Legally Wasted Read Online Free PDF Page A

“It is. I’ve thought about it.”
He kissed her cheek. They embraced and while tightly snuggled, he
cheated and stared at the rusted air conditioner rumbling next to
the overfilled ashtray. “This is what I want,” he said. He closed
his eyes and smelled that wondrous cinnamon smell. “Yes,” he said.
“This is what I want.”

 
     
20 Proof

    Larkin Monroe opened his eyes as the constant
thump of jazzercising people in the dance studio above his law
office forced him back into the waking world. As he flipped his
wrist over to glance at his watch, he suddenly realized that the
fingers of his left hand clutched something heavy and hard. His
gun.
    “Jesus,” he said with shock as the cheap
pistol he took as payment in a divorce case slipped from his hand
and landed on the floor with a clatter. Had he been dozing with the
firearm the entire time? “How dramatic of my subconscious,” he said
aloud.
    He did not remember opening the left drawer
of his desk where he kept the weapon. He only remembered leaning
back in his desk chair and shutting his eyes for a catnap. What the
hell had he been doing in his sleep?
    For a minute he considered whether he truly
had some sort of death wish that his unconscious self sought to
realize.
    Thump Thump Thump went the
jazzercisers.
    Larkin knew that he did not want to end his
life, but an article he read years ago in a magazine about deep
subconscious desires gave him a moment’s pause.
    His mind wandered and he forgot the gun
beneath his desk and instead remembered the curvy form of some
redhead pinup in the same magazine. His eyes fluttered and began to
shut when the pounding above hit a sudden peak and he snapped back
to attention. He leaned forward and looked at his watch. 1:30 in
the afternoon. He had only twenty or so minutes to do what he had
to before heading out the door and back to court.
    With a kick of a scuffed loafer, he sent his
chair rolling away from the paperclip and legal pad chaos on his
desk. Rainbow colored carbon paper copies of court-appointed
payment vouchers at least made it a jolly mess. Larkin steered
himself toward the small refrigerator humming quietly beneath his
printer. His kick only sent him about halfway forcing him to paw at
the door before it swung open. As his fingers grabbed the bottle of
gin, he sighed.
    “Shit,” he whispered as he opened the plastic
bottle for the first time. His voice was mostly drowned out by the
people smashing syncro-jazzing cardio with what sounded like a
hyper up-tempo remix of Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl . He
looked up to the ceiling. The song had always saddened Larkin.
    Though the floors of the old brick building
were thick, he was certain that in the six or so months since
Margie altered her business model from a quiet ballet studio to
free-spirited human cardiovascular downsizing that the plaster and
floorboards above his head had been pounded thin. He took a
sip.
    “Good god,” he stammered as a stream of gin
slid down his stubble. He held the bottle away from his face to
examine his poison. “Damn you, Bowland’s gin,” he said as the
little liquid that had made it down his throat ravaged his gullet.
He winced when it reached the stomach. “I’m counting that as one,”
he said as his left hand reached for his calendar. He flipped
through the summer months and landed on mid-September. As he gazed
down at the 2:00 slot for that day, his heart sank. No less than
six poorly scrawled names of defendants filled up the afternoon
block below the heading “DCSE.”
    DCSE stood for the Department of Child
Support Enforcement, a state agency. As a private attorney on the
Big Lick City Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court’s
court appointed list, Larkin had agreed to represent deadbeat
parents who had fallen in serious arrears on their child support
payments. The hearings themselves were rather simple. Aside from
trying to paint the deadbeat as a simple down-on-his luck father
unable to find steady