Artificial ferns. Wall-to-wall carpeting, no doubt very easy to vacuum. Eight-foot ceilings with the asbestos tiles, very easy to rewire.”
I tell him, “Look, don’t scare me, those tiles aren’t asbestos. I don’t want a place that makes the clients think I’m wasting their money.”
“David,” he says, “I have never felt that you’re wasting my money.”
There is no talking to Gogarty except you feel like he’s passing judgment on you. Him telling me “I have never felt you’re wasting my money”? When he’s never even gotten me a thank-you gift? Yes, Gogarty, in fact, I do run a business, and I do have paying clients.
He says, “I think you’ve found your niche here, David. This office really goes with your look.”
“My look? What look?”
“Your shoes.”
“My shoes.”
“Black ‘leather’ tennis shoes with black stitching, black nylon laces, and thick black rubber soles.”
“What, Gogarty, you’ve got a problem with my shoes? I can wear them for anything. I can wear them running, I can wear them to court with a suit. I own one pair of shoes, they cost me forty dollars.”
“And this office space meets the same criteria. That’s what I’m saying. You are an indefatigable ascetic.”
“How’s your mother, Gogarty?”
“I am her only disappointment.”
“Your grandmother?”
“The same. Strong as a tortoise.”
Never does he ask me about my kids or my wife. You know, he’s good at heart, but he’s got such a stiff manner. Is it that he’s morbidly shy? Is it that he doesn’t want to intrude? Is it all part of his endless philosophy of dignity? Anyway, he gives me the contract. I tell him, Look, I can tell you what this says as a legal matter, but I can’t tell you whether it’s a good deal as a business matter—I know nothing about this industry. He says he just wants to understand what he’s signing away and how much money to expect. I tell him I’ll take a look. But I ask him, out of curiosity, Who’s the attorney who wrote this?
FRANNY CLEMENT, the attorney who wrote it, gives us a tour of the reception area of Herman Nathaniel LLP and tells us about her meeting with Maynard Gogarty (early August 2000):
In our reception area, along with the white leather chairs and the white marble coffee tables and the white, muggy view of Jersey City, New Jersey, is an enlarged replica of a famous Japanese bonsai. Now most bonsai are planted in earthenware trays that are as shallow as wasabi dishes, but the trough holding our bonsai is made from marble and is over two feet deep. And instead of being only a few inches high, our bonsai trees are over twelve feet high. And instead of dwarf pines, the trees in our bonsai are fully mature junipers. But otherwise our bonsai is a to-scale replica of a planting of seven trees that was given as part of a famous dowry in seventeenth-century Japan. Welcome to Herman Nathaniel LLP; our receptionists are allegedly happy to bring you a beverage while you wait.
Now, Mr. Gogarty did not exactly look at home in our lobby. He was standing on an open patch of white marble tile, as far as he could be from our bonsai and our chairs and our receptionists, with his old brown briefcase leaning against his calf as if he were afraid to set it down on any of our four white marble coffee tables. And he was ventilating himself, one hand pumping the breast of his jacket in and out to get air to his chest, the other one beating his hat up and down beside his cheek to get air down his collar. He was dressed for summer, but so was Gene Kelly in Inherit the Wind.
But let me come to the point. The reason I had invited Mr. Gogarty down to our offices was that one of my clients is ITD Records, of Long Island City, New York. ITD stands for “intent to distribute.” As in “possession of a controlled narcotic with.” Obviously, ITD is a pro bono client. And they had just signed a new performer who was so very, very prolific, but so very, very unconcerned with copyright difficulties. Puppy Jones! Now, for the most part I had been able to track down permissions for Mr. Jones, but Mr. Gogarty seemed to hold the exclusive rights to his own music, and seems to have sold Mr. Jones a CD at Sundance for five dollars, with no contact information.
Isn’t that quaint? And isn’t that the sort of thing I want to spend my time on, at one in the morning, after I am done with the work for our paying clients? And isn’t it generous of the partners in the Intellectual Property Department at Herman Nathaniel LLP to allow their sixth-year associates to take on as much pro bono work as they like, but only as long as it “does not interfere with other assignments”?
MAYNARD GOGARTY moves right along (early August 2000):
I knew from her voice on the phone that Franny would be black, but I wasn’t expecting her to be so—short. An air of seriousness about her, which I always trust and admire, but it was beaten in with sarcasm, which I sometimes distrust. She had extravagant artificial braids affixed to her scalp by one of those mysterious methods hairstylists have, involving seared knots. But her skirt was a conformist gray, and her blouse was that ditto-ink purple that people are wearing this season, and wrinkled at the elbows. So—a short, sarcastic woman carrying an accordion folder.
She took one look at me and my boater and decided to hustle me out of her office. She insisted that we—talk—over breakfast, and she led me to a deli a block and a half away, just far enough to vanquish any reservoirs of cool I had gathered in my shirt while in her lobby. May I tell you what she ate for breakfast, this woman who wants to buy the rights to my movie?
Bivouacked in the middle of the deli to which she led me was—a breakfast buffet. Many different dishes, each one isolated, like radium, in a deep aluminum pan and suspended above a steaming bath of water. One hundred dishes, one single uncanny smell. Uncanny because it is the same smell that is in every deli in Manhattan now, a mixture of dishwater and barbecue sauce. Some dishes had their own aluminum spoons or tongs; other dishes did not. So, for example, if a man wanted a late breakfast of waffles and bananas, he would have to use the tongs from the sausage links to pinch up each—sodden waffl e, and would have to use the spoon from the ranchero-style scrambled eggs to fish bananas out of the fruit cocktail. Did I mention, too, that there were chicken wings? Not a popular breakfast item, chicken wings, but, aswim in their sauce, in their oily red and fatty brown sauce, very psychedelic.
For breakfast Franny had stewed strawberries over Belgian waffles, with ketchup-coated hash browns on the side—except the hash browns were more like hash pales. When she attempted to stab one of her stewed strawberries with her plastic fork, the strawberry would slip away from her and bolt for safety toward the hash browns. But Franny would not give up. She would pursue the strawberry, with her fork, into the mire of the ketchup, where she would be able to spear it at last, and then—she would eat the ketchup-covered strawberry. This is how breakfast is taken by the woman who wants to buy the rights to my movie. Me, I drank coffee.
While Franny ate, she felt she could be casual with me. She said, “Now, shame on you, Franny, shame on you, but—I have not seen the movie.”
I told her, “It’s not too late. It’s playing on Saturday at the Pioneer Theater, the one behind that—pizzeria. You should come. It seems there is a problem with the pizzeria’s piano; otherwise I would accompany the fi lm live.”
“Like a silent movie!”
“Or,
