Al-Tounsi

by Anton Piatigorsky

  Sources tell Vanity Fair that the animosity between Emmanuel Arroyo and Rodney Sykes has lingered for years, and has never been resolved. One source has even speculated that Judge Arroyo’s affair with Cassandra Sykes is motivated by his anger toward her father. Manny Arroyo, he says, has a vindictive streak.

  Insiders are now wondering if peace will be possible between Justices Arroyo and Sykes on the Supreme Court. Arroyo’s tempestuous past with his mentor and his present affair with Cassandra Sykes might prove too explosive. The justices are required to meet regularly in Conference and work together closely to reach their decisions. If Arroyo is indeed confirmed, what effect would their personal conflict have on the nation’s law?

  Manny folded the article in half and laid it on Kale’s desk. It was worse than he had feared. He smoldered at the characterization: Rash. Pushy. Social climber. And now the President of the United States, the U.S. Senate, and his future colleagues on the Supreme Court would all think him a malicious sadist, screwing Cassandra Sykes because of his hatred for her father. Never mind that he didn’t hate Rodney at all. He was completely indifferent to Justice Sykes, and he was certain they could work together just fine. Manny wouldn’t be Rodney’s subordinate on the Court. The unique and intimate circumstances of the job would dampen any explosive potential in their relationship. Justice Sykes, thanks to his ridiculous repression and ovine conformity, would never make a scene.

  How dare they malign him! Cassandra had been a stellar applicant for his clerkship, regardless of her last name. She was sexy as hell when she arrived in his chambers, unhappy with her marriage, eagerly searching for a way out. She had seduced him, not the other way around. With her blood-red, come-fuck-me lipsticks and grab-me-by-the-neck scarfs, Cassandra had thrown herself at Manny long before his divorce had been finalized. She had known all about that Eichmann incident and her father’s antipathy toward him, so if anyone was guilty of revenge tactics or sadism, it was Cassandra.

  “The President wants to talk to you alone.” Kale had silently reappeared in the doorway behind him.

  Alone. Didn’t seem likely. The entire West Wing staff would be waiting in the Oval Office—all the commanders of a regime that liked to face adversity with bellicosity—Batherson, Rimm, MacKneer and Nicolaides. Maybe Press Secretary Orrin Gray? It would be reassuring if Orrin was there, because that would mean the President wasn’t going to sack Manny right away, and instead thought of this situation primarily as a communication problem, requiring deft messaging, the right spin.

  Kale ushered Manny into the Oval Office. He sighed in relief at the sight of the President standing alone, resting his weight against the Resolute desk, his arms crossing his chest like a disappointed school principal. President Shaw greeted Manny curtly, moved to his chair and offered the judge a seat across from him.

  “Now I don’t believe it’s ever wise to get angry at someone.” The President’s lip rose in his usual half-smile. “But I need to get some facts straight here. This relationship with Cassandra started in July, right? You sure about that?”

  “Bring her down here and ask her yourself if you doubt me, Mr. President.”

  “Now hold on, Manny, you don’t have to get testy. You can just answer the questions I ask. Because remember, we have to focus on the big issue here, which is employer–employee ethics. I need the whole truth. I need your word.” President Shaw’s slow, deliberate speech made Manny feel like a child. “You can give your word on this?”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Manny tried to calculate the timeline for Cassandra’s pregnancy. Conception mid-to-late June. Baby due in early-March. No one would be able to figure out the exact math for months, until well after his confirmation. “I give you my word.”

  “What about this February thing?”

  “It isn’t true.”

  “So you’re telling me there is no ethical issue? Might not look pretty to some, but you and Cassandra are consenting adults, and you say July, and that’s that.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “All right.” The President nodded slowly, like he didn’t believe him. He laid his palm flat on his iconic desk. “But here’s the thing, Manny. We can’t work like this. It’s just not how it’s done. We can’t be expected to get you past the Senate unless we’re properly prepared, and we aren’t able to do so unless we have ourselves some good, solid information.” His condescending tone invoked the moral rectitude and folk wisdom of an old time Texas Ranger. “So I’m just going to come out and warn you. You can’t misspeak like that. I don’t see how I can continue with your nomination if you misspeak.”

