His expression suddenly became eager, almost hungry.
"Well why didn't you lead with that!?" he said, completely (and likely deliberately) ignoring the fact that he hadn't given Betty so much as a chance to say anything in the first place. "Send him in!"
I turned around in my seat in time to see Betty roll her eyes and hold the door wide open. Moments later, an overeager teen bounded in, glossy photo paper printouts in his hand, and I caught my first glimpse of Peter Parker.
He was a lanky teen, dressed in an old and worn bomber jacket, faded blue jeans, and well-loved sneakers. Glasses that had met with the concrete a few too many times adorned his face, but a particularly close look was enough to see that they were clear lenses, no prescription at all – not that the average person even knew to look for that, let alone how or where to look. Peter Parker's gaze flicked to me for a moment, eyes widening with slight alarm, and I couldn't help but wonder if that was his genuine response at realizing he'd interrupted my meeting with Jameson, or a result of his Spider Sense latching onto something I couldn't fathom.
"Parker! Quit gawking and get over here!" Jameson yelled, which left me wincing slightly; he was loud when he wanted to be, and my hearing was quite a bit more sensitive than the average human's.
Peter, to his credit, practically glided over the floor, his footsteps making no sound as he approached Jameson's desk and handed over his photographs.
"Alright, let's see… crap," Jameson flung the photograph over his shoulder. "Crap, crap, has some promise, crap, blurry, crap, aperture's fucked, crap—hold on, I think we got a winner!" Jameson pulled one photo out of the stack and turned it towards me. It showed Spider-Man swinging by a row of police cars, the police turned with their guns pointed at him, the New York Stock Exchange clearly visible in the background. "Front page material! I can see it now: 'Masked Maniac Menaces Monetarists'!"
"Isn't that the Shocker?" I asked, injecting as much sarcasm as I could while pointing at the figure on the steps before the Exchange, still clearly identifiable despite the distance.
"That out of focus little blob?" Jameson asked. "Bah! Don't you see where the cops are aiming? It's clearly Spider-Man at fault here!"
"Jameson, while you know I'm not one to defend Spider-Man," I started, being very mindful of the teen still in the room with us, "even I think you're a little out on a limb with that one."
Jameson frowned at me, turned the photograph back towards himself, and inspected it.
"Hm. Maybe not front page, then. Page two!"
He put that one photo down on his desk, scribbled out a note, put it atop the pile of other photos. He then proceeded to fling the lot at Peter, who managed to grab all of the papers out of the air in one graceful movement, disguised with a bit of gratuitous flailing afterwards. Again, it was a lot easier to notice if you were one, aware that's what was happening, and two, looking for it.
"Alright Parker, drop off your negatives and get that note to Robby, he'll handle your pay. And don't forget to say if you developed anyone else's film for them!" Jameson added on, even as Peter was already turning to leave. "If you did the work, you get the pay!"
"Thank you, Mr. Jameson, sir!"
And with that, Peter Parker left the room, just as quickly as he entered.
I turned back towards the desk, and saw Jameson holding back up his new 8x10 glossy of Spider-Man, smiling and laughing as he looked at it.
"Your premier photographer of Spider-Man is a teenager," I said, my tone matter-of-fact. I knew exactly what was going on there, but I had a chance to needle John Jonah Jameson. And I'd be damned if I let that slip.
"Not by choice, I assure you," Jameson said, dropping the glossy, and with it, his grin. A deep frown now crossed his face, his brow furrowing heavily along with it. "I don't know what the webhead has on Parker, but mark my words, one day I will get that disguised dastard what's coming to him!"
"What Spider-Man 'has on him'?" I asked, leaning forward with concern. "You're sounding a little paranoid."
"Nah," Jameson said, with a shake of his head. "I know my photographers, Schaefer. I've sent them into firefights, the middle of nowhere; hell, I've sent them into warzones. These people are consummate professionals, and I've seen them get photographs I would've called impossible. But Spider-Man?" Jameson groaned. "He knows. I don't know how the webhead does it, maybe he's got eyes in the back of his goddamn head. But every time one of my guys gets in position, their camera lens gets webbed!"
"And then here comes this young Mr. Parker, with actual pictures of Spider-Man," I said, giving Jameson what he wanted.
"Which he can't possibly be getting unless the webhead is letting him!" Jameson almost yells, and then falls back into his chair. "So of course I take the photos. Nobody else has photos of Spider-Man either; they all have to buy the rights to them from the Bugle. And Parker, bless his heart, but that poor kid hasn't got a goddamn clue that he's dropping gold on my desk."
"If you're taking advantage of him…" I trailed off in warning.
"I have an account set aside for when Parker turns eighteen and can legally claim it," Jameson revealed. "His royalties. Is it the biggest? No, but it's enough to get his ass through college, and away from that damned menace! Even if I have to give up all pictures of Spider-Man!"
I sighed. While the ultimate sentiment was of a particularly altruistic bent? Well… it was ultimately soured by the source. Namely, the vendetta John Jonah Jameson held against a man he'd never met, nor encountered, nor had an ill word spoken towards him from them.
Jameson's hatred of Spider-Man was a ridiculous thing, and in my opinion, it was bringing down the reputation of the Bugle as a news source. It was particularly noticeable when everything else was top-notch, unbiased reporting, without the liberal bent of the Times or the conservative slant of the Journal. It gave the facts, it offered both sides of an argument, and if one side ever strayed too far, it rebuked them in the op-eds.
But all that objectivity went right out the window where Spider-Man was concerned, and frankly, it was annoying.
"Why do you have such a problem with Spider-Man anyway?" I asked, somewhat expecting that my question would wind up being rhetorical.
"His face!" Jameson pulled his still-unlit cigar out of his mouth, and pointed it at me. "He won't show his face. Can't trust him!"
"And what about the Avengers' Iron Man?" I asked, drumming my fingers on the arm of the chair I sat in. "His face is obscured entirely, too, and he's never been seen without it, nor do we know who he is under the suit."
"Ah, but the difference there is he's held accountable!" Jameson crowed. "If the Iron Man fucks up, Stark has to deal with it. After all, he's the one who hired him, made his stuff. But the Spider-Man?" He scoffed. "None of that. Cause you see, it's not just the webhead's face. It's that one day, he could screw up, get people killed… and then the Spider-Man disappears, and now there's nobody left to blame."
I could see the points Jameson made. The way he got from start to finish, the rationale he used to come to that conclusion.
But that didn't mean I agreed with it.
"Regardless," I said, standing up from my chair and picking up my purse. "If I could offer some unsolicited advice that I expect you'll also hear from your in-house counsel? Tone it down," I told him. "The Bugle's coverage of Spider-Man is almost libel, and the only reason it isn't is because, legally speaking, Spider-Man doesn't quite fit the definition of a public figure."
"So don't try to make the webhead part of a scandal, that's it." Jameson opened up a drawer and pulled out a large matchbox, withdrawing one to strike, then glanced at me. "What? I know the definition of defamation too, you know. I've had legal breathing down my neck for decades, Schaefer. I can handle myself."
"If you insist," I said, holding back my sigh. "Have a good day, Jameson. Enjoy your pictures of Spider-Man."
"We'll call when it's interview time!" Jameson said by way of reply, even as I pushed open the door to his office and left.
Sunday, December 3, 1989
9:07 am
While NYU was quite the university, there were a few things that it lacked.
Good dorms were one of them, at least back in the mid 70's. I'd managed to finagle a single dorm for myself as a freshman and sophomore due to 'religious' reasons (having a rabbi at the ready came in handy for that), because otherwise I'd have been outed as a mutant within five minutes, but even that had been… well, a shoebox at best. It was a tight squeeze as it was, even with me being less than five feet tall, and I'm fairly certain I poked a couple of holes in the walls with my horns.
If it was small enough for me to have space issues, I couldn't imagine what taller people had dealt with.
But enough reminiscing about the early days of college life. Back to the university's deficits, and for one that actually mattered… the NYU tennis teams did not have courts available on campus to practice.
Instead, they needed to go out to the Bronx, to the Stadium Tennis Center. Which, thankfully for all of us involved, had twelve indoor courts, and a heated entryway-plus-administrative-area, leading to the locker rooms. It was far too cold outside to be playing tennis, and it was also threatening freezing rain. I would have to be exceptionally careful not to trip on my way, lest I slip, fall, and need to find a lawyer of my own.
And so it was with the front desk and locker rooms behind me that I watched the NYU men's and women's tennis teams filter into the building. The first few arrivals quickly filed to the sides and stripped off heavy winter wear before turning to see the duo awaiting them: Jacques Canter, and myself. Beside us lay a folding table. Upon that folding table rested a single stack of paper, a can of tennis balls, twelve camcorders, five dozen blank tapes, thirty identically-labeled VHS tapes, and a large, hard-walled briefcase.
The contents of that table had cost many thousands of dollars. They would have cost more if not for Black Friday, so thank goodness for small mercies.
Once everybody had filed in, and the head coach came up to confirm with me that this was everyone, I blew into a small whistle I'd brought along to get everybody's attention. Well, not really to get their attention, Jacques and I had that already.
More to get the murmuring to quiet down.
"Good morning everybody," I began. "My name is Noa Schaefer, and I am an attorney. I'd wager more than a few of you recognize my companion here; this is Jacques Canter, the rightful winner of this year's US Open."
"The mutant cheater?"
"Who said that?" I asked, immediately looking over the assembled student athletes with a Look (trademark pending). Sure enough, the power of The Look (trademark pending) forced the speaker to the front. "And this is?" I asked the coach, who stood next to Jacques and me.
"Ricky," the college student said before his coach got a chance to answer.
"Alright then," I said. "Ricky. You called him the 'mutant cheater'." I reached behind me, took the can of tennis balls off the table, and walked forward a few paces. "Answer me this then. How did he cheat?"
"Huh?" Ricky asked, quite intelligently.
"I mean," I continued, opening up the can of tennis balls, pulling one out, putting the lid back on, and tossing it behind me to Jacques. "I know how I, specifically, would have cheated."
I flicked out a hand, called on my magic, and sparked a small orb of light into being. Pretty much everybody flinched at the display, even as all I did was take the light and bend it around the tennis ball, which had the fun effect of guiding all other light around it as well, and left me with a near-invisible tennis ball in my hand.
"This is how I would cheat," I said, holding out my hand so everybody could, well, not see the almost-invisible tennis ball. "But that's me. So how did Jacques Canter cheat, Ricky?"
I received no answer. The seconds ticked by, and still no words were forthcoming from the young student athlete I'd put on the spot.
"How about the rest of the class?" I asked. "Can any of you tell me how the mutant cheater Jacques Canter used his powers to cheat?"
Once again, silence.
"I didn't think so."
I tossed the invisible tennis ball in my hand upward ever so slightly, turned around to walk back towards the table. When the ball hit the floor, the glamour I'd placed on it shattered into fragments of rainbow static, drawing sharp gasps and hisses of surprise from the students.
"Ladies and gentlemen, today I am putting forward a challenge." I approached the table and pulled the briefcase off of it, holding it in front of me. "In the official announcement from the Association of Tennis Professionals that stripped my client of his title and banned him from the sport, the organization cited Boris Becker's statements. In those statements, Becker pointed out five specific points that my client won, and said that the five shots he made were, and I quote, 'impossible to make without using his mutant powers'. I disagree."
I popped the latches on the briefcase, grabbed it by one handle, and let the briefcase fall open.
Bundles of cold hard cash fell out and scattered across the floor, hundred-dollar bills bound together with paper bands.
"On the table behind me are camcorders, blank video tapes, video tapes with the full Becker v. Canter finals of the US Open, and templates to write reports," I told them. Some part of me was surprised that none of them had lunged for the cash littering the floor.
Another part of me rationalized this failure in one of two ways: either they were shocked into inaction, or they were too scared of the mutant to make a go for it.
"My challenge to you is this: I want you to partner up and work together to recreate each and every one of these so-called 'impossible' shots, and I want it on video. For each and every successful recreation of one of my client's 'impossible' shots, and an accompanying report filled out, I will award five thousand dollars to both of the athletes involved." My smile turned downright feral. "For those of you who are still trying to process that: if you manage to recreate all five shots, then you will get twenty. Five. Thousand. Dollars."
I dropped the briefcase on the ground. About half of the athletes jumped at the sound.
"You have until the opening day of the Australian Open to undertake this challenge!" I yelled. "I trust I don't need to tell a team of collegiate tennis players when that is, no? Camcorders and blank video tapes are on the table behind me, one camcorder for each court available. Now hop to it!" I said, clapping my hands.
Ricky, the student who'd first been called out, impressed me by being the first to step up. After him, a trickle turned into a flood, and soon, nothing was left on the table behind me. Amazingly, however, all of the money was still left on the floor in front of me.
I guessed they just didn't want to risk tangling with a mutant.
"You know you could be out most of a million on this, right?" The team's coach murmured this from behind me, even as I knelt down to collect the money and put it back in the briefcase.
"I honestly hope so!" I replied, chipper as ever. "Consider this an investment, Coach."
"Into what?" The coach asked.
"Something oh so simple, dear sir."
I clicked the briefcase closed, and turned to flash the coach a smile, full to the brim with too many teeth.
"Coffin nails."
Chapter Fifteen
Monday, November 13, 1989
When I arrived at the office this morning, there was a package sitting on my desk.
I peeked out past my glass door and looked at Sophie, who herself was en route to the conference room for a short meeting.
"Sophie, was this package here when you got in this morning?" I asked, slightly concerned.
"It was!" she replied. "Did you not see the letter that came with it?"
I looked back to my desk, and now that I was actually looking for it, I did see a letter. A nail under the flap had it open in moments, and I flipped the card inside open to see… barely anything, really.
Who says you can't speak ill of the dead?
—J.J.J
Well, if that wasn't a hint…
Instead of using a nail, I took a pair of scissors I kept in my desk drawer and used those to open the package. A paper envelope was one thing, but I was not about to ruin my nails on cardboard and packing tape. It was a good way to get your manicurist massively passive-aggressive at you – but more importantly it was galling, having my nails get cracked, chipped, and messy.
The package opened, and I was greeted by a fairly large frame, holding three newspaper articles and three small blurbs beside them, arranged vertically. A small brass plaque at the bottom bore a single word: Karma.
The first article held opposing pictures of a purpling Lou Young, juxtaposed with a suit-clad Captain America at the courthouse steps. Beside it was a poll showing Lou Young's approval numbers in the days after, which had fallen to a paltry 21.2 percent.
The second article covered the District Attorney race in more detail, and showed opposing photographs of Young and his challenger, our newest District Attorney, Max Collins. I didn't actually know much about Collins, save that he'd been a prosecutor for three years before resigning in protest, right around the time Young became DA. He was a fellow NYU alumnus, from twelve years earlier, so even though I probably hadn't spent more than five minutes in a room with him, he got my vote. Beside that article, a poll showed Collins leading in pre-election polls, 58% to 24%, with the remaining voters angling for some of the various non-frontrunner candidates.
And the third article?
Disgraced Judge Runs Down District Attorney
Blood on the courthouse… driveway?
In perhaps the most serendipitous example of coincidence, newly-retired Judge Philip Andrews, in his haste to leave court for the final time, fatally ran over District Attorney Louis Young earlier this afternoon—
And next to that? Lou Young's obituary.
I looked at the title again.
"Karma" indeed, John Jonah Jameson. Karma indeed. This was coming home with me, where I'd hang it on my wall. Also I was going to have to find the old articles from the end of DA Wallace's career, just so I could start my collection. Then keep track of DA Collins, and if his tenure started turning sour, maybe look for an opportunity to add that to the pile. After all, third time's the charm, and—
A knock on the glass door to my office pulled me from my musings, and I turned to see Sophie push it open slightly.
"Just waiting on you," Sophie said, poking her head into my office.
"Ah, sorry." I slid the framed articles back into the box, gathered up the folder sitting on my desk, and followed Sophie to the conference room. Joshua was already there, sipping at a massive mug of coffee, so full of cream and sugar that I could smell it from the doorway. I took my seat at the head of the eight-seat conference table, with Joshua to my left and Sophie to my right.
"Okay, let's get this started," I said, clicking my pen and opening the master copy of the case file. "Just a small meeting so we're all on the same page regarding what we're doing for this case."
"We got all the documents from Mr. Canter yesterday," Joshua said, looking over a checklist in front of him. "Financials, letters from his old sponsors, official communications from the USTA, ATP, copies of the letters Canter sent demanding retractions, the letter from his agent dropping him…" Joshua trailed off with a shake of his head. "Man. People suck."
"When there's money involved, people tend to be just as bad as cynics claim," I said in agreement. "Sophie, did you manage to find all the addresses we need? And where are they all?"
"We still need Becker's," she said, eyes on her own paper. "Prince is headquartered in Georgia, Adidas and Nike are in Oregon, the USTA is upstate here, and the ATP is in Florida."
"Damn," I said. "That means—actually?" I paused. "Joshua, where did Canter put as his home for his financials?"
"Uh…"
I ignored the rummaging of papers, and instead wrote the locations on my paper. GA, FL, OR, NY, and probably abroad in Germany on one side, so…
"San Diego, California!" Joshua said.
"Perfect!" I said. "Okay. This gives us complete diversity and an amount greater than $75,000, meaning we can file straight into federal court and not need to split the USTA off. And we get New York State law, which gives us a leg up from the get go…" I trailed off, eyes scanning over the documents Canter gave us, realizing something. The address and phone number he'd given us for case-related matters was in New York State, but it was about an hour and a half north of here (or three with traffic), if I was remembering my counties correctly. I glanced over at Joshua, and saw his eyes fixed on the same page, his pencil under the same bit of info I'd just cottoned onto. He raised one eyebrow, and I gave a slight nod.
Final nail in the coffin?
Yup.
"So what even is the argument here?" Sophie asked, rifling through the pages in front of her. "How do you even prove he isn't a mutant?"
"You can't, legally speaking," I said, not bothering to elaborate this time. "But the thing is that we don't need absolute proof here. All we need is to prove that it's more likely than not that Becker was pulling something out of his ass to purposefully make Canter look bad. Though actually," I added after a moment's thought, "that makes this case somewhat unique. Most defamation cases, whether slander or libel, revolve around something that can definitively be proven true or false, and the arguments tend to run along that line. So this is a bit different."
"Are we certain he isn't a mutant though?" Sophie asked. "He says he isn't, but he could be lying, no?"
"While I'm glad you cottoned onto rule one so quickly," I said, "as the mutant in the room, I can say with confidence he isn't. His reaction to seeing how I really look?" I reached down, wrapped my fingers around the tip of my tail, and pulled it above the lip of the table for emphasis. "Pretty much identical to either of yours. Trust me when I say other mutants don't react like that."
"He is hiding something, though!" Sophie insisted. "Two of my boys are obsessed with sports, and they both told me thirteen tournaments a year is small. So if Canter is as serious of a professional as he claims, then he should be doing more tournaments, yes?"
"So?" Joshua asked. "Muhammad Ali didn't take every fight that came his way. No reason Canter has to go to every open tennis court."
"If it was just that it wouldn't be a big deal!" Sophie insisted. "But there's this address upstate that he wants us to send everything to? That's a residential neighborhood! He's hiding something, and—"
""He's gay,"" Joshua and I interrupted at the same time.
Sophie closed her mouth.
She opened it a moment later, then closed it again.
Then her lips parted once more, only for her to not say a word, and close her mouth again.
"... how…?" Sophie's hesitance was frankly adorable, but I was more than happy to enlighten her.
"His clothes fit properly," I supplied.
"And they're color coordinated," Joshua added.
"His haircut actually fits his face shape."
"There was product in his hair too. Pomade, I think."
"Plus, his nails were clean and properly trimmed."
"Oh, and he was wearing just the right amount of cologne. Not too strong, not overpowering."
"And lastly, he didn't check me out even once. Not even a quick glance at my chest," I finished.
"He definitely checked me out though." Joshua got the last word, and when I went to give him the side-eye, he had a far-off look.
"Trust us," I told Sophie, who was caught looking between me and Joshua, some form of new understanding dawning in her eyes. "Once you know what to look for, it can be pretty obvious."
Sophie just blinked. A finger came up and pointed ever so slightly in my direction, before turning to point in Joshua's.
"... Everything you just said?" Sophie said. "That… sounds a lot like Brendan."
The names had come up enough times already for me to know who Sophie was talking about. Her triplet boys, Brendan, Kevin, and Michael.
Brendan was the youngest.
Joshua and I both turned to look at one another for a moment, and came to a silent agreement within moments. Yeah… not the time for that. Best to move the conversation along, and ignore what probably wasn't meant to be said out loud.
"Time for revelations aside," I said with a raised voice, drawing attention back to myself.
Well, mostly. Sophie still wasn't quite paying attention, unsurprisingly.
"Everybody is from different states, and we're above the dollar threshold. Federal court it is, but we get to use New York law. As for what else we're going to need… let me think real quick."
"Should I get any discovery requests prepped in advance?" Joshua asked.
"Oddly enough? Not really," I said. "Most of the evidence we could gather is public statements, and our client already provided us with copies of all the statements in question. But I do want to try and get a better idea of what the overall climate was in the sports sector before the defamatory statements came out. Which means doing a bit of research, but it's not something that needs to be done in the discovery process."
"Alright," Joshua said. "I'll draw up a template I can work from once they deny everything in their answers and you come up with seventeen new things to ask for, got it."
I favored Joshua with a stink-eye, but he offered a disarming smile in return.
"As for the actual evidence we need to make our case, I have an iron in the fire for that," I revealed. "I just need to wait on certain parties to get back to me, or follow up with them later this week."
"Another idea?" Sophie piped up, drawing eyes to her. "You just received a package from the Bugle, and you spoke face to face with John Jonah Jameson this past summer. If we care about public opinion in the sports sector, would it be worth reaching out to him about an interview with the client?"
I pondered that for a moment, then realized that she had a very good point. As much as I wasn't a big fan of media circuses… this was actually a case that would absolutely benefit from one. Especially if we managed to get a jury that read an interview from a favorable interviewer.
Such as John Jonah Jameson, who was famous for giving everybody a fair shake.
(Except for Spider-Man. Never Spider-Man.)
"I like that," I said. "Great idea, Sophie. I'll run it past Canter and get back to you."
"Thank you," she said. "I'll get that scheduled once we have permission!"
"Excellent. In that case, I think we're almost wrapped up."
I gathered up the files and papers in front of me, making sure they were sorted how I liked them.
"So, here's the plan," I said, standing up to draw both Joshua's and Sophie's attention. "The Australian Open runs from January 15 to 28. Depending on how long it takes to get the evidence we need, we file that same month, preferably on the eighth, otherwise on the fifteenth. We want to bracket the Australian Open, since that will give us the most attention. Preferably we get this in before the Open starts. That way, our case is the very next topic in line for discussion on the news."
