You've Been Served

You've Been Served

There are many stories that involve a cheating spouse being served in the most humiliating and vengeful manner possible, but I was wondering what the stories were like from the point of view of the person who serves the papers. That is the genesis of this story.

I'll admit that I'm not sure what I think of the main character here. On the one hand, he's just a young man doing a dirty, but necessary, job. On the other hand, can you blow up a person's life and then walk away without it changing you?

There's no explicit sex in this story, well not much, but hopefully there is a little humor to lighten your day.

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"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" I was breathing hard and running as fast as my feet would carry me. "He's a fast mother fucker for a fat man!" I reached my car barely ahead of the fat bastard and managed to lock the doors before he got to me. Good thing I left my car door open. As they say, this was not my first rodeo. I was feeling safe and trying to catch my breath as he beat his fist on the door when the noise stopped. That's not good. Like I said, not my first rodeo. I glanced over just in time to see him reaching for a brick by the far curb. As fast as I could, I started the engine and was driving away when that chunk of fired clay hit my side window. I kept looking in the rear view as I drove down the street thinking, "I have got to get into another line of work!"

So what did I do to get myself into this situation? Am I some kind of lothario and her husband came home early? No. Was I in bed with his daughter when her father caught us? No, not that either. Am I some kind of Peeping Tom? Oh, hell no! I'm a process server. I'm the one thing everyone hates more than a case of the clap. When your neighbor slips and falls on your walk because you didn't shovel the snow, I'm the one that serves you. When you sue the town because the garbage truck knocked down your mailbox, I'm the one that serves them. Worst of all, when you think you're too clever to get caught and you're not, I'm the one that delivers the divorce papers with those classic words, "You've been served."

I'm not planning to do this for the rest of my life. I want a quiet life and a nice office with a big desk and a comfortable chair where people come to me for a change. I'm a law student but serving legal papers is the only way I can pay for law school. Even then, I'll be graduating with a mountain of debt.

Despite what you might think, most of what I do is just the simple work of a bonded courier. I'm the one that delivers papers from one lawyer to another, or from the judge's office to the lawyer, or sometimes from a lawyer to his client, or... Come to think of it, I spend way too much time with lawyers.

Anyway, I don't want to brag, but I've become pretty good at it. I've even learned a few tricks. That last fellow might not agree, but most of the time I get in and get out without a lot of drama. The routine courier work is nothing to get excited about, although I have seen a few lawyers blow their stack and that's always fun. When it comes to divorce papers, they usually know I'm coming, and they've had time to deal with it. Hell, sometimes they even smile and thank me! One time this guy invited me in for a beer, but I have one hard and fast rule and that's, "Get in, get out, and get home in one piece!" I learned that one the hard way.

Every workday starts the same way. I report for work, the boss briefs me, and I head out. Jack's a great boss; he used to be a server himself, so he knows the job. When he hands me the documents, he tells me what is contained in each envelope and what kind of reception I can likely expect. I've got to tell you that when it comes to divorce papers, you just never know. I've served some scary dudes, and mostly they acted like I was delivering a pizza. Then I had one petite little thing jump me and try to gouge my eyes out, and there was one very distinguished man in a suit who just sat there, broke down, and cried. His wife had me serve him in the restaurant where he ate lunch every day. That one was hard. I remember when I served two car mechanics working in different shops on the same day. One actually smiled, shook my hand, and thanked me. I guess he was glad to be rid of her. The other came after me with a wrench big enough to split my skull. I went home that night and studied hard because I do not want to do this any longer than I need to.

Anyway, I'm just the messenger, people! Don't take your frustrations out on me. I try to be nice. I try to be professional. Let's just get it done and we can both move on with our lives.

Once I'd escaped that brick-throwing fat man, I drove until I felt I'd put enough distance between us that he wouldn't come up behind me, and then I pulled over to check my next delivery. It's just a counter suit for delivery to a law office. Good! Law offices are always nice and boring. I had time for a coffee and drove through a Starbucks for a latte. You might be thinking that I didn't need the caffeine right now, but I knew the adrenaline crash would come, and I still had a long day ahead of me after that. This was the one day each week when I had no classes. Every other student would be working hard so they can party over the weekend, but for me this was just another workday and come the weekend I'd be making up for not studying today. That law degree couldn't come soon enough.

