GOOD THINGS
BY DEAN W. M. LESLIE

New York Lawyer
December 1, 2008

Horace Bantam picked an irritating white thread from the lapel of his blue pinstripe bespoke suit as he ascended the stairs. The light from the latticed window half-way up the flight hurt his eyes. He was not accustomed to coming out of his cubby so early in the morning. He opened the short, squat, green door with the pass key he had gotten from his father almost twenty years ago. There were several of these doors in the stairwells, and no one ever opened them, but Horace had seen what was behind them all. Armed with his pass key, like a miniature watchman, Horace had seen every room in building on his nightly rounds on which he would scan computers that had been left on, and rifle through the trash of important judges.

Horace had spent most of his twenty-seven years behind a particular unnoticed portal. As a child, he would spend nights in this, his favorite, crawl space between the fourth and fifth floors, reading law books pilfered from the court library as he waited for the end of his father’s shift. Afterward they would go home together: as a small person, Horace was subject to bullying, and hardly went out alone. Once they got home, his father would immediately go to sleep, leaving Horace idle. Once, Horace gathered the courage to wander back to the courthouse, but he was beaten badly by thugs. It was not long before Horace would spend all of his time there – in that grand apartment with a tiny entrance – with his father joining him for dinner before working his custodial night shift.

Transported to his lilliputian world on the other side of the small door, Horace flipped the switch of a jury-rigged hot plate in his make-shift kitchenette, and walked over to the window to read the New York Law Journal he had swiped from the front desk of the building while the court officer was out getting morning coffee. Being a small person, he could barely reach the ceiling of the half floor where he had painted frescoes, using silver insulation and asbestos as his canvas.

When his father started to let Horace sleep in the cubby, he provided Horace with the best available furniture in the building. Soon the cubby was laid out in inimitable Manhattan style. With no distractions such as friends or television in his formative years, Horace finished college and law school online by the tender age of twenty. His father, proud of Horace’s accomplishments, exhorted him to go out into the world and get a job, but Horace was too terrified to go out on his own. When he was twenty-one, though, he went on an excursion with his father to Monroe Street in Brooklyn to be sworn in as a lawyer. Weeks later, his father died.

After his father passed away, Horace knew no other home. Terrified of the street, and happy with his expansive, but short, living space, Horace spend much of his inheritance making his apartment a small paradise. He wanted to be taken seriously, so he had custom suits made ... it was humiliating to shop in children’s stores.

From the time he was sworn in, until that morning when the sun had revealed the errant thread on his lapel, he had not left the building. It was now six years that Horace had not walked in the sun. Horace tipped his chair back to expose himself to the sun more. He had diagnosed himself with a vitamin D deficiency, and would spend thirty minutes by the window every morning to combat the osteomalacia.

Over the years, Horace acquired a large sleigh bed, a short wardrobe, two small refrigerators (one serving as a wine cooler), a sofa with end table, and a wet bar (although he rarely drank, he dreamed of hosting cocktails parties). He would take showers in judges’ chambers, and spend most of his nights combing through the shelves of the library for interesting legal treatises, which would make their way to the shelves Horace’s father had helped him to build.

He turned his back to the window for more reading light and laughed out loud at the Decisions of Interest. “Another boner,” he thought looking with disdain at the judge pictured next to the article. “I thought you were better than this ... How could you get this so wrong? The First Department will reverse this for sure,” he mused. Horace was rarely wrong in his estimations. Indeed, he was a brilliant lawyer who was well respected throughout the courthouse. Horace got all his clients in the building. He would sit quietly outside of the pro se, or clerk’s, office and listen to hard luck stories and lost causes. Then he would offer his condolences ... and his services.

Horace always looked especially sharp for court. He had several custom suits and shirts, and had them cleaned and pressed regularly. Once he took to center court, Horace filled every judge with delight, fright, or envy. The smart judges loved him for his logic and masterful presentations, the mediocre judges feared him for his ability to expose their missteps and establish credibility with the jury, and the poor judges begrudged his intelligence and thinly-veiled disdain for their incompetence.

