We
waited and waited, but no judge appeared.
Eventually, at about twenty minutes past ten o’clock, a side door opened
and two official-looking women entered the court room. They conducted a hasty
discussion in hushed tones just inside the door, and then one of them, a
plain specimen with long, gray hair and ugly spectacles, came over to stand before the motley assemblage of petitioners, respondents, children, and counsel.
"Sorry,"
she began, pushing her glasses further up her nose and looking faintly
apologetic. "Judge Grazziano has been delayed at another hearing. He'll probably be here by eleven if you want
to wait. For those of you with #evictions, if the other party hasn’t shown up, default judgments can be issued, or
you can reschedule for another day. I'll
read out the cases in order, and you can decide what you want to do."
I
looked at Diane. "I know you say you're going to pay me more on May first, but I still have to reschedule for my
own protection. You understand, don’t
you?"
Diane
tut-tutted and heaved a hefty sigh. "Agh. We took time off work for nothin',
and now we have to come back?” She shook her head in disgust.
At
that moment, our case was announced, and we went up to the front of the court room.
"Eviction
for non-payment of #rent?" Plain Jane asked.
"Yes,"
I answered. "We might be able to
work something out, but I still want to go ahead and reschedule. I'm going on vacation May second, so
…"
"How
long will you be gone?"
"Til
May seventh."
"Okay." The woman leafed through a large diary and
pounced on a page. "May
ninth?"
"Fine,"
I said. Diane looked on, but didn’t
disagree.
"See
you on the ninth, then." Plain
Jane made an entry in her diary and began reading out the name of the next
case.
In
the lofty, echoing marble hallway outside the court room, Diane patted me on the arm. "I'll get
right on that money order," she told me cheerfully. "And I'll have four hundred ready for
you, May first."
I
looked doubtful. “I'm going on vacation the next day, so . . ."
".
. . so you need the money," Diane finished. "That's why I'll make sure to have it
ready for you."
"Okay,"
I said. "And when you hear about the
job, we need to work out a payment schedule for the overdue rent. You owe me thirteen hundred now, for
January through this month.”
"I
know. It’s a lot."
"I'll
be busy packing, so Wim’ll pick up the rent.”
"Mommy,
Mommy." Diane’s little girl was tugging
on her mother’s arm.
Diane
shook her off in practiced fashion and glanced at her watch. "I gotta git back to work."
"Me
too." We headed toward the
stairs. "May first, don't forget? If you make an effort to pay me more in the next
two weeks, we'll see, but for now, we 're back in Court May ninth, okay?"
"Yeah,
yeah." Diane gave me a wave, and we went our separate ways.
I
had planned to deal with the information subpoenas after court but my office was short-handed that day, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.
When the clock struck noon the next day, I was out of the office like a shot and racing over to
Schemmerhorn. It took twenty minutes to get there and twenty minutes to get back,
which meant I only had twenty minutes to spare at the Clerk's Office. I arrived, out of breath, weighed down with
restraining notices, already-addressed envelopes, and stamped-addressed
envelopes for return of the subpoenas.
The
Clerk’s counter was unmanned, but at the sound of my whirlwind arrival, a large
lady breezed into the room from a side office.
"Can
I help you?"
"Yes. I've come to collect an information #subpoena."
The
woman looked at me with a blank expression on her face. "A what?"
"An
information subpoena. I spoke to the
Clerk. Apparently Small Claims have their own information subpoenas for service on banks in the area. I have to pay, like, a dollar for it?"
"I
don't know." The woman began to
look harassed. "Um, maybe they're
in this drawer? The Clerk's out to lunch
right now. Can you come back?"
"No. I'm on my lunch hour too. I drove over from
St. Albans, and it takes twenty minutes to get
here, so I can't come back."
The woman halfheartedly shuffled through
some forms in the drawer. "I don’t see anything like that in here."
I
glanced at the clock."What
time does the Clerk get back from lunch?"
The
woman also looked at the clock. "Around
twelve forty-five. It's twelve-thirty
now."
"Okay. I'll go over to the post office and get some stamps on these?" I said, motioning to my armful of envelopes. "Then I'll be back."
The woman smiled, obviously
relieved that she could stop looking for the elusive forms. "All right. The post office is just across the
street."
Faced
with four entrances on each point of the compass by which to exit City Hall, it
took me a few minutes to find said post office.
Luckily there was no line, and I walked right up to the counter. I bought stamps for twelve certified letters
and twelve return envelopes and returned to the Clerk's Office, loaded down
with green return receipts and tracking slips.
I
had to wait a few minutes for the Clerk to return from lunch, so I
occupied myself in filling out the tracking slips and corresponding green postcards
and sticking stamps on the envelopes. I
had just finished the last one, when the Clerk bustled in.
"Hello,"
she said, remembering me. "You're
here for the information subpoena?"
"Yes."
Rummaging
in the very same drawer the other woman had searched, she produced a form
with ease. "Here it is. I'll give you one, and you can make copies and
fill them out. Then bring them back to me to stamp. It's safer to stamp
them all because you can't be certain which banks require it."
"I'll
go to the library and make copies and fill them out right now," I told her. "I just need to get this done. My office will have to put up with me getting back a bit late."
I
took all my paperwork out another entrance, across another street, and into the
public library. After making copies of
the subpoena, I sat down at a table and proceeded to fill them out. It didn’t take long. The forms were really
basic -- much simpler than the information subpoenas I’d used before for Supreme Court.
When
I’d finished, I hauled the papers back to City Hall, and the Clerk stamped them
for me. I sat in my car, stuffing and
licking the envelopes. The glue tasted very
nasty and was probably toxic. I hoped I wasn’t going to keel over and die from envelope-glue poisoning like George Costanza’s fiancée did in “Seinfeld.” When I was
finished, I shoved the envelopes though the slot at the post office with
heartfelt relief. Phew, that was over
with. Now I just had to wait.
The
next day -- surprise, surprise -- the mailman delivered a money order for $300.00. Diane actually phoned me that night to check
that I received it.
The
mail also included a note from my realtor, Wally. Fifty-one Manson Street was
now listed for sale at $45,000.00. Big
whoop.
Wim went over to Schemmerhorn on May
1st to collect the additional $400.00 Diane had promised. Upon his arrival, he was treated to an earful
from Giselle because one of the beams that supported the porch had a crack in it. According to her, it was shameful that it was
cracking already, since Wim had only recently replaced it. In Giselle’s expert opinion, he must have
used inferior materials and done a shitty job as usual.
He
came home, quite shaken from the barrage of verbal abuse Giselle had subjected him to. She must
have hopped straight on the phone to me after he left because she was still complaining in
my ear when Wim returned home twenty minutes later.
"Phew!"
I sighed, as I eventually hung up the phone.
"What's the story, Wim? Giselle's
been bending my ear about the porch and going on and on about the shitty
work you do. She said you refused to
listen to her and just stood there, shaking your head."
Wim exploded in a rare display of fury.
"Agh, that woman just has to have something to complain about! Yah, the beam is a little cracked, but I told
her it's normal. It's just
surface-cracking. That porch is
solid. I laid cement under it and it's not going anywhere. I tried to
tell her that, but she wouldn't listen, yelling and screaming and cursing at me like some mad woman! I told her I wasn't going to listen anymore, and just got
in my car and drove away."
Fortunately, despite
the earful, Wim had remembered to collect the $400.00 money order from
Diane. Her #debt to me now stood at
$1,250.00.
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