Trial

"But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people."

-Psalm 22: 6

Just finished a two-day trial, and it's not the exuberant finale I used to feel at this moment.

After a quick post-trial cocktail with the clients at their beach house that is the subject of this debacle, I drove to the yacht club and sat alone on the deck wondering why no one brought me a menu. Maybe just as well--I get pudgy during trial weeks, living on Publix chicken wings and whatever is offered in a courthouse vending machine.

We might have won at trial, or maybe we lost, but these days it's a matter of Jesuit indifference. The clients were gratified to see me absolutely gut a witness who got out over his skis, offering opinions on things about which he knew next to nothing, finally getting him to admit he hadn't even obtained a high school diploma. "Did you at least take chemistry in high school and pass"? I asked. What an asshole. Me, I mean, not him.

All over caulk. I'd like to find a villain or a hero in all this, but really all I see is folly. We just spent so much, and for what? One side wants vindication for a perceived wrong, the other is so used to getting away with rotten behavior that it's inconceivable that they might be help accountable. This human walk is ridiculously tragic.

After not being served supper at the yacht club, I drove to the condo and heated some wings before I started taking conference calls in other cases while watching the Braves win. Peg got the dregs, fifteen minutes or so long after she should've been in bed. The most important person in my life left hanging around until I was done talking about slider repairs in a condo full of rich people. No way to hold a relationship together.

Total billable value for the day? About $6,000.00. Maybe a shade more. None of it worth the candle.

How to fix? One can only complain so much.

Enough for one night.