Chambermaid

  Then the darnedest thing happened. She suddenly became meaner, nastier, and more maniacal than pre-manhole. It was clearly a ploy to regain what she’d lost. It worked. The mocking stopped. The woman did what Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich, and Marv Albert couldn’t do. Even the great Bill Clinton couldn’t do it. She stopped the presses. It was as if the incident never happened.

  I must have been staring blankly for minutes, because I came to as Kevin gently shook me.

  “Sheila. Sheila. Are you OK?” OK wasn’t the first word that came to mind. My head felt like an overheated planet spinning off its axis. What would become of us after this news broke? Living with one leg or a half-bitten ear couldn’t be that bad, could it?

  “Um. Yeah. It’s just that I’m shocked.” I forced my neck up. “What happened?”

  “Well, you know about this National Independence Center thing?” Did I ever. “Well, Friedman is on the board and she’s pretty high up. And this center is a pretty big thing, I guess. Well, Condi Rice was apparently on the short list to speak at the opening. You can imagine the public image boost that’d give her. Anyway, your boss pretty much roadblocked her speaking unless the administration made some sort of public overture toward the third. Enter Adams. Nominating Adams is the perfect solution. Bush wanted her all along. She’s on the third. Friedman would have to be appeased. Except—”

  “Except this is her worst nightmare and they don’t know that”—I finished Kevin’s sentence for him—“but what could Friedman have wanted? What could the Bush administration offer to a court of appeals? They all already have life tenure. There’s no chance in hell they’d ever have nominated Friedman to the Supreme Court even before the manhole incident.”

  I suddenly realized that we were in a public place and quickly surveyed the scene. Family of four. Young married couple. Famous blueberry/banana/strawberry pancakes. Want more coffee? The sheer normalcy gave the illusion that someone had hit the pause button on everyone but us.

  “Kevin? Why would Friedman do that? Am I missing something here?”

  “Sheila, you’re not. It’s not at all obvious. According to our secretary, Friedman wanted Haskell to get the nod. She has absolutely no idea that the only person Bush was considering from the third was Adams. I think she just assumed that Haskell would be the natural pick and—”

  “Judge Haskell is her only comrade on the bench.” I finished his sentence again. Now it made sense. Judge Haskell was Friedman’s only true friend on the court. He was legitimately nice to her. Then again, he was nice to everyone. He’d been appointed by Clinton but was not a rabid liberal by any stretch of the imagination. A lauded moderate, with an eloquent flair. He was fifty-five, handsome, and probably didn’t even have half a skeleton in his closet. The kicker—he was African American. Good-looking, perfect age, black, moderate—a perfect choice for an administration mired in right-wing controversy. Then again, there already was one black man on the Supreme Court. The Bush administration, indeed the country, wasn’t ready for another.

  While Friedman was unquestionably bright, she’d not considered that Judge Adams could attain the one thing she herself so badly wanted in life—a slot on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Friedman’s hatred had made her impervious to the reality that she had, in effect, garnered the nomination for Judge Adams. Not since the hipster invasion had something been so ironic.

  Heart palpitations. Dizzy. Sweating.

  What if Adams got confirmed during my tenure?

  Rapid pulse. Dizzier.

  Death penalty.

  Drop of sweat on lap.

  I’m rilly rilly counting on you Sheba.

  Swish.

  You’re too slow, Sheila.

  Woosh.

  You failed the bar, Sheila.

  Electric chair.

  I came to in my cheddar omelette. Kevin and James were saying my name on repeat. Over and over and over—for a second, I thought I was going through security at the courthouse. The restaurant definitely was no longer on pause—everyone was staring in my direction.

  “OK, this is awkward,” I blurted, cheese stuck to my nose.

  Kevin helped me out of the booth, we tossed a twenty on the table, and exited into a sunny northeastern autumn afternoon. Somehow, the breeze felt suffocating and my company’s concern (“Are you OK, Sheila?” “Can I get something for you, Sheila?”) only exacerbated it. Needing air, I extricated myself from Kevin and James, wiped 7-Eleven clean of its gossip magazine collection, and crawled into bed.

