The Players

He told me the story of the love of his life the first night I met him.
She was perfect he told me. He had counted all her little fingers and toes just to make sure. It was his daughter. He would dedicate his every thought from that moment on to make sure that she had whatever her little heart desired. It was love at first sight for him. No other woman in his world would ever come close to the love he felt for her, or the gut wrenching disappointment he would come to know at her coldness and indifferance to him many years later.


He wondered how he would ever be able to provide the kind of life he knew she deserved. He was only in his mid twenties when she was born. Not really established in the Legal Community and he just loved being in the DA's office. No money there to speak of. So he opened his own practice at the encouragement of his wife's family.
He was a young attorney with a law practice and a mortgage to maintain. He wasn't making a lot of money and his young wife was the product of a wealthy life style. He was constantly reminded by his inlaws that he needed to give their daughter the kind of home she deserved. He tried his best. At 27 he had a lot of responsibility. He had dreamed of becoming a journalist but his parents wanted him to go to law school. They were very convincing and he finally gave in. Actually if he hadn't agreed to go the Law School he would have never met his wife. After becoming friends with her brother, they found themselves in love and planning a wedding after six months. Life was rushing past him almost too fast to keep up with. His days were consumed with working and in the beginning studying for the bar exam. Two years or so had flown by and today he was looking into the eyes of his angel. Could this be enough to put the happiness back in his world? His mother was so sick, his job was exhausting him, he was finding solice in a bottle not to mention the ability to escape all the problems he seemed to have. He wanted to make everyone happy, he always did. It was part of his problem, the more guilt he felt, the more he would seek oblivion in the bottom of a glass.

Of course with the drinking came a lot of very unaceptable behavior. All in all he had plenty of reasons to feel guilty he told me. It was a vicious cycle.
The one thing besides his daughter that he loved was his work. He was a great prosecuter. He was working in Compton and making quite a name for himself. He had only lost one case out of ten. The problem was that there is no money in the DA's office, at least not for what was expected of him.

Somewhere along the way, they managed to talk him into starting his own Criminal Defense Practice.
This is what he was doing when I first met him. I should actually say that is what he was supposed to be doing. He was pretty much non functional at that time. He did still have an office, but there was no work really going on there by him. I think his partner was carring the load of the office.