“Right, so I’ve been an associate at Murrell, Dunne, Walmax and Wright for about three years. I specialize in Lanham act and false advertising suits, but currently I’m working on a labor dispute thing ’cause one of our partners is a fucking dick who always loves putting his favor files in mylap.”
“Do you enjoyit?”
“Sometimes I do. I’m good at it and I enjoy being good atthings.”
“Okay. Whatelse?”
“Oh, enough about the law. Let’s see. I have a little sister. Her name is Brooklyn. You want to see apicture?”
“Yeah.”
She reaches for her laptop and when she turns it back around, I see she’s pulled up a picture on her Facebook page. “That’sus.”
“She’s cute.” I can see where they look alike in their faces, but in the picture, Brooklyn is clearly shorter and a little heavier. She wears her hair longtoo.
“And fucking crazy, but I loveher.”
“It’s just the two ofyou?”
“Yeah my parents died when I was nineteen. I had to get us both intoadulthood.”
“What does shedo?”
“She’s a baby district attorney in the Bronx. That’s where we grew up. She’s great atit.”
“I want to know what happened in your apartment,” I say, turning the box of matches around in my hand. “Why would someone want to hurtyou?”
“Uh—it’s more law stuff,really.”
“I hate my brother. I don’t hate lawyers. I went to law schooltoo.”
“Youdid?”
“Yeah. I went to Berkeley. Both of our parents are lawyers by trade. They met in lawschool.”
“But, wha—what are you doinghere?”
“Running my family business. Back toyou.”
“Uh, okay. Anyway. Do you know Belle’s BeeCosmetics?”
“Yeah, we sell it in themercantile.”
“Well David Dorrit Jr. wanted to throw something together for his faux hippie daughter so they started this company, Au Natural. They had some makeup and hair stuff that they were pushing using similar ad lines, saying that their products were made from real honey from these natural farms and shit. Well Belle’s sued because that’s their market and their stuff actually passes all of these federal regulations, so on and so forth. I did what I could, but we lost. I think it actually would have been fine, but his daughter Mackenzie got online with her two million Twitter followers and told people that Belle’s was full of shit. It was amess.”
“So they blamed you, enough to want to killyou?”
“Apparently. My associate on the case left our firm shortly after. She could be dead too for all I know. Can we talk about something else?” she says. Her gaze drops to thetable.
“Sure. Tell me about what you like to do in your freetime.”
“I just run around the city with my sister and my friends. I’m not, like, a hobby gal. I work so much I just like to catch up with them when I’m free,” she says with her own shrug. “What should we watchtonight?”
“I haven’t really updated the DVD collection in awhile.”
She gets up and grabs the remote to the cable box. I almost tell her it doesn’t work. I don’t pay the bill. I’m going to reup when the regular football season starts. She turns on the TV and to both our surprises, the cable is working. She starts going through the guide and turns to HBO. It works. I decide not to sayanything.
“Oh perfect.Suicide Squadstarts in ten minutes. I haven’t seen it yet. What do youthink?”