Doug's Big Adventure

Driving back from the courthouse, Doug offers me a drink.  He switches his cell phone from his hairy right ear to his even hairier left so he can maneuver an illegal left turn while simultaneously smoking a cigarette and nodding towards the glove compartment, where I must assume the beverage in question is stored. 

We have just left a fairly important hearing, during which attorneys for the opposing party accused Doug of using an extended but dramatic coughing fit as a stalling tactic.  And actually, if I didn’t know Doug so well, I might have thought the same thing.  After all, during one of his more spectacular coughing episodes of the afternoon, I managed to take a bathroom break and still get back in place well before courthouse maintenance workers had even managed to mop up the purple expectorant Doug had evacuated from his lungs. 

What the opposing party didn’t know, of course, is that stalling tactics are almost useless when it comes to Doug.  Give him a minute or give him an hour or a day, he’s not going to suddenly remember where he was with his train of thought.  Doug is one of these blackout drunks who, under status quo conditions, cannot tell you whether or not he won the hearing he’s just finished, let alone how he won it.

Chances are, though, he probably won it, because despite all of Doug’s competitive disadvantages, he’s a brilliant attorney.  In fact, I invited him down from Dallas recently to help me out on a particularly sticky case that I shouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. 

When I told one of the partners at my firm that I was calling him in for assistance, the partner went wide-eyed and exclaimed, “Good God, is Doug really still alive?” 

Driving home from the courthouse, I make sure my seatbelt is fastened and I have a long look over at the driver, mentally assessing just how drunk he might be at the moment.  Doug wouldn’t let me drive today, as usual.  The truth is, he probably can’t fit into most human-sized cars.  I figure he weighs in at about 325 lbs, give or take a few pounds for the hidden flask of whiskey and two – count ‘em, two – packs of cigarettes he carries around with him at all times. 

Mind you, I’m not making fun of him for being overweight.  Being overweight is not something about which I would sink so low as to use for comedic effect.  Because what’s notable about Doug is not his weight.  What’s notable about Doug (besides what a brilliant attorney he somehow is) is how gloriously unhealthy he has managed to be for so long.

It truly defies belief, I muse as we head back to the office.  His entire lifestyle is like a middle finger in the face of God.  It’s as though the Grim Reaper were unable to locate him through the smokescreen.  He’s constantly taunting Death in the most blatant ways imaginable.  Once you’re around Doug for a while, you learn to hit 9-1-1 on your cell phone and linger your finger over the “Call” button, just in case this is the day. Once you’re around Doug for a while, you don’t even risk a restroom break without (something approaching) a hug and a fond eulogy about how much he’s meant to you.  Just in case. 

I went out to eat with Doug once.  The only time he stopped shoveling piles of the most heart-stopping of foods into his mouth the entire evening was during the 15 minutes he escaped outside to smoke.

Every time Doug comes down from Dallas to help us out, the subject of “work breaks” arises in the office.  You see, most smokers take occasional smoke breaks from working.  Doug takes occasional work breaks from smoking. 

Fortunately, he does most of his best thinking while sucking down a pack and a half of filterless Camels out by the curb.  I once offered to develop a helmet of sorts that would enable him to shorten the time spent outside, where he might accidentally develop a tan from the sun, but Doug will have none of it.  The way I figure it, a kind of space suit like the astronaut’s wore on the moon is in order – except instead of pumping in oxygen, I could rig it up to pump smoke, all in the otherwise hygienic atmosphere of a modern-day law office.

“Ha-<<hack-wheeze-cough>>-ha!  Thank ya sweety, but I get my best thinking done outside <<wheeze-wheeze-wheeze>>.”

As we’re driving back to the office today, the inside of Doug’s car smells like a seedy corner tavern where all the patrons have been dead for three days.  Doug’s third chin has taken on a particular shade of purple that is way out of fashion this season.  As we’re pulling into the office, he makes yet another ill-advised left turn during which we avoid being hit by rush hour traffic only because all the other cars have stopped to let an oncoming emergency vehicle through.

This semi-mobile one-man zip code goes into another coughing fit as I gather my things to go inside.  He waves me away, gasping something about how he’ll be in in a few minutes. 

But a half hour later, he has yet to re-emerge.  After 45 minutes, Kayli goes out to check on him.

Don’t get ahead of me here.

Five minutes after Kayli goes to check on him, all of our jokes seem either not nearly so funny or else eerily prophetic. 

Forty-five minutes after Kayli goes out to check on him, we find out that stories of the 19-year old mistress he bragged of visiting while in Houston were true. 

An hour after Kayli goes out to check on him, it occurs to me that I was the last human being to see Doug while he was alive. 

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

R.I.P. Doug.  1957-2006.

Out of respect for the dead, I won’t update you on what day today is on my endless celibacy quest...