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“But Your Honor …”
Bitter Man holds up a hand that looks like a mound of Play-Doh. “Stifle, Mr. Starankovic, as Archie Bunker used to say.” He glances around the room to see if anyone appreciates his joke. The gallery is too terrified to laugh, but the courtroom deputy smiles broadly. Your tax dollars at work.
“Yes, Your Honor.” Starankovic bows slightly.
“Now, Mr. Starankovic, even though Miz DiNunzio thinks she has you, you and I know that I have total discretion in deciding whether to grant her motion. I may grant it or I may deny it purely as a matter of my own inherent powers. Am I right?”
Starankovic nods.
“Of course I am. So your work is cut out for you. Your job is to give me your best argument. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t grant Miz DiNunzio’s motion.”
Starankovic blinks rapidly. “Your Honor, if I may, the class is composed—”
Bitter Man holds up a finger. “I said, one good reason.”
“I was about to, Your Honor. The class is composed of some five hundred employees, and counting—”
“No. No. You’re not listening, Mr. Starankovic. Repeat after me. ‘The one good reason …’”
Starankovic licks his dry lips. “The one good reason …”
“‘You shouldn’t grant the motion …’”
“You shouldn’t grant the motion …”
“‘Is …’” Bitter Man finishes with a flourish, waving his hand in the air like a conductor.
“Is …”
“No, you idiot! I’m not going to finish the sentence for you. You finish the sentence.”
“I knew that, Your Honor. I’m sorry.” The man is sweating bullets. “It’s hard to explain. I—”
“One good reason!” the judge bellows.
Starankovic jumps.
The courtroom deputy looks down. The gallery holds its breath. I wonder why judges like Bitter Man get appointments for life. The answer is: because of presidents like Nixon. Someday the electorate will make this connection, I know it.
“I made some mistakes, Your Honor, I admit it,” Starankovic blurts out. “I was having a rough time, my mother had just passed, and I missed a lot of deadlines. Not just on this case—on others too. But it won’t happen again, Your Honor, you have my word on that.”
Bitter Man’s face is a mask of exaggerated disbelief. He grabs the sides of the dais and leans way over. “This is your best argument? This is the one good reason?”
Starankovic swallows hard.
I feel awful. I almost wish I’d never brought the motion in the first place.
“This is the best you can come up with? The one good reason I shouldn’t grant the motion is that you were making a lot of mistakes at the time—and this was just one of them?”
“Your Honor, it’s not like—”
“Mr. Starankovic, you said your only concern was for your clients. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Do you care enough to give them the best lawyer possible?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Would the best lawyer possible fail to file his motion for class certification on time?”
“No … Your Honor.”
“But you failed to do so, didn’t you?”
Starankovic blinks madly.
“Didn’t you?”
Starankovic opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Didn’t you fail to do so, Mr. Starankovic? Yes or no will do.”
“Yes,” he says quietly.
“Then you are not the best lawyer possible, are you?”
There is silence as Starankovic looks down. He can’t bring himself to say it. He shakes his head once, then again.
Socrates would have stopped there, but Bitter Man is just warming up. He drags Starankovic through every deadline he blew and every phone call he failed to return. I can barely witness the spectacle; the back rows are shocked into silence. Poor Starankovic torques this way and that, eyelids aflutter, but Bitterman’s canines are sunk deep in his neck, pinning him to the floor. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There’s only pain and suffering.
When it’s over, Bitter Man issues his decision from the bench. With a puffy smile, he says, “Motion granted.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I say, dry-mouthed.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” says Starankovic, hemorrhaging freely. He shoots me a look that could kill.
“Next!” says Bitter Man.
I stuff my papers in my briefcase and turn to go, as another corporate shill takes my place at counsel table. The pews are jam-packed with us, padded shoulder to padded shoulder, because the argument schedule is so late. I hurry by the freshly shaved suits in rep ties and collar pins. I feel like I’m fleeing the scene of a murder. I avoid the eyes of the men in the gallery, some amused, others curious. I don’t want to think about who sat among them at this time last year.
