TO-WIT: THE SOUND OF SILENCE
I just hate this. I’m sitting here alone in the dark, shivering and shaking, blanketed against all light and sound and relentlessly aware that I am now by contract bereft of tongue, in cheek or otherwise. For a guy who has spent the better part of his adult life gushing words like a fountain of couth, this is intolerable.
It is essential for me now to avoid all human contact. I can’t even allow my dog in the room, for we all know of the vaunted and uncanny intelligence of golden retrievers and their abrading inability to keep their mouths shut.
This abysmal torment started soon after I ended the most difficult and contentious case of my career. “Ended” is the only word I can come up with that implies nothing about whether the result favored my plaintiff, and it is of necessity that I use it; the strict confidentiality agreement demanded by the defendant completely prohibits me from gloating.
From the get-go, the case was a vicious, knock-down, drag-out fight, with no quarter asked and none given; well, none given until it was over. Then there were plenty of quarters.
At first I thought maintaining confidentiality would be no big deal. Now though, several weeks later, the case still haunts me, lingering around like old smoke, and I can feel the discipline of silence slowly, inexorably slipping away.
All lawyers talk about their cases; its endemic, and I’m no different. We deal with so many staggering vagaries that every case, no matter how its resolved, leaves in its wake unanswered questions: How was my closing? Was my trial strategy sound? Should I have been a dentist?
Talking about it is the way we sort out our insecurities. The answers that we can’t get for ourselves we can sometimes get from others, be they lawyers or people.
But the way this most difficult case “ended,” with no verdict to provide formal acknowledgement of superiority, and saddled by this ungodly prohibition against talking, I have precious little way to satisfy myself that I did a good job.
You know, professional fighters are really the lucky ones. No, not the part where they get their noses broken or their eyes split open or their skulls cracked. That’s not very lucky. I mean the part where they do that to their opponents, then stand over those bleeding, broken carcasses in clear triumph; or the part where the referee raises their arm at the end of a fight to signify for all to plainly see who’s the mightiest of them all.
We need a system like that. I’m not suggesting we settle disputes by engaging in fisticuffs with opposing counsel. That’s not civilized and many of them are bigger than me. No, I had something else in mind; pie.
Yes, pie. Here’s what I propose. In any case that “ends” short of a verdict, let’s have the trial judge review the record and decide who did the better job. Then let’s have the judge call counsel into open court, step down off the bench and hand the winner a banana cream pie.
You know what comes next, don’t you? Oh, and it will be glorious. I do so love the sound of merengue hitting skin at speed. If you record it and play it back slowly, you can almost hear the word “loser.” Its either that or “Paul is dead,” I’ve never been sure which.
And we need to implement this plan soon, oh please. I don’t know how much more of this preternatural taciturnity I can endure, and I really, really, really miss that dog.
© 2012, S. Sponte, Esq.