Chambermaid

  “Fine, I’ll let it go. But please tell your old lady friend with the sick husband that if she does this again, I’ll make sure she spends a little time in prison.” He then stormed off.

  Matthew and I approached the judge, and I gently tapped her shoulder. “Judge? Seems like everything is under control. We’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, Judge Fleck.”

  “WAIT. WAIT! SHEILA! I’ll drive you home.” No way was she driving me anywhere!

  “You know what, Judge, I am in a huge hurry so . . .” I fumbled, attempting to come up with an excuse. No need—the judge already had lost interest in me. The woman had created the biggest spectacle in Philadelphia since the signing of the Constitution and what did she do? She turned to Judge Fleck to bad-mouth the police officer.

  I must have unconsciously broken into a jog because Matthew was out of breath when he caught up to me several blocks from the courthouse.

  “Sheila,” he panted, “wait up. I just missed my train and the next one’s not for over an hour. So, I thought maybe you’d want to grab a drink or something?”

  “Sorry about that—I just couldn’t be there another second,” I apologized. “I’d love to get a drink but I really need to get to Banana Republic before it closes to—well, you know,” I pointed to the shoulder pads.

  “Well, I for one think your suit is very, um, well, very ah—retro? But, I’d be happy to go with you, I mean, if, if that’s OK by you?” He looked down sheepishly, fidgeting with his jacket button. People never ceased to amaze me—this was a guy who’d told his boss (a federal judge!) to fuck off but felt shy to ask a colleague about shopping.

  “Sure, that’d be great,” I said and touched his shoulder, attempting to put him at ease. “My boyfriend, Sanjay, refuses to shop with me anywhere, ever.”

  “Well,” Matthew said, blushing, “Heidi, I think I mentioned, really likes the mall, so I’m used to it. And I didn’t know you had a boyfriend. Is he a lawyer?” It started to rain and the two of us picked up the pace.

  “He’s a radiology resident in Virginia, so definitely not a lawyer. In fact, he finds the law, lawyers, law students—the whole bit—incredibly boring.” I paused. “That’s not true. The expense of medical malpractice insurance captivates from time to time.” A block from the store, the sky opened up, drenching us.

  “I can’t say I blame him. This clerkship has kind of soured my opinion on the legal profession,” Matthew said, holding the door to Banana Republic open for me. “I mean, can you believe what we just witnessed? I’m serious—can you even believe that . . . that shit she pulled?” he said rather loudly, shaking water from one of his sleeves.

  Attempting to get out of harm’s way, an appalled thirty-something woman in Burberry capris did a 360 with her Bugaboo stroller, nearly popping a wheelie. Her sixth-month-old wailed—not from Matthew’s profanity—but from whiplash.

  I grabbed a navy plaid suit without checking for size and maneuvered my way past the “classic chinos” to get a look in the mirror. A dressing room sounded too tiring at that point.

  “Our judge is going to be on the news,” Matthew continued, following me, “not for an opinion she wrote—but for driving into a manhole. Who does that?”

  “She does that. Only she does that. If there weren’t cameras to document it, I don’t think anyone would even believe it,” I answered, squeezing into the jacket.

  Matthew gave me a strange look and leaned against a rack of slacks.

  “What?!” I asked defensively, pointing at myself.

  “Nothing, nothing, Sheila . . . it’s just that”—he nodded toward the mirror—“it’s just that this whole day is ridiculous, don’t you think?”

  I peered into the mirror and gasped—staring at me was a brown sausage in a plaid casing with runny hose and flattened hair. Matthew came and stood behind me, generously softening the blow. In his soaked pinstriped suit, Matthew resembled a sickly flounder with a receding hairline. What started out as giggling quickly turned into hysterical laughter, and within moments, dozens of eyes were fixed on us.

  It wasn’t exactly the fifteen minutes of fame I’d envisioned as a child.

  Chapter Nine

  Sanjay heaved into a trash can on the corner of 22nd and Sansom. We’d escaped the Mütter Museum just in the nick of time.