I promised myself.
I’m almost past the back row when someone grabs my elbow. It’s the only other woman in this horde of pinstriped testosterone, and her red-lacquered nails dig into my arm.
“This has gone far enough!” the woman says.
“What do you mean?” My chest still feels tight, blotchy. I have a promise to keep and I’m failing fast. I try to avoid looking at the pew where she sits, but I can’t help it. It’s where my husband sat with his first-grade class and watched me argue my first motion. The rich mahogany of the pew has been burnished to a high luster, like a casket.
“He hates us! He hates women lawyers!” she says. She punches the bridge of her glasses with a finger. “I think it’s high time we did something about it.”
I only half hear her. All I can think about is Mike. He sat right in this row and had to quiet the class as they fidgeted, whispered, and giggled through the entire argument. He sat at the end of the pew, his arm rested right here. I touch the knobby arm rest with my fingertips. It feels just like his shoulder used to feel: strong, solid. As if it would never give way. I don’t want to move my hand.
“We have to file a complaint of judicial misconduct. It’s the only thing that will stop him. I know the procedure. You file the complaint with the Clerk of the Third Circuit, then it goes to the Chief Judge and …”
Her words grow faint. My fingertips on the shoulder of wood put me in touch with Mike, and in touch with that day. It was a morning like this one. My first argument in court. I remember my own nervous excitement, presenting the motion almost automatically, in a blur. Bitter Man ruled for me in the end, which caused the first-graders to burst into giddy applause. Mike’s face was lit up by a proud smile that didn’t fade even when Bitter Man went ballistic, pounding his gavel. …
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Reality.
I pull my hand from the cold, glossy wood of the pew. Mike isn’t here, Mike is gone. I feel my chest flush violently. “I have to go.”
“Wait? How will I find you? I need you to sign the complaint,” the woman says, grasping at my arm. “I have at least two other incidents. If we don’t do something about this, no one else will!”
“Let me go, I have to go.” I yank my arm from her grasp and bang through the courtroom doors.
My promise is broken; my head is flooded with a memory. Mike and I celebrated the night I won the motion. We made love, so sweetly, and then ate pizza, a reverse of our usual order. Afterward he told me he felt sorry for the employees whose discrimination case I had gotten dismissed.
“You’re a softie,” I said.
“But you love me for it,” he said.
Which was true. Two months later, Mike was dead.
And I began to notice a softer-hearted voice than usual creeping into my own consciousness. I don’t know for sure whose voice it is, but I think the voice is Mike, talking to me still. It says the things he would say, it’s picked up where he left off. Lately it’s been whispering to me that my on-the-job sins are piling up. That each hash mark for the corporate defense is a black mark for my soul.
Judgment day will come, it says. It’s just a matter of time.
2 (#ulink_c4dc2109-9054-52ac-bd1c-e4f18032f631)
It’s exactly 11:47 when I get back to my office at Stalling & Webb, one of Philadelphia’s holy trinity of corporate megafirms. I can’t help but know the time exactly, given the view from my office. It’s a regulation associate cubicle except for the fact that the window behind my desk is entirely consumed by the immense yellow clock face on top of Philadelphia’s City Hall, which is directly across the street. If you have to have a clock looming over your shoulder as you work, it’s one of the nicest: an old-timey clock, round as the moon and almost as large. Ornate hands, curlicued with Victorian ironwork, move precisely on time, silently pointing to Roman numerals of somber black. Nobody senior to me wanted this office because of the clock, but I didn’t mind it. I always know what time it is, which is good for a lawyer. As Socrates said, time is money.
I swivel around in my chair and look at the clock. 11:48. 11:49. I don’t like it so much anymore, though I’m not sure why. 11:50. It’s only a matter of time.
