House Rules Read online

  I decided to go to law school, for the same reason everyone else goes to law school: because I had no idea what else to do.

  I'll be a good lawyer. Maybe even a great one. But here I am, at twenty-eight, and my secret fear is that I'm going to be just another guy who spends his whole life making money by doing something he's never really loved

  to do.

  I have just put the vacuum back in the closet when there is a tentative knock at the door. A man stands there in Carhartt coveralls, feeding the seam of a black wool cap through his hands. He reeks of smoke.

  --Can I help you?|| I ask.

  --I'm looking for the lawyer?||

  --That's me.|| On the couch, Thor begins to growl. I shoot him a dirty glance. If he starts scaring away my potential clients, he'll be homeless.

  --Really?|| the man says, peering at me. --You don't look old enough to be a lawyer.||

  --I'm twenty-eight,|| I say. --Wanna see my driver's license?||

  --No, no,|| the man says. --I, uh, I got a problem.||

  I usher him into the office, closing the door behind him. --Why don't you have a seat, Mr. ...||

  --Esch,|| he says, settling down. --Homer Esch. I was out in my backyard this morning burning brush and the fire got out of control.|| He looks up at me as I sit down at my desk. --It kind of burned down my neighbor's house.||

  --Kind of? Or did?||

  --Did.|| He juts out his jaw. --I had a burn permit, though.||

  --Great.|| I write that down on a legal pad: LICENSED TO BURN. --Were there any casualties?||

  --No. They don't live there no more. They built another house across the field. This was just a shed, pretty much. My neighbor swears he's suing me for every penny he put into that place. That's why I came to you. You're the first lawyer I found who's open on a Sunday.||

  --Right. Well. I may have to do a little research before I can take your case,|| I say, but I'm thinking: He burned the guy's house down. There's no way to win this one.

  Esch takes a photograph out of the inner pocket of his coveralls and pushes it across the table. --You can see the place in the background here, behind my wife. My neighbor says it's twenty-five thousand dollars I'll have to pay out.||

  I glance at the photo. Calling this place a shed is generous. Me, I'd have said shack.

  --Mr. Esch,|| I say, --I think we can definitely get that down to fifteen.||

  Jacob

  Here are all the reasons I hate Mark, the boyfriend Jess has had since last September.

  1. He makes her cry sometimes.

  2. Once, I saw bruises on her side, and I think he's the one who gave them to her.

  3. He always wears a big orange Bengals sweatshirt.

  4. He calls me Chief, when I have explained multiple times that my name is Jacob.

  5. He thinks I am retarded, even though the diagnosis of mental retardation is reserved for people who score lower than 70 on an IQ test, and I myself have scored 162. In my opinion, the very fact that Mark doesn't know this diagnostic criterion suggests that he's a lot closer to actual retardation than I am.

  6. Last month I saw Mark in CVS with some other guys when Jess was not around. I said hello, but he pretended that he did not know me. When I told Jess and she confronted him, he denied it. Which means that he is both a hypocrite and a liar.

  I was not expecting him to be at today's lesson, and for that reason I start to feel out of control right away, even though being with Jess usually calms me down. The best way I can describe it is like being in the path of a flash flood. You might be able to sense that a catastrophe is imminent; you might feel the faintest mist on your face. But even when you see that wall of water rushing toward you, you know you are powerless to budge an inch.

  --Jacob!|| Jess says, as soon as I walk in, but I see Mark across the room sitting in a booth, and just like that, I can hardly even hear her voice.

  --What's he doing here?||

  --You know he's my boyfriend, Jacob. And he wanted to come today. To help.||

  Right. And I want to be drawn and quartered, just for giggles.

  Jess links her arm through mine. It took me a while to get used to that, and to the perfume she wears, which isn't very strong but to me smelled like an overdose of flowers.

  --It's going to be fine,|| she says. --Besides, we said we're going to work on being friendly to people we don't know, right?||

  --I know Mark,|| I reply. --And I don't like him.||

  --But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.||

  --That's stupid. It's a huge world. Why not get up and walk away?||

  --Because that's rude,|| Jess explains.

  --I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.||

  Jess laughs. --Jacob, one day, when we wake up in the world of the Painfully Honest, you can be my tutor.||

  A man comes down the stairs that lead up from the entryway of the pizza place. He has a dog on a leash, a miniature poodle. I step into his path and start patting the dog.

  --Thor! Down!|| he says, but the dog doesn't listen.

  --Did you know poodles aren't French? In fact the name poodle comes from the German word Pudel, which is short for Pudelhund, or splashing dog. The breed used to be a water dog.||

  --I didn't know that,|| the man says.

  I do, because before I used to study forensics, I studied dogs. --A poodle took Best in Show at Westminster in 2002,|| I add.

  --Right. Well, this poodle's going to take a whiz if I don't get him outside,|| the man says, and he pushes past me.

  --Jacob,|| Jess says, --you don't just accost someone and start rattling off facts.||

  --He was interested in poodles! He has one!||

  --Right, but you could have started off by saying, Hey, that's a really cute dog.'||

  I snort. --That's not informative at all.||

  --No, but it's polite ...||

  At first, when Jess and I started working together, I used to call her a few days before our lesson just to make sure it was still on--that she wasn't sick, or expecting to have some kind of emergency. I'd call whenever I was obsessing about it, and sometimes that was three in the morning. If she didn't pick up her cell phone, I'd freak out. Once, I called the police to report her missing, and it turned out that she was just at some party.

  Eventually, we agreed that I would call her at 10:00 P.M. on Thursdays. Since I meet with her on Sundays and Tuesdays, that means I don't have to spend four days out of touch and worrying.

  This week she moved out of her dorm room and into a professor's house. She is babysitting for the house, which sounds like an immense waste of time, because it's not as if the house is going to touch the stove if it's hot or eat something poisonous or fall down its own stairs. She will be there for the semester, so next week we are going to meet there for our lesson. In my wallet I have the address, and the phone number, and a special map she's drawn, but I'm a little nervous about it. It will probably smell like someone else, instead of Jess and flowers. Plus I have no idea what it looks like yet, and I hate surprises.

  Jess is beautiful, although she says this was not always the case. She lost a lot of weight two years ago after she had an operation. I've seen pictures of her before, when she was obese. She says that's why she wants to work with kids whose disabilities make them targets--because she remembers being one, too. In the pictures, she looks like Jess, but hidden inside someone larger and puffier. Now, she is curvy, but only in the right places.

  She has blond hair that is always straight, although she has to work hard to make that happen. I have watched her use this contraption called a flat iron that looks like a sandwich press but actually sizzles her curly, wet hair and turns it smooth and silky. When she walks into a room, people look right at her, which I really like, because it means they are not looking at me.

  Lately I have been thinking that maybe