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Kim’s not in the breakroom the next morning. Jimmy arrives early as usual, but for the first time he has to put the coffee on himself—a task almost more complicated than anything else he’s had to learn in the job so far. He fumbles with the machine and spills coffee grounds everywhere, and he’s only just finished cleaning it up when the door opens.
“Hey, you out late celebrating?” Jimmy says, face breaking into a smile as he turns and sees—
Chuck.
Jimmy grins wider. “Chuck! Sorry—thought you were someone else.”
“Jimmy,” Chuck says. He steps into the breakroom and looks around curiously, taking in the kitchenette, lockers, and table. “This is nice.”
“Yeah, isn’t it?” Jimmy says warmly, as he finally pours himself a coffee. He gestures to the machine. “Want a cup?”
“No, thank you.” Chuck peers closely at the mailroom noticeboard (latest addition: PLEASE wash plates before putting away!!! in Ron’s ugly scrawl) then straightens up again. He’s holding his cellphone in one hand, and he glances at it for a moment before turning to Jimmy. “Have you had any luck finding an apartment?”
“Yep, all signed up and good to go,” Jimmy says, taking a seat at the table. “Went with the Beachcomber like we talked about. Next time you see me, I’m gonna be rocking that dark orange, Cary-Grant-in-To-Catch-a-Thief tan.” He sips his coffee. “Hey, thanks again for the help. I’ll pay you back.”
Chuck waves a dismissive hand.
“And thank Rebecca for me, too,” Jimmy says. He tries to look extra sincere—and then hates that he’s always trying to look sincere around Chuck, like he’s worried his real emotions aren’t genuine enough.
“I’ll let her know,” Chuck says, brushing some invisible lint off his sleeve. His lips pull downward, then he glances back at Jimmy. “You had a good night, then?”
Jimmy gives a small smile. He studies Chuck for a moment, then says, “She’s great, Chuck. She’s really great. You did good.”
Chuck’s lips twitch, and he nods. “We have been married for five years.”
“All right, all right,” Jimmy says, chuckling and holding up his hands. He watches Chuck for another long moment. His brother looks wide awake, fresh and alert, his hair neatly combed and his dark blue suit immaculate. Jimmy can tell the fabric is expensive, more expensive than Chuck usually shells out for.
Then Chuck’s cellphone rings. Chuck lets out his breath and brings it to his ear, waving a hand to Jimmy as he turns and walks out the door. “Yes? No, I’m here. I’m on my way. Tell Gurnstetter if he doesn’t…”
Jimmy sinks into his hard chair and takes another sip of his coffee. He’s never known his brother not to be busy, never known him to sit back with his feet up and drink a beer or watch a movie. Maybe when Jimmy was a kid…but the memories are hazy at the edges. Or maybe not even memories at all, just photographs.
Henry walks into the breakroom next. “Was that Mr. McGill?” he asks, peering back over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Jimmy says. “He come around often?”
Henry shakes his head. “He and Hamlin Senior stop by at Christmas to deliver the bonuses. Santa hats and everything. Haven't seen much of him otherwise." He scratches his face. “Started in seventy-nine, so what’s that, thirteen years? I think they like me because I have no ambition.”
Jimmy laughs, and then feels a little guilty. He wishes he knew enough about Henry to make a joke—no, come on, they love you for your karaoke at the holiday parties!—but he doesn’t. All Jimmy’s learned about Henry so far is that he’s bony and middle-aged and doesn’t wear a wedding ring.
Like the old man with the yellow dog in Chuck’s neighbourhood, Jimmy can see himself in Henry, if he tries. A version of himself where he lets all the work and days of the mailroom wear away at his rough edges—the copy machines like millstones smoothing him down until he, too, is content. Content to be bony and middle-aged and ringless.
The others show up at seven o’clock, and Kim among them. She’s almost late, in fact. Jimmy tries to catch her eye, but the morning mail arrives with her, and they’re all swept along in sorting it and distributing it between the carts for delivery. Ron collects the mail for the name partners separately, eyeing each envelope as if he’s party to some secret the others aren’t, some important and pressing business going on in the towers upstairs. He sniffs proudly as he departs.
Kim and Henry wheel off the rest of the mail, and Jimmy and Burt are left downstairs with not much to do, for once. Jimmy busies himself in the stock room, lining up boxes of windowed envelopes so the edges are flush. After a few minutes, Burt strolls in. He leans against the wall and chuckles.
