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for David.
    “Then you talk to him. He’s your son,” I said. “You can use the whole guilt thing on him.”
    “Your brother responds more to violence than guilt. Rough him up if you have to. But don’t leave that office without a check.”
    Mom zipped up her bag and headed out the door with Jake in tow. When she was halfway out, she turned back to me. “Oh, and give David a kiss from me.”
    I decided to drop by David’s office at 1:00 P.M ., thinking I could get a free lunch out of the visit. When I arrived, his secretary, Linda, who is not-so-secretly in love with him, told me that my sister had already arrived. Linda, like all of David’s secretaries, believes that one day he will return her affections. But like so many other alpha males, my brother thinks monogamy is something you do somewhere between the age of forty and retirement. In fact, if I were searching for David’s single flaw, this would be it. My brother is a true and unrepentant heartbreaker.
    I entered David’s office on the offensive. “What are you doing here?” I said, glaring suspiciously at Rae.
    “Visiting,” Rae replied without a hint of contrition.
    “Why aren’t you in school?”
    “Half day,” she said, rolling her eyes.
    “Show her the evidence,” said David.
    Rae handed me a crumpled piece of paper—an official memo from school. Evidently she expected David to ask for documentation. I’d never known Rae to ditch school, but we are related, so it was natural for me to be suspicious.
    “Okay, I’m out of here. See you next Friday, David. Later, Isabel.”
    After Rae left, I turned to David for an explanation. “Next Friday?”
    “She drops by every Friday,” David explained.
    “Why?”
    “To visit…mostly.”
    “What else?”
    “Well, she usually asks for spending money.”
    “David, she makes ten bucks an hour working for Mom and Dad. She doesn’t need your money. How long has she been doing this?”
    “Almost a year, I guess.”
    “You give her money every week?”
    “Sounds about right.”
    “How much?”
    “Ten dollars usually. Sometimes twenty, but I try to remember to keep the smaller bills on me these days.”
    “So you’ve given her about five hundred bucks this year?”
    “Do you ever say ‘dollar’ anymore?”
    “That’s pathetic.”
    “Isabel, why are you here?” David asked, desperate to change the subject.
    “For money.”
    “I see,” David replied, smirking, the irony of the situation not lost on him. “A collection call.”
    “I can break a finger or two, bruise a few ribs, but Mom says to leave your pretty face alone. It’s twenty grand, David. Pay up.”
    “You know our policy: We pay when the client pays. I can write you a personal check.”
    “Mom won’t take it.”
    “I don’t know what to tell you, Isabel.”
    It didn’t end there. I plopped myself down on David’s couch and refused to move until he let me speak with a superior. David sighed and walked out of the office, returning ten minutes later with Jim Hunter. Hunter had been a partner in Fincher, Grayson for five years and specialized in fraud defense. Hunter is a fit-looking forty-two-year-old divorcé with a boyish haircut and an unsettling way of looking you directly in the eye. Since I couldn’t go home without some cash, I had to match his stare.
    I thought my intimidation tactics were working when Hunter said he could get the bookkeeper to cut me a check for ten grand before I left.
    “Under one condition,” he said. “You have dinner with me next Friday.”
    Caught off guard, I said yes, knowing that if I didn’t I wouldn’t get paid that week, and if Mom found out I turned down both a date with a lawyer and ten grand, I’d never hear the end of it.
    “I’ll pick you up at eight,” Hunter said, exiting the office.
    David stifled a smile and I realized he had planned the whole thing.
    “So you’re my pimp now?”

    While I was trying to squeeze money out of David, my mom was dodging Jake’s