  “Are you all right, Sanj?” I stroked his clammy forehead. The Mütter Museum housed the country’s widest collection of “human medical anomalies.” I’d suggested a visit, a seemingly generous overture toward Sanjay’s profession. Between the mummified Siamese twins and eighteenth-century umbilical cords, Sanjay mentioned feeling queasy. I’d chalked it up to the Cheez Whiz he’d liberally applied to his tempeh “steak” (being a devout Hindu, he didn’t touch meat). Something about the jarred and jellied embryos sent him over the edge. Next thing I knew, he was bulldozing through a crowd of enthralled children.

  “It’s not your fault, Sheila. I should have told you about my issues. In med school, I basically died every time I had to touch a cadaver. It was awful. Why do you think I opted for radiology? I could never deal with blood, needles, tissue . . .” He shuddered, his voice trailing off.

  “Sanjay, it’s no big—”

  “Sheila, you can’t—CANNOT—tell anyone about this. Nobody likes a squeamish doctor. It is really really embarrassing, OK?” With his bulging eyes and freckles of crusty vomit on his chin, Sanjay bore a remarkable resemblance to one of the museum’s exhibits.

  “You can’t be serious, Sanj. That’s ridiculous. Why do you care? You’re a great radiologist and that’s what matters, right? I mean, I can’t stand sitting around discussing the Supreme Court. And I’m not embarrassed to say it out loud.”

  “So, you’d walk into a pack of law clerks and tell them talking about recent court decisions made you sick?” He asked pointedly.

  “OK. I’ll shut my trap.”

  “Sheila, that means you can’t tell your parents,” he ordered. “Your mom will tell every uncle and aunty this side of Madras.”

  Just then, a horde of children spilled out of the museum, swinging shiny spoils of gift shop victory. One marched past Sanjay waving a bloodied hook. He retched again.

  “The place sells vaginal speculums?” He wiped his mouth and shook his head, embarrassment transforming into disdain. In fact, Sanjay cheered up only when he hopped into his Mercedes that Sunday afternoon to head back to Reston.

  It had been an unusually sedate Monday, the morning free from medievalism, staring, and (wrong) name-calling. I had just about polished off my toilet lunch when the silence was broken.

  “Sheera! Sheera! We lost! We lost! Where is she? Where is She-She-la?”

  I rinsed baba ghanoush remnants from my hands and cautiously emerged from the bathroom. To my left was the judge, who’d cornered Evan. Cowering in her presence, Evan—who had to be at least six feet tall—looked dwarfish. Could it be that the judge moonlighted as a human-shrinking machine? Evan strained to lift his arm, pointed in my direction, and fled.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. Wasn’t it obvious? “Never mind, now. We lost.” She jumped slightly. “We lost it.”

  “Um, Judge, I am not entirely sure what you’re—”

  “That case. Nelton or whatever it’s called,” she clenched her fists. “We lost. Stevens went along with that-that-Adams! We have a dissent to write!” I’d been wondering what the panel had decided about the fate of Dell Nelson. It had been two weeks and not a peep from the judge.

  “Oh no! What happened? And how—”

  “Didn’t I just tell you what happened! I told you that we lost.” She motioned me to follow her into the torture chamber. “And that we’re dissenting. Adams is writing for the majority. It’s death penalty—Nelson’s lawyer will definitely appeal to rehear it ahn-bunk. And we’ll win this thing then.” I nodded compulsively, pretending to understand everything she said. “So, take your bench memo from the case and turn it into an opinion. First, get me Druttel. I’m rilly rilly coun
ting on you, Sheba.” Any more nodding and I’d need treatment for Parkinson’s disease. “Now get out and get to work.” She clapped.

  Druttel? Ahn-bunk? Matthew beckoned me to his cubicle as I entered the clerks’ cave. “What was she screaming about? Is everything OK?”

  “Not really OK,” I whispered, kneeling. “I have to write a dissent in that death penalty case. Adams and Stevens decided to screw the guy over. Do you know what an ahn-bunk is?”

  “Yeah, an en banc is when the entire court of appeals comes together to hear a case if enough judges on the court think that a panel’s majority opinion is suspect and the subject matter of the case is exceptionally important,” Matthew explained, leaning in.

  “Martha! Marka! Matthew!” The judge blitzkrieged the room. “I do not have time for my law clerks to dillydally all day. I seem to recall that you are supposed to be writing an opinion, Sheila. Didn’t I just tell you to write an opinion?”