“We’re not used to having the extra man, to be honest,” Burt says. He picks up a ball of rubber bands and tosses it to Jimmy, who catches it. “We’ve been managing with the four of us for months. Since Nate passed the bar and moved on up. He’s a first year associate now,” Burt adds, almost proudly.
“You studying, too?” Jimmy asks, throwing the ball back. He’s never seen Burt with any books or notebooks.
“Nah,” Burt says. “I’m taking a year or two to save up some money, and then I’ll put in for the scholarship program here. I talked to Mr. Hamlin and he said it looked promising.” Burt tosses the rubber band ball between his hands for a moment then throws it back to Jimmy. “You?”
Jimmy fumbles the ball. He has to fish it out from behind a row of archive boxes, and when he turns back Burt is looking at him curiously. “Me?” Jimmy asks.
“Come on, you’re smart, you picked those copy machines up pretty quick,” Burt says, catching the next throw. “Why not?”
Jimmy wonders what Burt’s heard about his past, if anything.
The man’s eyes are wide and innocent-looking as he waits for Jimmy’s answer, rolling the rubber band ball between the palms of his hands.
Jimmy gestures for a pass, then catches it. "Just not for me,” he says. “Hey, I heard this story: a lawyer wakes up in hospital wonders why all the blinds in his room are drawn…”
Burt’s face lights up. “Go on, then.”
“Nurse’s like, sorry, there’s a fire over the street, and we didn’t want you to think you’d died!”
Burt snickers. “Hah. Good one.”
Then they hear the chimes of the elevator, and an assistant comes down with a stack of papers to photocopy and collate. Burt wanders off to help him, and Jimmy is left alone in the storeroom. He peels a single rubber band off the ball, and stretches it around his splayed fingers, bouncing his hands against the tension. When Burt calls for him a few minutes later, Jimmy curls the rubber band around his thumb and forefinger like a gun.
“Stick ‘em,” he says, training it on a row of archives boxes.
Then he fires off the rubber band with a snap, and leaves.
Jimmy finally sees Kim as she’s heading into the breakroom for lunch. “Hey!” he calls, jogging to catch up with her. “Hey, Kim. So?”
Kim stops and looks at him. “So?”
“So?!” Jimmy repeats, gesturing helplessly. “Did you pass your test—your review, or whatever? Come on, how’d you do?”
Kim opens her locker and rifles through her bag for something. Her voice emerges from behind the door: “Terribly.”
“What?!” Jimmy slams the palm of his hand into the wall. “What? No!”
“I only got an eighty,” says her muffled voice.
“Is that…bad?” he asks softly.
There’s a long silence, and then Kim closes her locker door, and he sees she’s grinning. “It would be, but nobody else got above a sixty-three!”
Jimmy laughs, huffing out his breath. “Jesus, Kim! Don’t play me like that.”
“I wasn’t,” Kim says, brushing past him and heading towards the kitchenette. “An eighty would be terrible on the final test. It’s really not good enough.”
Jimmy rolls his eyes. “Come on.”
“All right,” she says. “So maybe I didn’t do terribly.”
“There ya go!” Jimmy says, pointing at her. “I knew you’d ace it. And hey”—as Kim reaches for the coffee pot—“hey, listen, I completely fucked up that machine this morning without you, let me buy you a proper one from the cart upstairs instead.” He raises his eyebrows. “You know, to celebrate!”
Kim stares at him, her lips twitching at the corners.
“We gotta celebrate your shitty eighty per cent, Kim! What even is that, anyway, an A?”
She frowns. “What? It’s a B minus. It’s a low B minus.”
Jimmy holds up his hands. “You think I ever did that well at school? Please. Come on, let’s go celebrate.”
“All right, all right,” Kim says, putting down the coffee pot. “Let’s go, then.”
She follows him out of the breakroom. Jimmy hops on the balls of his feet and spins, walking backwards across the mailroom floor. He taps his palm into the loose fist of his other hand and makes a hollow, pucking sound. “So why the no-show this morning? Out drinking with your much dumber friends?”
“Hah,” Kim says. She pulls the door to the landing and holds it open for him.
“Not drinking?” Jimmy says, acting shocked as he moves past her. He thumbs the elevator call button, then turns to Kim as she joins him at his side.
“I went in early to talk with the professor,” Kim says. “We discussed the review as a class afterwards, it’s a learning exercise, you know. But I had a few more questions.”
“‘Course,” Jimmy says, as the elevator arrives and they step inside. “This guy must be good, coming in at the crack of dawn.”
