Read Online Starter House A Novel by Sonja Condit - Free Book Online

different lawyers for different kinds of trouble. Some of them had a whole page in the book, with pictures of themselves smiling, and he didn’t trust them either, because why were they so happy? The law was a terrible thing. So he called his uncle Harry, and the old man said, “I sold the house to a lawyer. Call him.”
    The woman who answered the phone had a friendly voice. Lex came into the lawyer’s office holding the big manila envelope across his chest. It had arrived yesterday, Monday, delivered by hand at MacArthur’s, when he was in the back sorting avocados. The soft avocados went into the “Buy Me Today” bin at half price. A man in a blue windbreaker came into the back, carrying a clipboard. “Andrew Lexington Hall?” he said and handed him the envelope and was gone before Lex knew what had happened.
    The thing was only four pages long. It took a long time to read. Lex could read as well as anybody. He had his GED. He didn’t have any trouble reading, but his mind slid away from the words. He worried about the avocados.
    Petitioner . Respondent . Dissolution of marriage . He thought someone must be suing him and Jeanne, because her name was all over it. On his lunch break, he called the old man and read it to him, even though the break room was full of cashiers, listening to him and giggling behind their hands.
    “It means divorce,” the old man said.
    “Then why is Jeanne’s name here?” He still couldn’t understand. And so many of the avocados were already soft. The delivery truck must have parked in the sun. These things weren’t supposed to happen.
    “Jeanne’s divorcing you,” the old man said. “You need a lawyer.”
    No lawyer had ever helped Lex, no matter who paid them, the old man or the state or whoever. They knew one another, lawyers. They went out together and drank in the same bars. He wasn’t stupid; he knew. “Jeanne’s got a lawyer,” he said. He’d found the name on the last page. Cambrick MacAvoy. One lawyer was okay. You only got into real trouble when there were two lawyers.
    “That’s Jeanne’s lawyer,” the old man said. “You need your own.”
    So here was Lex in the front office of Moranis Miszlak, an expensive room that smelled of perfumed men and dry-cleaned cotton and fancy magazines. At the back of the room, at a big curved desk, sat a golden-skinned black woman with soft straight hair, and she looked at the manila envelope all greasy from his clutching hands, and she judged him. People always did. They looked at him and they knew. Even if they didn’t know what they knew, they smelled it on him.
    The shiny girl looked away from the envelope, like she was sorry for him. She pressed a button on her desk phone and said, “Eric, your four o’clock’s here,” and then she went back to her computer. Not once had she raised her hazel eyes to look at Lex. People didn’t, especially women.
    “My wife’s divorcing me,” he told her. Petition for dissolution of marriage. Petition meant asking. Just because you asked for something didn’t mean you’d get it. “It’s not right,” he said to the shiny girl.
    Now she looked at him. Her eyebrows were as black and clean as if they’d been drawn with a Sharpie. “Mr. Miszlak will take care of you,” she said.
    The Miszlak lawyer was shorter than Lex expected, and younger, too young to have his name on the front door of the big office. It was thirty years since Lex had much to do with lawyers, but he remembered if your name was on the door, you were the big dog. This was not the big dog. He was short, with reddish-brown hair and a tight mouth. Lex followed him down a white hallway with glass doors.
    The young lawyer’s office was around two corners and past a water fountain. It was a little room with no windows and a torn-up vinyl floor. “Your name’s on the door,” Lex said, to get that clear in his mind. Names were hard. “Miszlak, that’s you.”
    “I’m Eric Miszlak. Floyd Miszlak’s my uncle.