  “Um, ah,” I said, standing, “yes, Judge, you did but—”

  “Oh damn it. Damn it. Anyway, that’s why I came here. To tell Matthew that I wanted him to work on the dissent with you. We need to move fast. The minute we file our opinions, Nelson will argue for an en banc. I’ve got to be ready to convince my colleagues to vote to rehear it, which shouldn’t be too hard—especially in light of the Drexel opinion.” Aha! Drexel was an opinion from the ninth circuit in California that I’d cited in my original bench memo. “So, I think it makes sense to have two law clerks on the case. Matthew, stop working on whatever it is you’re working on and get up to speed on Nelson. Sheila, give him the briefs, your bench memo, and I want a draft of the dissent ASAP. Now, get to work.”

  I inched toward my cubicle.

  “Any conversing between the two of you will strictly involve this case.” She wobbled, steadying herself on a bookshelf.

  I collected the entire Nelson file, which could have fit into a grocery cart, and lugged it to Matthew’s cubicle. “Happy reading,” I said, trying to make light of the situation. Matthew was frozen. I couldn’t blame him really. It’d taken me well over a month to get a grasp on the case.

  “Look, just read these two briefs and my bench memo, and let’s plan to talk after that, OK?” I gave his arm a little squeeze. “It may actually be fun to have someone to go over this stuff with.”

  He grabbed the pile and turned to page 1 of brief 1, eyes ballooning. “Yeah . . . fun.”

  A quick Westlaw search elicited Drexel v. California. Although the third circuit was not bound by decisions from other circuits (it was bound only by the Supreme Court), appellate opinions from other parts of the country were nonetheless persuasive. And if judges from different circuits were at odds on the same or similar issues, the Supreme Court typically would step in to bring legal uniformity to the country. That, of course, meant that one court of appeals’ decision would be overturned. As judges fancied themselves infallible, being overturned meant a public declaration of error and was an inconceivable fate worse than death.

  The facts of the Drexel case were astonishingly similar to those in the Nelson case. It dealt with a sleeping lawyer, one who failed to provide mitigation evidence during the trial and the sentencing. Yet, unlike Dell Nelson, Luther Drexel received a new hearing, because the ninth circuit found that his lawyer’s “glaring omissions undermined the very essence of the Sixth Amendment, thereby resulting in nothing short of a constitutional sin. In such cases, we are compelled to right the wrong committed by the court below.”

  “Well? Did you find it? Is that it?” the judge screamed from behind her cluttered desk.

  I clutched the opinion and approached the torture chamber. “Yes, I think I have—”

  “Why is it that you always think you’ve done this or that? You have something that appears to be an opinion. Can’t you just say, I have it?” she growled, swatting at my hands.

  It was a fair point—effective litigators were resolute. “I guess you’re right, Judge, I—”

  “There you go again. I am right,” she said, pounding her desk. “You don’t guess anything. I! AM! RIGHT!” Effective litigators also knew when not to speak, so I silently awaited her next move, awkwardly folding and unfolding my arms. “Now, get out and shut my door.” She secured her grip on the opinion. “I need some time to read this,” she said, smiling coyly. “The last thing we’d want is to create a circuit split on this issue of sleeping lawyers and the like. I have a feeling I can convince my colleagues that not giving Nelson a new sentencing hearing would do just that.”

  “So, if there’s a circuit split,” I began excitedly, “then—”

  “I am not one of your law professors and this is not office hours. I am rilly rilly busy and have lots of calls to make,” she said, clapping.

  Walking out of the torture chamber, I prayed that these phone calls would be more successful than the ones she made to Bob. Judge Helga Friedman held the fates of Dell Nelson and countless other death row inmates in her gnarled hands.

  Chapter Ten

  Our incoming class of first-year associates takes the Bar Exam tomorrow. There’s usually one or two who fail. Pathetic. Most people here pretend it’s OK, but it’s all for show. You can’t really expect to fail the bar exam and then be respected around the office. They’re mercilessly mocked, to their faces and behind their backs. They have two months with nothing else to do but study. If they can’t pass an exam on the first try, how are they going to do the cutting-edge work our clients demand? You don’t get a second chance to file a motion.

  Well, you can amend the motion. So you sort of do get a second chance.

  Usually, failing the bar is a sign of things to come. No work ethic, lazy intellect, unprepared for life at a big firm. More suited to another line of work. Maybe another service industry. Maybe a paperboy.

