The Ditto List Read Online Free Page A

liqueur washed away the lingering dust of cheese, the beer washed away the lingering film of candy. The mechanics of sustenance accomplished, D.T. pulled his time sheets from the credenza behind his desk and made notations appropriate for the morning’s activity, calibrating and quantifying his most recent humiliation.
    D.T. rarely performed a professional service that was payable on an hourly basis as opposed to a flat fee, so the time sheets he prepared so meticulously were invariably worthless. But there was always, he frequently told himself and occasionally believed, a chance that an initially routine matter would burgeon into a great litigious engine that would unearth someone, somewhere, who could be directed by an appropriate court to compensate D.T. for each and every minute of his time, at an approximate rate of two dollars per. Then he could live the way half the lawyers he knew were living—from the proceeds of that one big case, a sinecure that had fallen into their undeserving laps like a starling struck by lightning and had nevertheless generated, despite their persistent lassitude and seamless incompetence, a fee of an outrageous and easily sheltered six figures.
    In the meantime, D.T. used the time records as raw data from which to calculate a flat fee that would yield him a reasonable return for services rendered and at the same time keep the unfortunate ladies coming through the door at an approximate rate of three per day. The last time he had run the numbers it had come out thusly for a default divorce, the staple of the Friday Fiasco:
    Bobby E. Lee—Intake interview, forms completion, telephonic instruction re court appearance: 30 minutes @ $25.00 per hour = $12.50.
    D.T.—Client interview and forms review: 35 minutes @ $75.00 per hour = $43.75.
    D.T.—Court appearance: 15 minutes @ $75.00 per hour = $18.75.
    Expenses—Filing fees, service of process, etc.: $75.00.
    Total time and expenses = $150.00.
    Surcharge for overhead and unforeseen difficulties, tantrums, wails, interruptions, consolations, reconciliations, etc.: $150.00.
    Surcharge for inflation: $50.00.
    Discount for socioeconomic character of clientele and existence of storefront law firms that advertise on billboards and compete on price: $150.00.
    Net total: $200.00. Flat rate for default or uncontested divorce. Entire amount payable in advance unless alternate arrangements made prior to initial interview. Subject to change without notice. Frequently subject to reduction, occasionally subject to waiver, a gesture followed inevitably by regret and self-reproach.
    D.T. shoved the papers away from him and thought again about what had happened in court. Running into Jerome Fitzgerald after all these years reminded him how differently his own life had evolved from the course he had envisioned during the turbid days of law school. Had he known anyone to whom he could have been truthful about such things, he would have confessed during his freshman year that he believed himself a fermenting mix of Perry Mason and Clarence Darrow, a nascent champion of lost causes, reviver of trampled liberties, master of the sine qua non of the trial lawyer’s art—convincing anyone of anything. But after he had gone into practice on his own—against the advice of everyone he knew and a lot of those he didn’t—the clients who came his way all possessed totally prosaic difficulties, dilemmas that, while they involved the basic passions and requirements of life and therefore invoked D.T.’s empathy and an invariably unprofitable expenditure of his time, did not attract the kind of publicity or renown that would bring more glorious causes to his door.
    Mildly injurious dog bites, trivial slips and falls, evictions, credit hassles, change of names—the clients trooped in and out of his office like files of captured soldiers, asking little, getting less. His silver tongue tarnished by life’s relentless ambiguity,