"I'm sorry," Sophie said, hand half-raised to keep me from continuing to talk. "But why the eighth?"
"Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a defendant is given twenty-one days to respond to legal service of process," I answered, a small smile growing on my face. "So if we file on the eighth, that means the ATP and Becker both need to have their legal teams work on their responses during the Open, and means any hiccups either of them experience during the tournament will probably draw more attention to the suit.
"Now Sophie," I turned to her, still smiling. "If you saw somebody make constant mistakes when they normally didn't, and you'd just heard through the grapevine that they were being accused of something nasty, what would your first thought be?"
"I'd say that they were having a guilty conscience," she said with a shrug.
"Exactly." I gathered up my materials from the conference room table, and picked them up. "As for the rest of the plan. Joshua, keep working on our complaint, and feel free to use examples from other cases; unlike in academia, plagiarism isn't just allowed in the law, it's outright encouraged.
"Sophie, if you could work on getting back issues of the major Sunday papers' sports sections from the two months surrounding the US Open, or at least get me an appointment to go in and make copies of them myself, I would appreciate it. Other than that, just be on the lookout for a call back from either the NYU alumni office or the athletics program people. It'll be one of them."
"After I do a coffee run," Joshua said as he stood up and grabbed his jacket.
"Ugh," I wrinkled my nose. "Hot bean juice."
"And your hot leaf juice is so much better?" Joshua asked, all while Sophie hid her giggles at what was probably the… hm, was it the fifteenth or sixteenth time we'd had this debate?
"Yes," I said. "It at least tastes like something other than bitter."
"That's only bad coffee, and you can say the same of bad tea!" Joshua fired back.
And so the debate continued for another five minutes, during which nothing got done and nobody complained.
Saturday, November 18, 1989
Note to self: when hiring more people, do not tell them that I have a habit of working weekends.
All that did was give secretaries the idea that Saturday was an okay day to schedule meetings with people. Granted, this was a meeting with a reporter, who was busy working on a major Sunday newspaper. And I didn't exactly have anything planned for this time of day. Nor was there a major Jewish holiday this weekend, which would have seen me going to the synagogue, and then calling my dad to complain about the rabbi (again). But this was still a Saturday! It was the principle of things!
(And I lost my chance to scope out the department stores in preparation for Black Friday!)
Unfortunately, work waited for nobody, and so here I was, riding an elevator up to the Daily Bugle's offices at 10am on a Saturday morning.
But I did break out the one pantsuit I had in my closet, one that I'd had to pay an additional five hundred dollars to have a tail hole tailored into it, because if I was going to work on a Saturday morning, then to hell with the expectation that I wear a knee-length skirt this close to winter!
The elevator dinged, and I stepped out into a busy, bustling office floor. Phones were ringing off the hook, fingers hammered away at typewriters and keyboards, and I spotted a few harried interns carrying somewhere between three and four coffee pots at a time around the various desks. The air reeked of ink, printer toner, and worse: cigarette smoke.
I reached into my purse and pulled a couple of tissues out of a small disposable pack I carried, then held that over my nose. Cigarette smoke was one of the few things in this world I well and truly loathed. It reeked. It gave me headaches just smelling it. It irritated my eyes and made my contact lenses itch. And the worst part?
Cigarette smoke makes your boobs sag.
I eyed the floor, and looked over to the corner, where my destination lay. The chaos died down for a short instant, and I took my chance to swiftly walk through the space between desks towards the office space in the back.
A yelp sounded from behind me as I passed, and I realized that I must have stepped on someone's foot. With three-inch heels.
Oops. Maybe that would serve as a lesson not to have feet in walkways…
I did manage to make it unscathed to the far edge of the floor, and pushed past the mayhem into the eye of the storm. A stern brunette sat at the desk, her hair in a perm that was probably barely holding on two months ago but was now desperately in need of a salon, typing away on a keyboard, and occasionally reaching over to pick up a handset, press hold, and put it back down. The nameplate on her desk read "Elizabeth Brant" – but she didn't actually respond to that name, which was the first line of defense for actually getting to see the man in charge.
"Hello, Betty?" I asked, stepping up to the desk. Betty looked up at me, flicked her eyes down to the trousers of my pantsuit, and frowned.
I countered with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow. We both knew why I was here, and I wasn't going to let her judgment bother me. After all, she was the one who made the decision to get a perm, even knowing Jameson would have her too busy to maintain it.
Sure enough, Betty didn't even bother to greet me with words. She just stood up from her chair, walked out from behind the desk, knocked twice on the boss's door, and pushed it open.
"Sir, your ten o'clock is here," she said, pushing the door open wide enough for me to get past before just… letting it drop as she went back to her desk. Luckily for her, I was small enough to slip past her before the door even started closing, so I didn't have to say anything about that conduct.
"Huh?" The man at the desk in the corner office looked up from the bundle of papers in his hand, an unlit cigar in the other being used as a pointer. Once his eyes fell on me, his expression lit up, and a devilish smile crossed his face. "Schaefer! Pantsuit? Daring, I like it. Heard from your secretary my gift arrived. Couldn't have happened to a nicer man, could it have!? Go on, take a seat. Coffee?"
"Good morning, to you too, Mr. Jameson," I said, once he finally let me get a word in edgewise, and slid into one of the chairs in front of his desk, resting my purse on the ground beside the chair. "Thank you for the compliment, by the way. And no thank you for the coffee, but don't hold back from a cup on my account."
"Good choice. Robby's on coffee duty today, his brew tastes like ground dirt!" Jameson laughed, and I couldn't help but chuckle a little in return.
"And as for your little gift," I continued, "it's taken a place of honor in the front hall of my condo. Next to a framed copy of the article about former DA Wallace's resignation. Who knows," I said, inspecting my nails. "Maybe I will have to go for the hat trick."
"You'd best be sure to give me advance warning on that one!" Jameson crowed. Then he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk, and turned his head to look me in the eye. "So, Betty says your secretary was calling after the sports section. Let me guess, you're working for Canter, or however you say it," he said, pronouncing it 'Khan-Tay'.
"Close enough to the pronunciation. And yes," I confirmed. "I'm representing him in a defamation action."
"Pfft, had a feeling that shit was libel when we printed it," Jameson said with a scoff. "Hell, it looks worse for Becker if your man is a mutant!"
"How so?" I asked, curious about Jameson's take.
"Well let's put it this way," he said. "Either your guy isn't a mutant, and Becker is the world's biggest sore loser. Or your guy is a mutant, and Becker now has to contend with the fact that the only reason he's won anything in the last… how long has your man been active, four years?"
"Five," I corrected.
"Five!" Jameson said. "Either Becker's a sore loser, or the only reason he won any title in the last five years is because your man decided to not play at his best. Not a good look, is it?"
I shrugged. That wasn't exactly how I would put it, but I could see where Jameson was coming from. After all, what was worse: realizing that you were simply incapable of accepting a hard-fought loss, or realizing that every victory you'd attained was at the sufferance of somebody who was capable of trouncing you right from the start?
Personally, it was the former, because it spoke more about your character, or lack thereof. But that was just my take, perhaps due to the fact that I cared about my image more than most.
"Regardless," I said, "we're in the process of acquiring the evidence we need to prove our case and readying our materials. Our plan is to file right around the time of the next Grand Slam tournament, and I was wondering if, during the first week of the new year, the Bugle wanted an exclusive interview from a man who should have been competing, but isn't being allowed due to… let's call it organizational fuckery."
Jameson stared at me for a moment before he spoke, and I could see the gears turning over in his mind.
"You know, I'm not sure why I didn't expect this from you of all people, Schaefer," Jameson said, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. "That is dirty, and cutthroat, and I like it. Hell, I can even see the spin!" He raised a hand as if framing, moving it to the right as he spoke. "They got Canter, who's next? Jordan? Ali? Gretzky? Or better yet, who's next on Becker's hit list, McEnroe? Ha!"
"Oh trust me, Jordan, Ali, and The Great One are all slated for my opening arguments," I told him. "My client has already told me that he wants his case to make as much noise as possible. And that includes no settlement, not unless it comes with much fanfare and public shaming."
"Ballsy," Jameson said. "Taking the coin toss of a jury. I like it."
"I'm glad you think so," I said. "Now, obviously I'm not well versed on how to go about setting up an interview, or who you'd even want on it, so I figure it would be best to leave that ball in your court, as it were."
"Schaefer, I like a good pun as much as the next person," Jameson said with a sudden scowl. "But I swear to God, if the next words out of your mouth are anything other than 'pun not intended', then—"
A pair of loud knocks on Jameson's door interrupted his admonition, and I must admit that I jumped a little in my seat.
"What!?" Jameson yelled. "I'm in a goddamn meeting!"
The door opened, and I could hear Betty's failing perm rub up against the door.
"Sir, it's Parker."
And just like that, it was like a switch flipped in Jameson. His expression suddenly became eager, almost hungry.
"Well why didn't you lead with that!?" he said, completely (and likely deliberately) ignoring the fact that he hadn't given Betty so much as a chance to say anything in the first place. "Send him in!"
I turned around in my seat in time to see Betty roll her eyes and hold the door wide open. Moments later, an overeager teen bounded in, glossy photo paper printouts in his hand, and I caught my first glimpse of Peter Parker.
He was a lanky teen, dressed in an old and worn bomber jacket, faded blue jeans, and well-loved sneakers. Glasses that had met with the concrete a few too many times adorned his face, but a particularly close look was enough to see that they were clear lenses, no prescription at all – not that the average person even knew to look for that, let alone how or where to look. Peter Parker's gaze flicked to me for a moment, eyes widening with slight alarm, and I couldn't help but wonder if that was his genuine response at realizing he'd interrupted my meeting with Jameson, or a result of his Spider Sense latching onto something I couldn't fathom.
"Parker! Quit gawking and get over here!" Jameson yelled, which left me wincing slightly; he was loud when he wanted to be, and my hearing was quite a bit more sensitive than the average human's.
Peter, to his credit, practically glided over the floor, his footsteps making no sound as he approached Jameson's desk and handed over his photographs.
"Alright, let's see… crap," Jameson flung the photograph over his shoulder. "Crap, crap, has some promise, crap, blurry, crap, aperture's fucked, crap—hold on, I think we got a winner!" Jameson pulled one photo out of the stack and turned it towards me. It showed Spider-Man swinging by a row of police cars, the police turned with their guns pointed at him, the New York Stock Exchange clearly visible in the background. "Front page material! I can see it now: 'Masked Maniac Menaces Monetarists'!"
"Isn't that the Shocker?" I asked, injecting as much sarcasm as I could while pointing at the figure on the steps before the Exchange, still clearly identifiable despite the distance.
"That out of focus little blob?" Jameson asked. "Bah! Don't you see where the cops are aiming? It's clearly Spider-Man at fault here!"
"Jameson, while you know I'm not one to defend Spider-Man," I started, being very mindful of the teen still in the room with us, "even I think you're a little out on a limb with that one."
Jameson frowned at me, turned the photograph back towards himself, and inspected it.
"Hm. Maybe not front page, then. Page two!"
He put that one photo down on his desk, scribbled out a note, put it atop the pile of other photos. He then proceeded to fling the lot at Peter, who managed to grab all of the papers out of the air in one graceful movement, disguised with a bit of gratuitous flailing afterwards. Again, it was a lot easier to notice if you were one, aware that's what was happening, and two, looking for it.
"Alright Parker, drop off your negatives and get that note to Robby, he'll handle your pay. And don't forget to say if you developed anyone else's film for them!" Jameson added on, even as Peter was already turning to leave. "If you did the work, you get the pay!"
"Thank you, Mr. Jameson, sir!"
And with that, Peter Parker left the room, just as quickly as he entered.
I turned back towards the desk, and saw Jameson holding back up his new 8x10 glossy of Spider-Man, smiling and laughing as he looked at it.
"Your premier photographer of Spider-Man is a teenager," I said, my tone matter-of-fact. I knew exactly what was going on there, but I had a chance to needle John Jonah Jameson. And I'd be damned if I let that slip.
"Not by choice, I assure you," Jameson said, dropping the glossy, and with it, his grin. A deep frown now crossed his face, his brow furrowing heavily along with it. "I don't know what the webhead has on Parker, but mark my words, one day I will get that disguised dastard what's coming to him!"
"What Spider-Man 'has on him'?" I asked, leaning forward with concern. "You're sounding a little paranoid."
"Nah," Jameson said, with a shake of his head. "I know my photographers, Schaefer. I've sent them into firefights, the middle of nowhere; hell, I've sent them into warzones. These people are consummate professionals, and I've seen them get photographs I would've called impossible. But Spider-Man?" Jameson groaned. "He knows. I don't know how the webhead does it, maybe he's got eyes in the back of his goddamn head. But every time one of my guys gets in position, their camera lens gets webbed!"
"And then here comes this young Mr. Parker, with actual pictures of Spider-Man," I said, giving Jameson what he wanted.
"Which he can't possibly be getting unless the webhead is letting him!" Jameson almost yells, and then falls back into his chair. "So of course I take the photos. Nobody else has photos of Spider-Man either; they all have to buy the rights to them from the Bugle. And Parker, bless his heart, but that poor kid hasn't got a goddamn clue that he's dropping gold on my desk."
"If you're taking advantage of him…" I trailed off in warning.
"I have an account set aside for when Parker turns eighteen and can legally claim it," Jameson revealed. "His royalties. Is it the biggest? No, but it's enough to get his ass through college, and away from that damned menace! Even if I have to give up all pictures of Spider-Man!"
I sighed. While the ultimate sentiment was of a particularly altruistic bent? Well… it was ultimately soured by the source. Namely, the vendetta John Jonah Jameson held against a man he'd never met, nor encountered, nor had an ill word spoken towards him from them.
Jameson's hatred of Spider-Man was a ridiculous thing, and in my opinion, it was bringing down the reputation of the Bugle as a news source. It was particularly noticeable when everything else was top-notch, unbiased reporting, without the liberal bent of the Times or the conservative slant of the Journal. It gave the facts, it offered both sides of an argument, and if one side ever strayed too far, it rebuked them in the op-eds.
But all that objectivity went right out the window where Spider-Man was concerned, and frankly, it was annoying.
"Why do you have such a problem with Spider-Man anyway?" I asked, somewhat expecting that my question would wind up being rhetorical.
"His face!" Jameson pulled his still-unlit cigar out of his mouth, and pointed it at me. "He won't show his face. Can't trust him!"
"And what about the Avengers' Iron Man?" I asked, drumming my fingers on the arm of the chair I sat in. "His face is obscured entirely, too, and he's never been seen without it, nor do we know who he is under the suit."
"Ah, but the difference there is he's held accountable!" Jameson crowed. "If the Iron Man fucks up, Stark has to deal with it. After all, he's the one who hired him, made his stuff. But the Spider-Man?" He scoffed. "None of that. Cause you see, it's not just the webhead's face. It's that one day, he could screw up, get people killed… and then the Spider-Man disappears, and now there's nobody left to blame."
I could see the points Jameson made. The way he got from start to finish, the rationale he used to come to that conclusion.
But that didn't mean I agreed with it.
"Regardless," I said, standing up from my chair and picking up my purse. "If I could offer some unsolicited advice that I expect you'll also hear from your in-house counsel? Tone it down," I told him. "The Bugle's coverage of Spider-Man is almost libel, and the only reason it isn't is because, legally speaking, Spider-Man doesn't quite fit the definition of a public figure."
"So don't try to make the webhead part of a scandal, that's it." Jameson opened up a drawer and pulled out a large matchbox, withdrawing one to strike, then glanced at me. "What? I know the definition of defamation too, you know. I've had legal breathing down my neck for decades, Schaefer. I can handle myself."
"If you insist," I said, holding back my sigh. "Have a good day, Jameson. Enjoy your pictures of Spider-Man."
"We'll call when it's interview time!" Jameson said by way of reply, even as I pushed open the door to his office and left.
Sunday, December 3, 1989
9:07 am
While NYU was quite the university, there were a few things that it lacked.
Good dorms were one of them, at least back in the mid 70's. I'd managed to finagle a single dorm for myself as a freshman and sophomore due to 'religious' reasons (having a rabbi at the ready came in handy for that), because otherwise I'd have been outed as a mutant within five minutes, but even that had been… well, a shoebox at best. It was a tight squeeze as it was, even with me being less than five feet tall, and I'm fairly certain I poked a couple of holes in the walls with my horns.
If it was small enough for me to have space issues, I couldn't imagine what taller people had dealt with.
But enough reminiscing about the early days of college life. Back to the university's deficits, and for one that actually mattered… the NYU tennis teams did not have courts available on campus to practice.
Instead, they needed to go out to the Bronx, to the Stadium Tennis Center. Which, thankfully for all of us involved, had twelve indoor courts, and a heated entryway-plus-administrative-area, leading to the locker rooms. It was far too cold outside to be playing tennis, and it was also threatening freezing rain. I would have to be exceptionally careful not to trip on my way, lest I slip, fall, and need to find a lawyer of my own.
And so it was with the front desk and locker rooms behind me that I watched the NYU men's and women's tennis teams filter into the building. The first few arrivals quickly filed to the sides and stripped off heavy winter wear before turning to see the duo awaiting them: Jacques Canter, and myself. Beside us lay a folding table. Upon that folding table rested a single stack of paper, a can of tennis balls, twelve camcorders, five dozen blank tapes, thirty identically-labeled VHS tapes, and a large, hard-walled briefcase.
The contents of that table had cost many thousands of dollars. They would have cost more if not for Black Friday, so thank goodness for small mercies.
Once everybody had filed in, and the head coach came up to confirm with me that this was everyone, I blew into a small whistle I'd brought along to get everybody's attention. Well, not really to get their attention, Jacques and I had that already.
More to get the murmuring to quiet down.
"Good morning everybody," I began. "My name is Noa Schaefer, and I am an attorney. I'd wager more than a few of you recognize my companion here; this is Jacques Canter, the rightful winner of this year's US Open."
"The mutant cheater?"
"Who said that?" I asked, immediately looking over the assembled student athletes with a Look (trademark pending). Sure enough, the power of The Look (trademark pending) forced the speaker to the front. "And this is?" I asked the coach, who stood next to Jacques and me.
"Ricky," the college student said before his coach got a chance to answer.
"Alright then," I said. "Ricky. You called him the 'mutant cheater'." I reached behind me, took the can of tennis balls off the table, and walked forward a few paces. "Answer me this then. How did he cheat?"
"Huh?" Ricky asked, quite intelligently.
"I mean," I continued, opening up the can of tennis balls, pulling one out, putting the lid back on, and tossing it behind me to Jacques. "I know how I, specifically, would have cheated."
I flicked out a hand, called on my magic, and sparked a small orb of light into being. Pretty much everybody flinched at the display, even as all I did was take the light and bend it around the tennis ball, which had the fun effect of guiding all other light around it as well, and left me with a near-invisible tennis ball in my hand.
"This is how I would cheat," I said, holding out my hand so everybody could, well, not see the almost-invisible tennis ball. "But that's me. So how did Jacques Canter cheat, Ricky?"
I received no answer. The seconds ticked by, and still no words were forthcoming from the young student athlete I'd put on the spot.
"How about the rest of the class?" I asked. "Can any of you tell me how the mutant cheater Jacques Canter used his powers to cheat?"
Once again, silence.
"I didn't think so."
I tossed the invisible tennis ball in my hand upward ever so slightly, turned around to walk back towards the table. When the ball hit the floor, the glamour I'd placed on it shattered into fragments of rainbow static, drawing sharp gasps and hisses of surprise from the students.
"Ladies and gentlemen, today I am putting forward a challenge." I approached the table and pulled the briefcase off of it, holding it in front of me. "In the official announcement from the Association of Tennis Professionals that stripped my client of his title and banned him from the sport, the organization cited Boris Becker's statements. In those statements, Becker pointed out five specific points that my client won, and said that the five shots he made were, and I quote, 'impossible to make without using his mutant powers'. I disagree."
I popped the latches on the briefcase, grabbed it by one handle, and let the briefcase fall open.
Bundles of cold hard cash fell out and scattered across the floor, hundred-dollar bills bound together with paper bands.
"On the table behind me are camcorders, blank video tapes, video tapes with the full Becker v. Canter finals of the US Open, and templates to write reports," I told them. Some part of me was surprised that none of them had lunged for the cash littering the floor.
Another part of me rationalized this failure in one of two ways: either they were shocked into inaction, or they were too scared of the mutant to make a go for it.
"My challenge to you is this: I want you to partner up and work together to recreate each and every one of these so-called 'impossible' shots, and I want it on video. For each and every successful recreation of one of my client's 'impossible' shots, and an accompanying report filled out, I will award five thousand dollars to both of the athletes involved." My smile turned downright feral. "For those of you who are still trying to process that: if you manage to recreate all five shots, then you will get twenty. Five. Thousand. Dollars."
I dropped the briefcase on the ground. About half of the athletes jumped at the sound.
"You have until the opening day of the Australian Open to undertake this challenge!" I yelled. "I trust I don't need to tell a team of collegiate tennis players when that is, no? Camcorders and blank video tapes are on the table behind me, one camcorder for each court available. Now hop to it!" I said, clapping my hands.
Ricky, the student who'd first been called out, impressed me by being the first to step up. After him, a trickle turned into a flood, and soon, nothing was left on the table behind me. Amazingly, however, all of the money was still left on the floor in front of me.
I guessed they just didn't want to risk tangling with a mutant.
"You know you could be out most of a million on this, right?" The team's coach murmured this from behind me, even as I knelt down to collect the money and put it back in the briefcase.
"I honestly hope so!" I replied, chipper as ever. "Consider this an investment, Coach."
"Into what?" The coach asked.
"Something oh so simple, dear sir."
I clicked the briefcase closed, and turned to flash the coach a smile, full to the brim with too many teeth.
"Coffin nails."
Chag Pesach Sameach!
Have I been making it a bit of a tradition to post chapters during major Jewish holidays? Well, yes.
Has it been on purpose?... Also yes.
For people wondering why Jameson is being such a good dude here, well, I just laid down the thread for a subplot. I wonder who knows their Spider-Man lore well enough to figure out what has been set into motion... or possibly averted? Who knows!
Also, I finally had a chance to go and really show everybody one of Noa's major character flaws. I'm honestly a little disappointed in myself for not having made it all that evident just yet. Then again? Given how plot-development-heavy everything has been, and how much work I had to do to characterize everybody else, I figure I can let the main character's foibles slip in the short term.
And if you can put a definitive label on this character flaw, you may have an internet cookie.
Anywho. If you enjoyed what you're reading, and are feeling at all generous with your tax refund, here is, as usual, a link to my Ko-fi page. (Unfortunately the tax man came by and told me that I owed money, which... phooey.)
