The Tenth Justice (2 page)

“Don’t get in an uproar,” she drawled, without looking up. “I’ll be right with you.” After finding a place for the puzzle piece in her hand, she finally looked up at Ben. “Okay, now, who’re you here to see?”

“I’m clerking for Justice Hollis. I’m Ben Addison,” he said, extending his hand.

“I don’t care who you are, just tell me what floor you want to go to,” she said as she walked into the elevator.

“Second,” Ben said, dryly.

The second floor hallway was all marble, with red and gold carpet, but Ben barely noticed it. He was too busy looking for the room number that was written on his envelope. “Nice to see you, Justice Hollis,” he said to himself. “Hi, Justice Hollis, nice to see you. How’s everything, Justice Hollis? Nice robe, Justice Hollis—it fits great. Can I kiss your butt some more, Justice Hollis?” Finally, he saw room 2143. Outside the intricately carved mahogany doors, Ben wiped his hand on his pants hoping for a dry handshake. He grabbed the brass knob, opened the door, and stepped inside.

“I guess you’re Ben.” A woman in her late twenties peered over the newspaper she was reading. “Sorry you wasted the nice suit on me.” Dressed in khaki shorts and a forest-green T-shirt, the woman tossed aside the paper and approached Ben, extending her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Lisa, your co-clerk for the year. I hope we don’t hate each other, because we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together.”

“Is the justice—”

“Let me show you our office,” Lisa interrupted, pulling him into the room. “This is just the reception area. Nancy’s out today, but she usually sits here. She’s Hollis’s secretary.”

Lisa was petite with an athletic build, compact but elegant. A tiny nose balanced out thin lips and blue eyes. Lisa opened the door to a smaller room. “Here’s our office. Pretty crappy, huh?”

“Unbelievable,” Ben said, standing in the doorway. The office wasn’t large, and it was sparsely decorated, but the intricate dark wood paneling that covered the walls gave it an instant sense of history. On the right-hand side of the office were built-in bookcases, which housed the clerks’ personal library. Stocked with volumes of cases, treatises, and law journals, the room reminded Ben of the libraries that millionaires have in cheesy movies.

On the back wall hung the room’s only picture—a photograph of the current justices. Taken when a new justice was appointed to the Court, the official photograph was always posed the same way: five justices seated and four justices standing. The chief justice sat in the middle, while everyone else was arranged according to their seniority on the Court. The oldest justice sat on the far left; the newest justice stood on the far right. Although the photo was only six months old, the justices’ identical black robes and stoic stares made the current portrait almost indistinguishable from the dozens taken in years past.

Arranged on the navy and gold carpet were two antique wooden desks facing each other, two computers, a wall of file cabinets, a paper shredder, and a plush but well-worn scarlet sofa. Both desks were already submerged under a mountain of paper. “From what I can tell, the desks are from the early colonial period,” Lisa explained. “They might’ve been used by some old justices. Either that, or they’re replicas from someone’s garage. What the hell do I know about antiques?”

As he followed her into the cramped but sophisticated office, Ben noticed Lisa was barefoot.

“I guess the justice isn’t coming in today?” Ben pushed aside some papers and put his briefcase down on one of the desks.

“That’s right. I’m sorry, I was supposed to call you last night. Most of the justices take off for the summer. Hollis won’t be back until next month, so it’s as casual as you want.” Lisa leaned on Ben’s desk. “So, what do you think?”

Ben surveyed the room. “The sofa looks comfortable.”

“It’s average at best. But it’s more comfortable than these old chairs.” Darting to the side of one of the gray metal file cabinets, Lisa said, “This, however, is the best part of the office. Check it out.”

Pulling the cabinet away from the wall, Ben saw eighteen signatures written in black marker. “So these are Hollis’s old clerks?” he asked, reading through the names that covered half of the cabinet.

“No, they’re the original Mouseketeers,” Lisa said. “Of course they’re the old clerks.”

“When do we sign?”

“No time like the present,” Lisa said, pulling a black marker from her back pocket.

“Aren’t we eager?” Ben laughed.

“Hey, you’re lucky I waited for you.” With a flourish, Lisa wrote her name on the side of the cabinet. Ben signed just below and pushed the file cabinet back against the wall. “I guess you started in July?” he asked.

“Yeah. I wish I could’ve traveled more.”

