Unpopular Science

Margo shrugged and chewed her gum. The attorney watched the bent man for another few minutes, then asked, “They have an air-conditioner in that place?”

“Don’t think so. Know what it would take to keep that place cool? It’s big as a mansion!”

The attorney gave her a doubtful look. “I’ll bet it smells like a sewer.”

Margo lost her friendliness. “You’re being unpleasant.”

“Well, I am an attorney.”

“Yuck.” Margo left, no longer feeling obliged to be sociable. Attorneys, after all, weren’t people.

The attorney had no use for these back-road weirdos. He, for one, got no kicks from Route 66, and had not enjoyed his drive on it. Even the Town Car he rented in Tucumcari couldn’t seem to pump out enough air-conditioning to combat the searing heat of New Mexico. The doddering old Fastbinder wasn’t even halfway to the museum yet.

“Holy shit, how long is this gonna take?” he said. There was a gasp of horror and an eight-year-old girl in braces and pigtails pointed a stiff finger in his direction. “Mommy, did you hear what this man said? He said the S-word. Mommy!”

A sweat-drenched pantsuit with a rotund, middle-aged woman inside it came at him fast. He thought she might tackle him. “What kind of a man are you, saying words like that in front of a little girl? Where is your decency? Where is your respect for human beings? It’s sick and disgusting.”

“Mommy, he said a bad word! He said it. I heard him. He said it!” The girl was sobbing and dancing. “I heard it, Mommy!”

‘What happened?” Margo said, arriving to investigate the mayhem. She skewed the suited man with a look. “What did you do to this little girl?”

“He said the S-word!” the girl wailed.

“You did what?”

“Right here in the gift shop!” the girl’s mother whined. “What kind a man does that?”

“He’s no man,” Margo sneered. “He’s an attorney.”

The eight-year-old girl screeched and panicked, thrashing her limbs mindlessly, knocking over a rack of New Mexico State Bird postcards, which in turn toppled a wire stand holding hundreds of New Mexico shot glasses. The girl curled up behind a display of vinyl Indian moccasins wailing, “He’s gonna sue me! Please don’t let him sue me!”

The next thing he knew, the attorney was being manhandled out the front of the museum and gift shop. He didn’t fight it. It was too hot and Margo was too powerful. But he had never been so humiliated in his entire life. He waited in front of his Town Car.

Damn, he hated this son of a bitch Fastbinder. Couldn’t the son of a bitch walk any damn faster?

“Goot evening,” said Jacob Fastbinder III in his pronounced German accent, putting on a crooked, wrinkled smile. “You are zee attorney, ya?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Fastbinder. I’m here on business from the board of directors.”

“Oh, ya.” Fastbinder laughed. “The board is certainly having these days some troubles!”

“Yes,” the attorney answered dryly.

“Maybe they will go into bankruptcy soon, ya?” Fastbinder laughed more heartily.

“We’re talking to our creditors,” the attorney said defensively. “Some are willing to negotiate.”

‘I know you jab at me. I will never negotiate. But maybe I will buy back zee company, when the price hits rock bottom!” More laughter.

The attorney smoldered as he removed the envelope and handed it to Fastbinder. “I doubt you could afford it, Mr. Fastbinder. Even in bankruptcy, the company has assets worth…”

Fastbinder opened the envelope and displayed the check to the attorney. The attorney swallowed.

“Not worth more than that.” Fastbinder chuckled. “And I get one like this every six months.”

“No wonder the firm’s going bankrupt,” the attorney said. “How’d you manage to get a severance like that?”

“I outlawyered the lawyers! It was easy, once I realized that lawyers are filthy pigs who are helpless away from the slop troughs. They thought I was insipid when I wanted half the profits from my U.S. controls group patents. They thought the group was a dinosaur that would fold up in no time.”

“And now it’s the only profitable business unit,” the attorney concluded, stunned. “How could those people have been so short-sighted?”

“Not people, lawyers,” Fastbinder said gleefully. Margo appeared, her Keds crunching on the pea gravel parking lot. She whispered to Fastbinder, shooting glares at the lawyer, then raised her chin high as she strode back into the museum and gift shop.

“I hear there has been troubles. You must pay for the damages, please.”

The attorney opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it again. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I am not.” Fastbinder stopped smiling. “My manager says we suffered a loss of forty-two postcards of zee cartoon mosquitoes and thirteen shot glass. The postcards are seventy-nine cents each or three for two dollars, so that comes to fourteen dollars. The shot glasses are $3.25 each with no quantity discount. So the total owed is $56.25.”

“You have to be out of your mind.”

Fastbinder shrugged.

“First of all, I didn’t break the cheap tourist crap. The idiot kid broke it.”

“My Margo says it was you who caused it.”