Hope everybody has a wonderful Passover, an excellent Good Friday, or just the start of a nice weekend!
(Now if you'll excuse me, I have some bread to shovel down my gullet before sundown...)
Have I been making it a bit of a tradition to post chapters during major Jewish holidays? Well, yes.
Has it been on purpose?... Also yes.
For people wondering why Jameson is being such a good dude here, well, I just laid down the thread for a subplot. I wonder who knows their Spider-Man lore well enough to figure out what has been set into motion... or possibly averted? Who knows!
Also, I finally had a chance to go and really show everybody one of Noa's major character flaws. I'm honestly a little disappointed in myself for not having made it all that evident just yet. Then again? Given how plot-development-heavy everything has been, and how much work I had to do to characterize everybody else, I figure I can let the main character's foibles slip in the short term.
And if you can put a definitive label on this character flaw, you may have an internet cookie.
Anywho. If you enjoyed what you're reading, and are feeling at all generous with your tax refund, here is, as usual, a link to my Ko-fi page. (Unfortunately the tax man came by and told me that I owed money, which... phooey.)
Hope everybody has a wonderful Passover, an excellent Good Friday, or just the start of a nice weekend!
(Now if you'll excuse me, I have some bread to shovel down my gullet before sundown...)
Chapter Sixteen
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pound the Table
Chapter Sixteen
Monday, January 22, 1990
I had only just finished filling out and signing my first check (forty-five thousand dollars, two more of that same denomination to go) when my office phone rang. A glance up at the phone showed it was my direct extension, as opposed to a call transferred from Sophie's desk, which currently meant there were only four people it could be.
So, I picked up the handset, held the speaker about an inch away from my horn, and spoke.
"Noa Schaefer speaking," I said. No need for the full 'law office of Noa H. Schaefer' when they were calling the back line, after all. They already knew who was on the other end.
"Just got a call that the check for my Yankees season tickets was being shredded, and I may need to write a new one for next year," Sam Lieberman's voice greeted me from the other end. "You know, if you were going to ruin sports for the year, a little warning would've been nice? I had two hundred on the Yankees to win the World Series this year."
"You make that same bet every year, Sam," I told him, leaning back in my chair as I played with the phone's spiral cord. "And need I remind you that my Mets won more recently?"
"We don't talk about Eighty-Six," Sam said.
"The year the Bad Guys won," I said with fondness. "That was a good year."
"And this one's lookin' like shit without my baseball," Sam groused. "Just had to raise a stink in the press, didn't ya Noa. Can't go one case without the spotlight, I swear to God." Despite Sam's choice of words, his tone was downright affectionate. Heck, he sounded proud.
"Turns out, if John Jonah Jameson likes you, it's not hard to get something on the front page," I said with a smirk. I still had a copy of that Bugle in my desk, fresh from the newsstand and ready to be framed once this case wrapped up. It was a bit presumptuous to send it out for framing now, but it was only a matter of time.
"And all that kvetching means we don't get sports," Sam groused. "NBA is on hiatus, NHL is on hiatus; hell, they're talkin' about whether they should move the [/I]Super Bowl back. And yes, I blame you."
"Wow, people who are at the peak of physical ability don't want to perform to that level if it means they lose their livelihood, and the people whose finances depend on that performance don't want to lose their money," I said, my total monotone signal enough to anybody how sarcastic I was being. "Who would have ever guessed."
"Anyone," Sam said, answering the rhetorical question. "But if this is the backlash, it's looking like you've got yet another big one on your hands—"
"Oh, one sec," I said to Sam, as I saw Sophie's hazy form become visible through the frosted glass. I put a hand over the mouthpiece as Sophie pushed the door open, eyes on the paper in Sophie's hands. "Fax?" I asked, hand outstretched.
"From federal court," she said. "Docket update on our case." She handed me the papers, about thirty pages in total.
"Thanks a dozen, Sophie," I said. Sophie nodded with a smile, then left my office and closed the door behind her. "Sorry about that Sam," I said into the handset, thumbing through the papers to see page numbers. Canter v. Becker, et al. sat front and center of the fax's cover page. "Docket report came in."
"You get assigned a judge yet?" Sam asked.
"You ask this before I even flip past the cover page," I said before doing exactly that. "Let's see, it's – oh my God yes!" I cheered, voice rising almost into a shriek at the end there, pumping a fist in triumph.
And then I remembered I was still on the phone.
"For the love of God, Noa, I get enough of that from the wife!" Sam griped.
"Sorry! Sorry," I said, only half meaning it. "But we got assigned to Judge Nolan!"
"... Nolan?" Sam asked. "Judge Harold Nolan? Longest serving black judge in the State of New York? The man who taught your trial advocacy class in law school?" Sam finished. "That Judge Nolan?"
"Co-taught NYU Law's trial advocacy course," I corrected, "but yes."
Sam's laughter came over the other line.
"Talk about a home court advantage," he said, and I could just picture his smirk in my mind's eye.
"Indeed," I said, flipping through the pages. "And ooh, motion for an expedited discovery phase and expedited trial? I'll take those… hmm," I hummed, flipping to the last motion. "This last one, though… no thank you."
"Motion for a bench trial?" Sam asked, voice dry.
"Yup," I said, popping the 'p'.
"Of fuckin' course," he said. "That one ain't gonna fly. Oh – check something for me. Waldorf still servin' as counsel for Nike?"
"Uh… one sec?" I flipped back up to the earlier pages, and looked through the notices of appearance for the various attorneys in the case. "Yep, Alastair Waldorf, representing Nike. Why do you ask?"
"Word got around, that filthy schmuck has been… mouthing off in the lounges," Sam said. "Do every Italian, Irishman, and fellow Jew in New York a favor: take him to the cleaners."
"Oh, don't you worry, my dear Mr. Lieberman," I said, letting a shark-like grin spread across my face. "I intend to wring out every last drop."
Monday, February 26, 1990
Public pressure was a very good way to grease the wheels of the US justice system. A bureaucracy that usually ran at a snail's pace blazed through all of the various issues that would normally crop up in absolute record time.
Believe me, 'within two months of filing' was the fastest I had ever seen a case go to trial. Something told me that having the team owners, players, and commissioners of all of the major US sports leagues watching this case with bated breath was reason enough to get things rolling.
That, and the lost revenue across the country as professional sports shuddered to a complete halt.
Attempts to settle had been made by various parties to the case. Nike was the first to offer, putting forth a lowball settlement that would also have allowed the company to almost completely maintain face. Becker's offer came next, complete with a press conference with a public rescission of his statements, and turning the US Open trophy back over to its rightful owner: himself.
These offers, along with all of the others, were rejected. Jacques wanted his day in court, and he wanted everybody to see it.
Our limo service brought us to the underground garage at the courthouse, and my decision for us to arrive an hour and a half early allowed us to enter completely unmolested. We had made enough of a kerfuffle in the press that the media's attention was squarely on our opponents, and not in a kind way. The best thing we could do was slip under the radar and let the sharks circle.
When our foes finally made it into the courtroom, the sweat at their necks and the general discomfiture with which the various defendants sat was sign enough that our trick had worked. And that I would owe Jameson a holiday basket, most likely.
"All rise for the Honorable Harold T. Nolan," the bailiff announced. Jaques and I got to our feet immediately, and I had to hold back a smirk as eyes fell on my attire for the day — my one pantsuit. The one with the tail hole.
And wouldn't you know it, but the chairs at counsel's table had an opening between the seat and the back.
Judge Nolan entered the courtroom, an absolutely massive mug of steaming jasmine tea in one hand, a notepad and fountain pen in the other. He sat himself at the bench, took a loud, deep slurp of his tea, pulled his chair further up, and clasped his hands.
"You may be seated," he said, and we complied. "Are there any final motions before we seat the jury?" Silence greeted the judge's question. Well, aside from one person coughing in the gallery. "Very well. Please rise as we seat the jury."
And with that, we all stood once more as twelve people filed into the courtroom.
Now, civil court only required six jurors, and most courts hewed strongly to that bare minimum, as inconveniencing any more people than that was simply too inefficient for even the vagaries of bureaucracy to allow. However, when a case became high-profile enough, a judge could decide to seat a larger jury. Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure simply stated that you could have no fewer than six, but no more than twelve.
Fittingly, Judge Nolan decided that a case that had paralyzed all professional sports in the country demanded the full roster of twelve.
And four alternates. Just in case.
The jury we'd selected was a bit of a mixed bag. We had a pair of career corporate types that were clearly inclined to side with Nike, Adidas, and Wilson, but a simple question of "Mets or Yankees?" had been enough to reveal something very important to me: Don Mattingly and Willie Randolph were singled out by name, hinting that these people understood the value of a single player's performance.
(Also, I was of the opinion that both had withheld some information that might have disqualified them for cause so that they could get some insider information for their portfolios. And if the defense didn't want to say anything, well…)
The crown jewel of my jury, though? A new doctor, being given a much-needed reprieve from his internship, who would have gone on to college baseball if not for a subpar result from Tommy John surgery. Oh yes, he would be one to watch.
New doctor juror was the last to be seated, and his eyes locked onto Jacques instantly, sizing him up.
Perfect.
"Does the plaintiff wish to offer an opening statement at this time?" Judge Nolan asked.
"We would, your Honor," I said, standing from my seat. "Permission to approach?"
"Granted," he said.
"And permission to prepare my approved demonstratives?" I asked.
"Granted," Judge Nolan said. "Bailiff, if you could assist Counsel?"
The bailiff gave a nod, and he and I disappear off to the side, away from the jury's field of view, before returning with… a pair of big CRT televisions on carts, VHS players hooked up to them, both with large extension cords trailing behind them off to the back of the courtroom. This greatly limited the amount of room I had to maneuver in the well of the court, but that was a technique usually used to command the jury's attention, and lead it where I wanted.
What I put on TV would do the job for me.
A quick thing about demonstratives – if it was admissible as evidence, it was something you could use as a demonstrative. And given that we had already cleared all evidence for admission in the discovery and pretrial process, everything I had to show was already declared properly kosher for the court.
Before I began, though, I did a quick check to see if both VHS players were on and the tapes loaded up, and the other papers I needed sat atop them. Only then, once I was certain everything was ready the way I wanted it, did I turn to the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," I said, a smile on my face as I made eye contact with as many jurors in turn as I could. "My name is Noa Schaefer. I am here today to represent Mr. Jacques Canter, the rightful winner of the 1989 US Open, one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I call Jacques the 'rightful' winner because that is what he is – the man who, by right, won the tournament, and deserves the title. However, Jacques does not have his title, or his trophy. Those were taken from him. Why?
"Because according to the man he defeated, Jacques is, apparently, a mutant who used his power to cheat." I paused, sighed, and shook my head. "Okay, that seems like it should be a fairly simple accusation to fend off, right? Well, unfortunately, no. There's only two ways to actually prove if someone is or isn't a mutant," I said, reaching to pull several sheets of paper off of the cart. "The first is a simple cheek swab, stained and analyzed in a lab. The problem is that the specific combo of reagents you need to get that stain to stick doesn't work very well. I have here ten of that test, using a sample provided by yours truly." I flipped through the papers, walking in front of the jury. "Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, aaaaand negative.
"There we go. Ten tests that all say I'm not a mutant. But of course…"
I snapped my fingers, and my glamour shattered. Scales, horns, and tail, all became visible in a flash of rainbow. Several members of the jury jumped, and I could practically feel all eyes locked onto me.
"Well, the proof is right here," I said, waving down at myself. "The test is garbage." I turned completely away from the jury to place the papers back onto the cart, letting them see where my tail poked out of the hole tailored into my pantsuit before I turned back towards them. "There is one other test, but, eh…"
I grimaced here, wringing my hands.
"Would it tell you I'm a mutant? Yes… but it would send me to the hospital. And there's a very real chance that when I left that hospital, it would be in a body bag." I frowned as I looked at the jury, eyes falling squarely on our newbie doctor. "Administering that test? Well, that's a one-way ticket to losing your medical license. Which means that unfortunately, medicine can't tell us anything.
"So where do we look instead?" I asked, rhetorically. "Well, thankfully, we don't have to look far. When Jacques Canter was stripped of his title for being a rascally, cheating mutant, the Association of Tennis Professionals helpfully told us that they based their decision on the five points Jacques scored that were, per Boris Becker, several other tennis professionals, and all officials involved, quite literally impossible."
At this, I turned on the first television, the one on the jury's left. And silence ensued.
"... my apologies," I said. "The TV needs to warm up a bit." A small, muted chuckle rang out from the jury, and a quick glance showed me that the CRT was ready to go. "Now, where was I?... oh yes. The impossible shots. As you can see!"
I picked up the VCR's remote from the cart, and pressed play.
"First: a sprinting backhand return, glancing off of the net just perfectly as to land just barely inside Becker's side of the court." I probably owed Joshua a raise; somehow, he managed to perfectly record this VHS tape so that we got the run up to the shot, and then just the shot itself, repeated three times.
"Second: a drop shot, right at the net, that bounces off to the middle of nowhere, delivered immediately after a serve." This one came after Becker returned Jacques' serve, and even with Becker almost at the halfway point of the court, he couldn't predict where the ball was going to bounce; in fact, the damn thing bounced directly over his racket to land, for the second time, on Becker's side of the court. The part that was interesting, here, is that Jacques went into a dead sprint the instant his serve finished, in full anticipation of that exact kind of return. And Jacques punished it beautifully – but if his prediction had been wrong, he would have been the one punished.
It was less the shot that was the problem on this one, per Becker's account, and more the read. Which was a fact that ran contrary to the rest of Becker's accusations, but...
"Third: a blind return volley with Jacques' back to the net, which bounced back over the net and onto Jacques' side on its own." Everybody in the jury gave a full-body cringe at the sheer volume of Jacques' tennis shoes squeaking against the court. A quick look at my client showed that the man himself was reddening, if just a little. But this shot was crazy: Jacques wasn't facing the ball or the net; he just swung his racket blindly, and it managed to not just hit the ball, but put just the right spin on it.
"Fourth: a shot from between the legs, and arcing right over his opponent's head." This one was a treat to watch, and even on the crummy resolution of a CRT monitor, you could pinpoint the exact moment Jacques realized he had too much momentum, bled as much possible by throwing out a leg… and had still gone too far to wind up for a normal swing. So he swung a shot between his legs, and it worked.
"And last, but not least: an extremely wide, back-to-the-net backhand shot that required practically jumping into the crowd, and arcing the ball around the net to land." This one was, quite frankly, ridiculous, and was the shot I'd been most willing to call bullshit on.
It was also, hilariously enough, the one that every single student athlete duplicated.
With that last shot finished, I paused the TV, and faced the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are the five shots. These are the five feats that Boris Becker stated are impossible. Corroborating this claim are six other professional tennis players, all seeded in the top sixteen. They each provided a report, stating how and why, in their opinion as tennis professionals, these five shots were validly considered 'impossible'. And just to drive that impossibility home, let's take another look at them, shall we?"
Using the remote, I rewound the VCR on the first TV right back to where we started.
And then, I turned on the other television, whose VCR was also ready. And this one had spliced footage from five separate students, each reproducing one of the five shots.
"Let's go over this again, shall we?" I picked up the remote for the other television, and pressed play on them at the same time. "One, the sprinting backhand return. Two, the post-serve drop shot. Three, the blind return volley. Fourth, the last-ditch between-the-legs shot. And fifth, the crowd-jumping backhand."
All five shots played in sequence. The five from Jacques Canter, and from the students.
"Seven different professional tennis players, five tennis officials, and four sports analysts all agree that these five shots were impossible to make without the assistance of a mutant power," I said, listing off the types of experts that had provided a report to the various defendants. "Sixteen experts on the sport all agree that in order to do this, Mr. Canter must have cheated, and he must have used a mutant power to do so. But that's their opinion.
"And in this courtroom, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the only opinion that matters? Is yours."
And with that, I shut the televisions off, motioned to the bailiff that he was free to retrieve them, and went back to my seat.
It was an unorthodox opening statement. I didn't say what we would be proving. I didn't mention who would be speaking to prove our case. I didn't bring up the other professional athletes that I'd initially planned to – Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Mohammed Ali, Wayne Gretzky. I said none of that. Instead, I kept it simple, stupid, and relied on a creative interpretation of my favorite legal principle: res ipsa loquitur. That was to say? The proof could speak for itself.
And a picture was worth a thousand words.
Thursday, March 15, 1990
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" Judge Nolan asked.
It had been an utterly wild few weeks. Of the sixteen experts that the combined defendants had lined up initially, only three agreed to testify, and none of them were the professional tennis players who had initially gone to bat when Becker asked them. As it turned out? None of them wanted to follow a trio of Division III college athletes onto the same stand, and try to say that no, the feats of athleticism that college kids had pulled off were, in fact, impossible. The experts that did take the stand fudged their testimony to say that the shots were impossible when done legitimately, and tried to cast shade on the integrity of NYU's students..
But I had over a dozen separate students, men and women, who had all successfully recreated at least one of Jacques' "impossible" returns. If two or three students cheated, that was believable, sure. But when you got above five, it started to look more likely that the initial showing was, in fact, the real fucking deal.
"We have, your Honor." The jury foreman, the newbie doctor, stood up and handed the jury form to the bailiff.
The bailiff, for his part, handed the form to the clerk of court.
"If all parties would please rise and face the jury as it delivers its verdict?" Judge Nolan asked.
We got to our feet, and turned to face the jury. Not by much, as plaintiffs we were closer to the jury box, but enough.
"In the case of Jacques Canter v. Boris Becker, the United States Tennis Association, the Association of Tennis Professionals, Nike Inc., Adidas AG, and Wilson Sports – we the jury find the defendants liable for all counts of the complaint."
"Yes!" Jacques half-hissed, half-yelled next to me, arms pumping down as he visibly restrained himself from jumping for joy in the courtroom. Across the aisle, Boris Becker deflated and slumped down into his seat, while the attorneys looked wholly unsurprised.
All evidence had been in the record before the trial began. We all knew how this was going to go. The only reason it hadn't settled was that Jacques refused to let this go quietly.
"We the jury hereby award Jacques Canter, the plaintiff, forty million dollars in damages."
This time, though, my eyes actually did go wide. Our complaint had listed that much as the top end we asked for, but I had assumed that we would never get anywhere even close to that! I expected something closer to five million, maybe ten if we got lucky…
But forty million!?
Jacques reached over, leaned down, and hugged me, shattering my glamour to pieces. But I didn't care, because Jacques also picked me up and spun me around a little, knocking our chairs away.
And I allowed that, because my brain was still whirring at the numbers. I'd taken this case under contingency, and used a bog-standard contingency arrangement of thirty percent.
In just four months, I had made twelve million dollars.
Oh. My God.
"The Court would like to thank the jury for their service," Judge Nolan said, turning towards the jury. "Members of the jury, you are dismissed. Bailiff, if you would?"
What was I supposed to do with that much money?... okay, actually, at least a third of that was going to be taken by taxes. But that still left me at basically double my previous net worth. The mortgage on my condo? Taken care of. Rent for the rest of the office's lease? Handled. Oh God, I needed to set up some kind of bonus for both Joshua and Sophie, they had gone above and beyond, I needed to find a loophole to dive through so I wasn't paying them legal fees, non-attorneys can't partake in legal fees… mid-year bonus! Mid-year bonus, that's what I would do!
"If I could have your attention, please?"
The banging of Judge Nolan's gavel brought me back to the present.
"I do my best to offer the jury's award of damages as much respect as possible," Judge Nolan said. "But I do often find that when numbers get large enough, jurors simply lose perspective. In any ordinary situation, with even the greatest of celebrities, forty million would be more than enough. But this is not an ordinary situation. And these are no ordinary defendants. These six defendants are each jointly and severally liable for the full forty million – that is to say, one defendant can pay the full amount, and then sue the remaining defendants for repayment of their respective shares. And I guarantee that this is what will happen, because to one defendant in particular, forty million dollars, while an immense sum on paper, would just be another write-off on their taxes.
"Last year," Judge Nolan continued, "Nike's total revenue was one billion, seven-hundred and ten million dollars. The company's profits were one hundred and sixty-seven million dollars. Despite being embroiled in a legal battle over terminating Mr. Canter's sponsorship, and publicly stating that Mr. Becker's defamatory statements were the grounds for doing so, Nike's stock value has continued to rise. I would not be surprised if Nike's revenue broke the two billion mark this year.
"Compared to that, forty million dollars is two percent of their expected revenue. Just… the cost of doing business."
Judge Nolan leaned in closer to the microphone on his bench.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if the penalty for such gross misconduct is a fine, then it only serves its purpose if the fine is substantial. A mere two percent of one of six parties' projected yearly revenue is not substantial enough. And I will not disrespect this Court by leaving its judgments as simply 'the cost of doing business'."
My eyes went wide. Was… was he…?
"Mr. Canter." Judge Nolan turned towards our table, where we still stood. "Does plaintiff consent to grant this court the power of additur?"
"P-plaintiff consents, your Honor!" I practically yelled, my heart beating so fast I started stumbling over my words.
"Very well." Judge Nolan turned towards the defendant's table. "As a baseline: Mr. Canter is being awarded 3.7 million dollars in compensatory damages, from seized prize money and lost income from terminated sponsorship agreements. The original jury award included 36.3 million dollars in punitive damages. And that is simply… insufficient. Therefore, I hereby increase the punitive damages award to two hundred and fifty million dollars, for a total award of 253.7 million dollars."
Oh.
Oh my God.
Oh my fucking God.
I fell back into my chair, suddenly boneless. Beside me, Jacques fell back into his chair, small, hysterical giggles bubbling forth.
"Y-your Honor—!" Across the aisle, Alastair Waldorf, Nike's lead attorney, surged to his feet, his ghost-gray face framed by oily blonde hair. "Defense—"
"Whatever you were about to motion for, it is denied," Judge Nolan said. "Award has been entered into the record. I hereby find all parties jointly and severally liable for the full 253.7 million dollars, to be deposited into an escrow account controlled by counsel for the Plaintiff by the end of the month. You can squabble and sue over who owes what portion in a separate suit, as I will not have you denying a wronged man his much deserved due." The judge brought his gavel down. "Court is adjourned."
Jacques and I dragged ourselves to our feet as Judge Nolan left the courtroom. Once he left, we both slumped back down into our chairs, minds whirring in identical disbelief.
Thirty percent… Seventy-five. MILLION. Dollars.
"Champagne?" Jacques asked, voice barely a whisper.
"... champagne," I said, a hysterical giggle building into a joyous belly laugh.
My client pulled me into a hug, and I couldn't help but reciprocate, laughing all the way.
Friday, May 18, 1990
What would you do if you suddenly won the lottery?
Okay, actually, no. That didn't quite work – I hadn't won the lottery.
But I was fairly certain that seventy-five million dollars was close enough!
My mortgage? Paid. The office's lease? All of the funds for my remaining year and change of the lease, set aside in a separate savings account.
My wardrobe? Filled to the brim with brand new tail holes. I'd kept most of my old skirts and skirt suits, they still worked just fine. But I now had a half dozen skirt suits with a tail hole in the skirt, another five pantsuits with tail holes, slacks with tail holes, casual clothes with tail holes… I had even commissioned some special hosiery.
Let me tell you – it was utterly liberating to comfortably wear a pair of blue jeans for the first time in… oh God, I actually could not remember how many years it had been. Now don't get me wrong, I overall preferred skirts and dresses, they were more comfortable to me overall, but having more options was wonderful.
And having those options was particularly nice right now, as I walked into Madison Square Garden, my tail poking out the back of a pair of capris-leg pants, paired with, of all things, a New York Rangers jersey.
Judge Nolan's full written verdict in the Canter case set a very important precedent: to use plain language, if you want to make an accusation of using a mutant power for your personal benefit, you had best have the proof to back it up. Two months after they shuddered to a dead halt, sports came roaring right back, with some of the best play we'd seen in years.
That two month delay, serendipitously, meant that for once, I got to attend a playoff hockey game on my birthday.
Yes. It was my birthday. Today, May 18th, I was… thirty-four years old.
As of today, I was officially in my mid-30's. And yet, I thought with a quick glance at my reflection before putting my makeup compact away, I barely looked a day over twenty-five.
At least, I hoped so.
I stepped off the third escalator and onto the premiere level of the Garden, and went searching for the right section. It took walking around about a third of the stadium's outer ring (and dodging far too many people that thought they could speed walk while carrying three beers) until I arrived at the luxury box, showed my ticket to the usher outside, and walked in.
Cold beer and chilled white wine sat in a large ice bucket on a counter, alongside a crudite platter, cold cuts, and sandwich rolls. On the other counter, there were some hot food options – chicken wings, sliders, pigs in a blanket, and something else I couldn't quite pinpoint.
What mattered more was the only other man sitting in the box. A black man, nearly bald, with what little hair he had left pure, snowy white. He wore a Rangers jersey that still had the stiffness of a brand new purchase.
"You know, I'm amazed that I never gave hockey a chance," he said as he heard me approach. "It's always football, basketball, baseball. You never hear much about hockey. I think it has to do with all the ice skating."
"Something tells me the sport would get more fans if they heard an old adage I'm fond of," I offered, taking the seat beside him.
"Oh?" Judge Harold Nolan turned to me, an amused smile on his face. "And what would that be?"
"Simple," I said with a grin. "I went to the fights, and a hockey game broke out."
Judge Nolan gave me a grin of his own, then reached to give me a gentle one-armed hug, very careful not to press against my horns, hidden as they were beneath my glamour.
"It's always a pleasure to see my favorite students doing well," the judge said, leaning back as the Garden went dark, and the announcer began to introduce the Capitols first, then the Rangers.
"You tell that to every former student who ends up winning before you in court," I said, a bit of joking in my tone.
"Why I never!" Judge Nolan said, putting a hand to his chest in mock affront. "Who told you such lies?"
"Jake," I said, starting to list off the names of old classmates that I knew had also gone before the judge. "Ashton. Andrew. Mildred. Michael. Zachary. Me. Do I need to go on?"
"Oh, you wound me, Noa," he said with a laugh. "So, I will be the first to admit I am a neophyte here. Would you care to give me the rundown on what to look for?"
"Well, the puck is a piece of frozen rubber that—"
"I don't think you need to go over what a puck, stick, or skates are," Judge Nolan said with a laugh.
"If you insist," I said with a giggle of my own, and went about actually giving a halfway decent explanation of hockey's rules, mostly as they came up.
The offsides rule was the first to come up, followed by the line rule. Penalties were always fun to talk about, and even in just the first period, we actually saw a proper five for fighting. High-sticking was one that Judge Nolan understood immediately, but a look at how thick the players' gloves were left him a little baffled at how a holding penalty could even come about.
Cross-checking, though?
"So it's a tackle," Judge Nolan said.
"... no," I said again, pushing up my glasses as I pinched the bridge of my nose. "It's closer to a screen in basketball than a tackle in football. How did you even get a tackle out of that descriptor?"
And then there were the similar ones.
"So if you trip somebody by hooking them or slashing them, it's just tripping," he said, "and it's not also hooking and/or slashing?"
"Nope! Just the most obvious one," I said. "Plus, keep in mind the refs are always going to be half blind. So…"
"Aren't they always?" Judge Nolan asked, and laughed at his own joke.
Save for the occasional explanation, the first period went rather well. The Rangers were up two goals to none, and were playing circles around the Capitols defense. That said, from what I knew, this wasn't going to last – the Rangers had only one line that was actually good on the offense, and their second and third lines were just middling on both offense and defense. The Rangers absolutely lived by the idea that the best defense was a good offense, and it had worked rather well through the season… but the playoffs bug had a way of making people push too hard and run out of steam.
But once the period ended, and the break between them began, I turned towards the good judge.
"Not that I'm ungrateful for the birthday present," I started, "but I do have to ask, Judge Nolan: why did you invite me here?"
"Harold is fine, Noa," Judge Nolan said – Harold said. "You're right to be cautious. Yes, you are still one of my favorites, but you're also correct that I have an ulterior motive."
"You need a favor," I surmised, to which Harold nodded. "And as for why you're asking me, it's because I'm both a solo practitioner and have recently had a substantial financial windfall. Partly thanks to you, I'll admit."
"On the money," he said. "An old war buddy of mine from Korea is in a spot of legal trouble. I was able to pull a few strings and call in favors with our new District Attorney to keep charges from being pressed, but there isn't much I can do to stop a civil suit."
"And since you're a judge, the most you can do is offer basic advice, like 'retain an attorney'." I took a deep breath, and sighed. "Okay. What is your friend looking at, here?"
"The civil claim is for intentional torts of assault and battery," the judge told me. "Plaintiff had to go to the hospital, and needed some dental work. When he relayed the specifics, I told him he may have a case for defense of other."
Ah. I saw it now.
This was also part of the reason Judge Nolan wanted me.
"And the third party?" I asked.
"The plaintiff's son," he said.
"And who is the plaintiff?" I pushed. "Who is the plaintiff who can afford to push a civil suit when the DA refuses to press charges?"
"And there's the rub," he said. "The plaintiff is none other than Norman Osborn."
… well, shit.
"So this is why Osborn with a shiner was on the front page of the Bugle back in early February, I suppose," I half-asked, half said. "Okay. Harold, I may be good, but I am not 'win against a billionaire's fleet of thirty lawyers in open court' good. I don't think anybody is, really."
"This isn't a case that needs winning," he said, placatingly. "Just slowed down and calmed until a settlement can be reached. I won't expect a miracle, but I just don't want my friend and his boy out on the streets. There are too many veterans left sleeping on sidewalks already."
Judge Nolan was a canny one, I had to admit. He was largely responsible for my amplified wealth, he had gifted me the ticket here for my birthday, and nastiest of all, he had put the exact kind of case in front of me that I may not have wanted, but probably needed.
The last time a self-defense or defense-of-other case came before me, with overwhelming odds before against me, I had just barely not pulled out the win. Hell, I was still working on it; St. John's appeal was due for oral arguments in early August, and I was even now soliciting amicus brief after amicus brief. I knew that win was mine, and I was going to get it. I needed to get it.
And here was a chance at the exact catharsis I so desperately coveted, dropped right into my lap.
What other answer was there, really?
"Okay," I said. "I'll help your friend, pro bono. But again, I make zero promises," I warned. "I'll try to keep this out of court, get this as low as possible. But I'm no miracle maker."
"That's all I ask, Noa," Harold said. "Thank you, truly."
"Don't thank me yet," I said, reaching into my purse to pull out my planner. "I have nothing set for Monday, so I'll try to get this started then." I paused. "I realize you still haven't told me my new client's name."
"... did I really…?" Judge Nolan shrugged, with a light chuckle. "Ah, well. My friend's an old widower from Queens, name of Ben Parker…"
Chapter Sixteen
So, a note that should be obvious to y'all by now: this case is massively accelerated compared to what a similar such case would look like in real life.
For some comparison as to how much faster we're going? Well, this is a defamation case, so let's use the low-hanging fruit.
Johnny Depp's defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard was filed back in 2019. Three years later, the case is receiving its closing arguments today, May 27, 2022. That is three years from filing to trial.
Now, in fairness: that case had way, way, WAY more discovery involved than the one in this story. This is a story before the internet, before social media, before digital photography, etcetera. The difference in quantities of evidence is several orders of magnitude, which obviously translates to several orders of magnitude less time required to actually get there.
That said, a case like this would have taken at least six months to reach trial. And that's just for the facts.
I didn't want that. I didn't want to have to skip eight months just to get to a trial phase, and then through yet another year of arguments and deliberations over the damages phase. That is the Doylist reason why this trial is going several times faster than a trial of this scope realistically would in our world.
As for the Watsonian reason? Well… read on.
For some comparison as to how much faster we're going? Well, this is a defamation case, so let's use the low-hanging fruit.
Johnny Depp's defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard was filed back in 2019. Three years later, the case is receiving its closing arguments today, May 27, 2022. That is three years from filing to trial.
Now, in fairness: that case had way, way, WAY more discovery involved than the one in this story. This is a story before the internet, before social media, before digital photography, etcetera. The difference in quantities of evidence is several orders of magnitude, which obviously translates to several orders of magnitude less time required to actually get there.
That said, a case like this would have taken at least six months to reach trial. And that's just for the facts.
I didn't want that. I didn't want to have to skip eight months just to get to a trial phase, and then through yet another year of arguments and deliberations over the damages phase. That is the Doylist reason why this trial is going several times faster than a trial of this scope realistically would in our world.
As for the Watsonian reason? Well… read on.
So, get to scene 3 first.
Okay.
…
Read the scene? Perfect. You can open this second spoiler now.
Okay.
…
Read the scene? Perfect. You can open this second spoiler now.
So. Additur.
This is, very obviously NOT how additur (the choice of a judge to increase the monetary award of a jury) actually works. The damages phase of a trial is often just as long, if not longer, than the rest of the trial itself. And additur is an extremely rare thing to have happen. The opposite, remittitur, is far more common.
Now, if we're being completely honest, additur is just a version of remittitur -- remittitur is the process by which a judge corrects a clearly unfair jury award, and this is usually by pushing the number down to something more realistic. An example is the McDonalds hot coffee case – go look it up, there's enough misinformation about this case that you should probably just go read all the info on it yourself.
Here, we have an additur. That is to say – the judge decided that the award was too low.
This kind of thing is incredibly rare. It's there to shock you, to grab your attention, because I'm trying to impress upon y'all that this is not just a throwaway mini-arc to solve the financial issues problem for the rest of the fic.
This is just another step in a much larger, overarching issue.
This is, very obviously NOT how additur (the choice of a judge to increase the monetary award of a jury) actually works. The damages phase of a trial is often just as long, if not longer, than the rest of the trial itself. And additur is an extremely rare thing to have happen. The opposite, remittitur, is far more common.
Now, if we're being completely honest, additur is just a version of remittitur -- remittitur is the process by which a judge corrects a clearly unfair jury award, and this is usually by pushing the number down to something more realistic. An example is the McDonalds hot coffee case – go look it up, there's enough misinformation about this case that you should probably just go read all the info on it yourself.
Here, we have an additur. That is to say – the judge decided that the award was too low.
This kind of thing is incredibly rare. It's there to shock you, to grab your attention, because I'm trying to impress upon y'all that this is not just a throwaway mini-arc to solve the financial issues problem for the rest of the fic.
This is just another step in a much larger, overarching issue.
Monday, January 22, 1990
I had only just finished filling out and signing my first check (forty-five thousand dollars, two more of that same denomination to go) when my office phone rang. A glance up at the phone showed it was my direct extension, as opposed to a call transferred from Sophie's desk, which currently meant there were only four people it could be.
So, I picked up the handset, held the speaker about an inch away from my horn, and spoke.
"Noa Schaefer speaking," I said. No need for the full 'law office of Noa H. Schaefer' when they were calling the back line, after all. They already knew who was on the other end.
"Just got a call that the check for my Yankees season tickets was being shredded, and I may need to write a new one for next year," Sam Lieberman's voice greeted me from the other end. "You know, if you were going to ruin sports for the year, a little warning would've been nice? I had two hundred on the Yankees to win the World Series this year."
"You make that same bet every year, Sam," I told him, leaning back in my chair as I played with the phone's spiral cord. "And need I remind you that my Mets won more recently?"
"We don't talk about Eighty-Six," Sam said.
"The year the Bad Guys won," I said with fondness. "That was a good year."
"And this one's lookin' like shit without my baseball," Sam groused. "Just had to raise a stink in the press, didn't ya Noa. Can't go one case without the spotlight, I swear to God." Despite Sam's choice of words, his tone was downright affectionate. Heck, he sounded proud.
"Turns out, if John Jonah Jameson likes you, it's not hard to get something on the front page," I said with a smirk. I still had a copy of that Bugle in my desk, fresh from the newsstand and ready to be framed once this case wrapped up. It was a bit presumptuous to send it out for framing now, but it was only a matter of time.
"And all that kvetching means we don't get sports," Sam groused. "NBA is on hiatus, NHL is on hiatus; hell, they're talkin' about whether they should move the [/I]Super Bowl back. And yes, I blame you."
"Wow, people who are at the peak of physical ability don't want to perform to that level if it means they lose their livelihood, and the people whose finances depend on that performance don't want to lose their money," I said, my total monotone signal enough to anybody how sarcastic I was being. "Who would have ever guessed."
"Anyone," Sam said, answering the rhetorical question. "But if this is the backlash, it's looking like you've got yet another big one on your hands—"
"Oh, one sec," I said to Sam, as I saw Sophie's hazy form become visible through the frosted glass. I put a hand over the mouthpiece as Sophie pushed the door open, eyes on the paper in Sophie's hands. "Fax?" I asked, hand outstretched.
"From federal court," she said. "Docket update on our case." She handed me the papers, about thirty pages in total.
"Thanks a dozen, Sophie," I said. Sophie nodded with a smile, then left my office and closed the door behind her. "Sorry about that Sam," I said into the handset, thumbing through the papers to see page numbers. Canter v. Becker, et al. sat front and center of the fax's cover page. "Docket report came in."
"You get assigned a judge yet?" Sam asked.
"You ask this before I even flip past the cover page," I said before doing exactly that. "Let's see, it's – oh my God yes!" I cheered, voice rising almost into a shriek at the end there, pumping a fist in triumph.
And then I remembered I was still on the phone.
"For the love of God, Noa, I get enough of that from the wife!" Sam griped.
"Sorry! Sorry," I said, only half meaning it. "But we got assigned to Judge Nolan!"
"... Nolan?" Sam asked. "Judge Harold Nolan? Longest serving black judge in the State of New York? The man who taught your trial advocacy class in law school?" Sam finished. "That Judge Nolan?"
"Co-taught NYU Law's trial advocacy course," I corrected, "but yes."
Sam's laughter came over the other line.
"Talk about a home court advantage," he said, and I could just picture his smirk in my mind's eye.
"Indeed," I said, flipping through the pages. "And ooh, motion for an expedited discovery phase and expedited trial? I'll take those… hmm," I hummed, flipping to the last motion. "This last one, though… no thank you."
"Motion for a bench trial?" Sam asked, voice dry.
"Yup," I said, popping the 'p'.
"Of fuckin' course," he said. "That one ain't gonna fly. Oh – check something for me. Waldorf still servin' as counsel for Nike?"
"Uh… one sec?" I flipped back up to the earlier pages, and looked through the notices of appearance for the various attorneys in the case. "Yep, Alastair Waldorf, representing Nike. Why do you ask?"
"Word got around, that filthy schmuck has been… mouthing off in the lounges," Sam said. "Do every Italian, Irishman, and fellow Jew in New York a favor: take him to the cleaners."
"Oh, don't you worry, my dear Mr. Lieberman," I said, letting a shark-like grin spread across my face. "I intend to wring out every last drop."
Monday, February 26, 1990
Public pressure was a very good way to grease the wheels of the US justice system. A bureaucracy that usually ran at a snail's pace blazed through all of the various issues that would normally crop up in absolute record time.
Believe me, 'within two months of filing' was the fastest I had ever seen a case go to trial. Something told me that having the team owners, players, and commissioners of all of the major US sports leagues watching this case with bated breath was reason enough to get things rolling.
That, and the lost revenue across the country as professional sports shuddered to a complete halt.
Attempts to settle had been made by various parties to the case. Nike was the first to offer, putting forth a lowball settlement that would also have allowed the company to almost completely maintain face. Becker's offer came next, complete with a press conference with a public rescission of his statements, and turning the US Open trophy back over to its rightful owner: himself.
These offers, along with all of the others, were rejected. Jacques wanted his day in court, and he wanted everybody to see it.
Our limo service brought us to the underground garage at the courthouse, and my decision for us to arrive an hour and a half early allowed us to enter completely unmolested. We had made enough of a kerfuffle in the press that the media's attention was squarely on our opponents, and not in a kind way. The best thing we could do was slip under the radar and let the sharks circle.
When our foes finally made it into the courtroom, the sweat at their necks and the general discomfiture with which the various defendants sat was sign enough that our trick had worked. And that I would owe Jameson a holiday basket, most likely.
"All rise for the Honorable Harold T. Nolan," the bailiff announced. Jaques and I got to our feet immediately, and I had to hold back a smirk as eyes fell on my attire for the day — my one pantsuit. The one with the tail hole.
And wouldn't you know it, but the chairs at counsel's table had an opening between the seat and the back.
Judge Nolan entered the courtroom, an absolutely massive mug of steaming jasmine tea in one hand, a notepad and fountain pen in the other. He sat himself at the bench, took a loud, deep slurp of his tea, pulled his chair further up, and clasped his hands.
"You may be seated," he said, and we complied. "Are there any final motions before we seat the jury?" Silence greeted the judge's question. Well, aside from one person coughing in the gallery. "Very well. Please rise as we seat the jury."
And with that, we all stood once more as twelve people filed into the courtroom.
Now, civil court only required six jurors, and most courts hewed strongly to that bare minimum, as inconveniencing any more people than that was simply too inefficient for even the vagaries of bureaucracy to allow. However, when a case became high-profile enough, a judge could decide to seat a larger jury. Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure simply stated that you could have no fewer than six, but no more than twelve.
Fittingly, Judge Nolan decided that a case that had paralyzed all professional sports in the country demanded the full roster of twelve.
And four alternates. Just in case.
The jury we'd selected was a bit of a mixed bag. We had a pair of career corporate types that were clearly inclined to side with Nike, Adidas, and Wilson, but a simple question of "Mets or Yankees?" had been enough to reveal something very important to me: Don Mattingly and Willie Randolph were singled out by name, hinting that these people understood the value of a single player's performance.
(Also, I was of the opinion that both had withheld some information that might have disqualified them for cause so that they could get some insider information for their portfolios. And if the defense didn't want to say anything, well…)
The crown jewel of my jury, though? A new doctor, being given a much-needed reprieve from his internship, who would have gone on to college baseball if not for a subpar result from Tommy John surgery. Oh yes, he would be one to watch.
New doctor juror was the last to be seated, and his eyes locked onto Jacques instantly, sizing him up.
Perfect.
"Does the plaintiff wish to offer an opening statement at this time?" Judge Nolan asked.
"We would, your Honor," I said, standing from my seat. "Permission to approach?"
"Granted," he said.
"And permission to prepare my approved demonstratives?" I asked.
"Granted," Judge Nolan said. "Bailiff, if you could assist Counsel?"
The bailiff gave a nod, and he and I disappear off to the side, away from the jury's field of view, before returning with… a pair of big CRT televisions on carts, VHS players hooked up to them, both with large extension cords trailing behind them off to the back of the courtroom. This greatly limited the amount of room I had to maneuver in the well of the court, but that was a technique usually used to command the jury's attention, and lead it where I wanted.
What I put on TV would do the job for me.
A quick thing about demonstratives – if it was admissible as evidence, it was something you could use as a demonstrative. And given that we had already cleared all evidence for admission in the discovery and pretrial process, everything I had to show was already declared properly kosher for the court.
Before I began, though, I did a quick check to see if both VHS players were on and the tapes loaded up, and the other papers I needed sat atop them. Only then, once I was certain everything was ready the way I wanted it, did I turn to the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," I said, a smile on my face as I made eye contact with as many jurors in turn as I could. "My name is Noa Schaefer. I am here today to represent Mr. Jacques Canter, the rightful winner of the 1989 US Open, one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I call Jacques the 'rightful' winner because that is what he is – the man who, by right, won the tournament, and deserves the title. However, Jacques does not have his title, or his trophy. Those were taken from him. Why?
"Because according to the man he defeated, Jacques is, apparently, a mutant who used his power to cheat." I paused, sighed, and shook my head. "Okay, that seems like it should be a fairly simple accusation to fend off, right? Well, unfortunately, no. There's only two ways to actually prove if someone is or isn't a mutant," I said, reaching to pull several sheets of paper off of the cart. "The first is a simple cheek swab, stained and analyzed in a lab. The problem is that the specific combo of reagents you need to get that stain to stick doesn't work very well. I have here ten of that test, using a sample provided by yours truly." I flipped through the papers, walking in front of the jury. "Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, aaaaand negative.
"There we go. Ten tests that all say I'm not a mutant. But of course…"
I snapped my fingers, and my glamour shattered. Scales, horns, and tail, all became visible in a flash of rainbow. Several members of the jury jumped, and I could practically feel all eyes locked onto me.
"Well, the proof is right here," I said, waving down at myself. "The test is garbage." I turned completely away from the jury to place the papers back onto the cart, letting them see where my tail poked out of the hole tailored into my pantsuit before I turned back towards them. "There is one other test, but, eh…"
I grimaced here, wringing my hands.
"Would it tell you I'm a mutant? Yes… but it would send me to the hospital. And there's a very real chance that when I left that hospital, it would be in a body bag." I frowned as I looked at the jury, eyes falling squarely on our newbie doctor. "Administering that test? Well, that's a one-way ticket to losing your medical license. Which means that unfortunately, medicine can't tell us anything.
"So where do we look instead?" I asked, rhetorically. "Well, thankfully, we don't have to look far. When Jacques Canter was stripped of his title for being a rascally, cheating mutant, the Association of Tennis Professionals helpfully told us that they based their decision on the five points Jacques scored that were, per Boris Becker, several other tennis professionals, and all officials involved, quite literally impossible."
At this, I turned on the first television, the one on the jury's left. And silence ensued.
"... my apologies," I said. "The TV needs to warm up a bit." A small, muted chuckle rang out from the jury, and a quick glance showed me that the CRT was ready to go. "Now, where was I?... oh yes. The impossible shots. As you can see!"