  —http://anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_anonymouslawyers_archive.html

  “I just know I didn’t pass and that’s heinous enough but when she finds out, my life will be over!”

  It was early November—the season of discontent for anyone who’d taken any state’s bar exam in July. It was the time when you’d discover whether you’d wasted three years and a hundred twenty thousand dollars with no chance of ever being able to pay any of it back. It determined whether you’d be at Thanksgiving dinner or in debtor’s prison.

  James listened as I launched into my bar angst for the zillionth time. Unfortunately for him, my plans to spend the weekend in Reston were dashed when the chief of radiology invited Sanjay’s group to his McMansion for an impromptu dinner, sans guests, Saturday night. According to Sanjay, the equivalent of getting invited to the White House.

  “You didn’t fail. There’s just no possible way you failed. If anyone failed, it’s me,” James said unconvincingly, taking a bite of our local diner’s famous blueberry pancakes.

  “What’s up, you guys?” Kevin burst through the grimy door in a sweat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, scanning our cluttered table, “but glad to see that nobody waited to order.” James and I shrugged.

  “Anyway, the reason I’m late is that I have some pretty huge news.” Kevin grinned nervously. He slid into the booth next to me, placing his arm around my shoulder. “Judge Adams got the nod.” Full stop. James looked ill. My brain felt like an out-of-control calculator—not computing. “Both Specter and Shepard called her yesterday and she’s in. She’s going to be a Supreme Court justice.” Kevin tried, but failed, to conceal his excitement.

  Since our lunch at Jones weeks ago, there had been radio silence on the Supreme Court nomination front. The Friedman-in-manhole episode had caused President Bush to steer clear of the third circuit. While I blamed the guy for a lot of things, namely the destruction of our country, if not the world, I couldn’t blame him for wanting to distance himself from anything judicial in Philadelphia.

  At first, it’d just been the Philadelphia Inquirer and local news stations. But then it went national. The video was too good. I’d worked
in television for two years, and in that time I’d never seen video like this. An old lady with spinning eyes in a crumpled black robe and bun, waving her fist in the air, spitting and screaming as she’s lifted out of a mammoth hole in the street. The pictures proved more compelling than rescues, riots, or shuttle launches. A local cameraman caught the flecks of spit flying out of her mouth—audio and all: “Do you even know who I am!!!! I am a FEDERAL JUDGE. A FEDERAL JUDGE!!!”

  The camera then panned to the recipient of her saliva bath. The young, handsome cop who’d just saved her life. It took exactly one afternoon for an associate producer to discover that Friedman had been appointed by Gerald Ford at a time when presidents were trying to get women and Jews on the federal bench. During her tenure, Friedman had nailed cops for racial profiling, overturned a law banning pornography on First Amendment grounds, and nine out of ten times thought company executives were sexually harassing pricks. If she weren’t a tyrant who racially profiled her law clerks, she’d be worth idolizing as far as I was concerned. Rupert Murdoch owned way too many media outlets to let this one go. Having an unapologetically liberal judge appear insane and disrespectful of a uniformed officer who’d just rescued her was a crowd pleaser to the edgy underground and right-wing machine.

  She’d made CNN’s “news of the weird” as well as its headlines. So, too, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Even Tim Russert dropped her name on Meet the Press the Sunday after. Puja told me that she’d heard from a friend at Berkeley that some kids were planning on making stickers that read: “Fuck the Police,” with a picture of Friedman, fist in the air lasered behind the words. According to the Onion, the cameraman who caught it all was up for a Pulitzer.

  For us, the world changed. Nobody had ever publicly mocked the judge. She didn’t know what to do. For the first few days, the judge exposed an emotion previously unseen: embarrassment. Janet told me that in all her years with the judge, not even when she’d accidentally locked herself in another judge’s bathroom after clogging his toilet had she seen her embarrassed. But losing respect was too much. The judge came and went silently. She didn’t want to be seen, closing her door while in chambers. She even refrained from yelling at anyone—including Roy—at first. This even after Roy came to work stinking of cigarettes. Even more bizarre, the judge asked me what my favorite Indian restaurant was, told Evan he’d written a good memo, acknowledged Kate’s existence with a hello, and joked with Matthew about Boise State’s season. We learned that the judge was an avid sports fan. We were ecstatic. There’d be a happy ending after all.