Prostitutes can say no to a date. Overly fussy whores get slapped around by greedy pimps. Bruises are one of the reasons makeup was invented. Whores don’t have to go for drinks with johns, unless they’re moonlighting a liquor hustle. Being a whore is legal. Advertising your whored-out state isn’t. When cops arrest whores, the charge is solicitation. I should know. I’m a lawyer.
     Lawyers can theoretically say no to a client. I made the deadly mistake of soliciting clients among friends. Make that people I knew. When a client asks you out for drinks, you’re supposed to go. Senior partners at the firm call this sort of artificial socializing client relations. The partners have ways of slapping non-stellar non-partners around that no cosmetics would cover.
     Fred was a business major in college. He turned into the sort of loudmouth businessman I’d ordinarily go out of my way to avoid. He thinks almost exclusively about money. He was thinking and talking about money, wrangling a big-money business deal on his state-of-the-art cell phone, when he ploughed his overblown businessman automobile into a kid on a bicycle. The kid allegedly forgot to give the prescribed hand signal. Fred wouldn’t have seen it anyway. He hit the brakes too late. He was going too fast. His monster truck sent the kid flying. The kid died. Compressed skull fracture when his head hit the curb. No helmet. Brain tissue squirted from his nose and ears. His eyes popped out of the sockets.
     At least Fred didn’t split the scene. But if he had, I might not have taken his case.
     Fred said his cell phone was on the seat next to him, in speaker mode. He said the kid was riding a sawed-off stunt bike, hard to see from an SUV cockpit. He said the kid was hot-dogging. I didn’t believe him, but the firm doesn’t pay me to disbelieve clients. No hand signal. No way to tell if the cell phone was on speaker at the time of the incident. No helmet on the kid’s head. No eyewitnesses. Fred had no prior arrests. Pillar of the community. Legal amount of alcohol in voluntarily submitted blood and urine samples. No hit-and-run. Not a bad case, from a legal standpoint, but Fred was shitting roofing nails.
     Jason was a mumbling nerd, a hopeless-case English Lit Ph.D. Family connections landed him a low-money gig in the publishing biz. The company he worked for published poetry as a tax hedge against spectacular bestseller profits. Jason was in charge of poetry. His live-in girlfriend Laura was a poet. She was watering the marijuana plants on the rusted fire escape and took a five-story spill into the cement courtyard. Dented oozing garbage cans broke her fall, but weren’t soft enough to let her walk away unscathed. She was quadriplegic, maybe permanently.
     Laura was in no shape to sue the Jew landlord herself. Jason gave me a call, since I was the only lawyer he knew personally. We were friends in college, he said. You handed me your card at a party last year.
     Lawyers are supposed to look and act busy. Cocktails after office-hours with two vague college-friend clients is legalese for killing two shitbirds with one stone.
     Jason was working on a novel. He wanted to talk about this scintillating work-in-progress that had already devoured four years. Laura was encouraging, and a good proofreader. Jason didn’t want to talk about wiping her ass or disinfecting her breathing-tube incision.
     Fred cracked quadriplegic jokes, passed hot business tips. He passed gas, blew smoke to cover the stink. He was indignant about kids’ lack of common sense and negligent mothers who let their little hellion baboons go stunt-riding on heavy traffic arteries without a helmet. He cracked negligent mother jokes.
     Jason was worried he and Laura would be arrested for marijuana horticulture. His Jew landlord’s Jew lawyers would push the illegal drug use angle. Fire escapes weren’t for gardening purposes, especially not drugs. You aren’t supposed to hang out or get a suntan on fire escapes. They’re for emergency use only. Legal precedents galore in the form of stoned punks who took flying hippie leaps from fire escapes to their druggy deaths on city-owned pavement. Jason’s girlfriend Laura was overweight. Make that seriously overweight. Fire escape safety codes might not take fat people into account.
     Fred didn’t know Laura’s exact dimensions, or he would’ve started in with fat broad jokes.
