Captive Ride(7)

“Aren’t any,” I correct. At his blank stare, I wave my hand. No point in correcting his grammar.

Isamu isn’t wrong. The system is designed to fuck with the poor people and the poorer you were, the more the system worked against you. Other than his elderly mother, Isamu has no support and so it’s easy to see why he turned to drug dealing to pay his bills and make sure his mother had three meals a day. And now with two felony counts under his belt, he is virtually unemployable.

With a few strings pulled, I got him a job doing construction work with a local firm that is shady as hell. They injure more employees than they hire and they pay under the table. But at this point, it’s better than nothing. “I like you Isamu. You’re a good kid, but if you get caught again, there isn’t anyone who is going to be able to take care of your mother. She’ll die of heartbreak at the very least before you ever see another day of freedom.”

He blanches. “I’m going to try,” he promises again.

I stifle a sigh. He doesn’t need my nagging. It didn’t do any good the last go around anyway. He was out for only eight months before he was caught dealing again.

“Go on then. And tell your mother hello and thank you for the gyozas.”

He jumps to his feet and shakes my hand vigorously. “No problem Ms. Harris.”

And with that he’s gone, leaving behind the delicate scent of fried ginger and steamed pork—fresh dumplings courtesy of his mother. The one good thing about representing Isamu was the world class Japanese dishes his mother kept making me. Too bad her home cooking can’t keep him off the streets.

“Why do I do this?” I ask my admin, Tanya Muir, who peeks her head in after Isamu leaves.

“Because you love it?”

“I don’t love it.” I rub my stomach. “In fact I think all of these sad cases are giving me an ulcer.”

You need a break Amy I hear Flint telling me. But what does he know? Does he even work? I know he does things for his club but he has enough free time that he can follow me around.

“Your ulcer is the result of no eating and all working.” She waltzes over to my desk and lays down my appointment calendar. Despite all the technology around me, I still like keeping my appointments on paper. But there’s something wrong with my July because there isn’t anything on there for the entire month. It’s blank. Actually that’s wrong. There is one continuous line drawn through it in red. Red is what I use to denote time I’m out of the office.

“You gave me the wrong calendar,” I inform Tanya. “This one is defective. There’s a red line through all of July and none of my appointments are showing.”

“You’re so cute.” Tanya leans over and flips back one month where all my appointments are written in a mash of pencil, ink and highlighter. “You’re going on vacation.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where you leave the office and don’t think about it for a set period of time.”

“I was joking.” I fold up the fake appointment book and slide it across the desk. “I know what a vacation is.”

“Do you? Because you’ve never taken one.” Tanya pushes the ledger back.

“That’s not true,” I protest and flip the book open. “I took a break…” I page back a couple months and then a couple more. “Look.” I point to January 1. “I took off January 1 and 2.”

“Two days is not a vacation and one of those days the courthouse was closed anyway.”

“These cases don’t try themselves.”

Flint and Tanya may think I need a break but they are wrong. What I need is an overhaul of this society so that kids like Isamu have a better choice in the world between earning minimum wage at the local fast food joint and $100 for a ten minute delivery.

“The problem is that you aren’t going to be able to try a case either if you burn out. So you are taking a vacation.”

“I have hearings and client meetings and trials.”

“No you don’t.” She lays the book down in front of me and the little white squares are blank. Her finger stabs down. “Nothing on your calendar.”

“Is this for real?” I turn to August and see entries. A hearing in Terry. A pretrial conference for Allred. But July is still strangely, curiously blank. An entire month with no hearings, no trials, no meetings. That would takes months and months… “How long have you planned this?”

Tanya is halfway out the door. “Since last year. I need a vacation even if you don’t.”

She shuts the door firmly behind her.