Dirty Work

Dirty Work
By Lewis Shiner

Distributed under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

The office smelled like money. Brand new carpet, somebody's
expensive perfume still hanging in the air. The chairs in the waiting
room are leather and the copy machine has a million attachments and
there's pictures on the wall that I don't know what they're supposed to
be. Made me ashamed of the shirt I was wearing, the cuffs all frayed
and some of the buttons don't match.
The secretary is a knockout and I figure Dennis has got to be getting in
her pants. Red hair and freckles and shiny skin that looks like she just
got out of a hot shower. A smile like she really means it. My name was
in the book and she showed me right on in.
Dennis shook my hand and put me in a chair that was slings and tube
steel. The calendar next to his desk had a ski scene on it. Behind him
was solid books, law books all in the same binding, also some
biographies and political stuff.
"Too bad you couldn't make the reunion," Dennis said. "It was a hoot."
"I just felt weird about it," I said. I still did. It looked like he wanted me
to go on, so I said, "I knew there'd be a bunch of y'all there that had
really made good, and I guess I...I don't know. Didn't want to have to
make excuses."
"Hard to believe it's been twenty years. You look good. I still wouldn't

want to run into you in a dark alley, but you look fit. In shape."
"I got weights in the garage, I try to work out. When you're my size you
can go to hell pretty quick. You look like you're doing pretty good
yourself." Charlene is always pointing to people on TV and talking
about the way they dress. With Dennis I could see for the first time
what she's talking about. The gray suit he had on looked like part of
him, like it was alive. When I think about him in grungy sweats back at
Thomas Jefferson High School, bent double from trying to run laps, it
doesn't seem like the same guy.
"Can't complain," Dennis said.
"Is that your Mercedes downstairs? What do they call those, SLs?"
"My pride and joy. Can't afford it, of course, but that's what bankers are
for, right? You were what, doing something in oil?"
"Rig foreman. You know what that means. 'I'm not saying business is
bad, but they're telling jokes about it in Ethiopia.'"
Dennis showed me this smile that's all teeth and no eyes. "Like I told
you on the phone. I can't offer you much. The technical name for what
you'll be is a paralegal. Usually that means research and that kind of
thing, but in your case it'll be legwork."
Beggars can't be choosers. What Dennis pays for his haircut would feed
Charlene and the kids for close to a week. I must look ten years older
than him. All those years in the sun put the lines in your face and the
ache in your bones. He was eighteen when we graduated, I was only
seventeen, now I'm the one that's middle aged. He was tennis, I was
football. Even in high school he was putting it to girls that looked like
that secretary of his. Whereas me and Charlene went steady from
sophomore year, got married two weeks after graduation. I guess I've
been to a couple of topless bars, but I've never been with anybody else,
not that way.
It was hard for me to call Dennis up. What it was, I got the invitation

for the class reunion, and they had addresses for other people in the
class. Seemed like fate or something, him being right here in Austin
and doing so good. I knew he'd remember me. Junior year a couple of
guys on the team were waiting for him in the parking lot to hand him
his ass, and I talked them out of it. That was over a girl too, now that I
think about it.
Dennis said, "I got a case right now I could use some help with." He
slid a file over from the corner of the desk and opened it up. "It's a rape
case. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
Dennis sat back, kind of studying me, playing with the gold band on his
watch. "I mean my client is the defendant. The thing is--and I'm not
saying it's this way all the time or anything--but a lot of these cases
aren't what you'd think. You got an underage girl, or married maybe,
gets caught with the wrong jockey