  “Yes, sir.” And Manny heard in his sir something he hadn’t intended—an echo of what the younger Emmanuel Arroyo had once said in another precarious situation, when he felt similar cowed humiliation. Dragged into Doug Carrodine’s corner office at Farrow Marsh, overlooking the Bay Bridge and downtown San Francisco, like a dog who had just pissed on his master’s carpet and now had to suffer the insult of having his nose thrust into a pool of urine and scolded. All because of that ridiculous Eichmann outburst. Manny’s comment had apparently broken the bonds of Farrow Marsh’s self-righteous Ethical Code of Conduct, a policy that was flagrantly ignored by everyone who actually mattered around the firm. Yes, sir, Mr. Carrodine—ears hanging, tail between his legs—he realized his mistake, and no, sir, Mr. Carrodine, he hadn’t meant what he’d said, and yes, sir, of course, Mr. Carrodine, he would apologize right away to Rodney Sykes. Manny knew that his Eichmann comment was in bad taste, and too harshly delivered, but Rodney was a milquetoast of a man, Eichmann-like in every conceivable way, who forsook his own critical thought in order to follow the law mindlessly. Rodney Sykes was bad for the firm. Why should Manny, the one lawyer on staff brave enough to tell the truth, be reprimanded and humiliated and forced to eat crow? Where was the sense in that, Mr. Carrodine, sir?

  “Is there anything else you need to tell me, Manny? Any more surprises?”

  He was sweating profusely. It felt as if he had taken a shower in his shirt, slipped his jacket over the swampy thing, and waltzed right into the Oval Office. This experience was goddamn degrading. And now he had no choice but confess everything to the President.

  “Cassandra has recently informed me that she’s pregnant.” His voice sounded weak, more like Cassandra’s limp-dick ex-husband’s than his own.

  “Pregnant? With a baby?”

  “I should think so.”

  Mark Shaw raised his brow, laid a hand on his lips, and laughed. “Well, fuck a duck.”

  He called the core of his staff into the Oval Office—Rimm, Kale and MacKneer—to discuss this unexpected twist and decide what should be done about it. They all gathered around President Shaw, their expressions dark and grim. Manny sat and listened to them, but he would not participate in the shameful weighing of his personal life. Sleeping with Cassandra might rub against the morality of certain sanctimonious prigs, but his sex life was none of their damn business. The Senate should investigate one single question in their hearings: was he qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, to assess the constitutionality of U.S. law? Nothing else. President Shaw’s staff looked angry, like they were on the verge of dropping him. At the very least, they would insist that he play the game on their terms, which meant eating crow on a very big platter. He grimaced and waited for orders.

  “Maybe Cassandra’s pregnancy makes this situation better, not worse.” Gordon Kale marched back and forth, chewing a fingernail. “We can release a statement exposing their relationship and the pregnancy. Stun the world and scoop Vanity Fair. Tell everyone the whole damn thing.”

  MacKneer shook her head. “An affair with a younger staff member and a pregnancy out of wedlock?”

  “We’ve been over the conservative base, Lorna, and they’re not half the problem you worry about. They don’t care about divorces, affairs, any of that shit—only votes on the cases.” Kale leaned against the back of the couch. “Judge Arroyo and Cassandra Sykes have
been seeing each other since July. They’re consenting adults in a serious relationship working toward marriage.”

  Jeremy Rimm nodded, standing beside the President like a Secret Service agent. “Of course, we consult Orrin for precise wording.”

  Manny sat up stiffly. This idea was catching on with members of the staff, maybe even with the President. This approach wouldn’t mean groveling before the whole country. Quite the opposite.

  “Cassandra and her husband were in a dead marriage. Manny was divorced. They fell in love, and wanted a new family, children. Where’s the scandal in that? It’s a blessing.”

  “The scandal, Gordon, is the existence of Rodney Sykes. Judge Arroyo here is about to be the father to Sykes’s grandson.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. President, your father was Chief Executive of this country not long before you, and that hasn’t held you back, has it?”