I drove to the law office, parked, and informed the front desk why I was there. Then I turned and, "Claire? What are you doing here?"

My coworker smiled. "Work, Jimmy, same as always."

Claire MacArthur is another law student putting herself through school by serving paper. She's one of those lovely little blondes that can serve the papers before they know what hit them. She gets in and gets out and gets a date if she wants one. When she really wants to fly under the radar, she will snap some gum like a bubble-headed bimbo, and she is as far from that as I am from driving a Ferrari, roll her eyes, and drop the papers before she struts away leaving her victim wondering what just happened.

You need to find a little humor in this job whenever you can. I leaned over and whispered, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

Claire smiled and showed me the name on the envelope.

"Me, too! You want to go first?"

"What's yours?"

"Just some lawyer papers - a counter suit on a slip and fall." That's the sort of thing we say when it was expected to be routine lawyer-to-lawyer legal craft.

"No, you go first. He won't be much good when I get finished with him."

That wasn't what I was expecting, and suddenly I was looking forward to the next few minutes.

His personal secretary, who appeared to be well into her second trimester, knocked on his door, stuck her head in his office, and announced me. I was admitted with a gruff, "Yeah, okay, just give it to me" and with that I turned to leave. That's when Claire walked in unannounced. His secretary tried to stop her, but nobody stops Claire McArthur. I was three steps out of the office when I heard the outburst. I turned, intending to run to her rescue, when Claire sauntered out of the office with a big grin and a thumbs up. She then marched up to his personal secretary and announced, "Janet Turner, you've been served!" and with that she unceremoniously dropped the second envelope on the desk. The deed was done, she turned away, and the two of us marched out of the law office like we'd just gone ten rounds with the champ and won.

Once we were outside, I looked at my associate as we walked to our cars and asked, "Let me guess. He got divorce papers, and she got alienation of affection?"

"They don't have alienation of affection in this state." She was looking at me with an ear-to-ear smile. "She got served with a bill for a one-dollar unpaid rental fee."

Now I didn't understand at all. "One dollar?"

"Yeah. That's what his wife figures he's worth in bed!" She was laughing so hard that she barely got the words out. I figured it was more for the husband's benefit than his pregnant secretary.

I left there knowing that would be the high point of my day, and it was. I had another uninteresting delivery to a different law office, and then I had the horribly unpleasant job of serving divorce papers to a middle-aged insurance salesman. His wife had paid extra to ensure he was served in front of his employees so everyone would know. I felt lower than whale shit as I left his office and wondered if he's ever had a good day in his life. He was just that sort of man. Strange as it must sound, that was not the most uncomfortable service I've ever performed. There was one time about eight months ago where a guy had me serve his wife in their home right in front of their kids. She screamed and collapsed to the floor. I tried to help her, but the husband just told me to leave and to my shame I did. That one still haunts me. Anyway, after the insurance salesman, it was two more lawyers and a long-distance trucker who I had to catch between trips, and then I was done. If the salesman was tough, the trucker was brutal. He was just a hard-working stiff who wasn't home long enough or often enough to keep the marriage alive, or keep his wife at home, and he didn't know I was coming. After that, I went home to sit in my one-room efficiency apartment, drink a little bourbon, and contemplate my choices.

Some days are like that. There was the one time that I served a cheating wife as she and her boyfriend were leaving their motel room. I've asked process servers with twenty years of experience, and none of them have ever had that opportunity. I think about that on days with nothing but boring law office deliveries. That might seem mean spirited on my part, but I hope to be married someday, and I think I understand how the wounded spouse must feel.

Then there was the case of the wife who tried to have me arrested to avoid being served. I wasn't privy to what went on in the therapist's office, but I did speak with the husband later and I'm told it went something like this...

"Every time we have the slightest disagreement, she says I said this when I said that, and it's no big deal, but every time she turns it into an argument where she's right and I'm wrong and it's all over nothing. That's the worst part of it. It's always over nothing. I tell you I can't take it anymore!"