That morning, Horace would be representing a young woman he had met weeks before, after one of his cases. Horace had just wrapped the judge and the opposing counsel around his finger, when Maurina Pollack diffidently approached him and cleared her throat – she had been taught never to speak to a man first. Horace was taken aback by her beauty. No make-up graced her countenance, but her chiseled white teeth peeked out from behind refined, pouted, lips drenched with nervous urgency.

“How may I help you ... Ms. ....” Horace started hesitantly.

“Pollack,” she smiled briefly. “They are trying to destroy our neighborhood. The City has decided to allow the developers to build high rises on our block. Our block is a historic landmark. The Preservation Society of Manhattan decided that fifteen years ago. Now they are saying that the PSM decision was for the other block in our development, and not for ours. We need the best lawyer we can get fast. They have bulldozers at our front door!”

“Slow down,” Horace soothed her with his genial tone, “I’m sure there are no bulldozers there right now....”

“No, no, they’re there now! They want to break ground today!” Maurina looked pleadingly into Horace’s eyes.

Moments later, Horace was in front of the wizened Judge Pearson, matriarch of the courthouse, applying for an ex parte temporary restraining order. Judge Pearson could always be found in her robing room waiting for just such a need.

When they emerged from her courtroom, Maurina gave Horace such a tight hug that she crumpled the TRO. She knew from the moment she heard Horace’s voice – she could not see him above the bar – that he could save her home. Now her small knight had sprung into action. Maurina straightened her skirt, and regaining her composure, stepped away, extending her hand clumsily in an act of manifestly misplaced formality.

That night, by the shimmering light of his half-floor nest, Horace fantasized about a romance with Maurina. He thought of her sad but trenchant eyes, insisting on justice, and thriving on righteousness. She was a selfless sheep until there was a cause. Then she would turn into a lioness .... He had never felt this way before. But how could he romance her if he could not even leave the building?

Horace paced until he was tired. He thought of every angle on Maurina’s case. The PSM had designated two blocks in Manhattan as landmarks worthy of preservation. Meanwhile, two developers had plied the Manhattan Council with cash donations and good will. It was only a matter of days before the PSM decision to preserve each of the blocks was overturned. The community had appealed to the Supreme Court of New York for review of the decision, but to no avail.

The Supreme Court judge, after consolidating the lawsuits against the two developers for joint trial, in a decision reeking of pay-offs, stated that the Manhattan Council had properly considered the good of the city in general, and the decision of the Council should be upheld. Horace could not fathom the decision at the time. It was clearly not within the purview of the Manhattan Council to make zoning policy. The Council should either have approved the PSM’s designation or not. Period. There was no precedent for adjusting PSM directives to suit developers, or, indeed, any interested party.

Despite winning in court, months later one of the developers bowed under community pressure, and promised to drop the project. Meanwhile, the other developer, unrelenting, vowed to put up a fight to the end. The community appealed the decision of the Supreme Court to the First Department, and won. That was fifteen years ago. Now the developer who had promised to drop his plan, had a change of heart. Armed with an unchallenged Supreme-Court decision from fifteen years ago permitting him to develop, the unrelenting chant of “res judicata” rose like a prayer from the developer’s lawyer’s dogged lips.

Horace walked over to his Victorian buffet, and selected a heavy cut crystal tumbler that dwarfed his hand. He poured a couple of jiggers of Woodforde Reserve and placed the still open bottle on the small table by the window. He looked out over the desolate air-shaft between the outer hexagon and the inner circle of the building and sighed quietly. So much of his life had been spend right by this window ... so many opening and closing arguments had been rehearsed here. How could he get Maurina to live here? She had started to ask where he lives several times, but he always deftly preempted the question. Horace awoke to the sun caressing the side of his face that was not lined and crumpled from being drunkenly pressed upon the small wooden table by the window. He looked at his watch and jumped to attention ... nine o’clock. Calendar call for his divorce case was at nine-thirty. In his six years as a lawyer, he had never been late. Indeed, how could he be ... living in the building. He still felt drunk as his temples pulsed with fury.

