Supreme Courtship

by Christopher Buckley

  “Try the Jell-O.” Pepper smiled.

  “I demur,” Crispus said. “Demur most strenuously. Jell-O will not again pass these lips.”

  “You got enough saturated fats on that plate to kill a marathon runner.”

  “For your information, Miss Pritikin, that odious substance on your plate-intending no collateral disrespect to the cottage cheese-was about all I could afford to eat back in law school. That and those repellent Japanese noodles.” He shuddered. “No, neither Jell-O nor ramen shall frequent these digestive organs in this lifetime. But,” he said, “I do worry about Declan. I try to avoid the water-cooler style of discourse, but I confide to you here and now that I am alarmed for him. So is Paige, dear, kind woman that she is. But she can’t get anywhere with him. Shuts her out. And when you’re shutting out Paige Plympton, you are denying yourself the very quintessence of humanity. I saw him yesterday and he had a look on him… like a character out of Edgar Allan Poe. It gave me pause, I tell you. I said to him, in the most fraternal way, I said, ‘Dec, remember that on the other side of the wall of humiliation lies liberation.’ ”

  “What did he say?” Pepper said.

  “He said, ‘Did you find that in Pilgrim’s Progress or in a fortune cookie in a not very good Chinese restaurant?’ I laughed. He did not. Not even at his own bon mot. When you derive no joy from your own felicity, well, it’s like dying of thirst in your own wine cellar.”

  “I feel like a fried green tomato about all this,” Pepper said. “I…”

  Crispus shrugged. “It’s not your fault someone leaked Swayle. But I will say that your matriculation here has been”-he smiled companionably-“not uneventful.”

  Pepper stared forlornly at the remains of her fruit-dappled Jell-O. “Do you think I should…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  “Eat any more of that ghastly substance? No. You need meat and potatoes, woman. So tell me, Justice Cartwright, what is it you like to do?

  “Do?”

  “Come on, this isn’t oral argument. It’s not a complicated question. Do you listen to music? Do you go to movies? Do you dance? Solve Sudoku puzzles in the bathtub while listening to Chopin’s nocturnes? Maurizio Pollini is my preferred version. That man is touched by God. All due respect to Horowitz and Rubinstein, but next to him they sound like they’re playing chopsticks. Do you climb mountains wearing lederhosen? Do you shoot elk with high-powered rifles and mount their horns? Do you keep tropical fish? Do you speak to your houseplants? Do you knit?”

  “The only thing I’ve been doing,” Pepper said, “is working my Texas butt off.” She leaned forward and whispered across the table, “I’m drowning here, Crispus. I don’t think I’m gonna make this whistle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Bull-riding.”

  “Steady on,” he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, “steady on. For your information, everyone feels like they’re drowning the first year. Except maybe Silvio.” Crispus chuckled. “Silvio, you understand, was not appointed by the President, but from on high.”

  Pepper felt tears welling. “I’m a catty whompus.”

  Crispus stared. “What is a catty whompus? Something out of Lewis Carroll? It sounds… unpleasant.”

  “Something that’s out of place. Something that doesn’t fit. Something like me.”

  Crispus leaned back in his chair and patted his round belly pensively, as if posing for a nineteenth-century caricature. “Justice Cartwright, you disappoint me. I had not marked you for the self-pitying kind. You say you don’t fit? You’re here, aren’t you? You’re a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, aren’t you? Suck it up, girl.”

  “Yeah,” Pepper said, suddenly dry-eyed, “you’re right.”

  Crispus stood and bussed his tray, a habit left over from working his way through college. “Meantime,” he smiled, “I suppose the CJ could use a friendly word. Some bucking up. You’re not to blame for the Swayle leak, but it squirted all over onto his lap and he’s having a bad time with the mopping up. So, if you’re not otherwise occupied writing landmark opinions legitimizing the grievances of bank robbers, drop him a note or something, tell him you appreciate his… oh, whatever. Now I must leave you. I’ve got to go see a man about a horse.”