     Large babes tend to go for skinny, sensitive, stoned types like Jason, or maybe it’s the other way around. How much pot do you need to get a fat broad stoned?
     Laura weighed close to twenty stone, on the English scale. Jason had massive stones, getting it on with a bouncy babe a head taller and thrice as big around. Their sex life probably changed after the accident. Laura had regained partial control of two fingers on her left hand and could wiggle both big toes. Doctors held out slight hope she might recover use of her limbs, but couldn’t be sure, couldn’t say when.
     Doctors give up easier than lawyers. Doctors don’t have to go out for drinks with patients. They have access to pharmaceutical morphine.
     No doubt the chemistry classes required to enter Medical School would’ve kicked my legal brain’s ass. Getting into Law School was a breeze. If you can figure out how to buy a cheap suit, you’re in. The rationale is nobody dies if you fuck up a non-homicide case. No matter how hard you wish they would.
     Sometimes I wonder if doctors mentally tell problematic patients die, die, die.
     Fred told lame jokes like low comedy was a nervous tic. I considered him as a doctor might. Sometimes I look at a client and think, here’s a shmo who’s going to pull 5 to 10 at a minimum-security Club Fed, or this chief’s going to have to cough up 800 large in damages. Doctors look at a sick slob sitting across the desk and think, he won’t be a pain in my ass two months down the road. Make sure he pays his bill up-front.
     Funny-man Fred had dark circles around his eyes. The lips of his eyelids were red as sunsets on postcards from Florida. He made goofy faces to go with his jokes, but also to divert attention from his hands. He scratched his way through a string of dead baby jokes and amputee jokes, scratch scratch scratch. Look at his hands, his wrists. Funny Fred’s practically got stigmata. His palms are the consistency of road rash. In his head, he sees a kid on a bike fly, hands outstretched like Superman. Scrapedown headfirst on the sidewalk or gravel-strewn shoulder. Not a pretty picture, over and over. Scratch scratch scratch. Stigmata’s supposed to be a good sign, like you’re a holy man. Stigma, on the other hand, is negative, like you did something bad, with social stigma attached, so people avoid you. You fucked your friend’s wife. You stole money from old people. You killed a kid because you were blabbing about money on your stupid executive businessman cell phone.
     I was trying to remember the worst thing I ever did when slim, fidgety Jason got up to take a leak, or vomit. He wasn’t used to drinking alcohol. Give him a bong hit any old time. He didn’t like Fred, didn’t think Fred’s jokes were funny. My inner doctor scoped Jason’s hunched back heading towards the Hi-Life Bar’s head. Bad stoop, possible skeletal dementia, losing his babyish blond hair fast, thick eyeglasses. Astigmatism’s got shit to do with stigmata or social stigma. Hard edges and rough surfaces appear soft, pleasant. Astigma-vision puts a soft cast on being involuntarily cast into the role of permanent caregiver to a morbidly obese stoner chick in a 400-pound full-body cast. Life brands you a geek, sends you flying from the desirable gene pool on a skin-blistering downhill slide into a bubbling vat of 180-proof isopropyl.
     Conservative estimate for Laura Waneright was she’d recover 1.5-to-2 million, plus extra for pain and suffering, drug counter-charges dismissed, no warrant issued. Large, paralyzed but slowly recovering Laura would share grievance wealth with her skinny nurse-slash-lover. He’d pass joints, squeeze-bottles, burgers and brownies, wield the Handi-Wipes. Loving care is a full-time affair for a guy who slogs through endless drafts of a lame first and last novel.
     Jason shuffled past a man on a stool at the bar. Strange I hadn’t noticed the grizzled bald dude with thick glasses and tough demeanor, because he had no arms. Not even stumps to wiggle, just broad shoulders that went nowhere, shirtsleeves rolled and tucked like a bed in a barracks. Pint of beer in front of him on the counter. No straw. Regular glass. I pretended not to stare, but I wanted to see how the guy managed to drink. He was staring at the TV. A weirdo boxing match was on, two mugs in padded headgear punching and kicking away. I didn’t want Fred to notice the man I was observing over his hunched shoulder, didn’t want to hear any stupid armless guy jokes. ‘Ey, ‘e looks ‘armless.