At nine-fifteen he was shaking the hand of an imminent divorcée outside the courtroom. He concentrated on exuding compassion as he watched her lips, like a pair of well practiced synchronized swimmers, dance through the story he had heard a dozen times. “I hate him ... I want him to suffer ...,” she derailed. The noise of children running and lawyers barking conspired to deepen the pain of his hangover. “Stick to the story,” he chastised weakly.

His performance in court was noticeably poor. The judge paused a number of times, and peered over his glasses. He had never seen Mr. Bantam so rough. Exiting to his robing room, the judge looked askance at Horace ... he had waited years for Mr. Bantam to have a bad day, and finally it had arrived. The judge shook his head in satisfied disbelief.

Horace spent the rest of the morning battling the persistent pounding in his cranium. It eventually resolved into a dull but thorough pain. Later that day, Horace met Maurina for coffee on the fourth floor of the building. There was a small cart, offering various hardened confections, stale breads, pre-packaged cakes, and a selection of warm liquids (discernable only by the amount of froth on top as either coffee or tea). They simultaneously pointed at the orange-necked stained carafe of what might have been decaffeinated coffee or rusty water. The attendant poured cautiously, making sure not to give too much. She handed the onion-skin-thin cups to Horace and Maurina, who both held them loosely, relying on the supra-tegmental bundles in their respective spinal cords to stop them from dropping the searing hot containers.

For hours they sat on wooden benches, a mere half flight from Horace’s abode, shaking with caffeine overdose, and discussed the case. It seemed that the successor agency to the Manhattan Council, the City Board, felt that it could not change a determination made fifteen years ago, even if the corresponding case had been overturned on appeal. The Commissioner of the City Board offered flatly, “we are simply the successor to the Manhattan Council, we cannot overturn decisions made more than a decade ago.”

By the end of the day, Horace and Maurina had determined their strategy. The First Department had thrown out the decision of the Manhattan Council with regard to the adjacent property. That decision clearly would have applied to Maurina’s complex also had the developer not promised the community to scrap the development plan. With proof of that promise, the community’s forbearance to appeal would cast the developer as an enemy trying to welch on his promise.

If all went according to plan, soon the opposition would be arguing that, due to the Statue of Frauds, the City Board could not be held to oral promises made with the community or the Manhattan Council. Once the opposition was focused on the obvious Statute of Frauds objections to Horace’s contract theory, he could “concede” the idea that the City Board had been created to replace the corrupt Manhattan Council, and was not bound by its prior decisions. That might put res judicata to rest.

Maurina saw Horace in a new light that afternoon. His elegant trap revealed a devious side one did not expect in someone so diminutive. She wanted to thank him by taking him to dinner, but he flatly refused. Could she be wrong about the feelings between them? How could he reject her with warm smiling eyes? She had thought to ply him with alcohol at dinner that night ... after all, he was no more than sixty pounds, he would not be able to drink very much. After a few drinks, she would take him to her apartment, and have her way. She had never been with someone small. Her heart hurt.

Horace was riddled with guilt. He made Maurina feel self-conscious when it was he that had a psychological problem. He had been in the courthouse for so long, that he was afraid to leave. He wondered if he could be sure of her love. Could he rely on her the way he had come to rely on his apartment as a place of complete safety and refuge? He lied to her about having to see a judge as he walked her to the side exit from the building. He looked out longingly as she stepped into the street. He was at once jealous that she could leave, and relieved to see her go.

