Goodnight, Attorney

Glenn Nestor in:
GOODNIGHT, ATTORNEY

A story of intrigue, romance, and litigation

Prologue:

It was an eerie night in the city, the kind of night that gives way to a month of who-knows-what kinda no good. The kind where the only way out is through a dozen doughnuts and a full can of Folders, detoxing with the dame who got you into this mess. Unfortunately she had skipped town, and I felt like I was the same place I’d been for the past thirty-two days. My Italian herringbone vest had a stain on it, and I had a very important deposition in the morning.

My name is Glenn P. Nestor attorney at law; Let’s Rewind a few weeks.

Day-to-Day: Spring has Sprung

Leaving the Lions

The first thing I did was walk down the row of cages, telling each of them their names. I did this in a stern voice so they would remember me well. I started with Vladik, who liked attention, and ended with Aleksey, because he was my favorite. Then I told them about all the times I thought they had failed so I would not have anything weighing on my chest, and after I told them all the times I was most proud—I even told Yadviga how I knew why she was shy in the ring. They looked at me in a very sullen way, and we sat in silence for the last hour, and when it was one o'clock I wept. The tears fell onto my moustache, and I could smell for the last time the old meat and animal fur. I would no longer wake in the night to the sounds of nobel beasts thinking about their captivity. I think they knew my hair was going grey too.
On my way from the door it was dark, their eyes looked like just a flicker of light. Mr. Tarasov told me in English, "Good luck for the journey west."

Natural Tendencies

THE SECRET MOUSE
In the 4th grade we had these two white lab rats, we fed them different things, and observed them over a period of several weeks. We loved the rats, and there was a drawing to choose two lucky students to inherit the little creatures. My most vivid memory of the rats involved my teacher who, when weighing the less fortunate one in a yogurt container, nipped off the tip of its tail when putting the lid on. I remember that it made a squeal, and I can still see the scene playing out in my mind. It made quite a lasting impression on me; we were outraged. Harming those rats was a criminal offence, but after the end of the year, it didn’t really matter anymore.
When a classmate did a project on vertebrates and brought in a mouse to prove some points Sarah McCarty, then 17, managed to hold onto the magic a little longer. She took the demonstrative mouse home where it lived in secrecy in her closet. Sarah wrote this poem about it:

I have a secret mouse.
I saved her from a terrible end.
I brought her to my house.
So she could be my friend.

The mouse lived for about a year, it lost all its hair, fell very ill and died.

Two years later Sarah McCarty’s affinity for the natural and slightly bizarre manifests itself less with secret pets (though she has a few, among them a rather charming snake named Claude) and more with her very talented illustrations. Sarah is a natural. Her work reflects her experiences with friends, pets, other artwork, land, and family. This particular piece comes from a collection entitled “Accordions: As Seen On TV!” an homage of sorts to her grandmother Diane Pautzke. The accordion, Mildred, is one which belongs to Diane. Just one part of her collection of beautiful instruments. The two of them share a special bond, and Sarah has related countless tales about their adventures, one of which details the occasion they pierced their noses together at her grandmother’s home with the aid of some sage and a healing crystal.

THROUGH THE GRAPE VINE
When I asked Sarah to make me something with a story behind it for this zine, she related this to me:
When she was younger a huge tree grew in her backyard in Trevor Wisconsin. There was for one summer a grape vine that grew from the top of it yielding the sweetest and best tasting grapes, she contends, she has had to this day. On one unfortunate night the tree was toppled by a severe storm. Distraught, she climbed the tree the next day and passed its entirety in the toppled tree, mourning, and eating all the grapes she could find.



Sarah McCarty lives in Madison Wisconsin and is studying Art History at the University.
Her grandmother visits frequently.
She still eats grapes.

Getting out of Rockford

Emma Baker was five years older than me. She lived down the street, in a white stucco house owned by her mother. Mrs. Baker worked all the time, but I would see her some Saturday mornings in the front lawn, waiting for her boyfriend smoking a cigarette or reading a magazine. My mother must have felt for Emma because she was prone to bringing her up in a moment of spontaneity. “She’s such a nice girl,” she would mention wistfully. I suppose she’d always wanted a daughter.
It was no surprise then that even after the awkward play dates of our earlier years Emma was ever present in my life. Up until she turned twenty she would be in and out of my house about once a week, a dramatic decline from her daily presence when I was in middle school. Her presence was always simple, bordering on homely. She must have been well read or brainy, because from my understanding she associated little with her peers. After she finished high school, Emma worked at the Burger King. When my friends and I would stop through out on some mischief, she’d wave a small wave at me from the drive through. I didn’t sit with her and play Legos anymore, but some Sundays she would float into the kitchen with an air of purpose and, seeing me there, would stop and smile her wan freckled smile, “Hey Billy-bear.”
The summer after my first year of high school she left Rockford for good. She had finally put together money to start college at Illinois State. The day before she left, Emma told me that I had been like a brother to her, though my fifteen-year-old self felt emotionally unaccomplished. It was a brief farewell, but I remember it clearly, down to the way her straight blond hair hung past her shoulders, making her pretty on our summer lawn. My mother cried those tears of feminine obligation as she hugged Emma, “Be good honey, you’re such a smart girl.”
I only ever saw Emma one time after that, though my mother told me she wrote on and off. It was two days after my thirtieth birthday in a Starbucks on Clark Street (I had moved to Chicago after graduate school). Her familiar smell caught me off guard, and I saw her slip out the door into a grey winter afternoon. As she walked past the window I still saw that warm silence, reassuring like when we watched movies in our pajamas, twenty-five years ago.

Yellow Cloud

(Click it to Read it)

The Short Bug

The tricky creature was sitting on my window sill all morning. It had been sitting there for what felt like days, but my fever accounted for, it was probably closer to a few hours. Its stout qualities were masked by its lengthy antennae and every—I guess four to seven minutes—it would make a strangled click sound. Apart from those two things, the only other insight I gained into my companion's life was when, without warning, it jumped to the dusty end table and promptly drown itself in my glass of cherry 7-up.
Much of my own worldview then was predicated on higher and lower order beings—and seeing as it was just an insect—I was inclined to discredit the whole thing. Even after I had recovered from that short bug, the flu or whatever it was, I did not talk about it much.

Day-to-Day

Day-to-Day:
a semi-autobiographical, semi-surreal, semi-serial comic.

Preface:

Our symptoms is an online storytelling zine focused around significant anecdotes, captivating fiction, lusty comics and all the limitless imaginative breadth of humanity.
enjoy.