The therapist barely had time to turn her head to the wife.

"That's not true! He's always claiming I heard him wrong, but I don't. He mumbles and then he's always wearing the white hat!"

"I beg your pardon?" The therapist was genuinely confused, but it was an expression my client had heard all too often.

"You know, he's always the hero. He's the good guy and I'm the bad guy. I'm always wrong."

The therapist looked over at the husband.

"You know she wears hearing aids, right? When I speak up, she accuses me of shouting at her. Honestly, there are times I think she doesn't understand simple statements."

"I am not stupid!"

He looked exhausted and told me, "I was trying to stay calm, but she was working on my last nerve, and I had about decided it was time, you know?" I think I was starting to. "Anyway, I said to the therapist, 'Everything she tells me is pronouns. There's never a proper noun. It's always that and these. She tells me to move that over there the other way and then put this... I try to figure out what she's saying, or what she's failing to say, and then I get it wrong, and she goes off like she caught me kissing her sister.' Hell, I don't even like her sister. I tell you I'm exhausted."

I'm listening to him describe his last session and one question keeps bouncing around in my head. "So why did you wait?"

He looked at me and said, "Thirty years is a tough thing to kill. It comes to define you, and you think maybe you can deal with it, you know?" No, I was just twenty-three and I sure as hell didn't know.

He seemed to still be looking at me, but he had that thousand-mile stare, and I knew he was looking through me at the image in his own mind.

"Anyone ever tell you how to boil a frog?"

I thought, "Boil a frog? Why the hell would I ever..."

"You put the frog in a pot of cool water. It settles down, gets comfortable, and then you very slowly turn up the heat. It's incremental. At every step you wait for the frog to get comfortable and then you turn it up a little more. Eventually, the water is boiling, and the frog is dead."

I was still asking myself, "Why the hell would I want to..."

"It was like that, only I was the frog. Bit by bit over the years, her sense of entitlement and her need to always be right combined and grew. There was no disagreement too small that it couldn't be turned into a fight, and she had to win all the fights." He looked at me with sadness in his eyes. "She wasn't that way when I married her. She just slowly changed. The truth is I blame myself. I wanted her to be happy, and I was always taught to never sweat the small stuff, so I let her have her way. You know, 'Happy wife, happy life!' and all that? Somewhere along the way I created a monster."

That was finally something I could agree with. "So how'd you end it?"

"She was going on about some transgression and I just decided I'd had enough. For once, I took some pleasure in interrupting her. I said, 'Betty, I've been to a lawyer, and I've had divorce papers drawn up. There is a process server waiting by your car. Either you commit here and now to an honest effort at this therapy business, or we're through. I can't take any more of it."

"How did she take it?"

He drew a breath. "Let's just say she wasn't repentant. When I walked out of there, she was yelling her head off and I no longer cared."

I've got to say that of all the women I've ever served, in the short time that I had to interact with her I found her to be one of the most unpleasant people I'd ever met, and I've been chased by some big-ass bikers, and mean little bikers, and... Come to think of it, I've been chased by a lot of bikers. Still, his admission hadn't made my job any easier. This one saw me coming.

Speaking of bikers, there was one time when the wife was in hiding and I needed to serve her biker husband. I'm not saying he wasn't a perfectly upstanding, law-abiding citizen. I'm just saying that he was known to the police. On that job, I had two uniforms standing next to me when I served him, and still I didn't linger.

Anyway, I was standing by her car not long after that last counseling session ended early when a police cruiser pulled up. They didn't turn their lights and siren on until they were maybe twenty feet from me, and it's not like I could have outrun them, but they did get my attention. I got the third degree from an overweight cop and his smaller, younger partner who was trying to look tough when I decided to end the conversation. "Fellas, you got me." I flipped my credentials and showed them to the officers. "You see this envelope? These are papers signed by Judge William T. Fergus and I am an officer of the court. I am duly obliged to serve these papers in keeping with Judge Fergus' orders. However, I know I can't win an argument with the two of you, so I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll walk over to my car over there while you call the judge, and if I don't hear differently from the two of you before I get there, I'll get in my car and I'll leave. I'll be forced to explain to His Honor why the papers were never served, and I'll be sure to give him your names." I actually forgot to look at their name tags, but with that, I started walking for my car.