  I called Sanjay, whose interest was barely piqued over my fainting spell. “Sheels, that really sucks. Are you all right? Um, ah, can I actually call you back?—medical emergency.” The phone went dead, signaling that it wasn’t my medical emergency to which he was referring.

  Exhausted, I buried myself in the world of celebrity diets and Scientology, the latter of which sounded strangely alluring.

  Chapter Eleven

  Betsy was standing in the elevator when I stepped in. We’d not seen each other since the sitting.

  “Hey, Sheila,” she said, pursing her lips smugly, “how are you?”

  “Fine, fine. I, um, I’m looking forward to reading your Nelson opinion,” I said awkwardly, steering clear of Adams’s nomination, since it still hadn’t been publicly announced and Kevin had sworn me to secrecy. I hadn’t even spilled the beans to Matthew.

  “Likewise—we all look very forward to reading what I’m sure will be a killer dissent—oops, no pun intended.” Ding! Thirteenth floor.

  “No pun taken. Bye, Betsy.” I stepped off the elevator, trying to remember why I’d taken such a liking to Betsy the first time we met.

  “Good morning, Janet. Roy.” I strolled into the secretaries’ den. Roy was watering the brittle, brown plants with what must have been his breath—something about the nicotine gum he’d taken to lately made me want to wither and die also.

  Janet looked up: “Yes?”

  “Um, I just said good morning, that’s all.”

  “What’s good about it?”

  “Nothing, actually. It’s just something I say to people when I see them in the morning.”

  “Just so you know.” Janet fiddled with the cross around her neck. “Bob had a heart attack over the weekend. She’ll be in late.”

  “What? She’s coming in?!” My question amused Janet, who suddenly looked like a clown about to kill a kid.

  “She always comes to work. Have you not learned anything? She even worked half a day after her brother’s funeral. You think a little heart attack would keep her away!”

  Roy followed me to my cubicle, tripping on a trash can along the way. “You really should check out the Markland Web site, it’s awesome. Man oh man. It’s so cool.” He paused to blow a Nicorette bubble—pop! “And I went to the most kickin’ feast on Saturday. Debauchery everywhere, man.”

  “Good morning, Roy. How are you?”

  He cackled nervously and ran his hands through his mullet, leaving little feathers in their wake.

  “Um. Um.” And then he was gone. Matthew motioned me to his cubicle.

  “Janet just told me that Bob had a heart attack so she’d be in late. Don’t you think it’s strange she’s coming in at all?”

  Matthew smiled at what should have been considered bad news: “She’d come in if she were dead.”

  “Speaking of strange, who do you think is stranger—Roy or the judge?” I whispered, pointing to the secretaries’ den.

  “That’s tough. But I’d have to go with Roy. It’s shocking that he has a wife, don’t you think?” Matthew asked.

  Actually, Roy’s wife was shocking. Last week, I had answered the office phone after everyone had left for the day and it was her. When I offered to take a message, she barked: “That pussy better not have forgotten the cat food.” Then she hung up. I didn’t jot it down.

  “Yes, Roy is an interesting bird. But don’t you think it’s annoying that he never asks us questions about us? He always just wants to talk about hi
mself and that medieval stuff.”

  “He’s got nothing, Sheila. If it makes him feel better talking about himself, I’m not going to rob him of that. Why do you even care?” It was a good question. Why was I upset that a medieval, pockmarked pussy-feeding “pussy” wasn’t asking me questions about me?

  “Wait,” I said, noticing that the picture of half-naked Heidi had reappeared on Matthew’s desk. “I guess this means you guys are back on? Everything’s better now?”

  Matthew shrugged noncommittally. “Yeah, well kind of. Yes, we are. We’ve worked through our issues. She apologized for her behavior when my sister-in-law was in the hospital. She’s fine. She’s great.” He spoke rapidly, as if speed would bring truth to his words. “Yup, we’re all good now.”

