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me.”
    “Victor Carl,” I said, reaching out my hand.
    “I know who you are, boy,” he said as he slapped my hand away. “You think I just insult any damn fool who steps in my way?”
    “Why, yes,” I said. “I do.”
    “The name is Horace T. Grant. My friends call me Pork Chop. You can call me sir.”
    “You were in the army, I suppose.”
    “Hell yes, but I wasn’t a commissioned officer, if that’s what you’re thinking. I speak out from my mouth and fart out my asshole. With those mixed-up bastards, it was the other way around.”
    “So what can I do for you, sir?”
    “You can buy me a cup of coffee,” he said.
    And so I did.

7
    Now, this is strange, but absolutely true. I looked up irascible in the dictionary and found a picture of Horace T. Grant in his porkpie hat.
    “You call this coffee? This isn’t coffee. I’ve had ground donkey bladder tasted better than this.”
    “Maybe you need a little more sugar.”
    “Sugar’s not going to help this, fool. You ever put sugar on a load of crap?”
    “No.”
    “Well, let me tell you, it doesn’t turn it into cake. That’s experience, boy, hard won. Now, you might get me one of those muffins if the thought strikes, though I bet it’s a rare occasion when a thought strikes your sad excuse for a brain. I bet there’s celebrating in the streets, banner headlines, dancing girls up and down Broad Street.”
    “Do you want the donkey-bladder muffin or the horse-shit muffin?”
    “Blueberry. And if they don’t got blueberry, cranberry. And if they don’t got cranberry, then the hell with them, they don’t deserve my business.”
    “Your business?”
    “Get a move on, boy. I don’t got all day.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And another cup of coffee while you’re at it.”
    Why was I subjecting myself to Horace T. Grant when I could find pleasanter ways to bide my time, like wrestling porcupines or pouring hot coffee down my pants? Because I had screwed up. The judge was right to lash my scrawny back with her fierce words. Even if I had never met him, even if he was too young to know who I was or what role I was supposed to play in his life, even if I had never wanted his case in the first place, Daniel Rose was my client and I owed him more than a cursory phone call the day before a hearing. Yes, I had relied on the mother, but if the mother was reliable, I wouldn’t be needed in the first place, would I? So I escorted Horace T. Grant to a quaint little storefront in the charming residential area behind the courthouse, I treated him to a coffee, and I now jumped up with alacrity when he asked, in his own sweet way, for a muffin. Partly it was a form of penance, suffering Horace’s slings and arrows was surely a penance, but partly it was something else, too. Because Horace had known my name.
    “What kind of muffin you say this was?” said Horace T. Grant.
    “Cranberry.”
    “I don’t see no berries. Where are the berries? All I see is little red spots. This might as well be a chickenpox muffin. I’m not eating no chickenpox muffin,” he said as he took a bite off the muffin top. “Next time you take me someplace right.”
    “Next time?” I said.
    “Oh, yes. You got to make it up to me, taking me here to this hole. I got standards.”
    “I bet you do. Why don’t we talk about what you wanted to talk to me about?”
    He looked up at me as he took a sip from his coffee mug. “I got nothing to say to you.”
    “Then why am I treating you to coffee?”
    “Don’t ask me. You the one can’t wait to flash your wallet, show everyone how fat it is. ‘Look at me, look at my wad, see how much I got.’ ”
    I took out my wallet, as thin as a slice of bologna. “That look fat to you?”
    “Now you’re blaming me for your struggles? It’s not my doing you can’t make enough money to buy yourself a decent suit. And look at that tie.”
    “What’s wrong with my tie?”
    “It’s an embarrassment. There’s a word you might not be familiar