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Lipshitz and Shinola

The corridor was dim, lighted only by the glow of red exit signs. The glare came through frosted-glass panels of office doors. The shadows made red rectangles that cut up the passageway into elongated blocks. Lenny turned, stopped in his tracks. The radiator, a massive, cast-iron antique heater--bolted in place since the building was erected nearly 150 years ago -- groaned, then clanked. At night it sounded so much louder; steam rising from the basement furnace, like somebody taking a pipe wrench to metal. It startled him. In the shadows the radiator looked like the molded intestine's of a gargoyle coming to life. For a second he wondered if he was alone.

"This new blood pressure medication," Lenny took a deep breathe, his lips flapping with the exhale.

Lenny Lipshitz, Lenny the loser, partner of the legal blunder-house, name painted on all of the dozen office doors, also known as Lenny the lousy lover, Lenny the guy who spills soup on his tie, Lenny the boss who the secretaries behind his back pinch their noses and wave fresh air in front of their faces, biting their lips to hold back the laughs--was actually a nice guy. Too nice. He never wanted to be a lawyer, although he's been filing at the courthouse walking distance from his chipped plaster office floor for nearly thirty years. Never nearly as organized as he needed to be, searching for papers, files jumbled up and spilling into the briefcase in their own private conspiracy; it's the general push of legal life to cascade into anarchy that made Lenny apologize to almost every judge he had stood before. Quick with an extenuation, able to take a stern scolding, Mr. Lipshitz.

What could you expect, the expression on the exasperated judges said? Tolerating Lenny's displays of public floundering made them, to the one, glad they gave up lawyering. Somebody had to handle the level of clients Lenny got: The barters, the late if seldom complete payers, the sob storiers.

Lenny's problem was that he was a sucker for a wet tear rolling down a dirty face. Old men in walkers getting kicked out of their rent-controlled apartments seemed to be his foray. Mothers with two dozen kids jumping all over his office chairs trying to get a husband's check garnished was another thing he handled. Scofflaws, nickel and dime shoplifters, botching handymen, loiters, public drinkers, public pee-ers, litterers, an occasional turnstile jumper--these were all his clients who he stood before pointing at, trying to make the legal powers that be focus on that one thread of humanity, a chance a redeem-ability he had seen. It not only seemed like a thankless calling, he was going broke. The little money he squirreled away when his medical mal-practice partner, Shinola, was alive, was almost gone. All spent on making payroll; no heart to fire anybody. That night, when he stopped to listen to the sole radiator clamor, his briefcase was heavy from the rolled coins a client paid him with.

"Mr. Lipshitz?" A woman's voice from the shadows.

Lenny took a few nervous quick steps toward the elevator. No one should be there. For some reason he figured if he pressed the elevator call button he would be safe. The woman called again. She approached, then stood, her identity still covered by the cut shadows.

"Who is it?" Lenny's heart beat fast. He tried to see the woman's face. The woman had a figure like the one he had lived with him for ten years, a chain smoker, a scotch- belter, who one day took the curlers out of her hair, packed her bag and stood in the threshold before she left to say: "And by the way, you're a loser lover, Lenny."

"Doris, is that you?"

The radiator clanked.

The woman drew her small purse in front of her. He saw her open it. It was small, but large enough to conceal a revolver. Lenny knew firsthand the plausibility of such things.

"The office is closed. Come back tomorrow."

Clients always blamed the lawyer when they lost, and his loss-list was large. So this is how it will end? Lenny thought. The woman stepped forward, reaching into her purse.

"This," she said, finally out of shadows, "is an urgent matter I need your help with. " She pointed her extended hand at Lenny's chest. She held an envelope.

Lenny mopped the sweat from his forehead. He felt his stomach turn. His dinner of hot dogs and onions made a dangerous plunge toward his intestines.

"The office is closed. I'm late for..."

"This can't wait."

When Lenny finally took his eyes from the envelope he looked at the woman's face. If she had been a client he didn't recognize her. Black hair pulled and pinned in a French twist. High cheeks bones, large lips with red gloss, deep dark, brown eyes. An aroma of a soft, scented perfume that reminded him of lilies, the kind he once left in its pot and leaned against Shinola's gravestone.

Lenny edged to the elevator call button. A gas bubble rose up from his stomach and made him close his eyes. He put two fingers to his lips. The new blood pressure pills must be too strong.

"It won't take long," the woman stepped closer.

Lenny heard a slow, distorted garble of sounds, as if the woman was talking on a slow speed. When he looked again, her head transformed into a giant lizard. Steel blue eyes popping out of a crust-wart covered skin. Hairless, with a ridge of hard pointed bones on her skull. She had a wet, pink forked tongue, stiff and firm darting between a double row of jaggary teeth.

Lenny fell back against the wall and felt for the call button. When he turned he saw the lizard head gone. Now the woman had turned into a gorilla. A black skinned gorilla with red lipstick, dressed up like a woman. She continued to say something but when she opened her mouth a roaring foul order enveloped him.

Lenny heard laughter. Was it just the radiator? What was happening to him? Was it food poisoning.

The gorilla was gone. Now there was an insect creature, part praying mantis, part spider wiggling its claws at him.

"No, no," Lenny tried to pry open the elevator doors. He struggled and pulled.

"It's a letter. You're partner's estate...Mr. Shinola's inheritance..."

The elevators doors sprung open. But the car was on the ground floor. Lenny tried to gain his balance. The weight of rolled coins in his briefcase lopsided his efforts. He wavered, swaying, then fell.

Lenny didn't scream and held onto the briefcase even after his body smashed into the motor on the elevator car roof. Though it opened up, the briefcase clasp bursting upon impact. Coins tingling like silver raindrops cascading to the floor. One coin landed on its side and rolled. Its momentum took it to the end of the first floor corridor, toward the basement stairs. It kept rolling to the landing, down the steps, hit the rail, made a turn and kept rolling. The nickel was losing speed and started to wobble as it made its way toward the basement furnace.

Just before the coin spun to a stop a shadow seemed as if it reached out from a drainage pipe and snatched it.

The woman on the eight floor had finally managed to regain her senses from the shock of witnessing Mr. Lipshitz's suicide. She started to lean forward and peer into the shaft when a loud noise startled her. The noise from the silly old radiators began clanging like a drum.

She shook her head, took out her cellular to call the police. They told her the old lawyer was a strange man.


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