As he climbed Stairway B to his four-and-a-halfth floor apartment, he felt a fool. He wanted to run downstairs, fling the door open, and charge into the street after her, and end his days as the courthouse gnome. But his momentary false bravado was stomped out by his accustomed feet, approaching the door to his refuge. He slid his hand around the door jamb. “Hmm... needs cleaning ... the custodial service around here sucks” he thought to himself, missing his father. Finally, he was back in his own beautiful, safe, place in the universe. When he thought that he might never share it with anyone, a tear came to his eye.

Inside, he was coddled by the familiar scent of old Federal Reporters stolen from bins in front of the library. Surely this was a fire hazard. He had watched many times as the court attorneys in the building eyed the librarian suspiciously. She claimed the Federal Reporters had been disappearing nightly, but the court attorneys thought she was losing her mind. “Too many years in the stacks,” they thought, smiling condescendingly, and patting her on the back. “Besides, who would steal reporters when there’s Westlaw and Lexis?” They never took her distress seriously. She was eventually fired for her inability to explain the missing Reporters, and thousands of dollars worth of missing treatises. On occasion, having sneaked in, she could be seen being escorted from the building by a court officer as she wrangled and twisted against the continued injustice. “There must be someone in the building at night. I know it!”

Horace walked over to his table by the window and slapped an empty liquor bottle to the floor. It disappointed him by not shattering, but only bouncing briefly, and murmuring to stillness in a sea of empty bottles. He went to the cabinet, which was now bare of liquor, except for a bottle of gin. Horace abhorred gin. It was a fragrant abomination of innocent juniper berries. Nonetheless, he could not bear the pain of being without Maurina, and he could not stand the idea of leaving. Drinking somehow dulled the pain. He held the bottle in his hand, like a wet contaminated sponge, and brought it to his table. He looked around for a clean glass but could not find one. The gin burned his chest as it washed down his esophagus.

The day of Maurina’s hearing, Horace was nervous. He did not worry about the outcome of his oral motion for summary judgment based upon oral-contract theory. He knew that argument would lose as a matter of law, but the moral high ground was key. The afternoon session was bound to be more interesting. He was equally sure that he would win that phase. After all, the Manhattan Council and the City Board were two separate entities, with different powers, and exclusive mandates. The decisions of the defunct Manhattan Council could not serve as a bar to the prospective decisions of the City Board.

Based on the years of discussions with his father about trash, he knew the judge would side with him. Horace made a habit of checking the courthouse trash bins at night. As his father told him, you can learn more from what someone throws out, than from what someone keeps. He had analyzed Judge Pearson’s trash can in the hallway the night before: chocolate wrappers, diet soda cans, the last three days of the New York Law Journal, and a dying plant. This was the garbage of someone that was relaxing. She would not be catching up on her Law Journal reading, eating chocolate, and doing general housekeeping if she were worried about being trashed by the media the next day. No, she was going to do a popular thing, which could only be to thwart developers and champion the community.

No, Horace’s only nervousness was because he knew Maurina might have no reason to ever come to the courthouse again. He had resolved the night before to ask her to have dinner. He had been preparing for days. He knew exactly how to handle it. At 7 PM, Officer Pound, who attended the front door, would lock it and go on her rounds. She would go to the sixth floor, and walk her way to the basement. That would give him enough time to get into the court officer’s kitchen, and warm the dishes he had prepared. After getting dinner to the rotunda, there was no worry of detection: Officer Pound would be having a two-hour nap downstairs in the locker room. The challenge would be to host Maurina in the rotunda without her knowing they were hiding from the court officers.

Horace proved to be right about Judge Pearson. That day, she took patently perverse pleasure in crushing the developers, and commenting on her commitment to doing the right thing for the residents of Manhattan. “God bless activist morons,” Horace whispered under his breath as she spoke. “I am proud of my decades of service on the bench. The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.” Horace nearly choked as Pearson aggrandized herself by usurping the very words from the front of the building.