“That’s where I’ve been,” Ben said. “I just got back from Europe two nights ago.”

“Bully for you,” Lisa said as she flopped down on the sofa. “So give me your vital stats—where you’re from, where you went to school, hobbies, aspirations, all the juicy stuff.”

“Do you want my measurements too, or just my shoe size?”

“I can see the measurements,” Lisa shot back. “Small feet, medium hands, average build, big ego.”

Ben laughed. “And everyone said my co-clerk would be a stiff,” he said, taking off his jacket. Ben had an oval face and a less-than-impressive jaw, but he was still considered handsome, with intense deep-green eyes and light-brown hair that fell over his forehead. Rolling up his sleeves, he said, “I’m from Newton, Massachusetts; I went to Columbia for undergrad and Yale for law school; last year I clerked for Judge Stanley on the D.C. Circuit; and I eventually want to be a prosecutor.”

“Boorrrrrrrring!” Lisa said, slouching back on the sofa. “Why don’t you just give me your résumé? Tell me about yourself. Loves, hates, favorite foods, sex scandals, what your family’s like. Anything.”

“Are you always this nosy?” Ben asked as he sat on the corner of his desk.

“Hey, we’re going to be living in this room for the next twelve months. We better start somewhere. Now, are you going to answer or not?”

“My mother is an executive for a computer company in Boston. She’s the aggressive, street-smart power-mom who grew up in Brooklyn. My dad writes a liberal op-ed column for
The Boston Globe
. They both went to the University of Michigan and met in a sociology class. Their first conversation was a fight: My father went crazy when he heard my mom say that salary level had a direct correlation with intelligence.”

“All right! Controversy!” Lisa said, sitting up straight.

“They get along really well, but we can’t discuss politics in the house.”

“So where do you fall politically?”

“I guess I’m somewhere between moderate and liberal,” Ben said, drawing an imaginary line with his hands. “I’m the product of a bipartisan marriage.”

“Any girlfriends?”

“No, I think my dad’s pretty much narrowed it down to my mom.”

“Funny.”

“I live with my three best friends from high school.”

“You ever been in love?”

“You ever been called intrusive?”

“Just answer the question,” Lisa said.

“Only once, though I’m not sure I can call it love. After law school, I took a two-month trip around the world—Europe and Asia, Bangkok and Bali, Spain and Switzerland, everything I could see.”

“I take it you like to travel.”

“Very much. Anyway, in Spain, I met this woman named Jacqueline Ambrosio.”

“How exotic. Was she a native?”

“Nope. She was a marketing consultant from Rhode Island. She was starting her travels in Spain, and I was at the end of my trip. We met in Salamanca, took a weekend trip to that beautiful little island, Majorca, and parted ways five days after we met.”

“Please, you’re breaking my heart,” Lisa moaned. “And let me guess, you lost her address, could never find her again, and to this day, your heart aches for her.”

“Actually, on my last day there, she told me she was married, and that she’d had a great time revisiting the single life. Apparently, her husband was flying in the next day.”

Lisa paused a moment, then asked, “Is that story bullshit?”

“Not a bit.”

“Wasn’t she wearing a wedding ring?”

“Not when we were together.”

“Well, then, it’s a good story. But it definitely wasn’t love.”

“I never said it was,” Ben said with a smile. “How about you? What’s your story? Just the juicy stuff.”

Lisa swung her feet up onto the red sofa. “I’m from Los Angeles, and I hate it there. I think it’s the toilet of the great Western restroom. I went to Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law only because I enjoy being near my family.”

“Boorrrrrrrring!” Ben sang.

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. My dad is originally from L.A.; my mom’s from Memphis. They met, and I swear this is true, at an Elvis convention in Las Vegas. They collect Elvis everything—plates, towels, napkin holders, we even have an Elvis Pez dispenser.”

“They have Elvis Pez heads?”

“Some lunatic collector in Alabama put sideburns on a Fred Flintstone Pez, filed down the nose, and painted on sunglasses. My parents went nuts and paid two hundred bucks for it. Don’t ask; they’re total freaks.”

“I don’t suppose your middle name is…”

“You got it. Lisa Marie Schulman.”

“That’s fantastic,” Ben said, impressed. “I’ve always wanted to scar my kids with a really funny name, like Thor or Ira.”

“I highly recommend it. Being taunted throughout childhood is great for your self-esteem.”