     But the guy didn’t look harmless. He looked dangerous. One joke out of Fred and the armless guy would saunter over, chew his ears and nose off like a grizzly bear. I kept thinking, now he’ll lean over like a dyed-alcohol Drinky Bird executive desk toy and slurp, or hoist the glass between his well-trained extra-strong lips.
     A toilet-bound woman walked past the armless man, stopped to say hello. I couldn’t hear, but their chat looked friendly. She knew him, knew his story.
     One of the fighters on TV laid the other out with a knee to the solar plexus. The fight was over. Seconds stepped in to scrape the gasping loser off the canvas.
     The guy with no arms took in the KO, but didn’t drink. Maybe he enjoyed looking at beer bubbles rising and foam flattening like a boring TV meditation show, got drunk by osmosis.
     Jason emerged from the Hi-Life’s men’s room lost in disturbing thoughts. He didn’t waste a myopic glance on the double-amputee or severe birth defect man. Thalidomide yielded hefty settlements. Drug prices skyrocketed. Legal headaches lost among pain and suffering dividends, punitive damage figures tallied on outdated business machines. Plaintiffs’ lawyers requested pharmaceutical morphine as part of their fees. Doubtful drug company lawyers showed professional courtesy in the form of shared dope and disclosed clinical test results. Professional courtesy’s the only reason sharks don’t rip each other to shreds, according to lawyer jokes.
     Fred cracked himself up, scratched himself raw. Lawyer jokes, coming right up. Junkie-style scratch tracks on his forearms under cheapo Sta-Prest shirts bought by the dozen at Moe’s Closeout Bazaar to save on non-deductible French dry cleaning. Write off bloodstained bulk shirts dumped at the Salvation Army as charitable contributions. Bums get near-new no-iron shirts for 99¢. Stigmatized cast-offs don’t skeev drunk losers.
     Jason dressed soft. Tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows and moth-eaten cardigans were his office wear. I stereotyped publishing biz wimps like Fred did lawyers. How many poetry editors does it take to insert a feeding tube into a fat broad?
     The armless guy dressed like a skinhead. Skinny suspenders, tight jeans, heavy boots, plaid shirt squared away at the waist, zero beer gut. Shaved head…no way he does that himself…several days’ worth of brindled barbed-wire stubble.
     The armless man shimmied off his stool, headed to the Hi-Life men’s room. He walked with a pronounced gimp. His right shoulder stump described wide air-circles with each rolling step. One leg shorter than the other. His skinhead tough-guy leather-homo clodhoppers were custom clubfoot boots.
     He had a cartridge belt slung over his left shoulder like someone hung it on a coat-rack. Hadn’t noticed it before.
     He disappeared into the toilet.
     Fred asked Jason if he set off smoke detectors in airplane bathrooms. Federal offence, but maybe I could get him off. Get off, get it? Like get high? Fred wanted to know where Jason scored smoke. Joke-man Fred was in the mood, he said, for primo-grade Hawaiian. Times were fat. Whoops, forgot…Jason only smoked home-grown. Just enough for personal medical use, your honor. But watch that first step out onto the fire escape maryjane patch. It’s a doozy.
     Jason groaned, thought of his fat girlfriend Laura helpless and patient in a home hospital bed while he hoisted drinks with the lawyer and some business asshole who can’t stop cracking jokes like a loon and scratches like an ape in a cage at the zoo.
     “Hey Fred,” I said. “Why don’t you shitcan the one-liners for a minute. I’ll get this round.”