  Before I could respond to Matthew’s bizarre little rant, my phone rang for the first time all year. I rushed to answer, my heart racing. Getting a call in chambers was like getting a call in the middle of the night—it couldn’t be good news.

  “Uh, this is Sheila Raj.” Heavy breathing on the other end. “Hello? Hello?” I asked, confused. Heavy breathing.

  “Listen here. This is Robert Nussbaum,” he said angrily, “and my family will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if you give that murderous heathen another chance.” Robert Nussbaum? Robert Nussbaum? “My brother was killed by that animal and—” Right! Robert Nussbaum was Peter Nussbaum’s younger brother, who’d been in high school at the time of Peter’s murder. Dressed to kill, toting an army of assistants, Robert Nussbaum had appeared at oral arguments weeks earlier.

  “Um, excuse me. Excuse me. Mr. Nussbaum. I am not allowed to speak to you. I am hanging up now.” I took a deep breath. Under no circumstances were law clerks ever to speak with anyone personally affiliated with a case. Our numbers were unlisted—how did Robert get ahold of mine? How did he know Friedman’s vote in the case—the panel’s opinions had not even been released within the court, let alone to the public. The judges’ decisions were confidential at this point.

  As I pondered how to gently break the news of Robert Nussbaum’s call to the judge, an e-mail popped up. It was from Judge Adams’s secretary, and it was titled: “Penn Pals Reminder.” Oh no! I’d signed Matthew and myself up weeks ago for a do-gooder program that Adams had created a few years back. Law clerks and secretaries volunteered to read with inner city kids for an hour every Monday afternoon in chambers. Adams was smoking crack if she thought that one hour was going to save those kids, but I still wanted in. Any variation was welcome. So much so that I’d ventured into the torture chamber to get the judge’s permission to participate. She refused to lift her head from a brief and replied: “Do whatever you feel you have to do.”

  Janet had warned me that the tutoring program put the judge in a foul mood and advised against it. Penn Pals was a Friedman category killer: She hated kids. She hated her law clerks doing anything that didn’t involve slaving away for her. She hated Judge Adams. It was reported that last year, the cataclysmic combo drove her to tell a second-grader to “just shut up” when he read from Mother Goose too loudly. When the kid cried, the judge slammed the door in his tiny face. It wasn’t long after that that Janet and Roy were told flat out that they were not allowed to do the program. I was an idiot. What was I thinking? I knew what I was thinking—I wanted somebody, anybody, to talk to, even if it were a six-year-old.

  Before I could get up to deliver the bad news to Matthew, another e-mail popped up. It was Brian: “Sheila. Check the bar exam site and get back to me.” The Web site said that New York was releasing exam results that night at midnight. Even better, they’d be posted online for the entire world to see.

  I started sweating profusely, wondering if Bob needed a roommate in the ICU. My only realistic refuge was the bathroom, and Kate had been there for what felt like hours. Sweat. Wet. Cafeteria. I got up and wobbled to the second floor. The sight of Ernie in a hairnet and a “Proud to Be an American” T-shirt, trying to grab a coffee pot from the shelf but instead reaching for air was more than I could take. I sat at a table, put my head in my hands, and cried. Sniveling clerk. Loafers. Linoleum. A loud crash awakened me from my pity party. Ernie had found the coffee pot but only after accidentally punching it. The pot crashed, breaking into bits. Ernie simply started whistling and swept it up. If Ernie could get through life happily, I could survive the day.

  Marching back into the clerks’ cave, I stopped in Matthew’s cubicle. “Is she here yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anyway, I don’t know if you got the e-mail but we have to start that tutoring program.”

  “Sheila, I cannot believe you got me into this. I don’t even like children and she’s going to go crazy when she comes in here from the hospital and sees a kid.”

  “Not much we can do about it now. And by the way, New York is releasing bar results tonight. You should check California.” He looked doubly pained and quickly confirmed that, indeed, he’d be receiving his exam results that night, too.

  “Shit, Sheila, talk about a bad day.” He tensed his shoulders. “And I don’t even know what possessed me to agree to Heidi’s demands that we move to Los Angeles. I don’t even like Southern California.”