I picked up the VCR's remote from the cart, and pressed play.
"First: a sprinting backhand return, glancing off of the net just perfectly as to land just barely inside Becker's side of the court." I probably owed Joshua a raise; somehow, he managed to perfectly record this VHS tape so that we got the run up to the shot, and then just the shot itself, repeated three times.
"Second: a drop shot, right at the net, that bounces off to the middle of nowhere, delivered immediately after a serve." This one came after Becker returned Jacques' serve, and even with Becker almost at the halfway point of the court, he couldn't predict where the ball was going to bounce; in fact, the damn thing bounced directly over his racket to land, for the second time, on Becker's side of the court. The part that was interesting, here, is that Jacques went into a dead sprint the instant his serve finished, in full anticipation of that exact kind of return. And Jacques punished it beautifully – but if his prediction had been wrong, he would have been the one punished.
It was less the shot that was the problem on this one, per Becker's account, and more the read. Which was a fact that ran contrary to the rest of Becker's accusations, but...
"Third: a blind return volley with Jacques' back to the net, which bounced back over the net and onto Jacques' side on its own." Everybody in the jury gave a full-body cringe at the sheer volume of Jacques' tennis shoes squeaking against the court. A quick look at my client showed that the man himself was reddening, if just a little. But this shot was crazy: Jacques wasn't facing the ball or the net; he just swung his racket blindly, and it managed to not just hit the ball, but put just the right spin on it.
"Fourth: a shot from between the legs, and arcing right over his opponent's head." This one was a treat to watch, and even on the crummy resolution of a CRT monitor, you could pinpoint the exact moment Jacques realized he had too much momentum, bled as much possible by throwing out a leg… and had still gone too far to wind up for a normal swing. So he swung a shot between his legs, and it worked.
"And last, but not least: an extremely wide, back-to-the-net backhand shot that required practically jumping into the crowd, and arcing the ball around the net to land." This one was, quite frankly, ridiculous, and was the shot I'd been most willing to call bullshit on.
It was also, hilariously enough, the one that every single student athlete duplicated.
With that last shot finished, I paused the TV, and faced the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are the five shots. These are the five feats that Boris Becker stated are impossible. Corroborating this claim are six other professional tennis players, all seeded in the top sixteen. They each provided a report, stating how and why, in their opinion as tennis professionals, these five shots were validly considered 'impossible'. And just to drive that impossibility home, let's take another look at them, shall we?"
Using the remote, I rewound the VCR on the first TV right back to where we started.
And then, I turned on the other television, whose VCR was also ready. And this one had spliced footage from five separate students, each reproducing one of the five shots.
"Let's go over this again, shall we?" I picked up the remote for the other television, and pressed play on them at the same time. "One, the sprinting backhand return. Two, the post-serve drop shot. Three, the blind return volley. Fourth, the last-ditch between-the-legs shot. And fifth, the crowd-jumping backhand."
All five shots played in sequence. The five from Jacques Canter, and from the students.
"Seven different professional tennis players, five tennis officials, and four sports analysts all agree that these five shots were impossible to make without the assistance of a mutant power," I said, listing off the types of experts that had provided a report to the various defendants. "Sixteen experts on the sport all agree that in order to do this, Mr. Canter must have cheated, and he must have used a mutant power to do so. But that's their opinion.
"And in this courtroom, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the only opinion that matters? Is yours."
And with that, I shut the televisions off, motioned to the bailiff that he was free to retrieve them, and went back to my seat.
It was an unorthodox opening statement. I didn't say what we would be proving. I didn't mention who would be speaking to prove our case. I didn't bring up the other professional athletes that I'd initially planned to – Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Mohammed Ali, Wayne Gretzky. I said none of that. Instead, I kept it simple, stupid, and relied on a creative interpretation of my favorite legal principle: res ipsa loquitur. That was to say? The proof could speak for itself.
And a picture was worth a thousand words.
Thursday, March 15, 1990
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" Judge Nolan asked.
It had been an utterly wild few weeks. Of the sixteen experts that the combined defendants had lined up initially, only three agreed to testify, and none of them were the professional tennis players who had initially gone to bat when Becker asked them. As it turned out? None of them wanted to follow a trio of Division III college athletes onto the same stand, and try to say that no, the feats of athleticism that college kids had pulled off were, in fact, impossible. The experts that did take the stand fudged their testimony to say that the shots were impossible when done legitimately, and tried to cast shade on the integrity of NYU's students..
But I had over a dozen separate students, men and women, who had all successfully recreated at least one of Jacques' "impossible" returns. If two or three students cheated, that was believable, sure. But when you got above five, it started to look more likely that the initial showing was, in fact, the real fucking deal.
"We have, your Honor." The jury foreman, the newbie doctor, stood up and handed the jury form to the bailiff.
The bailiff, for his part, handed the form to the clerk of court.
"If all parties would please rise and face the jury as it delivers its verdict?" Judge Nolan asked.
We got to our feet, and turned to face the jury. Not by much, as plaintiffs we were closer to the jury box, but enough.
"In the case of Jacques Canter v. Boris Becker, the United States Tennis Association, the Association of Tennis Professionals, Nike Inc., Adidas AG, and Wilson Sports – we the jury find the defendants liable for all counts of the complaint."
"Yes!" Jacques half-hissed, half-yelled next to me, arms pumping down as he visibly restrained himself from jumping for joy in the courtroom. Across the aisle, Boris Becker deflated and slumped down into his seat, while the attorneys looked wholly unsurprised.
All evidence had been in the record before the trial began. We all knew how this was going to go. The only reason it hadn't settled was that Jacques refused to let this go quietly.
"We the jury hereby award Jacques Canter, the plaintiff, forty million dollars in damages."
This time, though, my eyes actually did go wide. Our complaint had listed that much as the top end we asked for, but I had assumed that we would never get anywhere even close to that! I expected something closer to five million, maybe ten if we got lucky…
But forty million!?
Jacques reached over, leaned down, and hugged me, shattering my glamour to pieces. But I didn't care, because Jacques also picked me up and spun me around a little, knocking our chairs away.
And I allowed that, because my brain was still whirring at the numbers. I'd taken this case under contingency, and used a bog-standard contingency arrangement of thirty percent.
In just four months, I had made twelve million dollars.
Oh. My God.
"The Court would like to thank the jury for their service," Judge Nolan said, turning towards the jury. "Members of the jury, you are dismissed. Bailiff, if you would?"
What was I supposed to do with that much money?... okay, actually, at least a third of that was going to be taken by taxes. But that still left me at basically double my previous net worth. The mortgage on my condo? Taken care of. Rent for the rest of the office's lease? Handled. Oh God, I needed to set up some kind of bonus for both Joshua and Sophie, they had gone above and beyond, I needed to find a loophole to dive through so I wasn't paying them legal fees, non-attorneys can't partake in legal fees… mid-year bonus! Mid-year bonus, that's what I would do!
"If I could have your attention, please?"
The banging of Judge Nolan's gavel brought me back to the present.
"I do my best to offer the jury's award of damages as much respect as possible," Judge Nolan said. "But I do often find that when numbers get large enough, jurors simply lose perspective. In any ordinary situation, with even the greatest of celebrities, forty million would be more than enough. But this is not an ordinary situation. And these are no ordinary defendants. These six defendants are each jointly and severally liable for the full forty million – that is to say, one defendant can pay the full amount, and then sue the remaining defendants for repayment of their respective shares. And I guarantee that this is what will happen, because to one defendant in particular, forty million dollars, while an immense sum on paper, would just be another write-off on their taxes.
"Last year," Judge Nolan continued, "Nike's total revenue was one billion, seven-hundred and ten million dollars. The company's profits were one hundred and sixty-seven million dollars. Despite being embroiled in a legal battle over terminating Mr. Canter's sponsorship, and publicly stating that Mr. Becker's defamatory statements were the grounds for doing so, Nike's stock value has continued to rise. I would not be surprised if Nike's revenue broke the two billion mark this year.
"Compared to that, forty million dollars is two percent of their expected revenue. Just… the cost of doing business."
Judge Nolan leaned in closer to the microphone on his bench.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if the penalty for such gross misconduct is a fine, then it only serves its purpose if the fine is substantial. A mere two percent of one of six parties' projected yearly revenue is not substantial enough. And I will not disrespect this Court by leaving its judgments as simply 'the cost of doing business'."
My eyes went wide. Was… was he…?
"Mr. Canter." Judge Nolan turned towards our table, where we still stood. "Does plaintiff consent to grant this court the power of additur?"
"P-plaintiff consents, your Honor!" I practically yelled, my heart beating so fast I started stumbling over my words.
"Very well." Judge Nolan turned towards the defendant's table. "As a baseline: Mr. Canter is being awarded 3.7 million dollars in compensatory damages, from seized prize money and lost income from terminated sponsorship agreements. The original jury award included 36.3 million dollars in punitive damages. And that is simply… insufficient. Therefore, I hereby increase the punitive damages award to two hundred and fifty million dollars, for a total award of 253.7 million dollars."
Oh.
Oh my God.
Oh my fucking God.
I fell back into my chair, suddenly boneless. Beside me, Jacques fell back into his chair, small, hysterical giggles bubbling forth.
"Y-your Honor—!" Across the aisle, Alastair Waldorf, Nike's lead attorney, surged to his feet, his ghost-gray face framed by oily blonde hair. "Defense—"
"Whatever you were about to motion for, it is denied," Judge Nolan said. "Award has been entered into the record. I hereby find all parties jointly and severally liable for the full 253.7 million dollars, to be deposited into an escrow account controlled by counsel for the Plaintiff by the end of the month. You can squabble and sue over who owes what portion in a separate suit, as I will not have you denying a wronged man his much deserved due." The judge brought his gavel down. "Court is adjourned."
Jacques and I dragged ourselves to our feet as Judge Nolan left the courtroom. Once he left, we both slumped back down into our chairs, minds whirring in identical disbelief.
Thirty percent… Seventy-five. MILLION. Dollars.
"Champagne?" Jacques asked, voice barely a whisper.
"... champagne," I said, a hysterical giggle building into a joyous belly laugh.
My client pulled me into a hug, and I couldn't help but reciprocate, laughing all the way.
Friday, May 18, 1990
What would you do if you suddenly won the lottery?
Okay, actually, no. That didn't quite work – I hadn't won the lottery.
But I was fairly certain that seventy-five million dollars was close enough!
My mortgage? Paid. The office's lease? All of the funds for my remaining year and change of the lease, set aside in a separate savings account.
My wardrobe? Filled to the brim with brand new tail holes. I'd kept most of my old skirts and skirt suits, they still worked just fine. But I now had a half dozen skirt suits with a tail hole in the skirt, another five pantsuits with tail holes, slacks with tail holes, casual clothes with tail holes… I had even commissioned some special hosiery.
Let me tell you – it was utterly liberating to comfortably wear a pair of blue jeans for the first time in… oh God, I actually could not remember how many years it had been. Now don't get me wrong, I overall preferred skirts and dresses, they were more comfortable to me overall, but having more options was wonderful.
And having those options was particularly nice right now, as I walked into Madison Square Garden, my tail poking out the back of a pair of capris-leg pants, paired with, of all things, a New York Rangers jersey.
Judge Nolan's full written verdict in the Canter case set a very important precedent: to use plain language, if you want to make an accusation of using a mutant power for your personal benefit, you had best have the proof to back it up. Two months after they shuddered to a dead halt, sports came roaring right back, with some of the best play we'd seen in years.
That two month delay, serendipitously, meant that for once, I got to attend a playoff hockey game on my birthday.
Yes. It was my birthday. Today, May 18th, I was… thirty-four years old.
As of today, I was officially in my mid-30's. And yet, I thought with a quick glance at my reflection before putting my makeup compact away, I barely looked a day over twenty-five.
At least, I hoped so.
I stepped off the third escalator and onto the premiere level of the Garden, and went searching for the right section. It took walking around about a third of the stadium's outer ring (and dodging far too many people that thought they could speed walk while carrying three beers) until I arrived at the luxury box, showed my ticket to the usher outside, and walked in.
Cold beer and chilled white wine sat in a large ice bucket on a counter, alongside a crudite platter, cold cuts, and sandwich rolls. On the other counter, there were some hot food options – chicken wings, sliders, pigs in a blanket, and something else I couldn't quite pinpoint.
What mattered more was the only other man sitting in the box. A black man, nearly bald, with what little hair he had left pure, snowy white. He wore a Rangers jersey that still had the stiffness of a brand new purchase.
"You know, I'm amazed that I never gave hockey a chance," he said as he heard me approach. "It's always football, basketball, baseball. You never hear much about hockey. I think it has to do with all the ice skating."
"Something tells me the sport would get more fans if they heard an old adage I'm fond of," I offered, taking the seat beside him.
"Oh?" Judge Harold Nolan turned to me, an amused smile on his face. "And what would that be?"
"Simple," I said with a grin. "I went to the fights, and a hockey game broke out."
Judge Nolan gave me a grin of his own, then reached to give me a gentle one-armed hug, very careful not to press against my horns, hidden as they were beneath my glamour.
"It's always a pleasure to see my favorite students doing well," the judge said, leaning back as the Garden went dark, and the announcer began to introduce the Capitols first, then the Rangers.
"You tell that to every former student who ends up winning before you in court," I said, a bit of joking in my tone.
"Why I never!" Judge Nolan said, putting a hand to his chest in mock affront. "Who told you such lies?"
"Jake," I said, starting to list off the names of old classmates that I knew had also gone before the judge. "Ashton. Andrew. Mildred. Michael. Zachary. Me. Do I need to go on?"
"Oh, you wound me, Noa," he said with a laugh. "So, I will be the first to admit I am a neophyte here. Would you care to give me the rundown on what to look for?"
"Well, the puck is a piece of frozen rubber that—"
"I don't think you need to go over what a puck, stick, or skates are," Judge Nolan said with a laugh.
"If you insist," I said with a giggle of my own, and went about actually giving a halfway decent explanation of hockey's rules, mostly as they came up.
The offsides rule was the first to come up, followed by the line rule. Penalties were always fun to talk about, and even in just the first period, we actually saw a proper five for fighting. High-sticking was one that Judge Nolan understood immediately, but a look at how thick the players' gloves were left him a little baffled at how a holding penalty could even come about.
Cross-checking, though?
"So it's a tackle," Judge Nolan said.
"... no," I said again, pushing up my glasses as I pinched the bridge of my nose. "It's closer to a screen in basketball than a tackle in football. How did you even get a tackle out of that descriptor?"
And then there were the similar ones.
"So if you trip somebody by hooking them or slashing them, it's just tripping," he said, "and it's not also hooking and/or slashing?"
"Nope! Just the most obvious one," I said. "Plus, keep in mind the refs are always going to be half blind. So…"
"Aren't they always?" Judge Nolan asked, and laughed at his own joke.
Save for the occasional explanation, the first period went rather well. The Rangers were up two goals to none, and were playing circles around the Capitols defense. That said, from what I knew, this wasn't going to last – the Rangers had only one line that was actually good on the offense, and their second and third lines were just middling on both offense and defense. The Rangers absolutely lived by the idea that the best defense was a good offense, and it had worked rather well through the season… but the playoffs bug had a way of making people push too hard and run out of steam.
But once the period ended, and the break between them began, I turned towards the good judge.
"Not that I'm ungrateful for the birthday present," I started, "but I do have to ask, Judge Nolan: why did you invite me here?"
"Harold is fine, Noa," Judge Nolan said – Harold said. "You're right to be cautious. Yes, you are still one of my favorites, but you're also correct that I have an ulterior motive."
"You need a favor," I surmised, to which Harold nodded. "And as for why you're asking me, it's because I'm both a solo practitioner and have recently had a substantial financial windfall. Partly thanks to you, I'll admit."
"On the money," he said. "An old war buddy of mine from Korea is in a spot of legal trouble. I was able to pull a few strings and call in favors with our new District Attorney to keep charges from being pressed, but there isn't much I can do to stop a civil suit."
"And since you're a judge, the most you can do is offer basic advice, like 'retain an attorney'." I took a deep breath, and sighed. "Okay. What is your friend looking at, here?"
"The civil claim is for intentional torts of assault and battery," the judge told me. "Plaintiff had to go to the hospital, and needed some dental work. When he relayed the specifics, I told him he may have a case for defense of other."
Ah. I saw it now.
This was also part of the reason Judge Nolan wanted me.
"And the third party?" I asked.
"The plaintiff's son," he said.
"And who is the plaintiff?" I pushed. "Who is the plaintiff who can afford to push a civil suit when the DA refuses to press charges?"
"And there's the rub," he said. "The plaintiff is none other than Norman Osborn."
… well, shit.
"So this is why Osborn with a shiner was on the front page of the Bugle back in early February, I suppose," I half-asked, half said. "Okay. Harold, I may be good, but I am not 'win against a billionaire's fleet of thirty lawyers in open court' good. I don't think anybody is, really."
"This isn't a case that needs winning," he said, placatingly. "Just slowed down and calmed until a settlement can be reached. I won't expect a miracle, but I just don't want my friend and his boy out on the streets. There are too many veterans left sleeping on sidewalks already."
Judge Nolan was a canny one, I had to admit. He was largely responsible for my amplified wealth, he had gifted me the ticket here for my birthday, and nastiest of all, he had put the exact kind of case in front of me that I may not have wanted, but probably needed.
The last time a self-defense or defense-of-other case came before me, with overwhelming odds before against me, I had just barely not pulled out the win. Hell, I was still working on it; St. John's appeal was due for oral arguments in early August, and I was even now soliciting amicus brief after amicus brief. I knew that win was mine, and I was going to get it. I needed to get it.
And here was a chance at the exact catharsis I so desperately coveted, dropped right into my lap.
What other answer was there, really?
"Okay," I said. "I'll help your friend, pro bono. But again, I make zero promises," I warned. "I'll try to keep this out of court, get this as low as possible. But I'm no miracle maker."
"That's all I ask, Noa," Harold said. "Thank you, truly."
"Don't thank me yet," I said, reaching into my purse to pull out my planner. "I have nothing set for Monday, so I'll try to get this started then." I paused. "I realize you still haven't told me my new client's name."
"... did I really…?" Judge Nolan shrugged, with a light chuckle. "Ah, well. My friend's an old widower from Queens, name of Ben Parker…"
Dun dun DUUUUUN.
I have been sitting on that ending line since literally the moment I started this fic.
Hope y'all enjoyed.
If you're feeling generous, you can find my Ko-Fi page right [HERE]. (with a bit of luck, I will hopefully be able to can the Ko-Fi page for good soon... assuming this next bit of networking works out...)
I have been sitting on that ending line since literally the moment I started this fic.
Hope y'all enjoyed.
If you're feeling generous, you can find my Ko-Fi page right [HERE]. (with a bit of luck, I will hopefully be able to can the Ko-Fi page for good soon... assuming this next bit of networking works out...)
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Noa H. Schaefer, Esquire
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So since some people have already noticed my sneaky sneaky... I figure I may as well properly share the full image!
BEHOLD. ART.
BEHOLD. ART.
Chapter Seventeen
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pound the Table
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, May 21, 1990
The limousine service dropped me off in front of 20 Ingram Street, in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, just after three o'clock in the afternoon. The house itself was a striking Victorian brownstone, and I would wager that the interior was substantially larger than my own Manhattan condominium… and probably cost a quarter to a fifth the price. More than that, the home showed signs of actual everyday life — wear and tear on the brick, darkening around the bottoms of the windows from dirt that never got fully washed away, leaves stuck in the gutters… with one exception.
The glass of the front window was clearly different from the others. More shine, less grime accumulated around the window sill. Newer.
That had a story around it, and I didn't want to ask.
I walked up to the double front doors, casting a quick glance at the mezuzah on the door frame. I rang the doorbell, business card ready in one hand and briefcase in the other, then focused and listened in. This was my first chance to learn something about my new client, and I wasn't going to waste it.
How quickly people react to the doorbell can tell you a lot about them, as can where they were prior to getting the door. Feet clambering down stairs implied them coming from the bedroom, and depending on the time, that meant either naps or depression — the latter was more common, sadly. Outside of winter, bare feet said they hadn't been outside, while socks meant they probably had.
What I did hear, the faint scrape of a chair on tile (probably linoleum), told me that my man had been in his kitchen.
A few moments later, I heard the deadbolt unlock, and the door opened. The man who appeared from behind the door was fairly old, a full head of gray hair combed back and out of his face. Deep wrinkles lined his face, laugh lines and signs of a constant smiler, though the bags under his eyes and the deep-set frown on his face told me a different story. He wore a polo shirt over a v-neck sweater (with a pair of reading glasses hanging off of the sweater's neck), paired with khaki slacks; a brief look past him showed a pair of well-loved loafers just up against the wall behind him.
"Yes?" the man asked, looking down at me. "Can I help you?"
"Benjamin Parker?" I asked, to which he nodded.
"Yes, that's me," he said.
"My name is Noa Schaefer," I told him, handing over my business card. "I believe your friend Harry Nolan called to say I would be coming?"
"He did," Ben agreed, taking the card, though he only gave it a quick glance before putting it in a pocket. "I just… he mentioned you'd be coming by sometime this week, but I didn't think it would be so soon, I — oh, where are my manners?" He stood aside from the door, and waved me in. "Please, come in," he said.
"Thank you." On the way inside, I touched the mezuzah before kissing my fingers, which prompted a small, approving smile from Ben. "It won't be a problem if I keep my shoes on, will it?" I asked, seeing the three other pairs of shoes beside the loafers I'd initially noticed along the wall, two of which clearly belonged to someone other than Ben Parker, simply going by size.
"Oh, no, by all means," he said, waving off the concern. "A habit I picked up on a tour of duty." His eyes flicked down to my feet, then he frowned slightly. "Just be careful with the carpet," he added.
"Of course, and thank you," I said with some relief, eyeing the carpet just right of the foyer. Carpet and stockings didn't always mix well, and it was easy enough to just walk 'tip-toe' so long as the heel wasn't too high, three inches at max for me. Well, except for wedges, but those didn't share the issue of possibly poking holes in the carpet.
"We can talk at the dinner table," Ben said, closing the door behind me before he walked past, leading the way. "Oh, um… can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee?"
"Water is fine," I said, following him, eyes scanning the walls as we went. In the front hallway hung pictures of family surrounding a framed ketubah — a marriage contract, typical in Jewish weddings. Beneath it lay a small dresser, with three small bowls on it, two holding sets of keys, one with a wallet, one empty.
Ben rounded a corner at the end of the front hallway, and when I followed him I was met with a dining table. Or, at least, half of it was being used as a dining table, given the placemats facing one another.
The other half was covered with papers, folders, and binders.
