Chambermaid

  And there I was. The early battles of the morning had obfuscated the grander war I’d be facing that day. Laura had quit and the judge didn’t know yet.

  Entering the clerk’s cave, I remembered happily that the new clerks would be there. Medieval Roy had already guided them to their respective cubicles, both of which were in the very back of chambers—farther away from the judge’s office and out of her immediate sight. I’d been geographically screwed. I put down my purse and glanced behind at Laura’s cubicle. Empty. Chair meticulously tucked under desk. Computer off. Multicolored case carefully closed and neatly stacked. You wouldn’t have even known she’d been there but for the one that got away—a plastic Twinkies wrapper. I had to hand it to Laura, the wrapper was a clever and final fuck you.

  Maybe Laura had more chutzpah than I’d thought. But I’d spent enough valuable moments thinking about Laura and couldn’t spare any more. Laura had made her bed and shoved me and the new clerks into it. We’d be paying for her “sins.” Speaking of which, I had to warn—never mind introduce myself to—Matthew and Evan.

  I hurried to the back. To my left was a visibly confused guy who was staring at his blank computer screen, unopened case on his desk. Nostalgia. He reminded me of myself five days earlier. Hearing my footsteps, he looked up immediately and stood, revealing the first pair of flat-front pants I’d seen on a guy in the courthouse. His bluish green eyes sparkled a tad when he extended his hand.

  “Hey, I’m Matthew. I take it you’re either Sheila or Laura?” He smiled, revealing a small dimple in his right cheek and, more important, perfectly sized teeth. My mother had always warned against men with small teeth (“not to be trusted, those men”). As for big teeth, they were unsavory for obvious aesthetic reasons.

  “I’m Sheila. And as for Laura, you should know that she quit. But the judge doesn’t know yet. And won’t know until she reads the letter Laura left for her. So, just beware. And, don’t tell Roy or Janet. Let’s just see what happens.” I turned to my right, toward a guy I assumed was Evan. I was momentarily paralyzed as I’d not expected an African American. I had yet to spot a black law clerk around the courthouse (in fact, out of the three black law students in my class at Columbia, none had received clerkships).

  Judge Friedman deserved some respect for hiring not one, but two, minority law clerks. Evan didn’t look up. Instead, he sat perfectly straight, arms bent, holding a blue brief close to his horn-rimmed glasses. He had been there for all of three minutes and was not only working but actually seemed engrossed in his case. He must have heard my conversation with Matthew, which had taken place about six feet away from him. Just in case he didn’t, I parked myself over his desk. He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch.

  “Hi. I’m Sheila. [Pause.] Nice to meet you. [Pause.] Laura quit. [Long pause.]” Evan barely looked up, evidently unconcerned. No hello. No nice to meet you. No nothing. Eyes remained focused on prized brief. His loss. That legal eagle was about to get shot down and he didn’t seem to care.

  Three clerks. Three strangers. Same fate.

  DING! Thirteenth floor, going down.

  “That’s her,” I whispered to nobody in particular. I rushed back to my cubicle, flung myself into my chair, and started staring. I heard someone breathing heavily behind me. Matthew had crept up behind me, just out of sight of the torture chamber.

  “What’s going on?” He whispered.

  “SHHHHHAAYYYLLLLLAAAA, get in here and bring Mike and Esther!!!!!!”

  I jumped, practically knocking Matthew over. “Just don’t say anything. She wants us in there.” I pointed toward the torture chamber. His concern transformed to obvious fear. I touched Matthew’s arm and continued: “It’ll be fine. Just don’t say anything. Wait here.” I ran back to retrieve Evan, who was still sitting and reading like a gnome. I couldn’t tell if he had progressed or was staring at the same page from before.

  “Evan, she wants to see us,” I explained. He looked up sheepishly but wasn’t budging. Desperate times called for desperate measures. I leaned over, grabbed his arm, yanked the blue brief from his grasp, and pulled him up.

  “Come with me,” I insisted, prying him from his chair. Collecting Matthew along the way, we scurried past Medieval Roy and Janet, who had bowed their heads and stopped breathing. No wonder Roy preferred twelfth-century Ireland. A more innocent time and place.

  “SHEEEEBBBAA!!!”