  THAT NIGHT, a little after nine o’clock as Pepper was getting ready to leave, she thought of what Crispus had said and thought to stick her head in Hardwether’s office on the way out and say… whatever.

  His outer office was empty, the clerks and secretaries gone. But she saw light under the door to his inner office. She knocked softly. No answer. Knocked again. No answer. Opened the door. The lights were on, but no CJ. The door leading from his inner office to the justices’ conference room was ajar. She walked over, opened it, and saw an arresting sight: the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court standing on the conference table, a rope around his neck, in the process of fastening the other end to an overhead light fixture. He turned and saw Pepper. The two Supreme Court justices stared at each other.

  “Uh,” Pepper said. “Am I interrupting?”

  “As it happens,” Hardwether said, “yes.”

  “I could come back. But…”

  “Thank you. If you’d please close the door behind you?”

  Pepper said, “Could I ask you a question?”

  “If it’s brief.”

  “Is this a cry for help or are you actually fixing to hang yourself?”

  “Justice Cartwright,” he said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but if I could have the room? Thank you. As you can see, I’m occupied.”

  “I can see that,” Pepper said. She turned and walked a few steps to the door, stopped. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Thing is, if I were to leave, I’d be guilty of aiding and abetting a felony. Suicide’s a crime in DC. I’m already paying one lawyer to handle my divorce and another to handle a breach of contract suit. I can’t afford a third one. Not on what this place pays.”

  “No,” the Chief Justice replied. “You’re perfectly in the clear. You’ve committed no act in support of the sui… of the deed. Absent said support, you would be guilty only if there were a relational obligation. Absent relational obligation-there being none here-you’re quite blameless. I would remind you that there is no ‘duty to rescue.’ ”

  “There’s a moral duty, surely,” Pepper said.

  “We’re not talking about moral duty, Justice. We’re talking about law.”

  “Right,” Pepper said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s well established under case law that, for instance, even if you were an expert swimmer you would be blameless for failing to save a drowning person. While I am not aware of any case where the drowning person was attempting to commit su… was attempting to sink, the larger principle, developed in cases of accidental drownings, is equally applicable. So, you see. No problem. Good night, Justice.”

  Pepper said thoughtfully, “I disagree.”

  Chief Justice Hardwether said with annoyance, “On what grounds?”

  “I believe,” Pepper said, “that because of our employment relationship, that is as coworkers-if you will-that there is clear duty to care and that I am thus obligated to… well, do something.”

  “No, no, no.” The Chief Justice shook his head. “Duty to care extends only to employer-employee relationships. As Chief Justice, I am your superior-if you will. The hierarchically subordinate individual is under no obligation to rescue the person in the hierarchically superior position. Zerbo v. Fantelli. The Court made it perfectly clear that it is only the hierarchically superior person who has the obligation to rescue the hierarchical inferior. So, if you would shut the door behind you?”

  “There’s a problem,” Pepper said.

  “For God’s sake, Justice. What problem?”

  “You’re construing too narrowly.”

  “Pepper-I’m the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court!”

&
nbsp; “Be that as it may, sir, duty to care runs both ways. See Farquar v. Simpson. And anyway, as a simple matter of constitutional law, the Chief Justice is most appropriately regarded as primus inter pares. [24] So,” Pepper said brightly, “duty to care clearly obtains here. We’re coworkers.”

  The Chief Justice’s head sagged. “Could you just please… go?”

  “All right,” Pepper said, “okay. But you’re going about this all wrong.”

  “We’ve been through all that, Justice.”

  “I’m talking about the knot. You call that a hangman’s knot?”

  “I… Pepper…”

  “I know how to tie one, if you want. I was taught how when I was eight. By an actual hangman. Friend of my granddaddy’s.”

  Hardwether stared. “All right,” he grumbled. “Jesus. Whatever.”