"Please, take a seat wherever," Ben said, going over to the various materials on the table and trying to gather them up. "I'm sorry about the mess, my nephew likes to do his homework at the table. A lot like — like his father was, in that way," he said, a slight hitch in his voice as he spoke.
"My father taught me to read Hebrew at the dining table," I said as I pulled out the middle of three chairs on one side of the table (while hiding my relief that there was a space between the seat and the back – thank goodness, my poor tail!), and offered him a soft smile. "And it probably saw as many sermons as the lectern at the synagogue."
"Well, this table has seen a fair bit of griping over Torah portions, so…" Ben's voice trailed off into a little chuckle, and he went into the kitchen, just next to the dining room. I heard a cabinet open and the clink of glass on glass, followed by him working the faucet. "Any ice?" he called from the kitchen.
"Not for me," I said back, only raising my voice enough to be heard. Ben returned to the dining table and placed a coaster first, then the glass. "Thank you," I said.
"Of course," he replied, placing his own glass down on a coaster before taking a seat, his expression turning downward into a concerned frown. "I confess, I've not needed a lawyer before, so I hope you don't mind me asking how this works?"
"Not at all," I said. "There are a few perfunctory things we need to handle first before the attorney-client privilege attaches." I reached into my briefcase for a manila folder, which I flipped open, turned to face Ben, and slid across the table. He pulled the pair of reading glasses off of his sweater and put them on, beginning to read. "What you have before you is a contract of retainer. It spells out what I am and am not allowed to do on your behalf, what you are allowed to ask of me, what protections you have should I act in a manner in which you do not approve, etcetera. Once we have both signed, you are officially my client, with all the rights and expectations involved."
"And how much will this cost?" Ben Parker asked, looking up from the contract.
"It won't," I said, hands clasped on the table in front of me. "You will incur no fees for legal representation or any court filings, or, hopefully, in damages."
Ben looked down at the contract before him with a heavy sigh, one hand pushing his glasses up to massage his closed eyes and the bridge of his nose.
"I don't like the idea of accepting charity," he said after a moment, peering at me from across the table with a heavy frown.
"If I may be frank for a moment, Mr. Parker?" I asked. A couple of fingers came off of the hand currently holding the contract of retainer, which I took as him waving me on. "If you were to try and pay for my services, you wouldn't be able to afford them. And you are currently staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Norman Osborn, who will undoubtedly come into this with at least a dozen lawyers, all of whom bill even more for their services than I do. At the moment, you only have two options: accept a little charity now, or ask for a lot more charity once Osborn has bankrupted you."
Was it harsh? Yes, though not needlessly so. One of the single most difficult parts of being a lawyer was managing client expectations. This meant making sure your client had a good idea of what outcome you expected – including if they decided not to hire you on as their attorney. While I had been at Lewin Lieberman & Loeb, that simply meant that any future firm they went to would be curious as to why they didn't hire us on, as LL&L was a tier one firm, and one of the best you could work with. This time, on the other hand?
It was the difference between throwing a low-experience legal aid attorney to the den of wolves that was Osborn's legal team… or having a fighting chance. Assuming, of course, that this case never saw the inside of a courtroom.
That fight was a slugfest that I wanted no part of.
From the wrinkling of his brow, the frown pulling at the corners of his mouth, and the way his eyes glanced across the page before him, Ben Parker seemed to be mulling over what I'd said. I simply took a sip of the water he'd offered and rested my hands on the glass, waiting for him to come to a decision.
"Do you have a pen I could borrow?" Ben asked after a minute or two, and I knew his decision was made. I produced a black ballpoint from my briefcase and handed it to him.
Moments later, he handed my pen back, along with the signed contract of retainer. I filled in my own signature upon the document, placed it in a manila folder (with a note to photocopy it a few times back at the office – always make a backup), and tucked the folder away in my briefcase.
Then, I pulled out a legal pad in exchange, brought out several more pens (in red, green, and blue, to join the black), and set them beside my legal pad.
"And with that, I am officially your attorney in this matter," I told Ben. "Now, I have already availed myself of publicly available filings on this matter, so I've seen the complaint that Mr. Osborn filed, and learned his take on events." Despite the event happening in February, the strings Judge Nolan pulled dragged out the actual refusal to press charges until very recently, in the hopes that some distance from the actual event would allow cooler heads to prevail. Unfortunately, that was not the case. "Now, I would like to know yours. Could you walk me through the events that took place on the evening of Friday, February 9th?"
"Sure, of course," Ben said, taking a sip of his water and leaning back in his chair before he started talking. "February 9th. Well, that was the debate tournament finals, between Midtown Prep and… what was the other school? I'm so sorry, I can't remember which one it was," he said, frowning.
"It's not a big deal," I said, writing down a note in red, reminding myself to figure out which other school was involved. "Please, continue."
"Right, anyway. So it was the finals of the inter-school debate tournament. My nephew Peter and his best friend Harry – Harry Osborn," Ben paused for a moment to clarify that detail for me. "They're both on the debate team together. I, uh…" Ben sighed, staring into his water glass. "When my wife May passed, Peter took it particularly badly. Distanced himself from his friends, stayed out late, got all moody. Grades slipped a bit. I confronted him about this change after a month or so, and told him he needed to do something to pull out of this new rut. I… we both did, really," he added. "So I started volunteering at the synagogue's food bank, and Peter joined the debate team. Then a week later, Peter told me his friend Harry had joined the team too. It was good for them," Ben said with a smile.
"How long have Peter and Harry been friends?" I asked once I noticed that Ben was starting to lose the thread.
"Since kindergarten, actually," Ben said. "My brother and his wife had Peter staying with May and me while they went overseas on a two week assignment." He shook his head, sorrow etched in the lines of his face. "Their plane never made it, went down in the middle of the Atlantic. So there's Peter at his first day of school, we've just had to tell him his parents aren't coming back a couple of weeks before – and he comes back after that first day telling us about his friend whose mommy is also gone, and whose daddy is never there."
"Harry Osborn," I surmised. Ben nodded, then sipped at his water before continuing.
"Those two have been thick as thieves ever since. It's to the point that while the house has a guest bedroom, it may as well have Harry's name on the door for how often he's in it. Or, at least until May passed," Ben said. "He… told me he felt odd about coming over here after… after what happened."
Given the newer glass on the window… I didn't even have to ask why. Home invasions had a way of making once safe spaces feel utterly inhospitable.
And if even Harry's retreat from his father wasn't safe anymore, then what place was?
"A-anyway, this all means that I've had the displeasure of encountering Norman Osborn more than a few times. He always has this look of wanting to be anywhere else, and constantly in a hurry." Ben grimaced as he said this. "The ninth was no different. For the first time, Norman showed up to one of his son's debate tournaments. And the first thing he does is sit himself down in the front row, cross his arms, and scowl. Every time it was Harry's turn to speak in the debate, Norman would clear his throat, just loud enough to be heard. It unnerved Harry something awful," Ben said, one hand over the other now, the knuckles I could see tightening. "I've known that boy for years. He looked more scared than I've ever seen him, and it only got worse the longer the debate went. By the end of it—"
The sound of the front door unlocking interrupted what Ben was going to say, and I found myself a little surprised by how good his hearing still was. When I heard 'war buddy from Korea', I assumed some measure of hearing damage because of proximity to gunfire. He noticed the sound as quickly as I did, and my hearing was literally superhuman.
"I'm home!" we heard from our place in the dining room.
"We're in the dining room!" Ben yelled back. I nearly raised an eyebrow at the subtlety of his hint. Surely a teen wouldn't catch the difference between – wait, I realized. Peter Parker was no ordinary teen. He was a mild precognitive. Was this Ben's way of testing me? Seeing if Peter's Spider-Sense pegged me as a threat? Did this mean Ben Parker was in the know?
… was I reading too far into this?
"Hey, so uh, before I forget!" The two of us heard Peter's shoes come off and backpack hit the floor, even as he continued to talk. "I'm meeting up with Gwen after school tomorrow to get some studying done for the history final on Friday, and we're gonna get dinner after," Peter continued, his speech punctuated by the sound of him unzipping a backpack and pulling out what sounded to me like binders. That, and some kind of wrapper, though I couldn't be sure what from. "So uh, yeah I've got plans for dinner tomorrow," he said, his voice getting closer as he walked through the hall and to the dining room, "and you can just—"
And that was when Peter Parker saw me in person for the second time. The glasses frames with clear lenses were nowhere to be found this time, and he was dressed for early summer weather instead of winter – a Mets t-shirt (the correct choice, I approved) and tan cargo shorts. And as for the wrapper I'd heard, it was, in fact, candy. A tootsie pop, which Peter plucked from his mouth and used to gesture at me.
"You're that lady who was in Jameson's office," Peter said, his brow furrowing and chin tilting down. "The one who called Spider-Man a criminal on TV last year."
"Uh, Peter," Ben said, standing from the table and gesturing towards me. "This is Noa Schaefer. She's the lawyer helping with this, um… this whole Osborn business," he said, voice falling a little flat at the end.
"A pleasure to properly make your acquaintance," I said, standing from the table. I made my way to Peter and looked up at him, offering a hand to shake. "I look forward to working with you both."
He didn't take it.
A beat passed where I stood there, hand outstretched, looking a petulant young man in the eye with an utterly placid expression on my face. He glanced down at my hand, but beyond that, nothing changed.
Until Ben Parker cleared his throat. Peter's shoulders went tense, and he transferred the tootsie pop to his left, gave a quick (and much too tight, any longer and he'd have broken my glamour; also, ow...) handshake, which left me trying to hide a wince, then let go and dumped his binders on the dining table. Specifically, he dumped them directly on top of my briefcase.
My very nice, seven-hundred dollar, leather briefcase.
God almighty, had I forgotten how much of a shithead a teenage boy could be. Hell, even Pietro had been an absolute angel in comparison.
"Don't let me interrupt," Peter said, putting the tootsie pop back in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the dining room with crossed arms.
"Well, I guess I can continue?" Ben ventured as I walked back around the table to the chair I'd been using, pointedly ignoring the binders on my briefcase — not a big deal, it wasn't like I couldn't afford to fix any damage, he was just a kid — and sat down.
"Unfortunately not," I said. "Mr. Parker, your nephew will need to leave the room."
"What!?" Peter spat, pushing off of the wall. I wasn't sure if he was fully aware of his specific body language, but he was making himself as tall and wide as possible as he took a step towards the table.
"It's okay," Ben said. "I'm okay with Peter hearing whatever I say."
"That is not the problem," I said, forcing my face into a mask of utter calmness as I turned to look at Peter. I did not need 'angry teenage male' to become part of my list of problems. "Mr. Parker," I continued, letting who I was facing indicate which Mr. Parker I was speaking to now. "From what I've already heard of your uncle's account, you were present at the incident. This makes you a material witness, and means that I will also have to interview you. Which means that I need to make sure your uncle's statements have as little influence as possible on yours."
"Look, Peter," Ben raised a hand part way off the table to get his nephew's attention back on himself. "It's okay. Just… go upstairs. I'll be fine."
Peter practically growled at being dismissed like that. But he did, thankfully, accept it. He grabbed his binders from off of my briefcase, stomped his way upstairs in that particular fashion angry teens do, and then slammed the door to his bedroom behind him, the thud clearly audible, with Peter's room apparently being directly above the dining room.
"Should I—"
I held a finger up to my lips with one hand, and with the other, pointed above us. It was very faint, but I could just barely hear Peter's footsteps on the floor, along with the squeak of a door hinge at the early stages of wanting some WD-40. Then, about ten seconds later, I heard the echo from a small zap of static electricity filtering in through the doorway of the dining room, and couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"That means no eavesdropping, Mr. Parker!" I yelled down the hallway. A muffled thud greeted this pronouncement, followed about ten seconds later by the door to Peter's room closing again. Not a slam this time, but just a closing.
"How did you know?" Ben asked, an amused smile on his face.
"Part of my being a mutant," I said with a shrug. It still felt odd to be this casual and almost open about what I was… but it was on national television. Not like I had as much reason to hide it. "I have very good hearing."
"I can see that coming in handy, though I wager sirens are a pain," he said good-naturedly. My pained smile was enough of a response for that. "Anyway… where was I again? Before Peter got home?"
"You had commented on Harry Osborn's look of fear," I said after glancing at my notes.
"Right," he said, shifting in his chair. "Well, that look of fear was certainly justified. Right as the debate ended, even before the judges could give their scores and critiques or award the win, Norman was out of his seat and up the aisle. About twenty minutes later, everything was said and done. Midtown had won the tournament, pictures were taken, and the teams went back out front to mingle. But right as I get out, Peter's grabbing me by the arm. He said Harry had gone to the restroom fifteen minutes ago, but hadn't come back yet, and that he had a bad feeling."
I had a sudden bad feeling of my own when Ben said this. Namely: how much of Peter realizing something was wrong came down to his being a good friend, and how much of it was his Spider-Sense?
I would say, at least, that it was smart of him to get an adult.
"And so what happened next?" I prompted after I'd written down some notes. Namely, that I wanted to know which building this debate tournament was hosted in, and its layout. Was it at one of the schools? Probably, but I wasn't sure. Regardless, that was information I could get later, but it could be useful. Not likely, but still.
"Peter led the way as we checked every men's room we came across. Three restrooms later, we checked the locker room, and that's where we found them," Ben said. Yup, it was at a school. "Norman had Harry backed up against a row of these small lockers with padlocks hanging from the front. He was standing over the kid, and Harry was holding his arms around his midsection, like he was hurt. Norman was yelling something about how Harry was an embarrassment to the Osborn name."
"And is that when you intervened?" I asked, starting to put the pieces together. Judge Nolan had said this was a defense-of-other case – the main issue of law is whether or not there was a compelling justification for Ben Parker to have interposed himself for the purpose of defending Harry Osborn. And unless there was sufficient reason to think Harry was genuinely at risk of harm, and not just a victim of clear verbal and emotional abuse…
"Not until Norman's hand came up," Ben said, giving me exactly what I needed. "I yelled out to Norman to try and get him to stop, but either he didn't hear me, or he just didn't care, and he struck Harry in the gut." The knuckles of Ben's clasped hands paled as his grip grew tighter, and I saw his jaw tense up. "I saw a pair of cleats just laying out on the floor of the locker room. Next moment, I'm picking them up and throwing one at Norman."
"Metal or plastic teeth on the cleats?" I asked, sincerely hoping it was the latter. Metal teeth turned this from something I could argue into me telling the Parkers to prepare their best groveling voices.
"Plastic," he said, and I let out a small sigh of relief. "That finally got Norman's attention, and I had the other cleat in my hand. I'm holding the cleat by the toe, and when Norman tries to yell at me, I hit him across the face with the laces side of the shoe. I see him stagger, so I drop the shoe, grab Harry, and Peter and I leave before Norman can get his wits back about him."
"Did you see what kind of effect your strike had on Osborn?" I asked, frowning. A hit with the spike of the cleat would have explained the medical and dental bills that Judge Nolan told me about, but a hit with the top of the shoe? With the laces, not the sole? That didn't make much sense to me.
Whatever was in those medical records, I really needed to see them.
"I didn't," Ben said. "At that point, I was more concerned with getting the boys out of there. We went right out to the parking lot and left, then I drove straight to the ER to get Harry checked out."
Thank God for people with a lick of common sense. If he went to the ER, then that meant there were medical records, so I could get an idea of… wait.
"Good call on the ER," I told him, trying not to let the worry show on my face. "Remind me, how old are Harry and Peter?"
"They both turned seventeen this year," Ben told me, and I bit back a curse. That meant Harry was still a minor, and his medical records were under the control of… Osborn.
Shit. So much for avoiding a Request for Judicial Intervention, and keeping this all contained to the parties.
… unless…?
Could I frame my not wanting to need an RJI as a threat?
I jotted that down in the margins in green, as a reminder to myself. I had to remember that this was a case where one party was all but anonymous, while the other was the complete opposite. If I needed to use that anonymity as a weapon, then that was what I would do.
"And can I assume that you were not allowed to remain with Harry Osborn at the emergency room?" I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"No," Ben said with a frown. "They told me only a parent or legal guardian would be allowed, and I was neither. Never mind that it was his father who put him in that state to begin with."
I could only agree to that sentiment with a sigh of my own. The system did, indeed, have its pitfalls… and while the police would be the ordinary remedy to this situation, when the person you were trying to call the cops on was a billionaire... that remedy swiftly evaporated into thin air.
"I think that's about it for what I can ask you for the moment," I said, flipping my legal pad back to the front and laying the pen down atop it. "As I mentioned earlier, I do need to talk to your nephew Peter and get his account of events, then compare the two. It's possible that he saw more of what happened than you did. Do I have your permission as his legal guardian to speak with him now, or would you rather I come back another day?"
"I think today would be best," Ben said with a slight frown. "He did mention that test on Friday, and I think we're running low on time here as it is?" I nodded at the implied question. "Then yes, feel free. Let me show you upstairs."
Ben Parker and I both stood up from our chairs. I put my notepad and pens back into my briefcase, then followed him back out to the front hall. From there, we turned right from the front door, went past the living room (where I had to walk on tiptoe to not chance my heels damaging the carpet), and did a u-turn to a stairwell leading up.
"Peter's room is the last one on the right," Ben said, stepping to the side of the stairwell. "Thank you again for this. It means a lot."
"Don't thank me yet," I said honestly. "There's still a lot of work to be done before I can comfortably accept your thanks."
With that, I made my way up the stairs, and tiptoed along the carpeted flooring, not letting my weight rest on my heels as I knocked on the door to Peter's bedroom. The door opened up just a sliver, and Peter glared down at me from the crack in the doorframe.
"It's your turn, Mr. Parker," I said, plastering a genial smile on my face. "Would you like to speak in there, or would you rather use the dining room?"
Peter continued to glare at me for a moment longer before he stood aside, and pulled the door to his bedroom open, letting me inside. He turned and plopped himself down on the bed, crossed his arms, and glared at me as I stepped inside, and took a quick glance around.
The biggest dominating feature was a Lego Death Star, fully opened up and on display, resting on the top of a bookcase along one side of the room. The bookcase itself was filled to the brim with textbooks, several of which probably had no place on a high schooler's reading list – organic chemistry wasn't usually taught until a person's second semester of college at least, and that was only the first one I noticed. The medical textbooks were the particularly interesting ones… and something I was decidedly not going to ask about.
Peter's bed was a full-size mattress pressed against a corner of the room, the duvet messy and unmade, pillows surrounding where it made contact with the wall. His desk looked for all the world like a library study carrel with drawers attached, save for the fact that most of its space was occupied by both a Macintosh II and a Commodore 64. One drawer, so full it wouldn't properly close, had myriad wires of all types sticking out of it… and a pair of wire strippers hanging haphazardly on the lip of the drawer.
The walls themselves were mostly sparse. Peter only had two posters: a periodic table of elements just above and to the right of his desk, and an AC/DC poster next to the window.
"Would you mind if I sat here?" I asked, a hand on Peter's desk chair.
He didn't offer any meaningful response. He just wrinkled his nose, gave a disdainful sniff, and kept sitting there, glaring at me with arms crossed.
I took the silence as acceptance, and spun the chair around… to see all of the binders that he'd previously set on top of my briefcase sitting on the seat. I didn't have to look to catch the barest glimpse of a shit-eating grin pass across his face – the accompanying amused exhalation was all I needed to hear.
Well. That and, again. My hearing was good enough for minor echolocation. When accompanied with a sound that sudden, I didn't need to see somebody to know their facial expression.
I carefully picked up the binders from the chair and placed them atop the Macintosh on Peter's desk. Then I spun the chair around, sat in it, placed my briefcase on the floor, and removed my notepad and pens.
"As I mentioned downstairs, your uncle has availed himself of my services in dealing with this…" I waved my left hand a little, my pen waggling slightly in the air. "Whole messy business. I've already spoken with your uncle, and now, I would like you to tell me your account of what happened on February 9th."
"And you couldn't let us do it at the same time why?" Peter bit out through clenched teeth, now deliberately not looking at me. "Cause you need to see if we're lying," he accused, rather than let time answer.
"Yes." Peter's eyes immediately snapped to me, a slight look of surprise on his face, so I took the opportunity to press on while I had his attention. "Trust me when I say that until people are under oath, and sometimes even then, somebody is always lying. This is just one of many ways I make sure that lying isn't being done to me.
"And on that note," I said, taking the segue as it came up, "feel free to begin wherever you'd like with what happened on Friday, February 9th."
There was no response for a good thirty seconds. The silence lingered heavy, with me tapping out a slow rhythm on my notepad with my pen, waiting for Peter to crack.
"Hmph."
A vocal harrumph and a further emphasis of his crossed arms was all I got.
Well. This was going nowhere fast. Despite being Spider-Man, a beloved (by all but Jameson) superhero… he was still also a teenager. One with a chip on his shoulder where I was concerned.
And given his alter ego, I had a feeling as to why that was.
"Mr. Parker," I started keeping my tone neutral. "If there is some problem you have with this situation or with myself, then I can't begin to do anything about that until you tell me what that problem is."
There continued to be no response.
"Does this have something to do with your status as Spider-Man's photographer?" I asked, deciding that I'd rather try to get to the heart of the issue than sit here in silence until the superhuman lost his patience. Or worse, his temper.
"Spider-Man's not a damn criminal!" Peter bit out, the sheer vitriol in his voice surprising me. "You got up in front of the whole country and called Spider-Man a criminal!"
Was that what this was about? That had been a single line of questioning in a cross examination from most of a year ago. Had Peter been holding onto that niggling doubt for this whole time?
Or had his encountering me, the one who said that, in John Jonah Jameson's office cemented it in his mind?
Regardless, if I wanted to actually get anywhere, I needed to nip this in the bud.
Now.
"While that is not how I phrased it in court, and not how I would phrase it now either, arguing the semantics will get us nowhere," I began. "Mr. Parker. Your anger is due to my statement that Spider-Man, who you are at least acquainted with, is a criminal. Am I correct in that regard?"
"Yeah," he said, his glare not abating one bit.
"Then would it surprise you to learn that, were I to have to defend Spider-Man to a detractor, I could quite successfully argue that he has not, in fact, broken any laws?" I said.
"... what?" Peter's face went almost completely slack out of surprise. I couldn't help but smile, and pressed on.
"Despite all of his acrobatics and theatrics, Spider-Man causes one of, if not the lowest amount of collateral damage and injuries among the heroes that call New York home," I said, and gestured at the medical textbooks on Peter's bookshelf. "Something I would wager you had a hand in. Heck, even the single most biased source of reporting on Spider-Man is shockingly light on accusations of actual damage."
Which was true. I'd taken the weekend to look at several of my back issues of the Bugle, paying special attention to Spider-Man reporting. And despite all of Jameson's fear-mongering?
