YD6~04 A Tarzan Amongs Divoce Lawyers

While I’m searching for parking, my memories surged, students Ronnie Schloss, the fourth-year faculty of Quantity-Surveyors, approached me on the steps of the lecture hall, saying. “I’ve learned more from you in four months than four years of university.” With the fluted glass tower disappearing, to a squatted classic brownstone architecture. crept past the sculptured porch, turning at the traffic lights.  

Dared think further than alighting the Mercedes on to facing the coin operated parking meter, my feeling at bay, eyesight brush these rare occasions in the center of Johannesburg. crossed the side street, toward the fine hewn cornerstones raised from the sidewalks, stretching walls out of sight turning the street block. I stepped stone slabs to the leading broad paving, approaching figures trickle in mid-morning sunlight, converging toward the sculptured porch’s flaring stairs. 

A woman between two men, at arms draping a black robe, gripping a leather swelling briefcase, arouse her round facial features with swollen top eyelids, to our teens, when we delivered chicken manure, to her parents’ home, but I had a soft spot for her sister. She passed by, dwarfing through the elaborate portal. a cool shade washes my face. across wings’ spreading corridor  carved out mountain to gleaming cream marble the floor speckled against a distant daylight, I’m meddling with a flurry of men and women, susceptible in their long strides to direct me, as I cited the courtroom number. ignored until a man points at the midget opening in the rear wall’s filtering light through a forest of stone-cold marble colonnades. 

In the crystal breezeway, I’m finding my bearing into a daylight stifling courtyard, straggling black robes trickle a to-and-fro plate-glass swing. Faced the white columns, to the flute glass windows rise out of sight -- flash back surveying shutterhands peeling formwork, onto expose concrete beams and columns lattice rising from the excavation. By ongoing dumper trucks backing up from the side street short of the concrete mixer. The hopper lifting aggregates to the tumbling drum, pours the concrete into buckets lifted to air and vanish on the pivoting crane jib, the survey as the tower’s skeletal rouse in the courtyard — As the crow clears plate-glass door swings. In turn, I step across, into the glittery lobby, to stand facing the elevator doors to a crowd’s fever, cursing. ‘_All these shysters_.’

The elevator door middle split, telling me to wait for the next call, behind a crowd choking the opening, into an inviting glittery cabin doubting my place, and the shuttle cabin shut to return. Peripheral mirrors absorbed the advancing black robes, not recognizing any of the stern regards. The wing doors sealing behind, the luminescent floor button toggled, doors parted to a spacious lobby floor uninterrupted daylight wash to my feet. I glanced away toward the curtain wall’s stifled daylight, approaching the weathered facade. I learned earlier the Inland Revenue to peer through a grid of windows, until I picked on the profile of a woman clerk at her desk. 

Apart from meddling with the public, to the magistrate’s court, disbelief. ‘_All this in my honor_?’ I’m lured behind the glass partition expanding around the corner, a contemporary king castle, when against the far dead-end hallway wasted space. Frilly black figures storm out the golden silk wall’s double doors. The trail of black robes gather to heads in a close crown, brainstorming. I short paced, a stay, until two women and men’s head break away. From their midst, Barry Baskin’s son flutters stapled pages at hand in long strides to disappear by the swing of a door leaf. In his wake, the other’s slow-paced. I’m a pace closer to daylight’s reflective double doors, to approach with an eyesight brushing the wealthy sapele grains. ‘_Without a tree’s organic seam?_’ In wonder, I cranked the door handle, press at my pace through a door-depth ante-room, clearing a modernist bamboo forest around the enormous courtroom. Caught up, the figures in black gowns Indian file down the far aisle, regroup in the forefront, a black curtain shielding Jean. 

I slow-paced down, ‘His Aisle,’ peaceful along reddish-brown, wasteful vacant mahogany pews louvered to darkness, shading the floor to the distant tribunal’s parapet fascia athwart the room. Susceptible to the openness, halfway down the aisle, I upheld, my foot flips aside sidle the dark footwell. My comfort buffer with adverse pressure, I approached no further, Jean and the black gown entourage. Lowered to sit, isolated in a royal court, alongside to sight whispering voices, until a man steps out of the bamboozling wall to the tribunal estrade, staging a curtain rise, hailing. “May the court stand up.” Without a crowd, my ego asleep, I rise. A little deeper than the clerk of the court, from the light crack of the bamboo wall, black wings flutter across the stage, the man twirls inside the flaring gown, to sit, saying, “You may be seated.” His ice darting eyes on me. 

The wrath of my Warthog’s raised defense tusks, against the Judge’s tell, glaring. ‘_Here in this court, it’s me who is the master_!’

My mind butts the judge’s glare. ‘_You don’t impress me_!’  While in the margin aisle, dressed in a flimsy pale printed dress, Jean chaperoned, by sidestepping a curtain of black gowns to heads in a circle. The judge gazed at the blond woman, I knew to despise wearing a chignon. Through elegant strides, in crystal slippers, she rounds the witness box’s top trim, to stand out from her hair stylist. Her mousy highlighted blond, curled locks shine volume, in waves over her shoulders. Her long manicured fingers feathered the top trim. She’s sworn in, into reciting our life, to a banal transcript of home life, with an academic flawless flow of words, fizzing my mind, while the judge’ upright posture meld. The judge’s piercing my regard, switches a fixation on me.

I keep Jean's intrinsic seduction outside my moat, the judge’s gaze thawing, to Barry Baskin inculcated behavior, dead ahead he meets my eyes again, and again, weighing my ego to no shame. Until the curtain of black gowns’ heads roll, eyes widening through ‘Her Aisles.’ I slew an eyesight around, into the rear corner, fueling curiosity. figures from the ante-room’s shadows, Joe Reynecke’s viral pride. The man to whom I passed down my champagne Audi, in his stride I fail a chill of betrayal to grip me --.

