The Enthusiast Read Online Free PDF

shoulder as he spoke.
    â€œThe Controlled Dynamics situation continues to unfold in an interesting way,” he said. “The other side filed a request to deny access to certain of the documents. We’ve filed a request to deny their request. We hope to have a ruling on that within sixty days.”
    â€œThat sounds good,” I said. “So the trial could be…”
    â€œCould be some time off, yes. You have discovery, motions…. The lead counsel for the other side is a fellow named Ken Radnitz. Kenny was with a firm here in the building at one time. It’s interesting. He and his wife are fencers. You know, with those suits with the heart on them. I think they’ve won some of the competitions. Not many people I know are involved with that. It’s a little off the beaten area. How are you enjoying pre-law?”
    â€œGood. It’s good.”
    â€œOkay. Let’s try you out on some proofreading.”
    I spent the rest of the day in a room with a stack of documents and two hundred books of statutes, getting up only to go to the bathroom and to buy a chili dog from a catering truck outside. On the bus ride back to school I wondered how Troup could fight for the little guy from an office like that, or think fencing was interesting, but I decided I was overreacting. Theclocks and the haircut could be ploys to lull the cowboys into thinking he was like them, when really he’d never be like them. It was possible.
    The next day his secretary called to say I could keep coming in on Tuesdays and Thursdays at a hundred dollars a week. It wasn’t enough money to give up frying, I had to drop a class, and the eyestrain from the proofreading gave me myopia. The addition of glasses made me look less lanky than ever.
    My third week there, Troup leaned his head into the room and said he was going to a settlement conference with some opposing lawyers on a product defect case and that I should come with him to take notes. As we walked across the shopping center to the other lawyers’ hotel, he said the case involved a boat part made by a company in Minneapolis, and that it was possible to hurt yourself because of the defect but, between Troup and me, you’d have to work at it.
    We met the two other lawyers in a conference room with fruit, coffee, and a bowl of wrapped candies. The three of them talked for a while about judges and lawyers they knew and then took out copies of the settlement. They changed a thirty-day waiting period to forty-five, made discount vouchers available in Guam, and added a phrase to cool out the attorney general of Maine. It took twelve minutes, after which they stood up and gossiped a while longer. Troup, gesturing widely with his left hand as he recommended restaurants, swept a handful of the wrapped candies into his coat pocket with his right.
    Walking back, I said I was surprised that the opposing lawyers had flown in just for that. “Henry,” Troup said, “they live in Minnesota . The whole key to this work is compassion for people.” I smiled with him, which made me feel complicit in the candy grab. As we got on the footbridge from the shopping center to the office buildings, I saw some high-school kidshanging around a fountain, the boys playing hacky sack and the girls talking in shrieks. In Rancho Cahuenga or Los Nietos my three months of college would have made me feel like their uncle, but now I wanted to go join them. Troup saw me slow down on the footbridge and said the shopping center was considered premier.
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    I n March I got a phone call in the dorm lounge, an unfamiliar voice with office clatter in the background. “Yeah, Henry Bay? Jim Rensselaer at Kite Buggy . I called your house and they gave me this number.”
    â€œOh,” I said. “Hi.”
    â€œYou got that issue with—I’ll call him back—you got the issue with your stuff in it, right?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “That