Fiction
Ben's Trial
Benjamin is screwing up again. His bloated, red nose screams, “menace to society,” or, “drunk.” Ben is unlikeable at best, and the jury will take one look at the apathetic jelly roll before they (most likely) scribble, “Guilty,” on their yellow legal pads.
Monday night, I got a message asking me to write for his trial Wednesday afternoon. When I heard it land on my desk, there was a fleeting moment of hope. I thought maybe a real job had come in; that wasn’t it. I leafed through the pertinent information: r1755a, A1, City Center, Wednesday at 2:30pm…Hope you can make it. – Ben. I peeled off the room tag, dropped it on the table and wiped the rest. We’ll see. It’s been a year and a half since we’ve spoken and now he wants me to come write. What are the odds I’ll pick up on anything worth while? I assume he’s in the wrong and forget about it as I slip into my routine. I call for wanted’s, toast bread, and two mediocre copy jobs come down the tube.
Tuesday morning brings scones with jam and cream. In twenty five minutes, I have baked a dozen and ingested three. Knock next door to see if Marsha, the L.M. is home. She isn’t. I’m out of the options which won’t require me to leave home so I put the rest away. Quickly, I withdraw into the usual fantasy. I dream about a simple office job. Bringing in treats for my co-workers, and leaving before the sun goes down, I retreat on foot to my homey apartment where I eat left over stew washed over by a great, big glass of red wine on the balcony – all the flavors melding together beautifully before an after-dinner cigarette that will not give me cancer but will propel me to write a few pages of my novel before collapsing on the couch to knit and watch television. In truth, there is no office, no balcony, no peace of mind – only scones.
As any distraction, this one is semi-enjoyable but mostly reminds me of the neglected tube. I have to complete something. I try revisiting a short story about my grandmother before residing to a quick tack-up on “Traditional Scottish Scones with Jam and Clotted Cream.” The third pastry post this month – it will get me nowhere. I thumb through past pages, sorting by MAT count. Ben’s trials rank 1 – 4, which both frustrates and embarrasses me to the point of wiping it all. I’m left with a stack of blank pages, staring, mocking and menacing. Scone me.
That night, I am whisked to an early, butter-induced slumber. I wake tangled in duvet and duvet cover, forcing me out of bed at a decent hour. I prepare in a state somewhere between excitement, anxiety and resentment in anticipation of Benjamin’s trial. I hate to admit that I need this. Preparation includes a thorough polishing of my tabletop scope, signing on with the Secondary Stenographer’s panel, assembling of my blank pages, keys, pen, aural plug, room tag, S.STEN badge, and sync, then steaming my suit in the shower and testing my sense reflexes.
Sight: 89%
Hearing: 95%
Taste: 95%
Smell: 95%
Touch: 81%
Balance and acceleration: 83%
Temperature: 90%
Kinesthetic sense: 96%
Pain: 82%
Direction: 91%
Other internal senses: 98%
The results are alright; better than most but not my personal bests. I pack everything down quickly, and am impressed by my muscle memory. I walk out the door with my kit and hop onto the next bus. The room tag swiftly directs me to r1755a, A1 from my stop and I enter through the side, swiping my badge as I pass through security. The public seating area is nearly empty, minus a handful of waiting respondents. The jurors file in, buzzing with excitement for Ben’s trial. He is a crowd favorite – an easy target for reconstruction. The jurors who don’t make the cut foam at the bit as the courtroom door shuts in front of them. Maybe next time. Each citizen returns home to wait by the tube.
Ben arrives 15 minutes late with his public defendant. The transcriptionist beside me takes note. We sit on opposing points of the recorders’ mount at the center of the courtroom – the judge to our back, his monitor facing us from the tele-point. Ben, his lawyer, and the prosecutor take their seats opposite us. The public are behind them and the jurors to the right of us all; I count 47 in total. He is as good as gone. We make brief eye contact and I sense relief and indignity behind his greasy exterior. He’s a sorry sight but I can’t help the empathy. I may have misread this as relief for new material. I’m rusty.
I unpack my kit. Bracing my scope to the table, its feet buckle in with a satisfying chuck-hummm. The moderator in the next room enables the zoom and aurals; my pages blush quickly as I’m signed on, then return to their paper look / touch. The trial begins. With the T.T. Scope locked on Ben and my aurals divi-tuned to his crappy public defendant, the judge and the jury (collectively, for now), I begin my story. The pen hits the paper as my senses absorb the commotion. The steno clicks quickly and then blurs into the background. I tell Ben’s story.
Caves
Patrick's situation was deeper in gravity than any of us anticipated. But, as crazy as it seemed, we were also in awe of his talents. It was hard to distinguish between neurosis and dedication because Pat had essentially vacated his home and moved indefinitely into the guest house. Who would do such a thing when he had a perfectly good home filled with perfectly good things in their perfectly reasonable places? Patrick had abandoned it all – left the grid, as my mother says. Neighbors would turn their heads, hoping to catch a glimpse of him as they walked down the block. On Halloween, his doorbell would ring relentlessly and on other days, kids whizzed up and down his walkway to ring it mischeviously before scampering off. Maybe that's what finally drove him away; the little shits had driven our greatest asset bat shit crazy and he had left. Punks. Patrick couldn't face the house and all of its things. Stuffs and goods from nameless "craftsmen" and factories had found their place there by way of catalogs or the shops on Post Lane. Over the years they had simply accumulated, as things tend to do. But Patrick couldn't find use for an anonymous desk. So, he stopped working. "That's a perfectly good desk," I would tell him. "You picked it out all by yourself and assembled the pieces with your own two hands for goodness sake! What more do you want? What did you have in mind, anyway??? Well, I think it's a perfectly good desk, quite frankly, and it's going to waste sitting here in the dark. I mean, you bought it full price, Patrick." Patrick had some grandiose plan for his work. This was not the desk for his manuscript. What a load of crap… What manuscript was it meant to support? Well, the desk wasn't made for him, it was just made. Made to be used by the masses – whomever. Patrick couldn't live that. He couldn't write at that desk or at the kitchen table. He couldn't relax on the sofa or watch the telecast. They made him feel alone. Ambiguous. Without purpose or place in the world. Patrick may have been a prima donna, but he had a bigger plan for himself. For his work. …………………. The arms were the first and greatest hurdle. When he began this project, Patrick could be spotted rummaging through the dump for scrap metal, old electronics and wire. He did not steal the parts, but paid for them all and returned what he wouldn't use. Without much experience welding or wiring, Patrick's first few months were spent scanning the telecast for tutorials. When his pages stopped coming in, we sent a series of warnings. When they went unanswered, I paid him a visit. This is when I knew something had changed. He wasn't coming back. Not to us, not to anyone. Post would simply keep turning around and around him without any participation from him at all. The first prototype was clumsy and loud. Extremely loud. You could hardly think in that little guest house with the whirring and whining; the sheet metal warping and groaning under the pressure of turning gears. Over the next several weeks, the arms found a certain grace in motion – not the fluidity you might find in the factory but they moved in a peculiar and familiar fashion. Patrick would sit on an overturned bucket, supporting the weight of his chin with his elbows resting on each knee. Eyes closed, Patrick would meditate on an idea and then quickly shift positions to scribble it down in his notebook. The arms cut into a dry slab of pine. …………………. Over time, The Arms would construct a desk from Patrick's imagination. It would suit his needs simply but fully, and Patrick would sit at that desk for each hour of sunlight. While he sat, The Arms mulched the inner bark of the pine into endless leaves of paper and they fashioned a writing implement to fit Patrick's needs. Every evening, the writer would slip out of the guest house to gather materials for his machine. As the machine grew more adept, Patrick's mind expanded and the terms of their relationship became more complicated. With each detail Patrick described inscribed on paper, The Arms' requests for assistance grew greater. They worked in tandem to create elaborate devices and Patrick would sometimes spend days gathering the appropriate parts. It wasn't long before Patrick, his desk, paper, pen, books, mechanisms and The Arms outgrew their little guest house in Post. Together, they crafted long, cylindrical cases for each of the arms to travel in and set off the following morning by train to Mexico's enormous caves.