Maurina could hardly contain her joy. After the media had subsided, she kissed Horace unabashedly, and hugged him often as they sat on the stark wooden bench at the back of the courtroom. Horace swung his legs wildly, which did not reach the floor, and tried to contain his happiness with her show of affection. He finally gathered the nerve to tell her about his dinner plans. “I have arranged something very special,” he boasted. “We will have the rotunda all to ourselves.”

As expected, a court officer came by, and without looking into the darkened courtroom, locked the door. Horace tried to distract Maurina so that she would not hear the click of the lock. That evening, as it was Friday, most court officers would leave the building as early as seven o’clock. Before Horace or Maurina could notice, that time had come and gone. Maurina was shocked to hear that they were locked in the building, but was also intrigued by Horace’s reassurance that there would be a great night in store.

Horace led Maurina to the rotunda on the first floor, and told her to wait as he fumbled in the corridor for the lights. Maurina stood in the middle of what seemed to be a mandala with zodiacal, legal, and political aspects. She almost got dizzy spinning around to read the names on the ceiling ... Hammurabi ... Moses ... Solon ... Justinian ... Blackstone ... Marshall.

She was so taken by the murals on the dome that she hardly noticed that Horace had been gone for more than ten minutes. He returned wheeling a custodian’s cart, covered with a sheet, into the middle of the rotunda. He pulled off the sheet as if performing a magician’s trick to reveal a fully laid table, an assortment of hors d’oeuvres, and a bottle of champagne in a chiller. “Dinner is served,” he declared in a refined tone, bowing obsequiously. He lit the candles, and ran to turn off the glaring fluorescent lights.

When he returned, Horace reached under the cart and suddenly music filled the air. He offered his hand to Maurina and she stood, pretending to sweep a gown onto the dance floor. Soon, they were spinning effortlessly across the rotunda. They laughed as they read the names of the celebrated legal traditions to each other. The names, raised like frieze, gleamed in the candlelight illuminating the dome. Assyrian ... Egyptian ... Hebraic ....

I only live for your love and your kiss, It's paradise to be near you like this. Horace sang along, except when he strained to dip Maurina without letting her fall. She was amazed that he could hold her weight so securely. Because of you my life is now worthwhile, And I can smile because of you. As Maurina sat, Horace placed his hand on her neck and pulled her forward for a soft kiss.

By the time they had eaten half the hors d’oeuvres, Horace had told Maurina about his life in the courthouse. “This is my living room, and the courtrooms are my playpens,” he boasted. “Why would you want to be anywhere else?” “Yes, but you can’t really sleep here,” Maurina chided incredulously.

“You’d be surprised ... I’ll show you tonight.” Horace tried not to look like an imp, but could only allow the grin on his face to diminish slowly.

Moments after the music subsided, Horace was about to put in another CD in the boom box, when he heard a door slam. It was clearly a door off the main corridor leading to the front of the building. Who could that be at this hour? A reporter who stayed late to file a story for tomorrow’s late edition?

Horace quickly blew out the candles, and held his tiny finger across Maurina’s lips.

Soon they heard footsteps coming down the corridor. Horace grabbed Maurina’s hand and pulled her quietly toward Stairway B. As soon as the door closed behind them, they started bounding up the flights. Horace’s short legs could scarcely carry him apace. He stumbled and slammed his arm on the stairs. By the time they reached the four-and-a-halfth floor they were panting for air. As Horace scoured his pockets for his key, they heard a door to the stairwell open several flights below.

“Who’s up there?,” a voice echoed through the stairwell. “I heard you. You might as well come down peaceably ....”

Horace shoved his key in the lock, opened the door, and pushed Maurina into the darkness. She yelped audibly as she hit her head on the entrance. Horace ran to the stairwell exit and opened the door. He then tip-toed back down the half-flight, and before the exit door slammed, was inside the door of his apartment. Horace listened intently at the door as the sound of footsteps bounding upward drew nearer. As he heard the footfall hurry past, he whispered “We’ll be safe here. Don’t worry.”