  We were standing shoulder to shoulder in the torture chamber before she could even finish slaughtering my name for the second time in less than a minute. The judge approached. The intrepid investigator. The glaring began. Up, down, left, right, and then again. This whodunit charade was particularly aggravating because our short Sherlock Holmes was herself holding the smoking gun, which, incidentally, contained a signed confession by the culprit, who was definitely not in the lineup at that moment.

  Incredibly, though, today wasn’t about Laura. Instead, it was about the three clerks whose only crime was showing up for work on time. With letter in hand, the judge dragged all twenty inches of herself and her lengthier leg toward me and parked it.

  “Sheila!” Did she have any other words in her repertoire?

  “What do you know about this?!” She shoved the letter, which I could have sworn was actually steaming, in my face.

  “Ummm. Ahhh—”

  “DO YOU THINK I’M A—” she was searching the letter for Laura’s exact words—a HOSTILE BITCH?!”

  Wow. Did Laura actually say that? The judge stood staring. Waiting. Oh no, she actually wanted an answer.

  Am I a hostile bitch? Yes? Maybe? Was I under oath? Could I lie to a federal judge? To spare my life. Definitely.

  “No,” I perjured myself softly. But it wasn’t a lie technically. “Crazy” seemed more accurate. It didn’t matter; my answer wasn’t good enough. The judge stood there, inches away from me, glaring. Tail in air. Bun twitching. It appeared that her bouffant twitched when angry. Left, right, left, right. A true marvel. Thankfully, as I became engrossed in her epileptic hair, she lost interest in me. She turned to Evan.

  “Which one of you two is Esther?” Did she not notice that there wasn’t another woman in the room? I gave Evan a little nudge. Nothing. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. I bet Evan had plenty to say in Con Law, Evidence, and Torts. But now, he didn’t have the nerve to tell his boss that he wasn’t a lady.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m Matthew,” Matthew said in a way you could tell he’d said a million times before.

  “What did you call me?” she slowly turned, eyes burning in Matthew’s direction.

  “Um . . . mm . . . mmmm?”

  “I am not a m-a-a-m,” she slowly enunciated, so utterly offended it was as if Matthew had just called her a c-u-n-t. “I am a federal judge. I do not see an m anywhere in judge. I am Judge. Judge. Judge. It is that simple.”

  Matthew stared, speechless. It was clearly the first time ma’am had gotten him into a pickle.

  “Are you too stupid to comprehend that?!”—she stepped back before continuing—“Well, it turns out that you people have lost a coclerk.” Brilliant. Within a minute, she’d made Laura’s defection a reflection on us and not her. “I should have expected this. Chicago is barely a top-five school. I did her a favor.” She was pacing back and forth in front of us, like a military commander in front of the rank and file. “Not to mention the fact that I normally like the gays. But not this one.”

  Did an allegedly liberal federal judge just say that out loud?

  “I know the three of you will never speak of this to anyone. You will have another coclerk by day’s end. I have thousands of people who want to work for me,” she sneered, seizing bun coming to a rest. Ego restored. “But then again, you all know that. You’re here, aren’t you?” With that, she smiled, turned, and returned to her desk. We just stood there, like mute morons. “Get out! And shut the door behind you, Esther.” Evan practically sprinted out, Matthew not far behind. I followed, gently shutting the door beh
ind me.

  The whole episode lasted about three minutes. In that time, Janet and Roy hadn’t moved an inch. Were they human? At that moment, I didn’t really care. I needed to take a load off and call my parents, my friends, Puja. Never before had I been falsely accused of a crime in a court of martial law. I took a long, deep breath, sat, and reached for the phone before remembering that I wasn’t allowed to. Heartbroken, I reluctantly replaced the receiver.

  Midday, the judge surreptitiously called Matthew and ordered him to move to Laura’s cubicle immediately. That way it was as if he had been there all along. But for that call, I would’ve thought the judge dead. Her door remained closed all day. Even so, nobody dared speak or move. Nobody went to lunch. Hell, nobody went to the bathroom.

  Then at 5:30, the judge emerged, walked into the clerk’s cave and announced to nobody in particular: “Kate is starting during the September sitting. She’s from the staff attorney’s office. She’s Jewish.” Then, just as quickly, she turned and walked out.

