The Law of Return
Mandl could be gullible and he knew it. Sometimes he was unable to see through the flurry of untruths hurled at him. His lapses in judgment – cases that collapsed like a house of cards, loans to ne’er do-wells that were never repaid – had led him on a slow decline from the top floor of a mid-town skyscraper to a decrepit office park in Queens. The Manhattan skyline, an aloof speck from Mandl’s third floor office, mocked him, reminding him of his fall.
It wasn’t a question of intelligence; Mandl had graduated second in his class from Columbia Law. Nor of passivity; he could be as hard-nosed as any lawyer. And it wasn’t senility, although he was approaching his seventy-eighth birthday. It was neurosis, a yearning to find something true amid the exaggerations, misrepresentations, and falsehoods that littered his days. In short, a hesitancy to accept the obvious: that the world turned under the power of lies.
Mandl sat at his conference room table, a Salvation Army purchase with bits of wood peeling off the sides, across from a young woman. He found it difficult to concentrate on her story, most of which he knew from the news coverage. The tale had become too familiar: The Rich Couple Murder Saga. The deceased, Ronald Renad, had been a star litigator with one of the biggest firms in the city. His wife, Emma, the auburn-haired woman sitting across from Mandl, had bludgeoned him to death in their Mcmansion. She claimed self-defense, that he had subjected her to years of physical and mental abuse, which culminated in a vicious beating and a threat to kill her. But the prosecution was floating other motives: a five-million-dollar insurance policy and allegations of her infidelity. She was out on bail pending trial. The hotshot defense lawyer who had been representing her had recently withdrawn from the case after being indicted for insider trading.
Although he had tried to break himself of the habit, Mandl tended to focus on a person’s tics and mannerisms when they spoke. So as the woman continued with her monologue, punctuated by sniffles and occasional tears, he was fixated on her long, delicate fingers, which alternated between caressing the table and running through an expanse of hair. Light bouncing into the room from slits in the blinds illuminated the enormous jewel on her finger. Mandl inhaled her scent, a mixture of soap and vanilla. He turned up his hearing aid and forced his attention back on her words, which were barely audible, lacking the insistent indignity that most prospective clients had when pleading their innocence.
“And when he beat me that last time, he kept saying he would kill me. It wasn’t the first time he’d made that threat. But this time I knew he would do it. There was this vacant look in his eyes. He didn’t even seem angry, just determined.” She turned her head and with a quick motion swiped at her wet face. “I couldn’t take it anymore. Something in me broke. I picked up the candlestick from the dining room table. I wasn’t even thinking, it was like I was in a t trance and once I started hitting him, I couldn’t stop.”
The police had estimated that there had been at least 20 blows. He remembered seeing the husband on the evening news, his jet-black hair parted severely on the side, giving a statement on the courthouse steps on behalf of a corporate miscreant. He thought of this woman bringing a candlestick down again and again on that head, blood spattering on the walls. The image made him queasy, a sensation exacerbated by the unexpected spring heat, against which the air conditioner battled noisily. Until now, Mandl had been mostly silent, occasionally attempting to calm her with nods and sounds of understanding. But now he sensed that she was waiting for him to speak.
“Ms. Renad, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But why have you come to me? I don’t specialize in criminal law and I’ve never tried a murder case.” He didn’t want to dissuade her yet he was curious: what in the world was she doing in his office?
“You were highly recommended,” she said in a shaky tone.
“By whom?” Mandl couldn’t think of anyone who would have recommended him. Most of his colleagues had retired or, may they rest in peace, passed away.
She looked confused. She put one hand in the air, as if to point to an invisible source of information, then lowered it aimlessly.
“I’m sorry, I can’t remember everyone I’ve talked to about this. I’ve been in a daze since it happened. Whole days are missing from my memory.” She looked at him intently. “Does it matter? I get gut feelings about people. You listen. You’re kind. And,” she gave an embarrassed smile, “There’s something about your accent. It’s, I don’t know, reassuring?”
