Feeling heat rising to my face, I practically shout, “He hadn’t signed their retainer agreement, damn it. Besides, it was me he wanted, not Mays amp; Burton. The odds were almost certain they wouldn’t have let me take it.”

Like a teenager wearing his first tie on a dinner date, Clan inspects it for stains. He says loyally, “You’re right. They wouldn’t get anywhere.”

I fight down a new wave of panic. The employment agreement I signed was three pages long and covered every loophole imaginable. The assholes. I slump in the chair, feeling exhausted. “I hope the hell not.”

Over a snack in the break room, Clan fills me in on the deal he has with the Layman Building. Feeling broke, I have a cup of water while he demolishes two packs of Twinkles and a Mars bar. The Secretary of Agriculture, he now calls himself, boasting that he could solve the need for subsidies to farmers all by himself.

I listen carefully and decide the price is right: I can rent a decent office and the use of a secretary for little more than three hundred a month (depending on how much typing I have). That doesn’t include a phone or furniture, but Clan assures me there is a good group of lawyers on the floor who are more than willing to help each other out.

“Hell, you know that by myself I’m a card-carrying incompetent,” he says, now daintily sipping a cup of coffee, “but there are five other attorneys within moaning distance of my office. Our collective IQ is probably 105, but that’s more than enough to get by with the kind of nickel-and-dime crap we mostly get. You know Southerland and D’Angelo, don’t you?”

I nod, sucking on a piece of ice, knowing that I might possibly find something even cheaper but probably more isolated.

Not only does misery love company, in the legal business misery demands it unless you’ve been around forever and remember at least half of what you’ve learned or can lay your hands on it. Besides, I know a couple of the guys and they are pretty good, much better than Clan admits.