  The President chuckled and shrugged his agreement.

  “So what’s the big deal? This is a private matter. We knew about it beforehand and respected their privacy. Happens all the time—people fall in love, raise a family. Make that the story. Something the senators on the Judiciary can get behind.”

  Manny nodded vigorously. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Gordon turned on him angrily. “But if we do this, Manny, you and Cassandra have to play this thing exactly as we say, word for word, using the script we write. You don’t even grunt if that grunt hasn’t been planned in advance and fed to you by us, or you’re out, Manny—just out.”

  “Temper.” Mark Shaw held palms aloft, like a serene portrait of Jesus. “Come on, Gordon.”

  “Judge Arroyo needs to speak with Cassandra,” said Lorna. “Before we go any further.”

  “Absolutely. I can do that, right away.”

  The President agreed. Manny was dispatched along with Kale to the second floor of the West Wing, where Cassandra was redacting and correlating Arroyo’s writings on executive power, the Commerce Clause, affirmative action and abortion—study sheets to be used in his last round of confidential mock hearings, and then his Senate confirmation. But before entering the small Office of Political Affairs, Manny stopped at the door to the men’s room, and thumbed toward it.

  “I need a second.”

  He sequestered himself in the toilet stall and pressed his forehead against its cool metal door. This was the only reasonable plan, to talk to Cassandra, but it was excruciating to have to appeal to her again. He was desperate to end this charade. It had already been weeks of apologizing, holding his nose, pleading with Cassandra to please, please come with him to his Watergate condo just for the night, because he missed her tender touch, and fantasized about her, and wanted her. More than anything, he had said, he hoped and prayed that she would move in with him as soon as possible, right after his confirmation. Oh, why had he bothered with those lies? It wasn’t as if Cassandra believed him. She had only acquiesced to his lame seductions once since she had come to Washington, because she needed the fiction of their continuing relationship as much as he did. One round of awkward, halting, self-conscious sex. She had only fucked him out of fear of what would happen to her when their relationship crumbled, fear of being pregnant, separated from Denny, terrified of hurting her father and fighting with her brother, all-around petrified at the prospect of being a single mother. In bed, in this office, everywhere—that woman was nothing but a statue of steely passivity and silent judgment. Approaching her now, begging her to play along with Kale’s grand plan, to do him yet another favor—he didn’t know if he could do that. He didn’t have the strength. Manny banged his forehead against the metal door. How was this any better than going home and castrating himself with a kitchen knife?

  He left the stall, pissed in a urinal, splashed water on his face. Looked at himself in the mirror. It would be just a few more days. A couple of rough weeks. And then he would have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Nothing but autonomy and freedom.

  He left the men’s room, smiled at Kale and followed him down the hall to the Office of Political Affairs. Kale asked everyone but Cassandra to leave, and then left them alone. He closed the door behind them.

  Cassandra was sitting at the large round table, wide-eyed and pale with panic. “They know about us, don’t they? They know everything.”

  Manny nodded. “There’s an exposé coming out in Vanity Fair. A real meaty history on me and your father, including details of the Eichmann incident at Farrow Marsh. The article suggests you and I are together because I want revenge.”

  She lowered her head into her hands.

  “I had to tell the President and staff that you’re pregnant. But it’s all right. We’ve developed a plan to turn this in our favor.”

  Tears streamed down Cassandra’s cheeks as Manny relayed the details of the White House’s approach, and their need for full cooperation from both of them. He kept talking and talking, although taciturn Cassandra looked exhausted and just blinked at the wall.

  “I need to know if you emailed or spoke to anyone about our relationship before July. I mean anyone, Cassandra.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “One text or scribbled note that you forget now means I could get caught lying to the Senate and likely won’t be confirmed.”

  “My father is going to be devastated and humiliated.”

  “Your father is the least of our problems.”

  “You don’t understand what this is going to do to him. He has pride and dignity. He hates you.”

  “He doesn’t hate me.”

  “He hates you, Manny. I’m sure about that.”