     The Hi-Life’s bartender could’ve been the armless cripple’s older brother, with bulging arms, no limp and a massive beer-belly. I wanted to ask him, what’s the story with the armless guy who just hit the can? How does he drink with no straw? But I couldn’t figure out how to phrase the questions. Maybe the bartender was the armless guy’s brother. He might take such enquiries the wrong way. Similarly, buying the armless guy an anonymous round might come off as patronizing from an able-bodied man in a suit and tie. Take your drink and shove it up your ass, shyster.
     Maybe the armless man absorbed alcohol from a douchebag intravenous enema kit slung up in Stall 3. Maybe I was turning into comedian seriously manqué Fred. Fuck it. Scratch scratch.
     “Three of the same, please,” I said. I didn’t ask, do you know the armless guy’s story? The barman would probably give me a slow burn and say yeah, I know him. So what?
     No further questions, your honor.
     In court, I’m OK. The only rule to remember is never ask a question unless you already know the answer.
     You can’t lie in the court of the human body. Only an idiot lies to the doctors on his case. Tell them where it hurts, tell them what you did, or they can’t fix you.
     Homegrown medical marijuana was probably no good for weight loss, in Laura’s case. Paralysis don’t still no hunger pangs. Might help soothe skinny, sensitive, jury-sympathetic Jason’s astigmatism. Does astigmatism hurt?
     Social stigma hurts plenty and it’s expensive. Jury apes wouldn’t exactly devour Fred’s antsy money-grubber vibe. Definitely advise him to lay off the jokes in court. Maybe try to talk him into a settlement. Toss the bereaved Welfare losers a million or two. Amortize it any way you can, Fred.
     Forgot to mention the kid Fred killed was a scary oversized black ghetto youth. Racially prejudiced unpremeditated vehicular manslaughter is social stigma supreme. Police blotter reporters live for such shit. Honky millionaire knocks, squawks, walks. Cracks jokes, compulsively scratches himself into Stygian Stigmataville. Stingy Jew landlords rub their hands together. Surly black youths with baseball caps askew on their brain-dead burr-heads go through the motions of going through Public School until they’re old enough to attend State Penitentiary, where their genuine non-bullshit educations begin. Hey, at least I kept that little nigger off the streets…until he landed, that is. Hey, you know why African-Americans got fat lips? Why God gave them rhythm? Why they don’t breed with Mexicans?
     Please stop cracking cracker-ass jokes in my head, Fred. Please hit and run next time, so I can say no to your fucking case.
     Fourth round of drinks was halfway down the hatch, another round of Thai boxing or whatever they were doing to stomp the crap out of each other was on TV when the armless man roll-walked out of the toilet, settled his butt on the naugahyde stool and stared ever-deeper into his pint-glass. Cartridge belt firmly in place. Pants zipped, far as I could tell. Suspenders T-square straight. Shoulder stumps still tucked away. Maybe he asks whoever’s in the men’s room to give him a hand.
     “’Scuse me, guy, but as you can see, I’m in a bit of a bind, as far as taking a leak the way a regular Joe like you can do is concerned. Would you mind helping me out, here?”
     In other words, are you man enough to unzip an oddly menacing armless cripple, pull out his penis, hold it while he urinates, shake it when he’s done, pack him away and zip him up again like it’s no big deal?
     Nobody else came out of the Hi-Life’s men’s room.
     Jason helped himself to a cig from Fred’s deck, lit it shakily with Fred’s corporate logo Zippo, squirmed like a man who needs to talk.
     Anything to drown out Fred’s endless stream of one-liners and riddles. Kooky stoner conspiracy theories, absurd plotlines from his inane writing project. Anything. But Jason wanted to ask about ethics.
     Sounded like a joke set-up. Asking a lawyer about ethics is like asking a shark for surfing lessons.
     “You know, I didn’t sign up for this,” he said. “Laura and I were just sort of hanging on together until one of us got another place, or found someone else. We had nothing to say to each other. We weren’t together, physically. Or not often. But the thing is…I don’t think I can handle, you know, anything permanent.”