When Horace turned on the lights, Maurina was awed by the smartly appointed space. It was a bit difficult to walk stooped over, but the furniture was very nice, and Horace’s taste seemed impeccable. She ruffled her hand across a shelf of treaties. “Books are so decorative ... I see why you like it here ... so private.” She was reminded of the famous low-ceiling Appartemento dei Nani (Apartments of the Dwarfs) in Mantua, where a replica of the Holy Staircase in the Vatican is built in miniature (in keeping with noble custom of the time, dwarfs were part of Isabelle d'Este's court). “This is unbelievable,” she sighed.

“I was reminded of something like this while we were downstairs dancing under the frescoes. Isabelle d'Este commissioned many art-filled frescoed apartments in Mantua that are still there today. I would love to take you there ... especially the Appartemento dei Nani ... you would fit perfectly.” She laughed as she smoothed his curly hair with her hand.

They sipped wine and laughed the whole night. She told him stories of 15th century nobility, and he fascinated her with a discourse on the history of jurisprudence. By the crack of dawn, they had discussed Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, and English artistic and legal traditions. They did not notice the noise just outside the small door.

Maurina was interrupted by the sound of a barking dog. Moments later, someone was pounding on the door.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! What are we going to do?,” Horace lost his composure.

“Come out of there,” a booming voice squalled from the stairwell. “We know you’re in there. Come on out!”

“I guess it’s time to give up,” Maurina said softly, holding Horace’s hand. “All good things must come to and end ....”

“Before other good things can start,” Horace interrupted. “Do you trust me?,” he looked deeply into her eyes.

“I don’t know why, but I do,” Maurina whispered as she leaned forward to kiss Horace.

“Then come.” Horace pulled Maurina by the hand and walked quietly toward the back of the room. He pulled up a section of rug, and removed a small sheet of wood to reveal an open air duct. He had prepared for the eventuality that he would have to leave his apartment one day, but he was still not ready. Horace placed two briefcases, which contained all of his important papers, in the air duct, and directed Maurina to get in also. She slipped in behind the briefcases without further question. Horace stopped to look around his home. Although he had chosen every aspect of the design, there was nothing to show that it was his home. His briefcases contained the only evidence of his identity in the place. That thought make him sick to his stomach; he took a deep breath to stop himself from vomiting. In that moment, memories streamed from all directions. He remembered his days as a child there, his father, and even the days he spent moving furniture around by himself.

He arranged the rug and sheet of wood so he could pull it over the hole as he passed through. Moments later, they were overlooking a robing room on the fourth floor. They pushed the duct open and leapt down onto the conference table. After washing up in the chambers bathroom, they exited nonchalantly into the hallway behind the courtroom.

As they pushed their way through the small crowd of staff that had assembled in the hallway outside of Stairway B, they held hands tightly.

“What seems to be the trouble,” Horace spoke up reaching the outside of his apartment door.

“Stow-aways sir,” the court officer offered. “Looks like we will have to break in.” The dog turned, sniffed at Horace, and started barking wildly as the officer ignored her.

“Are you sure, I can’t imagine anyone surviving in there!,” Horace offered, looking at Maurina and stepping back. “Oh well, good luck.” Horace and Maurina turned and walked down the stairs as the dog went into a frenzy. “Take it easy girl, we have them cornered,” the officer whispered to the dog.

At the bottom of the flight, Horace turned to Maurina and said “Let’s take the elevator ... I think the next stairway I want to see will be in Mantua.” She smiled and took his hand.

When they reached the front entrance to the building, Horace was blinded by the light. He looked up at the ornate, fresco-laden, ceiling of the main entrance, and, for a moment, could not move his feet. His trance was interrupted by a tug from Maurina’s hand ... It was then that Horace first gathered to courage to step out of his little world, and into his big future.

Horace never saw the inside of 60 Centre Street again.

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