“Let me ask you this,” Ben said. “Do you twirl spaghetti?”

Lisa raised one eyebrow, confused.

“I think there are two kinds of people in this world,” Ben explained, “people who twirl spaghetti on their fork to make manageable bites, and those who slurp it up, getting it all over themselves. Which are you?”

“I slurp,” Lisa said with a smile. “And when I was little, I didn’t eat anything white, so my mom had to dye my milk and my eggs with food coloring.”

“What?” Ben asked, laughing.

“I’m serious. I used to hate the color white, so she used to make my milk purple and my eggs red. It was tons of fun.”

“You used to cut the hair off your Barbie dolls, didn’t you?”

“As soon as I pulled them out of the box,” Lisa said proudly. “The little bitches asked for it.”

“Oh, I can see it now,” Ben laughed. “We’re gonna get along great.”

After a ten-minute Metro ride to Dupont Circle, Ben climbed one of Washington’s many oversized escalators and headed home. A block from the subway, he spotted Tough Guy Joey, the neighborhood’s angriest street person. “Hey, Joey,” Ben said.

“Screw you,” Joey snapped. “Bite me.”

“Here’s some dinner,” Ben said, handing Joey the turkey sandwich he had brought to work. “Lucky me, they feed you on the first day.”

“Thanks, man,” Joey said, grabbing the sandwich. “Drop dead. Eat shit.”

“You got it,” Ben said. Passing the worn but cozy brownstones that lined almost every block of his neighborhood, Ben watched the legion of young professionals rush home to dinner down Dupont Circle’s tree-lined streets. Almost home, Ben inhaled deeply, indulging in the whiff of home cooking that always flowed from the red-brick house on the corner of his block. Ben’s own house was a narrow, uninspired brownstone with a faded beige awning and a forty-eight-starred American flag. Although it was August, the front door was still covered with Halloween decorations. Ben’s roommate Ober was quite proud of his decorating and had refused to take them down before they got another year’s use out of them. When Ben finally walked through the door, Ober and Nathan were cooking dinner.

“How was it?” Ober asked. “Did you sue anybody?”

“It was great,” Ben said. He dropped his briefcase by the closet and undid his tie. “The justice is away for the next two weeks, so my co-clerk and I just worked through some introductory stuff.”

“Your co-clerk—what’s he like?” Ober asked, adding pasta to his boiling water.

“She’s a woman.”

“What’s she look like? Is she hot?”

“She’s pretty cute,” Ben said. “She’s spunky, very straightforward. There’s no sense of bullshit about her. She’s got nice eyes, pretty short hair…”

“She’s a lesbian,” Ober declared. “No question about it.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Nathan asked as Ben shook his head.

“Short hair and straightforward?” Ober scoffed. “And you think she’s not a lesbo?”

“She did offer to fix my car today,” Ben added.

“See,” Ober said, pointing to Ben. “She just met him and she’s already strapping on the tool belt.”

Ignoring his roommate, Ben opened the refrigerator. “What’re you guys making?”

“Anita Bryant is boiling the pasta, and I’m making my stinking garlic sauce,” Nathan said. His square shoulders didn’t budge as he moved the large pot of spaghetti to the back burner of the stove. Military in his posture, Nathan was still wearing his tie even though he had been home for a half hour. “Throw some more pasta in—there’s only twenty boxes in the cabinet.” Carefully, he moved his sauce pan to the front burner. “So tell us how it was? What’d you do all day?”

“Until the Court officially opens, we spend most of our day writing memos for cert petitions,” Ben explained. Looking to make sure his friends were still interested in the explanation, he continued, “Every day, the Court is flooded with petitions seeking certiorari, or ‘cert.’ When four justices grant cert, it means the Court will hear the case. To save time, we read through the cert petitions, put them into a standard memo format, and recommend whether the justice should grant or deny cert.”

“So depending on how you write your memo, you can really affect whether the Court decides to hear a case,” Nathan reasoned.

“You can say that, but I think that might be overstating our power,” Ben said, dipping his finger into the sauce for a taste. “Every other chamber also gets to see the memo, so you’re kept in check by that. So let’s say an important case comes through that would really limit abortion rights. If I slant the memo and recommend that Justice Hollis deny cert, all the conservative justices would go screaming to Hollis, and I’d look like a fool.”