  Pepper went over and took off her shoes.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Trying not to scuff the table. Not that you cared. Look at those marks.”

  “Would you just proceed, please?”

  “No need to get aggervated,” Pepper said. She took the rope off his neck. “Where’d you get this? Looks like clothesline…”

  Chief Justice Hardwether groaned. “If you’d please just tie the knot.”

  “All right. See, you take a length so, make your loop, then double it back-”

  “I don’t need to learn how. I’m not going to be doing this a second time.”

  “Didn’t they teach this in Boy Scouts? Or were you getting your merit badge in library science or some wimpy thing? There…” She handed it to him, a perfect hangman’s knot. “You better put it on yourself,” she said. “Legal-wise.”

  He put it around his neck.

  “You’d think a judge would know how to make a hangman’s knot,” she said.

  “I’m against capital punishment,” he said. “Perhaps you read any of my eight opinions?”

  “I read ’em,” Pepper said. “Now, you want the knot against the side, there, not the back. How much you weigh?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to do this right, or you want to strangle to death slowly with your tongue sticking out black and blue and-”

  “One seventy-five,” Hardwether snapped.

  “All right then,” Pepper said. “Hm.”

  “What now?”

  “We’d need at least a four-foot drop for a good clean snap.”

  “I’ll work with what we have. Thank you, Justice.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Pepper shrugged, climbing down off the polished table. “Only now,” she added pensively, “we got a definite problem.”

  “What?” the CJ said.

  “Now I am an accessory. You die, I go to jail. That’s not a satisfactory outcome from my point of view.”

  “For God’s sake,” the Chief Justice moaned.

  “Tell you what,” Pepper said. “Why don’t you come down off there. We’ll go over to the library, rustle us up a couple of real sharp clerks, see if maybe we can’t find a loophole. If there is, then off you go and we’re done.”

  Chief Justice Hardwether stepped forward as he raised his finger to gesture. As he did, his shoe slipped on the polished surface of the conference table. He pitched forward, the rope pulling taut against his throat. Pepper lunged forward as he crashed to the floor in a heap. He looked up at Pepper with a mixture of surprise, confusion, and betrayal, holding his abraded neck where the rope had been.

  “Slipknot,” she said half apologetically. “Escape clause. Hangman taught me that, too.”

  Hardwether made a hoarse sound.

  “You want to go get some coffee or something? Valium? Crisis counseling? I believe it’s covered under our health plan.”

  “A drink,” the Chief Justice croaked.

  THEY WALKED TO THE PORK BARREL, a bar on Capitol Hill frequented by congressional staffers, low-end lobbyists, and Vietnam veteran bikers. Hardwether ordered a double Scotch; Pepper tequila.

  “So,” she said when the drink came. “Seen any good movies lately?”

  He stared glumly at the table.

  “What was that all about?” she said.

  “I apologize,” Hardwether said hoarsely. “Can we just leave it at that? I haven’t been thinking very clearly.”

  “Sure. But the conference room?”

  “The ceiling in my office was too high.”

  “Oh. Would have made for one heck of a headline.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  They sat in silence.

  “Is it that bad?” Pepper said.

  “I just tried to kill myself,” he said. “Res ipsa loquitur.” [25]

  “The wife thing?”

  He stared into his drink. “The life thing. You won’t mention this to anyone, will you?”

  “I’m not the Court leaker.”

  “No, that’s right. Oh, what a… mess.”

  Pepper said, “Reason I went to see you in the first place was Crispus gave me a whuppin’ today in the cafeteria about feeling sorry for myself. I could recycle his lecture if you want.”

  “It’s not self-pity. It’s an admission of failure. Two different things entirely.”

  “We back on oral argument?”

  “No.” He rubbed the livid red line around his neck.

  “You might consider a turtleneck tomorrow,” Pepper said. “Or one of them high Edwardian collars. You’d look good in those. You’ve already got that stuffy owl sort of look.”