  At that moment, Evan walked into our cave. Matthew and I looked at him, awkwardness blanketing the room. “Hey, Evan, did you hear that we get bar exam results tonight?” I asked—a silly question for someone who’d trekked to California during his Christmas break for clerk camp.

  “Um. No. Oh,” he muttered, before stumbling back to his cubicle.

  Another e-mail from Brian awaited me. “I’m totally freaked out, Sheila. I know I failed. What am I going to do?” The sentiment was understandable, but why did Brian suddenly consider me a shoulder upon which to cry? At best, he’d been aloof since we started clerking. Yet, I still felt bad for the guy. Having a big butt and a fedora was no way to live.

  It was a little after eleven and the judge still hadn’t come in. Matthew and I set off to collect the kids when we heard the dreaded DING! Thirteenth floor, going down! We were stuck. The judge sauntered out of the elevator, sporting sunglasses and a brand new bun. How did she manage to get her hair done and jumpstart Bob? All in a day’s work.

  “Hello, Judge,” we chanted in unison.

  “Where are you people going!?” I had gotten Matthew into this mess, so I figured it was my duty to remind her.

  “Um. Remember we’re tutoring those children? Today is their first day.” Not the right answer. She threw down her bags and her newly minted hair went nuts.

  “NO! NO! NO!” This time, she sort of bobbed up and down. “I do NOT have time for this! You people NEVER work. NEVER!” Knees bent. Up. Down.

  “O-O-K. We—we. Won’t do it. We—we’ll stay here.” Matthew had gone from a fancy Ivy Leaguer to a common stutterer in less than four months.

  “Oh shit! Do whatever you people want. I don’t care!” And with that, she dragged herself into the secretaries’ den. Poor Roy was a goner.

  Matthew and I made a break for the elevators. “Technically she did say, ‘Do whatever you want.’” I tried justifying the fact that we were bringing innocent children into the torture chamber.

  “Sheila. Did you just hear me? I can’t even speak anymore.” Just then the doors opened into the lobby, which was filled with a sea of little children—in all colors but white—being led away by a group of uptight law clerks—in all colors but black. I spotted Kevin through the crowd.

  “Hey. We’re going out tonight. Bar exam results at midnight,” I blurted as a miniperson tugged at Kevin’s shirt. “I want to wead. Let’s go wead.”

  “Great, see you later. By the way,” Kevin said, gently guiding a cute little boy in a baseball cap over to Matthew, “this is Eric and he’s your tutee.” He ushered a pigtailed girl in my direction. “And this is Terry. She’s all yours,” he said chuckling.

  “Hi, Terry.” I smiled, kneeling to her level.

  “This is boring. You’re boring.�
� How could she tell by just looking at me? Did I actually look boring? Terry thought so. She was smart. And loud. Our pleas for no screaming fell on deaf ears. I couldn’t blame her. If I screamed like her, I’d be deaf, too. She was totally out of control, pushing every button on the elevator while simultaneously jumping up and down screaming, “Boring, boring, boring.” I managed to grab Terry’s scrawny shoulders to deliver a little sermon.

  “Terry. You cannot scream in there. Our boss is very busy and doesn’t like yelling. She’ll be very mad if you yell.” She nodded as I spoke. We were on the same page. That is, if you counted The Exorcist as your book. Terry took off running the minute the door was opened. I looked left, right, up, down. She’d disappeared. I returned to my cubicle, hoping, praying that Terry was a homing pigeon who’d landed in my chair. No luck.

  “You’re old!” Oh my God! I nearly got whiplash from turning left so quickly. There was Terry. Three feet tall, standing an inch in front of the judge, who, incidentally, didn’t look so much taller, pointing. “They said you were always mad!” That little Benedict Arnold!

  “Get out! Get out!”

  Terry was totally unfazed by the judge’s command. Somehow, I found a bit of courage in my internal safety deposit box and headed into the torture chamber. The judge’s eyes were burning. She’d been had by someone who hadn’t even graduated from the first grade, let alone a top-five law school.