“Snap out of it, Mare,” says a distinctive voice from the doorway. My secretary, Brent Polk, comes in with a stack of yellow message slips and coffee on a tray. Brent’s a slim, good-looking man with hazel eyes and a thatch of jet-black hair. He’s also gay, but only Judy and I are privy to that bit of job-threatening information. Judy nicknamed him Bent in honor of his sexual preference; he loves it, but we can’t call him that around the other secretaries. They think he has a girlfriend in Massachusetts and can’t decide whether to get married. The perfect camouflage—a man who won’t commit. He blends right in.
“Coffee, what a great idea. Brent, you’re a man among men.”
“Don’t I wish.” He sets the coffee and the messages down on my desk. “Look, I even have the tray today. Aren’t you proud of me?” Brent’s ticked off because one of Stalling’s commandments is THOU SHALT NOT CARRY COFFEE WITHOUT A TRAY because it will stain the carpets, and he got reprimanded last week for not using one.
I pick up the YOU WANT IT WHEN? mug gratefully. All the coffee mugs talk back at Stalling, because the employees can’t.
“Now listen, Mare, you got another call from Mystery Man. This is ridiculous. We should change your phone numbers. It’s been going on for a year.”
“Don’t exaggerate. It hasn’t been a year.”
“Yes it has, off and on. It seems like it’s more often now, too—this guy must have nothing better to do. Are you getting more calls at home?”
“When did he call?” Lately I’ve noticed the calls have fallen into a pattern, occurring when I get back to the office or home from work. I get the feeling that someone knows when I’m coming and going, which is not a good feeling to have. If Brent knew the whole story, he’d call out the National Guard. But I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t coincidental.
“What difference does it make when he called? He called.”
“Let’s hold off. I’ve had the same phone number since I started here. All the clients know it. I hate to change for no good reason. People hate that.”
“Arrrrgh,” he growls in frustration, and reaches for my throat.
“Back, back. I’m telling you: You don’t screw up your clients without good cause. Then they go away, and you’re broke.”
“But, Mary, it’s sceevy. Did you ever think about what this guy’s doing when you answer the phone?” He wrinkles his nose in disgust. “I had an Uncle Morty who—”
“Brent, please.”
“Well it’s the truth.”
“All right. Let it sit for a while. If it keeps on happening, we’ll change the numbers, okay?”
“Yes, bwana,” he says with a sigh.
“Good.”
His dark eyes light up wickedly. “Wait’ll the big kahuna hears you won that motion. He and Delia are gonna celebrate tonight at the Four Seasons.” Brent’s connected like nobody’s business at Stalling. The latest dirt is that the senior partner on the Harbison’s case, Sam Berkowitz, is having an affair with his secretary. “I figure she’ll leave at five and he’ll leave ten minutes later. This time I’m gonna win. I can feel it.”
“What do you mean, you’re going to win?”
“You want in? It’s only a buck.” Brent pulls a wrinkled piece of steno paper out of his pants pocket and reads from it. “I bet he could wait ten minutes, but Janet says only five. Maggie bet he’ll tough it out for half an hour. Lucinda says they’ll leave together, but she’s crazy. He’s got his position to think of. Not that position, this position.” He laughs.
“You mean you have a pool going?”
“Yeah.” He slips the paper back into his pocket.
“You’re shameless. You don’t know they’re having an affair.”
“What, are you kidding? Everybody knows it.”
“But he’s married.”
Brent rolls his eyes. “So was I.”
“You were young. It’s different.”
“Please. I can’t believe you’ve lived this long, you’re so naive. Take a look at Delia next time you’re up there. She’s edible.”
“She’s okay-looking, but—”
“Okay-looking? She’s a knockout. I’m gay, dear, not blind, and neither is Berkowitz. He’s got the hots. Everybody’s talking about it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
I make a finger crucifix and ward him off with it. “Blasphemer! The man is chairman of the department!”