  “All I ever wanted to be was this,” he said. “And now I’m in a bar, with abrasions around my neck. There’s a Yiddish proverb. Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans. ’Nother round?”

  “Do you really need more depressants? Come on,” she said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  The Chief Justice was now living not in a multimillion- dollar mansion in McLean but in a nice-but-nothing-fancy apartment building in Kalorama, which means “beautiful view” in Greek, a name dreamt up by a nineteenth-century Washington developer.

  Pepper pulled up in front of his apartment building. The Chief Justice stared vacantly through the windshield, making no move for the door handle. They sat in silence.

  Pepper said, “You don’t want to be alone tonight. Do you?”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “You got a couch?”

  “I think so. Yes. I have a couch.”

  “Okay then,” she said, “I’ll take the bed.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was a light day for Dexter on the set of POTUS. He had only a short scene in which the CIA would reveal that National Security Director Milton Swan had been poisoned by radioactive borscht at a Kremlin state banquet. Dexter hadn’t convinced Buddy or Jerry to add the subplot about Swan being a Russian double agent.

  A production assistant came to his dressing room with the word that his wife, Terry, was on the phone and that it was “extremely urgent.” (Personal cell phones had to be turned off on the set, a strict rule.)

  “Dexter,” Terry said, “something very strange has happened.”

  Dexter’s stomach tightened.

  “Oh?” he said, trying to sound casual while looking over his lines. “But Milton was like a son to me! At least until he started porking the First Lady.” Dexter made a mental note to ask Jerry if “porking” was presidential. These writers…

  Terry said, “I gave Lee Tucker from the bank the go-ahead to wire the down payment to the broker. He called me back and said, quote, ‘There’s not enough in the account. Not nearly enough.’ Do you know anything about this?”

  Dexter took a deep breath. “I was going to call you.”

  A frosty silence befell. “About what, Dexter?”

  “I had to make this other payment,” Dexter said.

  “Payment? For what? To whom?”

  “Just… some people in DC.”

  “Dexter,” said Terry, her temperature dropping like a Canadian cold front. �
�We’re talking about five hundred thousand dollars. That’s half a million dollars.”

  Dexter chuckled. “Yes. Yes. Like Ev Dirksen [26] used to say-God rest his soul-‘A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’ Ha-ha. They don’t make them like that anymore, do they?”

  “Dexter. What have you done with our money?”

  “Well, honey,” he laughed, “technically my money. But sure, of course, ours…”

  “Dexter.”

  “Terry, when I agreed to take on this new assignment, it was with the expectation, and the understanding that-”

  “No, no, no, no. No speeches, Dexter. This isn’t the Iowa caucus and it’s not the New Hampshire primary. What. Have. You. Done. With. The. Money. Dexter? The money that was the down payment money for the maisonette.”

  “That must be, what, a French word?”

  “Dexter.”

  “Terry, honey, lambie, listen to me for one minute, okay?”

  “I am listening, Dexter. And I’m not liking what I’m hearing.”

  “That money is a down payment. But on a different residence.” Yes, Dexter thought. Good. Brilliant!

  There was a silence, as the Book of Revelation would say, for the space of about half an hour-the kind of silence that generally precedes rains of fire and blood and other unpleasant things, some of them on horseback.

  “What,” Terry said, “in God’s good name are you talking about?”

  “The White House, Terry. The best housing in America. Makes that maisonette or whatever the hell it’s called look like a mud hut. And no monthly maintenance charges, either. Terry? Honey? Sweetie? Hello?”

  There was the sound of a telephone being violently cradled.

  Well, Dexter thought, that was a success. He returned to his script.

  “We’ll bury him at Arlington with full honors. In a lead-lined coffin so the pallbearers won’t get cancer. And once we’ve sounded taps over the corpse, then I will deal with President Gennady Barranikov. Get me the Russian translation for ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy.’ And tell Admiral Murphy to signal the Nimitz to stand by.”