  DING! Thirteenth floor, going down.

  I took a deep breath but had to wait to exhale. Roy was before me.

  “Dude, what’s goin’ on?” He nervously smiled and ran his chapped hands through his tame mullet. Its serenity somehow made him look at once scared and homicidal.

  “Not much, Roy.” What else could I say?

  “Hey, Roy, how are you?” Matthew asked, having just walked over. The question curiously stumped Roy. He startled cackling like a hyena and swaying back and forth. The effect was a bit troubling.

  “Man”—back, forth, cackle—“she’s just such a bitch. Today, she told me my xeroxing was bad again,” he sniveled, waiting for the pity party to get rocking. He’d have to get jiggy elsewhere.

  The judge had just convicted us of crimes committed by another—and in Matthew’s case, on his first day—and Roy was complaining to us that she criticized him? I didn’t have anything nice to say so I opted to not say anything at all.

  “That sucks,” Matthew managed.

  That’s all it took to whisk Roy back in time.

  “Dude, I can’t wait until this weekend. It’s gonna rock. I’m training for the Battle of Hastings, which is incredible. Hey you ought to come watch! It’s in three weeks. And then on Sunday, we’re working at the Great Medieval Yard Sale.” That one silenced polite Matthew. Thankfully, Roy took a hint, giggled, and walked out. Matthew shot me a questioning look. I nodded, assuring him that, indeed, the whole episode had actually happened.

  Moments after Roy blessed us with his disappearing act, Janet appeared. I felt like a hungover priest trapped in the confessional box. I wanted them all to go away.

  “Did Laura really quit?” Janet was strangely excited.

  I nodded. I couldn’t believe that she had to ask. Maybe she had actually been dead all day. It didn’t matter; Janet had definitely come alive.

  “WOW!!! That’s a record. Five days!” she said, clapping ecstatically.

  “Others have quit?” I was confused. I’d never heard of a law clerk quitting, let alone one of Judge Friedman’s. Janet sneered, clearly enjoying her newfound power of information.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with you! Usually, every five years or so someone quits. I don’t know why you people continue coming here. I just don’t feel sorry for you.” I wanted to tell Janet that we had something in common, namely that I didn’t feel sorry for her, either. I couldn’t feel sorry for anyone at the moment. I was too busy drowning in her breaking news.

  The judge had driven half a dozen clerks to quit over the years and it had remained a well-kept, dirty little secret. The files in Columbia Law’s Clerkship Center were filled with pages of adoring testimony from her former clerks, who had “learned so much” from Judge Friedman, “couldn’t have asked for a better experience,” and “loved and respected” the judge.

  But maybe the judge deserved the respect she bestowed upon herself. I didn’t know many people who could snap their fingers and make people disappear, and Judge Friedman did just that. After that day, it was as though Laura “the gay” had never existed at all.

  Like a scene from a movie that went straight to video, a poodle licked my leg on the way home. It was ninety-five degrees outside. Hot, sweaty, sad, dog saliva drenching hairy leg. I looked up. Owner looked proud. And looked just like her dog. I dragged myself into my apartment, almost tripping on what I figured was a shoe. It was a mouse. At that point, I felt so beaten down, I didn’t even bother cursing. Instead, I just crawled into bed. It was 7 PM on Friday night and I was under the covers, fully dressed. I had clerked for exactly one week. All I wanted to do was stay in bed until Monday morning—or, better yet, until the end of the year—but I couldn’t.

  Brian had forwarded me an invitation to “Clerks in the Commonwealth: Let’s Get (Il)Legal!” It was the first organized clerks’ happy hour, and I hadn’t even made the first cut. Apparently the cool clerks who whipped up the plans didn’t consider me to be one of them. Brian had generously sent it along and I’d agreed to go in thirty seconds flat hoping the faster I RSVP’d yes, the faster I could forget I hadn’t really even been invited. So, instead of sleeping for about a hundred hours straight, I had to whoop it up with a pack of law clerks who didn’t even want me there.

  The only saving grace was that James had moved into an apartment in my building that very day. James was clerking for a district court judge in Camden. He got to take a week off after the bar exam and before the start of his clerkship, so he’d been in East Hampton with some of our law school friends the past few days before heading to Philly.