His first thought was uncharitable: where were her treasured gut feelings when she married this monster of a husband? But beneath that he felt a jolt of connection with this person who could place trust in an aspect of him that repelled most Americans: the guttural remnants of Yiddish that remained in his voice. As he turned the situation over in his mind, an uneasy silence hung between them. What should he say? He thought of being honest and giving voice to his doubts: I’m an old man who doesn’t need the trouble; I abhor violence. But how often did lucrative cases like this stroll into his office? Ms. Renad’s defense was being bankrolled by the Alliance against Domestic Abuse, at least until the insurance policy issue could be resolved. The fees from this case could cure in one swoop the retirement worries that kept Mandl awake at night. If he turned this down, he’d never see another financial windfall, of that he could be sure.
He considered telling her he needed to do some research before committing to anything. But would she have patience for being kept in limbo? She needed a lawyer now, and there were plenty of others who would jump at the opportunity. He looked her over again, taking her measure. Her green eyes were big and sorrowful, her full lips curled with anxiety. This was not the face of someone who would kill for greed or convenience.
“Ok,” he said, and without another word left the room to have his secretary, Alice, draw up a retainer.
After she left, Mandl wondered aloud what he had gotten himself into.
“Why did she come to me?” he asked Alice, a sturdy woman almost as old as he.
“She came to you on a whim. Or on the wind. What does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Then think about it,” she said. “Her husband was a slick, fast-talking bastard who couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. She wants the opposite of that. That’s you, Mandl.”
He nodded his head in response and kept nodding long after he had meant to stop. Mandl returned home that night with a heavy feeling. There was a time when a challenge like this would have filled him with a pleasant anticipation. But now it felt like a weight around his neck. He had not lost his passion for the law but in recent years had settled into a well-worn routine: bankruptcy, trusts and estates, the occasional DUI defense. Taking this on would disrupt his entire life.
“Am I a fool?” he said to the silver-framed photograph of his wife that rested on the mantel of the Brooklyn brownstone where they had lived for four decades before her death three years ago. He felt sheepish speaking to the dead, but had recently given in to the impulse to share his thoughts aloud with the only confidante he’d ever had.
Madeline’s answers usually came to him quickly. They were not audible (thank God, Mandl thought, I’m not that far gone); they were like thought bubbles that bloomed in his consciousness then quickly popped. Otherwise, there was little difference to him between these conversations and the ones they had during their marriage.
His dialogue with Madeline was a relief from the loneliness that had descended after her death, a loneliness broken only by his interactions with clients and the weekly phone call from his son in Los Angeles, an unmarried screenwriter for a situation comedy about a lovable alien. He was generally able to put out of his mind what an observer would have seen: an old man talking to himself. But occasionally his embarrassment was stronger than his need to speak to her. At those times he felt acutely the shame of conducting these solitary seances. Mandl associated belief in the supernatural with the superstitions of Lansk, the village of his youth, where the existence of ghosts, demons, and gilguls – reincarnated souls – were unquestioned facts, even among the rabbis that taught them at the cheder. He remembered with shame his mother’s incantations against the evil eye, her claims to have spotted ghosts strolling through the village cemetery, her insistence that the spirits of her long-dead parents inhabited the Bronx apartment she shared with Mandl until his marriage to Madeline. He had found his mother’s claims not only preposterous but also escapist, an unseemly flight from reality.
Mandl had treasured the no-nonsense American-style wisdom his wife dispensed. He wished she were still here to advise him on his current dilemma. Mandl viewed all decisions as harboring the potential for both redemption and doom, but he could never decide which path led to redemption and which to doom, so he turned the possibilities round and round, like a scientist observing a novel specimen, before collapsing in a heap of indecision. Madeline had never had any patience for his wavering abstractions.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, David,” Madeline might have said. “Drop her as a client if you think you made a mistake. But don’t complain about something you have complete control over.”
“If only it were that simple. Maddy,” Mandl thought with a smile. But he went to bed restless that night and slept fitfully, dreaming of being pursued through the labyrinthine streets of a dark, ancient city.
Driving to work the next day, the heat rising from the asphalt in tremulous waves, Mandl imagined the complicated maneuverings and novel evidence the case would involve: DNA samples, crime scene experts, psychologists. His head throbbed just thinking about it. He had handled complex cases in his career but this was different. Who was he to represent a high-profile murder suspect? That the province of attorneys in $1,000 suits, lovers of grandiloquent gestures, coiners of snappy phrases. He was none of those.
That morning, before he even had time to get a cup of coffee, he had taken three phone calls from the media. He didn’t know what to say, so in a roundabout way he said nothing other than vaguely proclaiming his client’s innocence. But was she innocent? He was already beginning to have second thoughts about championing the cause of someone who had committed such a brutal act. He could empathize with a victim of abuse. But need it come to murder? Kill now, figure it out later, was that the idea?
Despite his misgivings, Mandl soon found himself swept up in the case. He was a quick study and absorbed information like a Hoover, sucking out relevant facts from reams of documents. He became an expert on Emma’s life and had memorized and categorized important events in her abusive relationship. The first time Ronald had struck her: their honeymoon at the Waikiki Sands Resort. The first time he had threatened to kill her: in their bedroom after she confessed to having forgotten to buy wine for a dinner party.
Mandl’s office, which he had always kept clean and ordered, soon turned into a den of disarray; stacks of paper lay piled at precarious angles on the floor and the conference room table. Occasionally, when he tried to clear space, a pile of documents would collapse in a heap like a building being demolished. Witnesses streamed into the office throughout the day and occasionally into the night: friends in whom Emma had confided, former friends of the husband who would testify to his violent tendencies. Mandl interrogated them intensely, gazing into their eyes, trying to discern their trustworthiness. Before long he was working 12-hour days, completely absorbed in the work. “It’s coming together Maddy,” he would whisper wearily to his wife’s photo right before he slipped into bed, often with his tie still on.
It was a strange world Mandl had entered. He never had much interest in the rich, wasn’t captivated by their champagne wishes and caviar dreams. But he had to admit some aspects of the Renads’ life fascinated him. They had had a lifestyle that, if not quite decadent, was lavish beyond his imagination. It wasn’t the vacations to far-flung islands, the obscenely expensive dinners or the constant spa visits that amazed him. It was the small things, the devices and implements Mandl had noticed when he visited the home: an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner; a massaging chair; a television that was roughly the size of small automobile; a mini-TV in the bathroom. So superfluous, yet who could deny it, so fun.
But he couldn’t imagine Emma living a life devoted to shallow pleasures. It didn’t fit with his experience of her. What struck him, aside from her unfailing politeness, was her salt-of-the-earth humility. There was nothing jaded about her. She never revealed animosity against anyone other than her dead husband, and even then, sometimes made excuses for him: he had had a rough childhood, he was under tremendous pressure at work. Mandl could no more imagine her reveling in frivolous extravagances than he could conceive of her committing the gory act that had led her to him. But she had. And so, at his lowest moments he wondered if the innocence wasn’t a performance, the elaborate ruse of a sociopath.
Here’s what he knew: Emma was from an Idaho family of modest means; valedictorian of her high school; summa cum laude at the University of Michigan. She had met her husband when he was in law school and she was pursuing a master’s in social work. She had become a well-respected supervisor at the state Department of Human Services and had continued to work long after her husband had made them wealthy. But with the money had come conflict. The police had responded to several domestic dispute calls at the home. The couple’s maid and many of her friends had confirmed the abuse. Even the husband’s family agreed that he had a short fuse. The prosecution’s intimations of Emma’s infidelity had fizzled; the alleged paramour, a former coworker, had recanted his story and had a history of mental illness.
It all came down to that night. Had Ronald made Emma reasonably fear for her life? She had bruises on her neck and face when she was taken into custody, although the prosecution’s witness would testify they could have been several days old. But Mandl had his own expert who would testify that the bruises were fresh. The prosecution’s theory was that Emma had initially intended to murder her husband, dispose of the body, and collect the insurance money. They further speculated that after the killing she had panicked, turned herself in, and concocted the self-defense claim. But forensic tests indicated that the time of death was most likely no more than 5 to 10 minutes before Emma’s 911 call. That was the action of a distraught woman with nothing to hide, Mandl would argue, not a scheming murderess.
The case would turn on whether the jury believed her. And Mandl liked his chances. He had no reservations about letting her testify. He had tried a number of times to find holes in her story, to trip her up. How many minutes between the assault and when you picked up the candlestick? What exactly did he say when he threatened to kill you? Her responses never varied.
But there was something that did trouble Mandl: he had begun to feel a strange closeness to her. Not the usual empathy for a client’s plight but a powerful pull into her nightmare. He fretted about whether she was getting enough sleep, eating well. Visions of the abuse and murder tumbled through his head like images from a damaged movie reel. He was getting too involved, he told himself. And the worst part was that it wasn’t the concern of a parent for the daughter that he and Madeleine never had. She engendered a powerful yearning in him. He thrilled at the way she absentmindedly ran her spidery fingers through her hair, completely without vanity. He was captivated by the barely detectable lisp and her shy smile when she slipped a joke past him.
He was ashamed of his feelings. He thought with revulsion of the nebbishy film director declaring his love for a young girl at a press conference. “The heart wants what it wants,” he had said. Shame on you, old man, Mandl had thought at the time. Yet it was true, wasn’t it? But Mandl would never act on his feelings, that’s what mattered
One night, as he sipped scotch in his favorite chair, unwinding from another long day, a name came to him and he uttered it aloud. “Cecylia,” he said. He looked up, startled, as if someone else had spoken.
He had relegated Cecylia to a part of his brain containing memories that were off-limits: the 1938-1945 file. Cecylia of the red hair and green eyes, the girl he had loved as a teenager in Poland. She was the daughter of the village doctor, Jerzy Bazinski, a kindly squirrel-cheeked man with a drooping, 19th-century mustache. When he was 17 and she 16, they had fallen in love with adolescent intensity. They would meet after school in an abandoned barn at the
outskirts of the village, fumbling and kissing unartfully until the sun set and they rushed home to their baffled parents. As Mandl thought of her, one particular memory came back to him. It was the spring of ’38 and he and Cecylia lay in a field in back of their barn hideaway, holding hands and gazing at the stars. It had been a mild, stunning evening, the wind playing gently in the trees. They had declared their love for each other again and again that night, as if it was an incantation that would clear the future of all impediments.
A few weeks later, he and his mother left for America, another one of his mother’s inexplicable decisions. But this time, her unpredictability and odd intuitiveness, traits that had gradually slid into intractable eccentricity as she grew older, had saved them from the death camps.
Although he knew he should be grateful to be alive, Mandl spent the war years heartbroken, brooding and poring over English grammar volumes in his bedroom in a cramped Brooklyn apartment. At first, Cecylia had responded quickly to his love letters. Then the responses came more slowly and finally stopped altogether. But Mandl continued scrawling letters to his love and grieving for the world he had left. He yearned for the green fields and waving grass of the village, the open-armed simplicity of nature. His memory had worked over his former life, editing out the boredom and claustrophobia, the resentment and grudges that lay buried under the exterior calm of the village, until only a few mental snapshots remained: the lilting greetings of his neighbors, the summer sun sinking beneath the hills, Cecylia’s touch. He knew that his unblemished memories were half-truths, at best. But he needed to believe in something, to grasp something solid. And there was nothing to hold on to in the mute concrete and brick of the Bronx or the Manhattan skyscrapers that cast sinister shadows at sunset.
So black was his mood that when by chance he met a boy from Lansk in a philosophy class at City College, he was distraught, but not shocked, to learn that Cecylia and her family had been killed for supporting the underground movement and hiding a Jewish family in the basement. It was the personal devastation that he had been waiting for, the excruciating blow that paradoxically eased his guilt about watching the destruction from the sidelines. At least that accounts for the unanswered letters, he remembered thinking tearfully.
Mandl’s depression lasted for years but lifted in time for him to fall in love with Madeleine, a secretary at his law firm who was smarter than most of the lawyers. She changed his life, ushering him into her world where troubles were mere inconveniences on the road to a rosier future. But had it been Cecylia, not Madeleine, who had been the love of his life? The thought made Mandl uncomfortable. How could puppy love compare to the lifetime of commitment he and Madeleine shared? He knew it was an unfair comparison; the Polish girl had the benefit of dying young, enshrouded in her family’s heroism, her faults never having time to materialize.
Mandl woke from his reverie and gazed at the photo of Madeleine on their wedding day, dark hair framing the soft lines of her face, her mouth set in an inscrutable half-smirk. “I’m sorry, Maddy,” he sighed, taking another sip of Scotch. But no thought bubble bloomed in response. The photo remained mute.