     He wasn’t talking about the pretend on-paper permanence of legal marriage. He was talking about having to wipe the ass of a bedridden, wheelchair-bound, or at best canes-and-leg-braces shambolic fat lady. Exactly the kind of situation to drive a guy like Jason nuts, but he didn’t have the stones to be a man and take the cowardly way out of the violent random shit life throws at the unfortunate.
     “What I’m thinking is…could she sue me? Like, for abandonment? We’re not legally married or anything.”
     The client wanted the guy in the suit with the office full of bookshelves stacked with casebooks packed with legal skulduggery and loopholes for shoddy behavior to say it was perfectly within his human rights to walk out on a companion suddenly stricken helpless.
     Some men walk out on crazy or drunk wives, retarded or deformed children. Happens all the time. Those guys usually have to pay, if the law catches up with them. You prepared to move to Mexico, Jason? They don’t care about no stinking stigmas down there.
     “She could bring suit,” I said. “But I wouldn’t handle her case.”
     “Why not?” Jason wanted me to say I’d protect him because we were friends.
     “Conflict of interest,” I said. “I’d have to recuse myself.”
     That wasn’t what Jason wanted to hear. He wanted iron-clad escape clauses, ethical indulgences, a pat on the back from a guy he sort of knew in college, happier times, a former fellow English major who turned into a lawyer. What did he think a Public High School English teacher would tell him? But he was pissed.
     “You think I’m a scumbag. But I’m in the real world. I don’t hide behind a suit or an office or an ad on TV or a pile of money in a fucking bank account. You sold-out fucking whores don’t even see you’re scumbags who whored out.”
     Fred didn’t see. Fred never thought about it. Fred didn’t care. Of course he sold out. Selling out was the idea. Fred was in business. A black kid who flew through the air because Fred was busy talking business and multi-tasking instead of driving was an unforeseen expense in terms of legal fees and damages.
     Fat Laura fell. Gravity dragged her down because she wanted to get high. Jason wanted weed and occasional listless sex, not responsibility.
     I needed to take a serious leak. “’Scuse me.”
     “The best…no, the worst minds of my generation,” Jason said, “destroyed by Law School, Business School.”
     Fred said, “Fuck you, flake,” and he wasn’t joking.
     The armless man sat contemplating the standard no handicap access strawless pint glass on the bar. I tested my mentalist powers. Show me how you drink. Do it now, so I don’t have to stare awkwardly at the freak. Follow me into the head. Help me understand how a man in your condition relieves himself. A voice in my head said, just ask the guy. He’s a human being too. He understands curiosity. He’s not mute. You saw a pretty girl talk to him. He’ll make conversation and let you buy him a drink. Or he’ll buy you a drink with a neatly folded banknote from his cartridge belt wallet. Talk about real problems. At least you can lift a glass and get up to take a trouble-free leak anytime. Beer and whisky elicited ethical homilies, but not the nerve to talk to another man, like me except no arms and crippled so I could figure out how he gets drunk and pisses.
     There was no one else in the Hi-Life’s men’s room, just a condom machine, slimy green soap in dispensers, lemon urinal cake whiff, low light.
     Hey Fred, admit you copped a thrill when you snuffed the nigger kid. Now you’re stuck with self-mutilation nightmares and a reckless driving vehicular homicide conviction. Joke about that, fuck-face.
     Hey Jason, find another fat pothead with some life below her waist so you can feel like a man when you pull your 28-waist pants down for a change, you smug little scumbag.
     Please, please, armless man, waddle your gnarled ass in here again so I can see how you piss.
     He spots me staring, approaches slowly. “What’re you staring at?”
     “Huh? Oh hey, ‘scuse me, guy. Just curious, is all. I mean, were you the victim of an industrial accident? On-the-job mishap…negligence on your employer’s part? Here, please take my card. Uh, whoops, let me tuck it in your pocket…I could help you recover…”
     He busts my face in with a head-butt for soliciting like a whore.