  “Well, he’s going to have to get over his hatred pretty damn soon.”

  “I’m going to be called a slut and a whore in every newspaper in this country. I will be dismissed as a serious person forever.”

  “Cassandra, focus on the real problem here.”

  Cassandra’s glazed eyes ignited, and flared with an anger that she had somehow managed to keep in check for weeks. “The real problem? Do you mean your concerns more real than my father’s? Or mine?”

  Manny sighed and lowered his head. A SCOTUS nomination was the culmination of his entire life’s work, and yet Cassandra wanted him to defer to Rodney’s wispy ego and her own greedy needs. Was her family really so embarrassed and fragile—such poor, suffering innocents, such tender little birds—that they needed special consideration? Only Manny Arroyo’s livelihood depended on what happened next.

  “You know, I have a pretty strong sense that I’m as real as you,” Cassandra continued.

  Steady now, steady. I’m sorry—that was his correct response, the proper rule of engagement. That was what the White House expected him to say. Manny needed to offer her another unsavory and pusillanimous reply to accompany his yes, sir to the President. He had to make this work.

  “You’re right, Cassandra. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not in the least bit sorry. You just want me to play along. God, I wish you could hear yourself.”

  “We’re in this together, Cassandra. We have to present a united front.”

  She nodded in exaggeration, mocking Manny mercilessly.

  “We need to make a strong statement. We should announce we’re getting married or at least getting engaged.”

  Cassandra started to laugh, a harsh, bitter chortle. “Wow, you are without a doubt the most cynical person I have ever met.”

  “Every fucking intern in this building knows how politics works.”

  Manny faced the wall, closed his eyes and tried to calm down.

  “I understand what you’re up to, Manny,” he heard Cassandra whisper behind him. “You don’t deserve to be on the United States Supreme Court.”

  White light encroached on the periphery of Manny’s vision, and his hands began to tremble. He spun around, pointing at her. “Listen, you bitch, if you fuck this up and so much as a goddamn blink at the wrong time or in the wrong way, I’ll spend the rest of my natural life systemati
cally destroying yours. I’ll smear your name all over this goddamn country, and you’ll never again work at a meaningful job, and don’t you goddamn think I can’t or won’t do it.”

  Cassandra stood, tears welling, her jaw locked. “You nauseating pig.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  She leaned over the table. “Oh, there is no chance in hell I’m going to shut up ever. If you and your President want me to play the good little pregnant wifey, then you damn well better get me out of this disaster with a job in the White House or the Justice Department. You give me exactly what I fucking ask for or I will not play your game, Emmanuel. I’ll tell the world the whole truth about how we started our affair back in November, and plenty of other juicy insights into your golden character, and I’ll make damn sure you are not confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. So don’t you fucking threaten me, you dickhead.”

  The door opened. Kale’s red face peeked into the room, panning back and forth between them. “Oh Lord.”

  “This woman’s a poisonous snake.” Manny backed away, hands raised.

  “Hold up, now.” Gordon stepped between them.

  “Just watch where threats get you!”

  “Okay, stop it!” Gordon touched Cassandra’s shoulder, made her and Manny sit down on opposite sides of the room. He made them take deep breaths. He asked them to stay quiet for a full 20 seconds, which he tracked on his watch. In the awkward silence, with his eyes pressed shut, Manny let the relief of Kale’s interruption seep into his knotted muscles. His body wilted with exhaustion. He might as well withdraw his nomination, hop the next flight to San Francisco, and pray that he would still be allowed to finish his career on the Ninth Circuit without getting impeached and disbarred.

  But then Gordon Kale took over. He spoke softly. His southern-twanged inflections and colloquial speech had a soothing effect. He gestured back and forth between them, saying all the right things: I’m not gonna pretend you two are gonna kiss and make up, here. We just gotta calm this fire down a few degrees. What do we need to do for you, Cassandra, to make this right? Manny tapped his fingers on the wooden table, and said nothing. He hadn’t felt this helpless in years. It was more profound than impotence. He was being subjected to forces much larger than himself.