I couldn't find a single injury or bit of property damage that I could wholly and unequivocally attribute to Spider-Man. The largest complaint was that he left his webbing all over the place, occasionally exacerbating traffic or public transit… but that was temporary at best.
"All of that taken together?" I asked rhetorically. "In the absence of damages or injuries, it wouldn't be all that hard to have each and every one of Spider-Man's arrests and villain takedowns dismissed as valid citizen's arrests."
"What… but that—"
"And as much as I have begun to value my friendship with Mr. Jameson," I said, interrupting Peter, "wherever Spider-Man is concerned? Mr. Jameson is, to be blunt, full of shit," I finished.
Peter's arms fell to the sides, the sudden mental whiplash and cognitive dissonance clearly tossing him for a bit of a loop. Here he had drawn up this mental image of me as yet another Jameson, just younger and prettier. Instead, he was getting an object lesson in what should and, more importantly, shouldn't be considered a first impression.
Hopefully, this was a lesson he took with him when he eventually became more involved with the superhero community.
"But… but you said at that trial that you thought Spider-Man was breaking the law," Peter said after a good twenty seconds or so, grasping at the last straws of his argument, and his anger with it.
"I know what I said then," I replied. "But no. I do not believe Spider-Man is a criminal. He is perhaps a bit rough around the edges, but I don't think he's a criminal. Not even close."
"You… you don't?" Peter asked, jaw slack in confusion. Most likely, he wasn't expecting to have the opposite of what he expected thrown at him. In that case… perhaps some elaboration. Make the lesson explicit.
"Mr. Parker, people have a way of acting differently depending on the situation. When I am in the courtroom, I am doing the hardest part of my job," I told him, tapping my pen against my notepad as I spoke. "And half of that difficulty is framing the story both how I want the jury to see it, and in a way that they will accept. I had a point to make, and given the situation, that was the best way to bring them around to the point I needed. Even though that meant following the Daily Bugle's example, and even though it was, yes, at Spider-Man's expense."
Peter was quiet for a moment, though he gave me a funny look. I had a feeling he was trying to reconcile the 'courtroom Noa' he'd seen on TV and the 'managing John Jonah Jameson' Noa he met this past winter with the 'out-of-court Noa' in front of him.
Which was fair. Entirely so.
"... so, um," Peter said, rubbing his hands together and pursing his lips expectantly. "You don't think he's a criminal. So uh, then. Aside from the, you know… civilian arrest thing?" Peter asked.
"Citizen's arrest," I corrected.
"Yeah, that," he said. "Uh, other than that. What, um. What is your opinion on Spider-Man?"
Oh. Oh my God. This boy was so transparent.
He was so incredibly transparent that his earnestness had already wrapped around to being adorable.
I put my pen and notepad down on my lap, clasped my fingers, and just gave him a look, followed by a long, slow, blink.
"Mr. Parker," I started. "Peter." I looked up and gestured idly to his closet – and more specifically, to his laundry basket. "If I were to get up and look through there, what are the odds I find Spider-Man's costume inside?"
Peter gave me a blank look, before he gave a small chuckle. When my facial expression didn't change a bit, the nervous grin fell off his face, and he started to go a bit pale.
"W-what—" Peter cut himself off as he stood, wetting his lips as he raised his hands out in front, as if to ward me off. "T-that—"
"Mr. Parker," I stopped Peter. "Look at me."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour fell away, showing the young man my true appearance.
"I have horns and a tail," I said, gesturing to them for effect. "And I can only hide them from sight. Even with that limitation, I lasted twenty-one years hiding that I'm a mutant, and my outing was a fluke. Compared to that? You're not very good at this."
"O-oh…" Realization dawned on his face as he clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly. "That's… yeah, right, you're uh… yeah, you're that. Uh…" Peter paced around his room, hands behind his head and running through his hair. "I, you, uh… look, y-you're not gonna… like, tell anyone, right?" he asked, turning back towards me.
"That depends," I said, pointing at his bedroom door. "Does your uncle know?"
"Y-yeah," Peter said, sitting back down on his bed. "Yeah. He does."
"Then no," I told him. "I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially since your little secret is covered by the attorney-client privilege."
"It is?" he asked, somewhat incredulous.
"Mhmm," I nodded. To be fair, it was... with a generous interpretation of the rules of ethics, courtesy of Peter still being a minor, and his legal guardian being my client.
"Oh thank God," Peter said, collapsing down onto his bed with relief. And then mere moments later, he popped back up. "Uh, alright, look, I gotta know. What gave me away?"
"The glasses," I answered immediately. It wasn't exactly true... but it wasn't exactly false, either.
Peter opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, and closed his mouth. His brow furrowed in thought, and then his eyebrows went up in surprise.
"Really?" he asked, incredulous.
"For obvious reasons, I pay attention to the research and discourse on mutants," I said, tapping my horn with my pen. "There's still a bit of peer review to go, but from what I've gathered, the most common mutant power researchers have found is slightly-better-than-perfect vision. It's also the most common secondary power, and the most common beneficial side effect of powers.
"Now, keeping in mind that mutant powers can, and often do, manifest quite literally overnight? Outside of a few situations, clear lenses are a dead giveaway. As are a glasses wearer's tics and quirks when you can't see contacts. Once I caught that first sign that something might have been amiss, it wasn't hard to see how graceful your fake clumsiness was."
"Oh, that's… huh. How hard is it to see if someone has contacts, though?" Peter asked.
"You tell me," I said, leaning in and looking him in the eyes.
"Wait, what? Why are – oh, ooh..." Peter cottoned on quickly and looked me in the eye. I saw the moment he realized what he was seeing. "Okay, I can see it. A bit of blue around the iris from the lens. And it slides down a bit after you blink."
"Indeed," I said. "And now you know how to spot most contact lenses. Anyways. Can we get back to the initial point of our discussion?" I asked. "Your recounting of events?"
"U-um…" Peter flushed a bit, in embarrassment. "S-sorry."
"It's okay," I said, picking up my notepad and pen. "Now, I know from your uncle that this was the first time Norman Osborn had shown up to one of the debate team's events, but I'd like it if you could take it from the top for me…"
Chapter Seventeen
Monday, May 21, 1990
The limousine service dropped me off in front of 20 Ingram Street, in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, just after three o'clock in the afternoon. The house itself was a striking Victorian brownstone, and I would wager that the interior was substantially larger than my own Manhattan condominium… and probably cost a quarter to a fifth the price. More than that, the home showed signs of actual everyday life — wear and tear on the brick, darkening around the bottoms of the windows from dirt that never got fully washed away, leaves stuck in the gutters… with one exception.
The glass of the front window was clearly different from the others. More shine, less grime accumulated around the window sill. Newer.
That had a story around it, and I didn't want to ask.
I walked up to the double front doors, casting a quick glance at the mezuzah on the door frame. I rang the doorbell, business card ready in one hand and briefcase in the other, then focused and listened in. This was my first chance to learn something about my new client, and I wasn't going to waste it.
How quickly people react to the doorbell can tell you a lot about them, as can where they were prior to getting the door. Feet clambering down stairs implied them coming from the bedroom, and depending on the time, that meant either naps or depression — the latter was more common, sadly. Outside of winter, bare feet said they hadn't been outside, while socks meant they probably had.
What I did hear, the faint scrape of a chair on tile (probably linoleum), told me that my man had been in his kitchen.
A few moments later, I heard the deadbolt unlock, and the door opened. The man who appeared from behind the door was fairly old, a full head of gray hair combed back and out of his face. Deep wrinkles lined his face, laugh lines and signs of a constant smiler, though the bags under his eyes and the deep-set frown on his face told me a different story. He wore a polo shirt over a v-neck sweater (with a pair of reading glasses hanging off of the sweater's neck), paired with khaki slacks; a brief look past him showed a pair of well-loved loafers just up against the wall behind him.
"Yes?" the man asked, looking down at me. "Can I help you?"
"Benjamin Parker?" I asked, to which he nodded.
"Yes, that's me," he said.
"My name is Noa Schaefer," I told him, handing over my business card. "I believe your friend Harry Nolan called to say I would be coming?"
"He did," Ben agreed, taking the card, though he only gave it a quick glance before putting it in a pocket. "I just… he mentioned you'd be coming by sometime this week, but I didn't think it would be so soon, I — oh, where are my manners?" He stood aside from the door, and waved me in. "Please, come in," he said.
"Thank you." On the way inside, I touched the mezuzah before kissing my fingers, which prompted a small, approving smile from Ben. "It won't be a problem if I keep my shoes on, will it?" I asked, seeing the three other pairs of shoes beside the loafers I'd initially noticed along the wall, two of which clearly belonged to someone other than Ben Parker, simply going by size.
"Oh, no, by all means," he said, waving off the concern. "A habit I picked up on a tour of duty." His eyes flicked down to my feet, then he frowned slightly. "Just be careful with the carpet," he added.
"Of course, and thank you," I said with some relief, eyeing the carpet just right of the foyer. Carpet and stockings didn't always mix well, and it was easy enough to just walk 'tip-toe' so long as the heel wasn't too high, three inches at max for me. Well, except for wedges, but those didn't share the issue of possibly poking holes in the carpet.
"We can talk at the dinner table," Ben said, closing the door behind me before he walked past, leading the way. "Oh, um… can I get you something to drink? Water, coffee?"
"Water is fine," I said, following him, eyes scanning the walls as we went. In the front hallway hung pictures of family surrounding a framed ketubah — a marriage contract, typical in Jewish weddings. Beneath it lay a small dresser, with three small bowls on it, two holding sets of keys, one with a wallet, one empty.
Ben rounded a corner at the end of the front hallway, and when I followed him I was met with a dining table. Or, at least, half of it was being used as a dining table, given the placemats facing one another.
The other half was covered with papers, folders, and binders.
"Please, take a seat wherever," Ben said, going over to the various materials on the table and trying to gather them up. "I'm sorry about the mess, my nephew likes to do his homework at the table. A lot like — like his father was, in that way," he said, a slight hitch in his voice as he spoke.
"My father taught me to read Hebrew at the dining table," I said as I pulled out the middle of three chairs on one side of the table (while hiding my relief that there was a space between the seat and the back – thank goodness, my poor tail!), and offered him a soft smile. "And it probably saw as many sermons as the lectern at the synagogue."
"Well, this table has seen a fair bit of griping over Torah portions, so…" Ben's voice trailed off into a little chuckle, and he went into the kitchen, just next to the dining room. I heard a cabinet open and the clink of glass on glass, followed by him working the faucet. "Any ice?" he called from the kitchen.
"Not for me," I said back, only raising my voice enough to be heard. Ben returned to the dining table and placed a coaster first, then the glass. "Thank you," I said.
"Of course," he replied, placing his own glass down on a coaster before taking a seat, his expression turning downward into a concerned frown. "I confess, I've not needed a lawyer before, so I hope you don't mind me asking how this works?"
"Not at all," I said. "There are a few perfunctory things we need to handle first before the attorney-client privilege attaches." I reached into my briefcase for a manila folder, which I flipped open, turned to face Ben, and slid across the table. He pulled the pair of reading glasses off of his sweater and put them on, beginning to read. "What you have before you is a contract of retainer. It spells out what I am and am not allowed to do on your behalf, what you are allowed to ask of me, what protections you have should I act in a manner in which you do not approve, etcetera. Once we have both signed, you are officially my client, with all the rights and expectations involved."
"And how much will this cost?" Ben Parker asked, looking up from the contract.
"It won't," I said, hands clasped on the table in front of me. "You will incur no fees for legal representation or any court filings, or, hopefully, in damages."
Ben looked down at the contract before him with a heavy sigh, one hand pushing his glasses up to massage his closed eyes and the bridge of his nose.
"I don't like the idea of accepting charity," he said after a moment, peering at me from across the table with a heavy frown.
"If I may be frank for a moment, Mr. Parker?" I asked. A couple of fingers came off of the hand currently holding the contract of retainer, which I took as him waving me on. "If you were to try and pay for my services, you wouldn't be able to afford them. And you are currently staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Norman Osborn, who will undoubtedly come into this with at least a dozen lawyers, all of whom bill even more for their services than I do. At the moment, you only have two options: accept a little charity now, or ask for a lot more charity once Osborn has bankrupted you."
Was it harsh? Yes, though not needlessly so. One of the single most difficult parts of being a lawyer was managing client expectations. This meant making sure your client had a good idea of what outcome you expected – including if they decided not to hire you on as their attorney. While I had been at Lewin Lieberman & Loeb, that simply meant that any future firm they went to would be curious as to why they didn't hire us on, as LL&L was a tier one firm, and one of the best you could work with. This time, on the other hand?
It was the difference between throwing a low-experience legal aid attorney to the den of wolves that was Osborn's legal team… or having a fighting chance. Assuming, of course, that this case never saw the inside of a courtroom.
That fight was a slugfest that I wanted no part of.
From the wrinkling of his brow, the frown pulling at the corners of his mouth, and the way his eyes glanced across the page before him, Ben Parker seemed to be mulling over what I'd said. I simply took a sip of the water he'd offered and rested my hands on the glass, waiting for him to come to a decision.
"Do you have a pen I could borrow?" Ben asked after a minute or two, and I knew his decision was made. I produced a black ballpoint from my briefcase and handed it to him.
Moments later, he handed my pen back, along with the signed contract of retainer. I filled in my own signature upon the document, placed it in a manila folder (with a note to photocopy it a few times back at the office – always make a backup), and tucked the folder away in my briefcase.
Then, I pulled out a legal pad in exchange, brought out several more pens (in red, green, and blue, to join the black), and set them beside my legal pad.
"And with that, I am officially your attorney in this matter," I told Ben. "Now, I have already availed myself of publicly available filings on this matter, so I've seen the complaint that Mr. Osborn filed, and learned his take on events." Despite the event happening in February, the strings Judge Nolan pulled dragged out the actual refusal to press charges until very recently, in the hopes that some distance from the actual event would allow cooler heads to prevail. Unfortunately, that was not the case. "Now, I would like to know yours. Could you walk me through the events that took place on the evening of Friday, February 9th?"
"Sure, of course," Ben said, taking a sip of his water and leaning back in his chair before he started talking. "February 9th. Well, that was the debate tournament finals, between Midtown Prep and… what was the other school? I'm so sorry, I can't remember which one it was," he said, frowning.
"It's not a big deal," I said, writing down a note in red, reminding myself to figure out which other school was involved. "Please, continue."
"Right, anyway. So it was the finals of the inter-school debate tournament. My nephew Peter and his best friend Harry – Harry Osborn," Ben paused for a moment to clarify that detail for me. "They're both on the debate team together. I, uh…" Ben sighed, staring into his water glass. "When my wife May passed, Peter took it particularly badly. Distanced himself from his friends, stayed out late, got all moody. Grades slipped a bit. I confronted him about this change after a month or so, and told him he needed to do something to pull out of this new rut. I… we both did, really," he added. "So I started volunteering at the synagogue's food bank, and Peter joined the debate team. Then a week later, Peter told me his friend Harry had joined the team too. It was good for them," Ben said with a smile.
"How long have Peter and Harry been friends?" I asked once I noticed that Ben was starting to lose the thread.
"Since kindergarten, actually," Ben said. "My brother and his wife had Peter staying with May and me while they went overseas on a two week assignment." He shook his head, sorrow etched in the lines of his face. "Their plane never made it, went down in the middle of the Atlantic. So there's Peter at his first day of school, we've just had to tell him his parents aren't coming back a couple of weeks before – and he comes back after that first day telling us about his friend whose mommy is also gone, and whose daddy is never there."
"Harry Osborn," I surmised. Ben nodded, then sipped at his water before continuing.
"Those two have been thick as thieves ever since. It's to the point that while the house has a guest bedroom, it may as well have Harry's name on the door for how often he's in it. Or, at least until May passed," Ben said. "He… told me he felt odd about coming over here after… after what happened."
Given the newer glass on the window… I didn't even have to ask why. Home invasions had a way of making once safe spaces feel utterly inhospitable.
And if even Harry's retreat from his father wasn't safe anymore, then what place was?
"A-anyway, this all means that I've had the displeasure of encountering Norman Osborn more than a few times. He always has this look of wanting to be anywhere else, and constantly in a hurry." Ben grimaced as he said this. "The ninth was no different. For the first time, Norman showed up to one of his son's debate tournaments. And the first thing he does is sit himself down in the front row, cross his arms, and scowl. Every time it was Harry's turn to speak in the debate, Norman would clear his throat, just loud enough to be heard. It unnerved Harry something awful," Ben said, one hand over the other now, the knuckles I could see tightening. "I've known that boy for years. He looked more scared than I've ever seen him, and it only got worse the longer the debate went. By the end of it—"
The sound of the front door unlocking interrupted what Ben was going to say, and I found myself a little surprised by how good his hearing still was. When I heard 'war buddy from Korea', I assumed some measure of hearing damage because of proximity to gunfire. He noticed the sound as quickly as I did, and my hearing was literally superhuman.
"I'm home!" we heard from our place in the dining room.
"We're in the dining room!" Ben yelled back. I nearly raised an eyebrow at the subtlety of his hint. Surely a teen wouldn't catch the difference between – wait, I realized. Peter Parker was no ordinary teen. He was a mild precognitive. Was this Ben's way of testing me? Seeing if Peter's Spider-Sense pegged me as a threat? Did this mean Ben Parker was in the know?
… was I reading too far into this?
"Hey, so uh, before I forget!" The two of us heard Peter's shoes come off and backpack hit the floor, even as he continued to talk. "I'm meeting up with Gwen after school tomorrow to get some studying done for the history final on Friday, and we're gonna get dinner after," Peter continued, his speech punctuated by the sound of him unzipping a backpack and pulling out what sounded to me like binders. That, and some kind of wrapper, though I couldn't be sure what from. "So uh, yeah I've got plans for dinner tomorrow," he said, his voice getting closer as he walked through the hall and to the dining room, "and you can just—"
And that was when Peter Parker saw me in person for the second time. The glasses frames with clear lenses were nowhere to be found this time, and he was dressed for early summer weather instead of winter – a Mets t-shirt (the correct choice, I approved) and tan cargo shorts. And as for the wrapper I'd heard, it was, in fact, candy. A tootsie pop, which Peter plucked from his mouth and used to gesture at me.
"You're that lady who was in Jameson's office," Peter said, his brow furrowing and chin tilting down. "The one who called Spider-Man a criminal on TV last year."
"Uh, Peter," Ben said, standing from the table and gesturing towards me. "This is Noa Schaefer. She's the lawyer helping with this, um… this whole Osborn business," he said, voice falling a little flat at the end.
"A pleasure to properly make your acquaintance," I said, standing from the table. I made my way to Peter and looked up at him, offering a hand to shake. "I look forward to working with you both."
He didn't take it.
A beat passed where I stood there, hand outstretched, looking a petulant young man in the eye with an utterly placid expression on my face. He glanced down at my hand, but beyond that, nothing changed.
Until Ben Parker cleared his throat. Peter's shoulders went tense, and he transferred the tootsie pop to his left, gave a quick (and much too tight, any longer and he'd have broken my glamour; also, ow...) handshake, which left me trying to hide a wince, then let go and dumped his binders on the dining table. Specifically, he dumped them directly on top of my briefcase.
My very nice, seven-hundred dollar, leather briefcase.
God almighty, had I forgotten how much of a shithead a teenage boy could be. Hell, even Pietro had been an absolute angel in comparison.
"Don't let me interrupt," Peter said, putting the tootsie pop back in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the dining room with crossed arms.
"Well, I guess I can continue?" Ben ventured as I walked back around the table to the chair I'd been using, pointedly ignoring the binders on my briefcase — not a big deal, it wasn't like I couldn't afford to fix any damage, he was just a kid — and sat down.
"Unfortunately not," I said. "Mr. Parker, your nephew will need to leave the room."
"What!?" Peter spat, pushing off of the wall. I wasn't sure if he was fully aware of his specific body language, but he was making himself as tall and wide as possible as he took a step towards the table.
"It's okay," Ben said. "I'm okay with Peter hearing whatever I say."
"That is not the problem," I said, forcing my face into a mask of utter calmness as I turned to look at Peter. I did not need 'angry teenage male' to become part of my list of problems. "Mr. Parker," I continued, letting who I was facing indicate which Mr. Parker I was speaking to now. "From what I've already heard of your uncle's account, you were present at the incident. This makes you a material witness, and means that I will also have to interview you. Which means that I need to make sure your uncle's statements have as little influence as possible on yours."
"Look, Peter," Ben raised a hand part way off the table to get his nephew's attention back on himself. "It's okay. Just… go upstairs. I'll be fine."
Peter practically growled at being dismissed like that. But he did, thankfully, accept it. He grabbed his binders from off of my briefcase, stomped his way upstairs in that particular fashion angry teens do, and then slammed the door to his bedroom behind him, the thud clearly audible, with Peter's room apparently being directly above the dining room.
"Should I—"
I held a finger up to my lips with one hand, and with the other, pointed above us. It was very faint, but I could just barely hear Peter's footsteps on the floor, along with the squeak of a door hinge at the early stages of wanting some WD-40. Then, about ten seconds later, I heard the echo from a small zap of static electricity filtering in through the doorway of the dining room, and couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"That means no eavesdropping, Mr. Parker!" I yelled down the hallway. A muffled thud greeted this pronouncement, followed about ten seconds later by the door to Peter's room closing again. Not a slam this time, but just a closing.
"How did you know?" Ben asked, an amused smile on his face.
"Part of my being a mutant," I said with a shrug. It still felt odd to be this casual and almost open about what I was… but it was on national television. Not like I had as much reason to hide it. "I have very good hearing."
"I can see that coming in handy, though I wager sirens are a pain," he said good-naturedly. My pained smile was enough of a response for that. "Anyway… where was I again? Before Peter got home?"
"You had commented on Harry Osborn's look of fear," I said after glancing at my notes.
"Right," he said, shifting in his chair. "Well, that look of fear was certainly justified. Right as the debate ended, even before the judges could give their scores and critiques or award the win, Norman was out of his seat and up the aisle. About twenty minutes later, everything was said and done. Midtown had won the tournament, pictures were taken, and the teams went back out front to mingle. But right as I get out, Peter's grabbing me by the arm. He said Harry had gone to the restroom fifteen minutes ago, but hadn't come back yet, and that he had a bad feeling."
I had a sudden bad feeling of my own when Ben said this. Namely: how much of Peter realizing something was wrong came down to his being a good friend, and how much of it was his Spider-Sense?
I would say, at least, that it was smart of him to get an adult.
"And so what happened next?" I prompted after I'd written down some notes. Namely, that I wanted to know which building this debate tournament was hosted in, and its layout. Was it at one of the schools? Probably, but I wasn't sure. Regardless, that was information I could get later, but it could be useful. Not likely, but still.
