Free House Rules by Jodi Picoult Page B

Ice has started to form. You‘ll take care of me when I have pneumonia, won‘t you? I tease.
    She laughs and pushes the box at me. As I jog up the stairs, Thor starts barking his head off. I open the door just a crack, so that he doesn‘t come flying out. Relax, I say. I was only gone for fifteen minutes.
    He launches all twelve pounds of himself at me.
    Thor‘s a miniature poodle. He doesn‘t like to be called a poodle within hearing distance he‘ll growl, and can you blame him? What guy dog wants to be a poodle ? They should only come in female denominations, if you ask me.
    I do the best I can for him. I gave him the name of a mighty warrior. I let his hair grow out, but instead of making him look less effeminate, it only makes him look more like a mop head.
    I pick him up and tuck him into my arm like a football, and then I notice that there are feathers all over my office. Oh, crap, I say. What‘d you do, Thor?
    Setting him down, I survey the damage. Great. Thank you, mighty guard dog, for protecting me from my own damn pillow. I drag the vacuum out of the closet and start to suck up the debris. It‘s my own fault, I know, for not putting away my bedding before running my errand. My office is currently also doubling as my living quarters. Not permanently, of course, but do you know how expensive it is to pay rent on a law office and an apartment? Plus, being in town, I can walk to the high school every day and the janitor there has been very cool about letting me use the locker room as my own personal shower. I gave him some free advice about his divorce, and this is his thanks.
    Usually, I fold up my blanket and tuck it with my pillow in the closet. I hide my little thirteen-inch TV inside a cavernously empty filing cabinet. That way, if a client comes in to retain my services, they won‘t get the vibe that I‘m hideously unsuccessful.
    I‘m just new in town, that‘s all. Which is why I spend more time organizing the paper clips on my desk than actually doing any legal work.
    I graduated with honors from the University of Vermont seven years ago with a degree in English. Here‘s a little nugget of wisdom for you, just in case you‘re interested: You can‘t practice English in the real world. What skills did I have, honestly? I could outread anyone in a quick draw? I could write a totally smoking analytical essay about the homoerotic overtones of Shakespeare‘s sonnets?
    Yeah, that and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.
    So I decided that I needed to stop living in the theoretical and start experiencing the physical. I answered a classified ad I‘d found in the Burlington Free Press to be a farrier‘s apprentice. I traveled around the countryside and learned to spot what was normal gait for a horse and what wasn‘t. I studied how to trim a donkey‘s hoof and how to shape a horseshoe around an anvil, nail it into place, file it down, and watch the animal take off again.
    I liked being a farrier. I liked the feel of fifteen hundred pounds of horse pressed up against my shoulder as I bent the leg to examine the hoof. But after four years I got restless.
    I decided to go to law school, for the same reason everyone else goes to law school: because I had no idea what else to do.
    I‘ll be a good lawyer. Maybe even a great one. But here I am, at twenty-eight, and my secret fear is that I‘m going to be just another guy who spends his whole life making money by doing something he‘s never really loved
    to do.
    I have just put the vacuum back in the closet when there is a tentative knock at the door. A man stands there in Carhartt coveralls, feeding the seam of a black wool cap through his hands. He reeks of smoke.
    Can I help you? I ask.
    I‘m looking for the lawyer?
    That‘s me. On the couch, Thor begins to growl. I shoot him a dirty glance. If he starts scaring away my potential clients, he‘ll be homeless.
    Really? the man says, peering at me. You don‘t look old enough to be a lawyer.
    I‘m