“She’s great, yes,” Kim says. “I think she thinks she’s Sidney Poitier.”
Jimmy grins. “Hope you’re ready to sing her a song at the end of the year.”
“Oh, I am,” Kim says dramatically. The elevator arrives on the ground floor, and they step out into a HHM lobby in full swing: people walking to and fro, or gathering in loose groups for fast-paced conversation. The sound of fingers hammering keys punctuates the trill of distant telephones as Jimmy and Kim cross the lobby and exit through the main doors.
It’s a beautiful day out, the huge blue sky flecked with patchy clouds, the sun hot but comfortable. The trees are starting to come back into their leaves, and early spring blossoms are appearing in the well-tended flower beds.
There’s a coffee cart on a grassy verge near the entrance. Jimmy orders two drip coffees and hands over a couple of bucks, then turns to Kim. She’s staring up at the sky as if she’s forgotten what it looks like—but then Jimmy notices her lips moving slightly, tracing around silent words.
“Hey!” he says.
Kim’s head flicks downwards and she frowns at him.
“Stop running over whatever contract law mumbo jumbo you’re memorizing and enjoy the sunshine,” he says. “We’re celebrating, okay?”
“Not contract law,” Kim says. “I’ve moved back to criminal.”
“Oh, carry on then,” Jimmy says, but Kim smiles and watches the barista make their coffees instead. Jimmy would bet good money some obscure legal precedents are still running through her mind on loop, and he chuckles. When their coffees are ready, he takes them, and gestures to a nearby bench.
“Here,” he says, handing Kim her coffee, “Congrats on the B minus.”
“Thank you,” Kim says, sitting down. She cradles her cup in two hands and stares away from him, towards the flow of people entering and leaving HHM, a swift-moving stream. “I actually knew the answers to the things I got wrong. I just…blanked.”
Jimmy sips his coffee and tries to think of the right thing to say. “I can quiz you more,” he offers. “If that helps. For next time.”
Kim turns to face him.
“You’d be doing me a favor, really,” Jimmy says, shrugging. “I need to make a friend in Albuquerque somehow. Burt’s a kid, Ron’s gross, and Henry’s like, almost fifty. It’s slim pickings.”
“Gee, thanks,” Kim says wryly.
“I got nowhere else to go,” Jimmy says, channeling An Officer and a Gentleman. “Kim, I got nowhere else to go!”
Kim laughs, bright and musical. She leans down, opens her bag, and pulls a neatly wrapped sandwich from her bag and unpeels the paper, then holds it out to Jimmy. “Want half?”
It looks homemade, chicken salad on whole wheat.
“Go on,” Kim says, inching it closer. “Without your help I only would’ve got a 78 on that review. Maybe a 79.”
“Thanks,” Jimmy says warmly, picking up half the sandwich. He takes a bite—it’s much better than vending machine chips. Across the grass, Chuck emerges from the HHM entrance, mid-conversation with the Rolex-wearing Carl Vernon. The two men stop near the coffee cart, but don’t order anything.
Kim folds the paper sandwich-wrapper between her fingers, creasing the edge sharply. “We have actual exams coming up after spring break.”
Jimmy swallows his mouthful of sandwich. “Hey, spring break, though!”
“Yes, spring break—a week of working here as usual but with extra cramming for midterms,” Kim says blandly. “Woohoo.”
“Woohoo,” Jimmy repeats, smiling at Kim then taking another bite of his sandwich.
Chuck gives Vernon a fatherly pat on the shoulder, then walks away. Rolex Vernon stares after him, grinning, then glances about and spots Jimmy and Kim. His face lights up, and he strides over, stopping right before their bench. He looks much healthier today—no sweat patches around his collar or dark bags under his eyes.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Vernon says, gesturing for them both to stay seated. “No, don’t let me interrupt your lunch. I wanted to apologize for losing my temper over that accident with my assistant. I go a bit nuts towards the end of a big case, heh!” His laugh is short and almost ironic.
Jimmy stares up at the man grinning in front of him. “So it turned out okay, then?”
“Okay would be an understatement,” Vernon says, waving proudly at the beautiful weather as if he’s the one responsible. “Papadoumian went in my favour, and she must’ve been really raving about me because I got a new case out of it. Was just telling Mr. McGill. High profile stuff, very hush hush, very exciting. I imagine there’ll be discovery coming in today, so brace yourself because Acevedo is going to try to drown me.”