"Peter led the way as we checked every men's room we came across. Three restrooms later, we checked the locker room, and that's where we found them," Ben said. Yup, it was at a school. "Norman had Harry backed up against a row of these small lockers with padlocks hanging from the front. He was standing over the kid, and Harry was holding his arms around his midsection, like he was hurt. Norman was yelling something about how Harry was an embarrassment to the Osborn name."
"And is that when you intervened?" I asked, starting to put the pieces together. Judge Nolan had said this was a defense-of-other case – the main issue of law is whether or not there was a compelling justification for Ben Parker to have interposed himself for the purpose of defending Harry Osborn. And unless there was sufficient reason to think Harry was genuinely at risk of harm, and not just a victim of clear verbal and emotional abuse…
"Not until Norman's hand came up," Ben said, giving me exactly what I needed. "I yelled out to Norman to try and get him to stop, but either he didn't hear me, or he just didn't care, and he struck Harry in the gut." The knuckles of Ben's clasped hands paled as his grip grew tighter, and I saw his jaw tense up. "I saw a pair of cleats just laying out on the floor of the locker room. Next moment, I'm picking them up and throwing one at Norman."
"Metal or plastic teeth on the cleats?" I asked, sincerely hoping it was the latter. Metal teeth turned this from something I could argue into me telling the Parkers to prepare their best groveling voices.
"Plastic," he said, and I let out a small sigh of relief. "That finally got Norman's attention, and I had the other cleat in my hand. I'm holding the cleat by the toe, and when Norman tries to yell at me, I hit him across the face with the laces side of the shoe. I see him stagger, so I drop the shoe, grab Harry, and Peter and I leave before Norman can get his wits back about him."
"Did you see what kind of effect your strike had on Osborn?" I asked, frowning. A hit with the spike of the cleat would have explained the medical and dental bills that Judge Nolan told me about, but a hit with the top of the shoe? With the laces, not the sole? That didn't make much sense to me.
Whatever was in those medical records, I really needed to see them.
"I didn't," Ben said. "At that point, I was more concerned with getting the boys out of there. We went right out to the parking lot and left, then I drove straight to the ER to get Harry checked out."
Thank God for people with a lick of common sense. If he went to the ER, then that meant there were medical records, so I could get an idea of… wait.
"Good call on the ER," I told him, trying not to let the worry show on my face. "Remind me, how old are Harry and Peter?"
"They both turned seventeen this year," Ben told me, and I bit back a curse. That meant Harry was still a minor, and his medical records were under the control of… Osborn.
Shit. So much for avoiding a Request for Judicial Intervention, and keeping this all contained to the parties.
… unless…?
Could I frame my not wanting to need an RJI as a threat?
I jotted that down in the margins in green, as a reminder to myself. I had to remember that this was a case where one party was all but anonymous, while the other was the complete opposite. If I needed to use that anonymity as a weapon, then that was what I would do.
"And can I assume that you were not allowed to remain with Harry Osborn at the emergency room?" I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"No," Ben said with a frown. "They told me only a parent or legal guardian would be allowed, and I was neither. Never mind that it was his father who put him in that state to begin with."
I could only agree to that sentiment with a sigh of my own. The system did, indeed, have its pitfalls… and while the police would be the ordinary remedy to this situation, when the person you were trying to call the cops on was a billionaire... that remedy swiftly evaporated into thin air.
"I think that's about it for what I can ask you for the moment," I said, flipping my legal pad back to the front and laying the pen down atop it. "As I mentioned earlier, I do need to talk to your nephew Peter and get his account of events, then compare the two. It's possible that he saw more of what happened than you did. Do I have your permission as his legal guardian to speak with him now, or would you rather I come back another day?"
"I think today would be best," Ben said with a slight frown. "He did mention that test on Friday, and I think we're running low on time here as it is?" I nodded at the implied question. "Then yes, feel free. Let me show you upstairs."
Ben Parker and I both stood up from our chairs. I put my notepad and pens back into my briefcase, then followed him back out to the front hall. From there, we turned right from the front door, went past the living room (where I had to walk on tiptoe to not chance my heels damaging the carpet), and did a u-turn to a stairwell leading up.
"Peter's room is the last one on the right," Ben said, stepping to the side of the stairwell. "Thank you again for this. It means a lot."
"Don't thank me yet," I said honestly. "There's still a lot of work to be done before I can comfortably accept your thanks."
With that, I made my way up the stairs, and tiptoed along the carpeted flooring, not letting my weight rest on my heels as I knocked on the door to Peter's bedroom. The door opened up just a sliver, and Peter glared down at me from the crack in the doorframe.
"It's your turn, Mr. Parker," I said, plastering a genial smile on my face. "Would you like to speak in there, or would you rather use the dining room?"
Peter continued to glare at me for a moment longer before he stood aside, and pulled the door to his bedroom open, letting me inside. He turned and plopped himself down on the bed, crossed his arms, and glared at me as I stepped inside, and took a quick glance around.
The biggest dominating feature was a Lego Death Star, fully opened up and on display, resting on the top of a bookcase along one side of the room. The bookcase itself was filled to the brim with textbooks, several of which probably had no place on a high schooler's reading list – organic chemistry wasn't usually taught until a person's second semester of college at least, and that was only the first one I noticed. The medical textbooks were the particularly interesting ones… and something I was decidedly not going to ask about.
Peter's bed was a full-size mattress pressed against a corner of the room, the duvet messy and unmade, pillows surrounding where it made contact with the wall. His desk looked for all the world like a library study carrel with drawers attached, save for the fact that most of its space was occupied by both a Macintosh II and a Commodore 64. One drawer, so full it wouldn't properly close, had myriad wires of all types sticking out of it… and a pair of wire strippers hanging haphazardly on the lip of the drawer.
The walls themselves were mostly sparse. Peter only had two posters: a periodic table of elements just above and to the right of his desk, and an AC/DC poster next to the window.
"Would you mind if I sat here?" I asked, a hand on Peter's desk chair.
He didn't offer any meaningful response. He just wrinkled his nose, gave a disdainful sniff, and kept sitting there, glaring at me with arms crossed.
I took the silence as acceptance, and spun the chair around… to see all of the binders that he'd previously set on top of my briefcase sitting on the seat. I didn't have to look to catch the barest glimpse of a shit-eating grin pass across his face – the accompanying amused exhalation was all I needed to hear.
Well. That and, again. My hearing was good enough for minor echolocation. When accompanied with a sound that sudden, I didn't need to see somebody to know their facial expression.
I carefully picked up the binders from the chair and placed them atop the Macintosh on Peter's desk. Then I spun the chair around, sat in it, placed my briefcase on the floor, and removed my notepad and pens.
"As I mentioned downstairs, your uncle has availed himself of my services in dealing with this…" I waved my left hand a little, my pen waggling slightly in the air. "Whole messy business. I've already spoken with your uncle, and now, I would like you to tell me your account of what happened on February 9th."
"And you couldn't let us do it at the same time why?" Peter bit out through clenched teeth, now deliberately not looking at me. "Cause you need to see if we're lying," he accused, rather than let time answer.
"Yes." Peter's eyes immediately snapped to me, a slight look of surprise on his face, so I took the opportunity to press on while I had his attention. "Trust me when I say that until people are under oath, and sometimes even then, somebody is always lying. This is just one of many ways I make sure that lying isn't being done to me.
"And on that note," I said, taking the segue as it came up, "feel free to begin wherever you'd like with what happened on Friday, February 9th."
There was no response for a good thirty seconds. The silence lingered heavy, with me tapping out a slow rhythm on my notepad with my pen, waiting for Peter to crack.
"Hmph."
A vocal harrumph and a further emphasis of his crossed arms was all I got.
Well. This was going nowhere fast. Despite being Spider-Man, a beloved (by all but Jameson) superhero… he was still also a teenager. One with a chip on his shoulder where I was concerned.
And given his alter ego, I had a feeling as to why that was.
"Mr. Parker," I started keeping my tone neutral. "If there is some problem you have with this situation or with myself, then I can't begin to do anything about that until you tell me what that problem is."
There continued to be no response.
"Does this have something to do with your status as Spider-Man's photographer?" I asked, deciding that I'd rather try to get to the heart of the issue than sit here in silence until the superhuman lost his patience. Or worse, his temper.
"Spider-Man's not a damn criminal!" Peter bit out, the sheer vitriol in his voice surprising me. "You got up in front of the whole country and called Spider-Man a criminal!"
Was that what this was about? That had been a single line of questioning in a cross examination from most of a year ago. Had Peter been holding onto that niggling doubt for this whole time?
Or had his encountering me, the one who said that, in John Jonah Jameson's office cemented it in his mind?
Regardless, if I wanted to actually get anywhere, I needed to nip this in the bud.
Now.
"While that is not how I phrased it in court, and not how I would phrase it now either, arguing the semantics will get us nowhere," I began. "Mr. Parker. Your anger is due to my statement that Spider-Man, who you are at least acquainted with, is a criminal. Am I correct in that regard?"
"Yeah," he said, his glare not abating one bit.
"Then would it surprise you to learn that, were I to have to defend Spider-Man to a detractor, I could quite successfully argue that he has not, in fact, broken any laws?" I said.
"... what?" Peter's face went almost completely slack out of surprise. I couldn't help but smile, and pressed on.
"Despite all of his acrobatics and theatrics, Spider-Man causes one of, if not the lowest amount of collateral damage and injuries among the heroes that call New York home," I said, and gestured at the medical textbooks on Peter's bookshelf. "Something I would wager you had a hand in. Heck, even the single most biased source of reporting on Spider-Man is shockingly light on accusations of actual damage."
Which was true. I'd taken the weekend to look at several of my back issues of the Bugle, paying special attention to Spider-Man reporting. And despite all of Jameson's fear-mongering?
I couldn't find a single injury or bit of property damage that I could wholly and unequivocally attribute to Spider-Man. The largest complaint was that he left his webbing all over the place, occasionally exacerbating traffic or public transit… but that was temporary at best.
"All of that taken together?" I asked rhetorically. "In the absence of damages or injuries, it wouldn't be all that hard to have each and every one of Spider-Man's arrests and villain takedowns dismissed as valid citizen's arrests."
"What… but that—"
"And as much as I have begun to value my friendship with Mr. Jameson," I said, interrupting Peter, "wherever Spider-Man is concerned? Mr. Jameson is, to be blunt, full of shit," I finished.
Peter's arms fell to the sides, the sudden mental whiplash and cognitive dissonance clearly tossing him for a bit of a loop. Here he had drawn up this mental image of me as yet another Jameson, just younger and prettier. Instead, he was getting an object lesson in what should and, more importantly, shouldn't be considered a first impression.
Hopefully, this was a lesson he took with him when he eventually became more involved with the superhero community.
"But… but you said at that trial that you thought Spider-Man was breaking the law," Peter said after a good twenty seconds or so, grasping at the last straws of his argument, and his anger with it.
"I know what I said then," I replied. "But no. I do not believe Spider-Man is a criminal. He is perhaps a bit rough around the edges, but I don't think he's a criminal. Not even close."
"You… you don't?" Peter asked, jaw slack in confusion. Most likely, he wasn't expecting to have the opposite of what he expected thrown at him. In that case… perhaps some elaboration. Make the lesson explicit.
"Mr. Parker, people have a way of acting differently depending on the situation. When I am in the courtroom, I am doing the hardest part of my job," I told him, tapping my pen against my notepad as I spoke. "And half of that difficulty is framing the story both how I want the jury to see it, and in a way that they will accept. I had a point to make, and given the situation, that was the best way to bring them around to the point I needed. Even though that meant following the Daily Bugle's example, and even though it was, yes, at Spider-Man's expense."
Peter was quiet for a moment, though he gave me a funny look. I had a feeling he was trying to reconcile the 'courtroom Noa' he'd seen on TV and the 'managing John Jonah Jameson' Noa he met this past winter with the 'out-of-court Noa' in front of him.
Which was fair. Entirely so.
"... so, um," Peter said, rubbing his hands together and pursing his lips expectantly. "You don't think he's a criminal. So uh, then. Aside from the, you know… civilian arrest thing?" Peter asked.
"Citizen's arrest," I corrected.
"Yeah, that," he said. "Uh, other than that. What, um. What is your opinion on Spider-Man?"
Oh. Oh my God. This boy was so transparent.
He was so incredibly transparent that his earnestness had already wrapped around to being adorable.
I put my pen and notepad down on my lap, clasped my fingers, and just gave him a look, followed by a long, slow, blink.
"Mr. Parker," I started. "Peter." I looked up and gestured idly to his closet – and more specifically, to his laundry basket. "If I were to get up and look through there, what are the odds I find Spider-Man's costume inside?"
Peter gave me a blank look, before he gave a small chuckle. When my facial expression didn't change a bit, the nervous grin fell off his face, and he started to go a bit pale.
"W-what—" Peter cut himself off as he stood, wetting his lips as he raised his hands out in front, as if to ward me off. "T-that—"
"Mr. Parker," I stopped Peter. "Look at me."
With a snap of my fingers, my glamour fell away, showing the young man my true appearance.
"I have horns and a tail," I said, gesturing to them for effect. "And I can only hide them from sight. Even with that limitation, I lasted twenty-one years hiding that I'm a mutant, and my outing was a fluke. Compared to that? You're not very good at this."
"O-oh…" Realization dawned on his face as he clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly. "That's… yeah, right, you're uh… yeah, you're that. Uh…" Peter paced around his room, hands behind his head and running through his hair. "I, you, uh… look, y-you're not gonna… like, tell anyone, right?" he asked, turning back towards me.
"That depends," I said, pointing at his bedroom door. "Does your uncle know?"
"Y-yeah," Peter said, sitting back down on his bed. "Yeah. He does."
"Then no," I told him. "I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially since your little secret is covered by the attorney-client privilege."
"It is?" he asked, somewhat incredulous.
"Mhmm," I nodded. To be fair, it was... with a generous interpretation of the rules of ethics, courtesy of Peter still being a minor, and his legal guardian being my client.
"Oh thank God," Peter said, collapsing down onto his bed with relief. And then mere moments later, he popped back up. "Uh, alright, look, I gotta know. What gave me away?"
"The glasses," I answered immediately. It wasn't exactly true... but it wasn't exactly false, either.
Peter opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, and closed his mouth. His brow furrowed in thought, and then his eyebrows went up in surprise.
"Really?" he asked, incredulous.
"For obvious reasons, I pay attention to the research and discourse on mutants," I said, tapping my horn with my pen. "There's still a bit of peer review to go, but from what I've gathered, the most common mutant power researchers have found is slightly-better-than-perfect vision. It's also the most common secondary power, and the most common beneficial side effect of powers.
"Now, keeping in mind that mutant powers can, and often do, manifest quite literally overnight? Outside of a few situations, clear lenses are a dead giveaway. As are a glasses wearer's tics and quirks when you can't see contacts. Once I caught that first sign that something might have been amiss, it wasn't hard to see how graceful your fake clumsiness was."
"Oh, that's… huh. How hard is it to see if someone has contacts, though?" Peter asked.
"You tell me," I said, leaning in and looking him in the eyes.
"Wait, what? Why are – oh, ooh..." Peter cottoned on quickly and looked me in the eye. I saw the moment he realized what he was seeing. "Okay, I can see it. A bit of blue around the iris from the lens. And it slides down a bit after you blink."
"Indeed," I said. "And now you know how to spot most contact lenses. Anyways. Can we get back to the initial point of our discussion?" I asked. "Your recounting of events?"
"U-um…" Peter flushed a bit, in embarrassment. "S-sorry."
"It's okay," I said, picking up my notepad and pen. "Now, I know from your uncle that this was the first time Norman Osborn had shown up to one of the debate team's events, but I'd like it if you could take it from the top for me…"
So, this chapter was supposed to have three full scenes.
That was until I realized that this first scene was more like three scenes condensed into one, since there's no page break, and it just has segments that serve as diegetic transitions, almost.
… well, that and the thing breaking the 7000 word mark.
So, the next scenes… one of them has been cut and is going to be relegated to a canon sidestory most likely, since it was only there as a breather between the subject matter of this scene and the other. So the initially planned scene three will now be the first scene of next chapter.
And the five planned scenes from next chapter are now scenes two and three, and then the three scenes of the chapter after that.
Fingers crossed that other scenes don't balloon the way this one has. Otherwise, this arc isn't going to wrap up around chaptertwenty-two twenty-three like I wanted it to.
Anyways. Hope y'all enjoyed. If you're feeling generous, my Ko-fi is still going for now (hopefully not for too much longer… I'm getting tired of sending resumes and cover letters into the void, please networking work…).
And the chapter after this one is currently scheduled for release on July 16.
For the one year anniversary of this fic's posting.
… oh shit it's about to have been a full year—
That was until I realized that this first scene was more like three scenes condensed into one, since there's no page break, and it just has segments that serve as diegetic transitions, almost.
… well, that and the thing breaking the 7000 word mark.
So, the next scenes… one of them has been cut and is going to be relegated to a canon sidestory most likely, since it was only there as a breather between the subject matter of this scene and the other. So the initially planned scene three will now be the first scene of next chapter.
And the five planned scenes from next chapter are now scenes two and three, and then the three scenes of the chapter after that.
Fingers crossed that other scenes don't balloon the way this one has. Otherwise, this arc isn't going to wrap up around chapter
Anyways. Hope y'all enjoyed. If you're feeling generous, my Ko-fi is still going for now (hopefully not for too much longer… I'm getting tired of sending resumes and cover letters into the void, please networking work…).
And the chapter after this one is currently scheduled for release on July 16.
For the one year anniversary of this fic's posting.
… oh shit it's about to have been a full year—
“What If…?” issue 2 Strawpoll
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, this is long overdue.
A short while back, y'all sent me your suggestions for other "What If…?" prompts, with my one caveat being "we aren't going back for more of another one quite yet".
I finally took the initiative to actually make a strawpoll for those options.
Note. EITHER when 1) there is a clear standout favorite, OR 2) five days have passed, I will close the voting.
With all this said… please EDIT 2: TRY THIS LINK INSTEAD
A short while back, y'all sent me your suggestions for other "What If…?" prompts, with my one caveat being "we aren't going back for more of another one quite yet".
I finally took the initiative to actually make a strawpoll for those options.
Note. EITHER when 1) there is a clear standout favorite, OR 2) five days have passed, I will close the voting.
With all this said… please EDIT 2: TRY THIS LINK INSTEAD
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Try this one instead?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
An edit has been made to the strawpoll because it seems the original was just Not Working.
EDIT 2 -- there's a different option
edit: or somebody provide an alternative...
EDIT 2 -- there's a different option
edit: or somebody provide an alternative...
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FINAL ATTEMPT -- "What If..." vol.2 Voting
- Pronouns
- She/Her
“What If…?” vol.2 Vote Results
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So uh, this was supposed to go up yesterday. But I got back from Manhattan at 11:37pm.
And then today, my aunt taught me "great grandma Lily from Ukraine"s recipe for matzah ball soup. Which turned out amazing, let me tell you, my God. And the secret ingredient was the key.
(Schmaltz. The secret ingredient is using schmaltz in the matzah balls.)
Anyway, where was I?
… right, right! Vote results!
Anyways! So first off, a lesson learned: don't use strawpoll. Just use Google Forms. And lesson two: in the future, provide a small 3-4 paragraph blurb as a reader to help people decide.
As a recap, your options were:
1) the Worm AU. Which, despite everybody's hopes… would not have touched the Canary case with a 90 foot pole. Another Matter for Lawyers already did it. Go read that.
2) the My Hero Academia AU.
3) the Star Wars AU.
4) AU branching off from the verdict in the first major case of the fic (State v. S.J. Allerdyce)
5) AU where oh hey, Noa is STRONK.
I received 1224 responses. Which is a way larger number than I anticipated! The distribution is as follows:
—In fifth place, we have the Star Wars AU. To which I say: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
—In fourth place, we have St. John being found not guilty. Which is fair —people can read between the lines and know it's eventually going to happen anyways in this fic. And yeah, the What If…? would have ended up somewhat spoiling things from the larger overarching [REDACTED] arc. (hint: it's the one where She-Hulk makes a guest appearance)
—In third place, we have the HeroAca AU. Boo, people. Let me take a sledgehammer to the canon, the fanon, the shark jumping tank, and more.
Now, clearly this means there were two options left: power fantasy Noa, and Worm!Noa. And I think we can all see the writing on the wall here. We know where we are. The winner of this vote was…
… NOT the Worm AU!
Oh my God! I'm so proud! Mazel Tov, everyone, you beat expectations!
Yes, the winner is:
What If…? Noa Schaefer was actually a rather powerful mutant?
The next chapter will be continuing the current arc. But after that, we get our sidestory.
and maybe QQ will finally get its first exclusive if I can get my brain back into horny jail instead of letting the ghost of the creator of graham crackers think they served their initial intended purpose, note to self, maybe try using something other than a graham cracker crust next time I make a NY style cheesecake I plead the Fifth.
And then today, my aunt taught me "great grandma Lily from Ukraine"s recipe for matzah ball soup. Which turned out amazing, let me tell you, my God. And the secret ingredient was the key.
(Schmaltz. The secret ingredient is using schmaltz in the matzah balls.)
Anyway, where was I?
… right, right! Vote results!
Anyways! So first off, a lesson learned: don't use strawpoll. Just use Google Forms. And lesson two: in the future, provide a small 3-4 paragraph blurb as a reader to help people decide.
As a recap, your options were:
1) the Worm AU. Which, despite everybody's hopes… would not have touched the Canary case with a 90 foot pole. Another Matter for Lawyers already did it. Go read that.
2) the My Hero Academia AU.
3) the Star Wars AU.
4) AU branching off from the verdict in the first major case of the fic (State v. S.J. Allerdyce)
5) AU where oh hey, Noa is STRONK.
I received 1224 responses. Which is a way larger number than I anticipated! The distribution is as follows:
—In fifth place, we have the Star Wars AU. To which I say: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
—In fourth place, we have St. John being found not guilty. Which is fair —people can read between the lines and know it's eventually going to happen anyways in this fic. And yeah, the What If…? would have ended up somewhat spoiling things from the larger overarching [REDACTED] arc. (hint: it's the one where She-Hulk makes a guest appearance)
—In third place, we have the HeroAca AU. Boo, people. Let me take a sledgehammer to the canon, the fanon, the shark jumping tank, and more.
Now, clearly this means there were two options left: power fantasy Noa, and Worm!Noa. And I think we can all see the writing on the wall here. We know where we are. The winner of this vote was…
… NOT the Worm AU!
Oh my God! I'm so proud! Mazel Tov, everyone, you beat expectations!
Yes, the winner is:
What If…? Noa Schaefer was actually a rather powerful mutant?
The next chapter will be continuing the current arc. But after that, we get our sidestory.
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