  It was 9:04 PM when James came knocking. Judging from the amount of drool spilling over my pillow, you’d have thought I’d been asleep for weeks. Or that my tongue had been surgically removed. With his tan and new designer jeans, James didn’t look like he’d spent the day unpacking. But the guy was still too skinny for his own good. James and I had been seated next to each other in Torts on day one at Columbia. Aside from one drunken indiscretion after our Property final, we’d maintained a strictly platonic relationship, since we both admitted that said indiscretion felt dangerously close to incest.

  “Hey there.” He smiled, shoving a bottle of pinot noir in my face. I grabbed it and led him into my sparse living room. Thanks to my paltry salary, the only furniture I had was the yellow couch and an old IKEA coffee table, which had too many scratches and a few screws loose. This, of course, further separated me from my friends who’d gone straight to law firms where they were getting paid in six digits, had five weeks of vacation, and free gym memberships. It was tough to recall why I’d secretly considered them the unlucky ones.

  “Welcome to Philadelphia!” I tried to sound exactly the opposite of how I looked and felt. He didn’t buy it.

  “What’s up, Sheila? No offense, but you look terrible.”

  “Um. Well, thank you. And if you must know, my coclerk quit and the judge just about ripped my head off today. Oh, and I didn’t tell you this earlier, but I didn’t even make the first-round cut for this bar thing tonight. Brian—you remember, from Fed Courts—had to forward me the invite. So, we’re your basic party crashers.”

  “You mean she quit—as in the clerkship? She actually quit the clerkship? I didn’t know people did that.” James’s eyes bulged.

  “Well apparently they do do that and one in particular already did do that.”

  “Oh my God. I mean—”

  “James, it’s done. I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Can you please open that bottle? I’ll make myself look unterrible and we can head to this fantastic place.”

  An hour later, the two of us were standing outside of Rouge, Rittenhouse Square’s premier hot spot. A thick red velvet rope separated James and me from the legions of law clerks we could see inside.

  “Nope, not on the list,” the bouncer announced gleefully. This wasn’t good. Sure, I’d been turned away from hot New York nightclubs in my day, but this was a restaurant-cum-bar in Pennsyl
vania. As we were about to split, Brian came stumbling out, fedora clinging on for dear life, half a glass of red wine in one hand, blond coed in the other. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years old.

  “Sheila. James—what’s up, man!” Brian high-fived James and lunged toward me for a hug but instead nicked my left breast. The humiliation wouldn’t stop. “This is Robin.” He smiled, revealing fierce merlot-stained teeth. “She’s a junior at Penn.” No way. Some sorority girl was going to bed Brian, with his red teeth and all. Maybe this law clerk thing was an amazing rap after all. Brian turned to the bouncer: “Dude, they’re totally cool.” The bouncer nodded at Brian, and in an instant the red rope had parted. We’d arrived. Never mind it was on account of Brian, who’d apparently gained ownership of the town in a few short days.

  Inside were dozens, hundreds, what felt like thousands of really smart-looking people smiling, laughing, and patting one another on the back. I recognized a few from around the courthouse but nobody seemed to have a clue who I was. How were all of these law clerks already friends?

  Brian returned sans coed, who’d presumably come to her senses. He beelined to me and James.

  “Man, who are you clerking for?” he asked James with what’s-the-meaning-of-life-style intensity. James glanced at me, clearly a bit unnerved.

  “Um, I’m clerking for Judge Harris in Camden. How are you liking—?”

  “I am clerking for Judge Fleck”—big smile, pause for accolades—“and Harris? Isn’t he a district court judge?”

  Oh no. James’s district court status was about to get us ditched. I should have been happy. Instead, I pathetically tried to keep Brian’s attention.

  “So, how do you know everyone here?” I pointed around the bar.

  “Well, we all went to the Judicial Clerk Institute out at Pepperdine. It was totally awesome,” he bragged. “And frankly, I’m surprised not every law clerk was required to go. Judge Fleck, for one, paid for each of his law clerks to attend. And frankly, I don’t know how you guys will even do in chambers without the institute. We learned a ton. Now if you’ll excuse me. I see someone I summered with at the ACLU.” And he was off.