Unbeknownst destiny plays out, a timeless evolution, my meeting with the Virgo across my desk in the office, with Joe Reynecke leaving me. I pick a contract folder from the corner of my desk. After Gordon, the black man drafted the architectural blueprint. As I’m surveying the data set, and input my workstation - Ring - It’s ten o’clock. ‘_Who could be calling me at this late hour?_’ I wondered, answering the phone. Joe said. “I’m at the Randburg police station—I wrecked the car along the concrete highway.” 

In the morning, through my office grown wild planter, Joe’s family Volkswagen Combi pulled into the courtyard under my window. Given a while, he rises beyond the glass partition, the stairwell, stepped by Jean’s workstation to press the glass door, by the glass pigeonhole vitrine shelved trophies, to sit in last night’s visitor’s chair, saying. “The police reported. ‘The man, a father of eight. What was he doing, walking from the Velskoen Drive-In to crossing the highway — With police officers, in the darkness, we searched the dismembered body’s leg?”

The judge’s regard turned to questioning the upcoming figure, as Joe Reinecke’s cowers and ceased behind his regard from crossing my eyes. plows his fixation past Jean seated at the edge of a nearby bench, clears the pack of black robes, paws the witness box top-end trim, swings his hips, to hold his pace standing firm. The bailiff utters the swearing oath, to which Joe Reinecke replies. “I do.” Joe lays both the hands’ heels and fingers roll the top trim. Handsome in a business suit, telling the judge a denouement in my office —.

I’m not strange to the day while Joe Reyneke sat low in a visitors’ chair, with a ledger on his lap. The discussion went beyond the habitual evening updating the construction site’s work-in-progress. Then, I stood up, stepped around my desk, and behind Joe Reynecke back, to cross my office to the strongroom door, above the breezeway to Jean’s milieu, the house. I turned the safe door’s dial, rifle at my fingertips, clockwise count, with back turns, in my mind parade my family’s last birthday digits, four-fold to zero and grip the handle - clang - pulling the heavy steel door. Stepped into the mansard room, reminded of the purpose, to a pre-stressed concrete planks’ ceiling. I turned toward the wall for the shelved box safe, to press the keypad - peep, peep, peep, peep - unlatching the door, to a cache, reminded of my thinking. ‘_If Hilton auditing Aditon’s books, doesn’t discover, no one would!_’ 

After Jean, aware I can’t expect sympathy for me, the judge’s ice glare while too honest to disbelieve, Joe’s words. “He handed me ten hundred Rand banknotes.” I’m on the edge of experiencing criminal repercussions, when from Harry Goss Attorneys firm, the petite woman detaches from the black robes curtain, without flinching a surprise eye , signaling me along to the rear of the courtroom. She trails in her stride the advocate representing me, and Jean’s legal representation

I stepped out into the hallway, turned and along the pool of daylight down the gray Inland Revenue facade, pacing alongside the curtain wall, bearing a judge’s telling regard. ‘_How can you be so indifferent to such an admirable woman?_’ I’m preparing myself for Harry Goss’ petite lawyer for her reprimanding words. My Warthog’s defense tusk in approach, objecting to Jean divorcing me. But after a few words, without mentioning bribing Joe Reynecke, she wiped my mind with her best intentions. The flawless golden silk spring door, to a weir’s wild black gowns’, spills onto us. Goss’ petite lawyer leaves my side onto facing Barry Baskin’s son, who sidestepped, as she blustered the cool man standing in a dark expensive business suit, to a lopsided crown of eyes. overseeing fluttering pages’ typed paragraphs rectified scribbled words, with added and crossed out paragraphs, and margin notes, while radical jazzing, cat’s eyes and claws out, softening my heart for the petite woman. 

By Barry Baskin’s son’s magic ball-point pen in his hand, to the fluttered still textual typed and scribbled paper sheets, indifference to my demise, Tarzan at heart, I can’t endure this circus. After I initialed every scripted correction and clauses, Goss’s little lady flips angry pages, at signing the bottom of the last page. ‘_You rendered my signature worthless!_’ By Jean’s fivefold alimony demand, on what we used to live on, one house instead of two. The document flew into space, an arm’s length ahead of Barry Baskin’s son, and he trailed the black gowns, through the silky double doors. I entered the ante-room’s shadows in ‘His Aisles,’ turned around at the encountered bench, sit on the edge, watched Jean signs the few sheets of paper,the shield of black robes break up, as she distances through ‘Her Aisle,’ toward the rear, disappearing from the rear of the courtroom. Two advocates pass by Joe Reynecke speaking out of the witness box. While men in black gowns approach the bench, I’m eager to disappear, but obliged to defend my cause, to my demise.

The men in black gowns turned away as the judge uncoils and spins toward the rear. My body in-flight, as my mind’s obsessive lag, through the rear doors, glimpses at Jean seated with legs crossed, arms on her lap, overlapped hands, against the daylight’s curtain wall shaft isolated on the wooden bench, her eyes, with an enigmatic soft smile, calling. In my mind, the music stopped playing, and stepped up to her, dropped her wedding band, and engagement onyx ring, in her cupped hands, and turned away. In long strides, around the corner, the lobby’s elevator appeared, while I’m pressing my way through the glass partition, her words trailing. “It’s not what I wanted!” Short of the distant window, over the classic pitched roofs, I pressed the button. The doors are still in my face. I’m eager to fly away, but my heart cries for Lionel and Gavin.