“Congratulations,” Jimmy offers, but Vernon doesn’t even seem to hear him.
“Well, hey—I gotta dash, but sorry again there, Jim,” Vernon says. He nods at Kim, then wanders towards another group of people, evidently looking to share his good news with anyone who’ll listen. Very hush hush indeed.
Kim scrunches up her sandwich wrapper and downs her last bit of coffee. “We'd better get back to it if he’s right about that discovery.”
Jimmy nods. He takes the trash from Kim and throws it in the bin beside him, then stands. “Thanks for the sandwich. And I mean it, let me quiz you again.” He throws out his arms and twists his face up and yells, “I got nowhere else to go!”
A few people glance over in concern, and Kim waves them down with a placating hand. “All right, all right. Don’t make me regret it, Richard Gere,” she says sternly, but then she laughs, and the two of them head back down to the mailroom.
The first lot of discovery for Rolex Vernon’s new case arrives that afternoon, and at first Jimmy is underwhelmed when only seven narrow containers about the size of shoeboxes are delivered to the mailroom. Underwhelmed, and then confused, when everyone else around him lets loose a cacophony of groans.
“Oh no,” Burt says. “Get ready to weep for the trees.”
Henry picks up the first box and opens it to reveal a line of tightly-packed floppy disks.
“I know Vernon said Acevedo wanted to bury him, but this is a declaration of war,” Kim says.
“What’s going on?” Jimmy asks, looking between everyone.
Henry sighs. “Mr. Vernon and the poor folks in doc review need physical copies. It’s a massive bottleneck.”
Kim walks off with a box and turns on the two computers linked up with the copy machines. “Let’s get started, then,” she says, grimly. She picks up the first floppy disk and slides it into the machine. Hits a few buttons and waits a minute, and then the printer beside the PC starts spitting out paper. Kim peers down at the pages and lets out a hushed noise.
“Everything okay?” Henry asks, and he and Jimmy approach with the remaining boxes.
Kim’s eyes flick over the pages as they emerge from the printer. “Isn’t Stan Westerbrook the Channel Four anchor?”
Henry nods. “Stan and Trisha Westerbrook. ‘All the News You Need at Six’.”
Jimmy can picture them now, laughing fakely on his hotel TV. Perfect white smiles and dyed hair talking about Bush and Clinton and Super Tuesday.
“Not married for much longer, it looks like,” Henry adds, gesturing with his box of floppy disks. A handwritten label just reads: Finances.
“The money they have? They could drag this out for a long time,” Kim says. She frowns, and Jimmy can almost see the calculations running through her head—the loss of anticipated study time. She breathes out slowly and closes her eyes for a moment, then settles down into the computer chair and starts queueing up files for the printer. The monitor casts a soft blue light on her face, reflecting like pinpricks in her eyes.
And, sure enough, they all spend the rest of the day flat out, staying on until after six o’clock, until after the light beyond the high windows fades from the oranges of sunset down to darkness. Kim leaves before the rest of the group, making apologies about her night class, but the others just wave her away kindly, and Jimmy smiles and calls, “Congratulations on that B minus!” as she rushes out to the elevators. She holds up a hand to him in farewell.
By the time they finish for the evening, Jimmy and the others have filled a couple of dozen archive boxes, papers stacked in painstakingly-numbered lever-arch files and then squeezed into the boxes like sardines. Jimmy pays more attention to the content of the pages than usual as he’s assembling them. It’s mostly dry financial statements, but even those contain gems: high-end sports cars, expensive holidays, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to own a forty-foot yacht in the middle of landlocked Albuquerque. Maybe Stan Westerbrook can sail it in the couple’s enormous in-ground pool, installed just three years ago.
Jimmy’s never known anyone with that kind of money. There was a time, after his dad got the store but before it started doing badly, when his mom would buy brand name products from the supermarket instead of the generic stuff. His parents had even started talking about moving into a bigger place. But of course it didn’t work out, and his mom's still in the same townhouse as he was born in, and last time he visited she still ate the store-brand muesli for her breakfast every morning.
Chuck must have money, Jimmy thinks, but he doesn’t show it off to the world. Not like Howard, whose suit and car and hair stink of the stuff. But Chuck—Chuck has nice suits, and a nice car, and a nice house in the suburbs, and he’s not flamboyant about it. Jimmy thinks that that’s all he’d want money for too, really: some nice suits and a car and a house.
Well, maybe the suits and the car and the house and the in-ground pool, if he can swing it.
If he can swing it.
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