Harvey Kaplan looked like he’d been dead for twenty years. At least since Woodstock. I saw him standing at the top of the stairs screaming his head off, his face turning red. The last guy in Los Angeles with a ponytail, and he was having one hell of an argument with his guru. The skinny bearded little Indian was screaming too, waving his arms around, his white robe flapping like a loose spinnaker. It had been a long time since I’d seen Harvey on his feet. Usually he just sits in his office. Sometimes I hear him chanting or the tinkle of little bells. Mostly I smell pot and incense wafting out from under his door. I try to avoid Harvey Kaplan. He is my landlord, and right now I owe him $850.

I was tired, limping in my high heels, coming back from a disappointing day at the arraignment court on Bauchet Street. I had picked up only one case, a loony woman charged with creating a disturbance at an abortion clinic. She had snuck into the recovery area to shove plastic fetuses in the faces of women who were still crying and half drugged from the procedure.

The guru pushed past me, banging into my briefcase and muttering something about motherfuckers. I had enough on my mind what with worrying about where plastic fetuses came from.

Securing a smile of deliberate but vacant pleasantness, I made it up the stairs, sidestepped Harvey, who was still hyperventilating, and unlocked the old oak door to my office.

WHITNEY LOGAN

ATTORNEY AT LAW

It cost me thirty-five dollars to have that lettering done. Before my arrival eight months ago, there had been a bookkeeping service here. They had moved out fast, abandoning a scarred orangy pressed-wood desk and a battered black file cabinet. I gave the furniture a few coats of black paint and did the walls an off-white. The building had been constructed in 1936, solid and hopeful as a WPA project. The woodwork, which goes halfway up the walls, is all real; and, except for some rough spots where the former tenants had used brackets for bookshelves, it looks good. The glass light fixture in the ceiling is authentic. I’ve hung a couple of Dutch Masters reproductions from the art museum on the wall along with my law degree and certificate from the State Bar. Some pink cymbidiums made from silk are arranged in a black ceramic vase on top of the file cabinet. I sit here a lot and think how nice it all looks. That the bookkeeping service went out of business should have told me something.