A year passed and to Mandl it felt like five. A year marked by cavalcades of paper, court delays, and press conferences where Mandl spoke haltingly yet passionately of Emma’s innocence. As the trial drew near, the weather turned and the air grew crisp and still. Leaves flamed crimson and orange, then fluttered to the ground. He found himself thinking of autumn in Lansk. While driving on the clean, wide streets of the modern city, Mandl would have visions of the narrow, muddy lanes of the village. Smells would come to him as if borne on a wind blowing across time: the sweet aroma of candle wax from the candle maker; the garlicky smell of beef and bean stew simmering on his mother’s stove; the acrid odor of chimney smoke on a frigid winter day.
Standing in line at a coffee shop, the sallow youth taking his order would bring to mind Czarnecki, the village idiot, forcing Mandl to stifle a smile. A bearded, black-hatted Hasid on the street would engender thoughts of his grade school teacher, Rabbi Edelstein. The beaming bank teller would kindle memories of Mina Kryvosika, the beautiful, pink-cheeked daughter of the town’s fruit vendor. He worried that the present was beginning to take on an air of unreality on the eve of the biggest trial of his life. He redoubled his efforts on the case, trying to force away the distracting thoughts.
On the night before the trial, he met with Emma to prepare. Winter had moved in and a thin blanket of stained flakes, the remains of a weekend storm, covered the ground. She entered his office dwarfed in a light blue parka, her freckled hands peeking out of the sleeves. Mandl’s heart leapt at her girlish beauty, but he immediately covered his boyish excitement in a scowl.
As they went over the evidence and her upcoming testimony, he could feel the fog of the past lifting as he returned firmly to the present. Speaking with her that night, he became absolutely convinced of her innocence. He was as ready for this trial as he had ever been for anything, he told himself. Thinking of the prosecutor, a swaggering youth filled with simplistic ideas of good and evil, Mandl allowed himself a moment of vanity: the kid had no idea what he was up against. But as he gained steam, becoming more enthralled with his burgeoning confidence, he looked over at her and what he saw gave him pause. Those emerald eyes had turned vacant; it was as if she was receding from the room.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She looked at him with disbelief. “I’m scared,” she said, her index finger softly tapping her lips. “They could give me the death penalty, right? And you ask if anything’s wrong?”
Mandl felt a flush of embarrassment rise to his cheeks. He had been so consumed with
self-congratulatory thoughts that he had lost sight of how she must feel. To her, this was not a contest of wits; it was life and death. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, stroke her hair, and whisper that everything would be all right. Instead he said: “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s just that I keep waiting for this all to go away. But it never will. Even if they find me not guilty, I’ll always be the woman who killed my husband.”
Mandl frowned. “Let others think what they want. You know the truth,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and her eyes searched his face. “But I don’t know the truth. I’ll never know for sure what would have happened if I hadn’t done it.”
“The day before trial is not the time to dwell on that, believe me.”
“I can’t help it. I’ve been reexamining everything. Life always seemed like a dream to me, unreal and fuzzy. Even when I tried putting my heart into something, there was a part of me that was holding back. It was like I was two people: one taking action and the other watching. It was the same when Ronald would hit me. Part of me was not there. But now everything is so clear and sharp. And bleak.” She exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling.”
“It’s ok,” Mandl said. “I’m an old man, I know from rambling,”
Her slight smile seemed to come from a distance. She shifted in her chair and placed a hand on her cheek. “Can I tell you the truth about something, David”? Her use of his given name disconcerted him. They had never used first names with each other. Mandl had once started to call her “Emma,” but the name stuck in his throat as if it was a foreign word he couldn’t pronounce. He nodded an unenthusiastic assent to her question.
“Remember how I said you had been recommended to me? Well, that’s not true. I met with the criminal defense lawyers that had come highly recommended and couldn’t stand any of them. They reminded me of Ronald. I know it’s strange, but one night in frustration, I took out the Yellow Pages and turned to the Criminal Defense section, and something drew me to your name. It was like I was being pulled. I was too embarrassed to tell you.”
Mandl sighed, grateful that this harmless bit of eccentricity was all she had to reveal. “I’ve heard much stranger, believe me.”
