Page 57 of Danny Hall Gets a Lawyer
“No way! I did not tell you all that!”
Mom laughed again, louder this time. “You want me to get your dad on the call to back me up?”
“No, I?—”
Too late.
“How do you—is it Add Call? Wait, I got it. Pick up your phone, Gary. No, press the button. The button on the screen.”
“Hello?” Dad asked.
“Tell your son that he kept mentioning his friend Danny the other week,” Mom said.
Dad said, “David?”
“Your other son,” I said.
“Miller?”
“Hi, Dad.” I closed my eyes and wondered if I should grab a beer out of the minifridge too.
“What’s this about your friend Danny?” Dad asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Hey, I’m calling from New York. I’ve got a job offer at a firm here. Winston, Baker and Fisk. They’re pretty big.”
“Oh,” Dad said, and he sounded as excited as my mom had. “But what does that have to do with Danny? Wait, are you breaking up with him?”
“How can we break up when I’m not even dating him?” That beer was looking better and better, even at minibar prices.
“Really? The way you were talking when you were here, your momma and me were sure there was something going on there.”
I was absolutely not explaining the concept of friends with benefits to my parents. I refused. And to be fair, they were probably already familiar with it. But I wasn’t going to tell themthat I, specifically, had a fuckbuddy. There were some lines you didn’t cross.
“I told you you talked about him!” Mom said.
“Fine,” I said. “I talked about him.”
We were all silent for a long moment, and then Dad said, “New York’s a fair way away. It’s a long drive. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to visit as often as you do.”
“I probably won’t have many weekends free to begin with anyway,” I said. “It’s a competitive environment here, so I’ll be putting in the extra hours.”
“Ah,” Dad said. “Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Wasn’t I?
“Well,” Dad said, “you know what I’ve always taught you. When in doubt, trust your gut.”
Stellar advice, if only I knew what my gut was saying.
Mom spent most of the rest of the call telling me all about the new fabric store that had opened in their neighborhood and how she was thinking of buying a sewing machine because how hard could it be to learn? So obviously she was in full deflection mode. Dad just hummed and agreed with whatever either Mom or I said, and I felt worse for having called them, not better. And even though I wasn’t always as good at keeping in touch with my parents as I should have been, I usually enjoyed talking to them. But today the conversation left me feeling both flat and unsettled when I ended the call.
What the hell was going on with me? I should have been at the top of the world.
At the back of my mind, the prosecutor cleared his throat.
“Nope,” I told him. “Objection. Case dismissed. Whatever.”