It's a well-known fact that Judge Fergus is feared by divorce lawyers everywhere, and it is also well known that the divorce rate among police officers is higher than the national average. They were lucky my car wasn't closer. I was about two steps from the driver's door when the older one reached me huffing and puffing like he was about to have a heart attack or at the very least blow his lunch. He had an entirely different attitude by then.

"Okay, we called the judge, and his clerk confirmed your story. No hard feelings. We got a call that someone was trying to break into cars in the garage and they were seen hanging around a green Volvo. We're sorry we bothered you."

It's at times like this that a fellow can afford to be magnanimous. Besides, in my line of work, I may need these fellows on my side someday.

"No problem. It was probably the wife who called. I'll bet she's trying to dodge these papers, and you almost helped her do it." I set it with a chuckle hoping their wrath would be turned on her and it worked.

As we started back for her car, we saw the wife unlocking the driver's door.

"Hey, you! Madam! We need to speak with you."

Oh yeah, I had them on my side now. She tried to get into her car, but the little one stopped her. Now you might think that with two men in uniform standing with us, she might be on her best behavior. Nope, not this one! She started cussing me out, and when the officers told her to calm down, she turned her attention to them and started cussing out the cops! Just when I thought she was getting herself under control, she took a swing at me and caught me in the face with her claws. That's assaulting an officer of the court, and it prompted the police officers to put her in cuffs. After that, it was a simple matter of serving her in front of two witnesses in uniform. Jack thought it was all hysterical when I told him and made up a Purple Heart medal that he gave to me in front of the whole office. It was made of paper, but I still have it.

About two weeks later I was serving a thirty-something wife whose husband was dumping her for his pregnant secretary. If I had a dime for every middle-aged man and his pregnant secretary... Sometimes the lawyers give us the backstory and sometimes they don't. It seems to depend on a mixture of whether they think it will be a difficult service and how amused they are. In this case, the lawyer was the wife's brother, and he was not amused. Jack got an earful about the lawyer's sainted sister and her scumbag husband, and he passed it all on to me. Gossip is one of the few forms of entertainment in this job.

So I wasn't expecting any problems, but you never really know. Every time you serve papers to someone outside the legal profession you take a chance. On top of that, I'd been working flat-out for three weeks either at my studies or serving papers. I needed a break. The wife knew the time and place she would be served, and it was 3pm at home. I pulled up to the curb. It was a nice-looking house and for a moment I hoped she would get to keep the place. I walked up to the front door assessing the situation as I normally do and looking for signs of possible trouble ahead, but I had nothing to work with. The house was quiet, the lawn was cut, the garden was manicured, it was the perfect image of domestic bliss.

One of the tricks I've learned is that you don't always have time to take that photograph the lawyers want to prove service, so I started wearing a body camera much like what the police wear. I get the image, and I get the evidence if I'm ever attacked. I checked that it was on.

I knocked on the door and it opened almost immediately. There before me stood the most perfect vision of womanly beauty I'd seen in a very long time wearing the finest bit of red gossamer that I'd hoped one day to see. She smiled, took the envelope before I offered it to her, and said, "I was just enjoying a glass of wine. Won't you join me?" And then without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked into the house.

I think it was Robin Williams who said, "See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." My brain lost the competition for blood. Hell, my brain was never in the competition for blood! It got just enough blood to keep me from passing out as I walked three steps behind her beautiful behind while breaking every rule I had for my own survival. She sat on the sofa where two glasses were already waiting and motioned for me to sit next to her. My only memories after that were of two beautiful round breasts, a warm flat stomach, a bottom that would inspire Michaelangelo, and perfect lips. She was incredible, and she wouldn't let me leave until she'd drained me and made me promise that I'd send her the video. Three days later Jack tried to chew me out with a straight face and failed. It seems that her lawyer brother called to say that the husband had gone ballistic when he received a copy of the video. It's hard to understand some men. If he felt that way, then why was he divorcing her? The general opinion in the office was that I should be congratulated, although the brother had mixed feelings on the subject. I kept the video.