Her front teeth gripped her lower lip in worried concentration. “There’s something else I should tell you,” she said. There was a pause and when she spoke again, her voice shook. “Ronald didn’t say he was going to kill me that night. I made that up.” She choked on the last words.
As the revelation sunk in, Mandl felt unanchored, like he was floating. He glanced around the room as if he expected a camera crew to appear from the wings, shouting that he’d been the victim of a prank. “Wonderful timing for this. Perfect,” he mumbled.
“Let me explain,” she pleaded. “Everything else I told you is true. He was a monster. And that night when he hit me, he did have a completely different look than usual. Not enraged or maniacal but the opposite: cool and detached. I knew what that meant: I’d be dead if I didn’t do something. But I didn’t think anyone would believe me unless he had actually threatened to kill me. You can’t imagine what it’s like to live in fear like that.”
Mandl could feel his heart flopping in his chest. He suddenly had a vision of himself falling from a great height. He cursed himself: he’d been a fool to trust her.
“Well, now that you’ve seen the light, what do you propose we do, Ms. Renad? I’ve already made your husband’s threat the centerpiece of our case. If you recant that part of your story now, your credibility is shot.” He crossed his arms as if to protect himself.
She leaned forward suddenly, startling Mandl. “I don’t want to change my story. I’m just telling you the truth because I owe it to you. Our position doesn’t need to change.”
Mandl threw up his hands. “So, you plan to lie under oath?
“No one needs to know but us! How would anyone ever find out? I didn’t plan on telling you this but tonight, all of a sudden, I couldn’t continue to be untruthful with you. You’ve been too good to me.”
Mandl shook his bald head in frustration.
“Is telling the truth a bad thing? Would it have been better if…”
“You should have told the truth from the beginning,” Mandl interrupted. “I needed to know everything. I told you that when we first met. But once you lied, you should have kept quiet. Excuse my bluntness, but you’ve ruined everything.”
He looked away from her, towards the row of filing cabinets lining the wall, and spoke firmly. “I’ll need to ask the court for permission to withdraw as your lawyer. It’s a tricky business but I may be able to do it so the judge isn’t tipped off to the reason. I ‘ll ask that the trial be postponed so you can retain other counsel.”
She leaned back in her chair, as if she had just been struck. “I don’t want someone else. I want you,” she said.
Mandl shook his head again
“I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”
“Oh,” she said in a low, resigned voice. Her sobs came softly at first then with greater
force, her body shaking rhythmically. “I’m sorry. For everything,” she said, her voice muffled.
What should he have expected? he thought. This was his destiny: to be entangled with people like this and their messy, deluded lives, to be pulled into their web of lies. She didn’t want an advocate, she wanted a co-conspirator. But perhaps he deserved his fate. After all these years, what was he but a country bumpkin begging to be trampled in the big city?
Mandl peered through his office windows. A few stars shone listlessly over the city and a heavy moon hung in a frozen sky. Her crying had become pathetic, like the whimpers of a wounded animal. A wave of compassion gathered in his chest. He placed his hand on her forearm, which was dotted with downy red hairs, and a small shiver of pleasure ran through him. She raised her head slowly and her eyes met his. For a moment, he felt like he was being pulled into their depth, into a state halfway between wakefulness and sleep. He struggled to regain his bearings and when he did, he was aware of the sound of blood rushing through his ears and the hum of the light overhead.
As he looked her over, watching her tears subside into child-like hiccups, a calmness settled over him. Was there any truth, he thought, other than that she needed him? What was the worst they could do if he presented perjured testimony: disbar him, a lawyer who should have retired years ago? He couldn’t abandon her now.
A memory came to him. He was sitting with his schoolmates in the one-room schoolhouse in Lansk, yearning for class to end, while Rabbi Edelstein, a tall, gaunt man with a red beard and haunted eyes, recited a passage from the Talmud. Whoever destroys one life, the Rabbi had solemnly told the bored children, it is considered as if he destroyed the whole world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world.
“Listen to me,” he said. “We will find a way to do this.”
She tilted her head and looked at him quizzically.
“It will be ok,” he continued. “I promise, Emma.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came.
Wim Hylen‘s work has appeared in Four Chambers, Café Irreal, Eunoia Review, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among other places. Originally from Philadelphia, he lives in Phoenix, Arizona.