The Common Pleas Lawyer by Aime Austin

Author:Aime Austin [Austin, Aime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-944179-37-3
Publisher: Penner Publishing

Ten

Casey

May 4, 1996

“Where have you been? I’ve been keeping lunch warm in the oven.” That was my mother. Sometimes I wanted to tell her that food wasn’t love. Instead, I hefted a large Office Max bag onto the kitchen table. “Had to get this to help me study for finals,” I lied.

My dad slid the bulky box from the bag. The laptop computer’s doppelganger, a shiny professional photo highlighting its utilitarian beauty stared up at us from the box.

“A computer? I thought you used the school’s computers,” my dad said.

“I used the ones at law review, Dad. I can’t exactly show my face in there right now.”

“Why not?”

“The people who are taking over are using them.” It was the best excuse I could come up with. I hadn’t yet told them about the masthead issue. The dean was in Iowa and unavailable for meetings, but I was hoping to get to him by e-mail. Some students had found that sending a message from your computer to theirs yielded a better response than telephones and old-fashioned visits, which if timed incorrectly, never seemed to reach the intended target.

“Looks complicated,” my dad said, fingering the slotted tab on the side of the box. I plucked it open and removed the computer from its Styrofoam confines. It was heavier than I’d imagined. The little ‘Q’ logo was cute. If pressed, I’d probably have to admit it had been the deciding factor to buy a Compaq. I’d liked the little cow one, but the delay between ordering and delivery was too long for my immediate needs—keep what I had earned.

“It’ll be good, I think.”

Before I could grab it, my dad latched on to the receipt that had floated from the bag.

“Four thousand dollars? Casey Ann Cort. That’s practically a down payment on a house.”

“It’s an investment in my future, Dad. I’ll be able to use it for working in the fall. If I bill a lot of hours, I will probably get a bonus that covers the cost.”

“My God, an education on credit is one thing. They can’t ever take that away from you. But a computer? You’ve managed to do pretty well without this.”

Before the lecture went on, I took my bowl of potato salad with sausage and my new computer upstairs. Once I closed the door to my room, I cleaned off my desk and unplugged my telephone. After I got the computer booted and running, I inserted one of the disks the store clerk had given me. A thousand hours and one month of free Internet, it promised. Again, I entered my credit card number.

Hopefully, it would never get to the point where I had to renew and my charge was rejected faster than the speed of sound. I would never share with my parents that I took out store credit for the computer. I’d directed the bills to Summit Avenue, so they’d never see those. It would all be worth it, I promised myself. Come September, I’d pay everything off.

It took thirty minutes, but I was finally logged into CSU’s system.

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