Nino and Me

by Bryan A. Garner

  In the end, we settled on dates in late January and early February 2016. That timing was convenient for his Court schedule, for Karolyne’s family, and for Karolyne and me with our LawProse commitments. It was also right before the Chinese New Year celebrations, meaning that we’d see lots of festooned streets and buildings, but we’d be gone before all the mad revelry itself would begin.

  Soon, with the help of Tom Leighton at Thomson Reuters (no longer working through the head of Asian marketing), we also had invitations from both the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong to make presentations. At the latter affair, I would be interviewing a retired justice of the High Court of Hong Kong along with Justice Scalia. Our third presentation in Hong Kong was to be at the offices of Thomson Reuters, where we would discuss book authorship and the nature of our collaborations.

  Tailoring Our Plans

  About six months before the trip, I told Justice Scalia that we must find a good D.C. tailor.

  “Why?”

  “We need to get shirts made.”

  “But why?”

  “So copies can be made in China.”

  “Aren’t the Chinese tailors going to measure us?”

  “Yes. That’s for suits. For shirts, it’s better to have them made in advance.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’ll spend about $200 on a tailor-made shirt in D.C., and we’ll get it made exactly as you want it—an inch longer than usual, French cuffs if you like, the precise style of collar you’d like, the extra button on the arm vents, and so on.”

  “Why can’t we do that in Hong Kong?”

  “We could, but that would cost about $100 a shirt. Lyne’s aunt Jenny can go into mainland China and have ten of these shirts made—precisely to your specifications—for $200.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “And they’re the finest fabrics—all whites and blues, but superbly woven cottons. My favorite is Egyptian cotton.”

  “Why not just send her our measurements?”

  “That’s risky,” I said. “It doesn’t work, I promise you. It’s better to send them a well-tailored shirt that they can mimic in every detail. That way it’ll be perfect for you.”

  “Huh.”

  “You’ll have ten tailored shirts for $400—$200 for the first shirt here, and $200 for the ten in China. Otherwise, it’d cost you over $2,000.”

  “Won’t I have eleven, counting the one I get made here?”

  “No. That one will be destroyed in preparing the pattern for the other ten.”

  “But why can’t we do it all there? I want to see the whole process!”

  “No, you don’t, Nino. It’d waste a whole day, and you’d have to get a special visa for mainland China. The way we’re planning it, Jenny will have our shirts ready for us when we arrive. We can wear them to our events in Hong Kong.”

  “Ah. And they’re only 10% of the cost of American-made shirts?”

  “If they’re tailor-made, right. Karolyne’s mother, Sandra, gives me shirts like that every Christmas. One year, we sent only the measurements, and the shirts didn’t fit at all. They were comically bad. We have to send tailor-made shirts for the pattern.”

  “But I don’t have a tailor in D.C.”

  “I’ll find one for us. Mine is in New York, but we’re not going there together anytime soon. Let me find a tailor for us in D.C., and we’ll do it together. It’ll be fun. Just one more little adventure.”

  On a flight to D.C., a month or so later, Karolyne and I sat near Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Texas and an old acquaintance of mine. We struck up a conversation at the baggage claim, and I asked the well-accoutered man about his tailor. He recommended Christopher Kim on M Street.

  One afternoon, while Justice Scalia and I were working together in chambers on the second edition of Reading Law, I suggested that we go to Mr. Kim’s to get our shirts made before meeting Karolyne for dinner. He was enthusiastic. Angela called ahead so that Mr. Kim would be expecting us. The large shop was crammed full of racks of suits, shirts, and fabrics, and we were the only customers there for a full hour. We both chose white shirts with the same style of collar, and we each bought two—one to wear and one to be copied in China. We had one of Justice Scalia’s shirts sent to my office so that I could send it on to Jenny with one of mine.

  Looking at some suits, Justice Scalia asked whether our Hong Kong suits would be as well made as Mr. Kim’s. Yes, I assured him, at a third of the cost—or maybe less.

  “I’ve never had a bespoke suit,” he said. “I’m excited about Hong Kong.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  San Antonio

  In November 2015, Justice Scalia and I made a joint presentation in San Antonio for the annual conference called the General Counsel Forum, at La Cantera Hill Country Resort. Karolyne and I took an early flight from Dallas on the morning of the presentation and met Justice Scalia for breakfast in the resort’s restaurant.

  “Long time no see!” he said as we approached him. He was having coffee. “I’m just trying to decide what to have for breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.”

  “You’ve indoctrinated me to that point of view,” I said. “I’ll bet you can get a Mexican breakfast here. That’s the best.”

  “No way. Too mushy! I don’t like mushy!”

  “Then go for American. But snotty eggs seem pretty mushy to me! How’s the term shaping up?”

  “It’s going fine. What have you been working on?”

  “Apart from the second edition of Reading Law? I’m closing in on the precedents book, which should be out next year. You know, it’s the one you backed out of,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. Karolyne smirked.

  “You’re almost done with it?”

  “Almost, and it’s going to be superb. You won’t believe the amount of research that my twelve coauthors did. It’s going to be over 800 pages.”

  “Lookit, Bryan, if you’re trying to make me jealous, it’s not working.”

  “Come on, Nino. It’s nothing like working with you. I haven’t had any sessions at all with them personally—except two hours with your former clerk Jeff Sutton. It’s all been through e-mail.”

  He was silent. I was sensing jealousy. I added: “You know, Nino, nothing else in my life could be like working with you. Our sessions together have been the experience of a lifetime. You’ve changed my life. I’m the only person in the history of the nation who’s coauthored a book with a sitting Justice. Uh, make that two books. And of course you’ve changed Lyne’s life.”

  “Just knowing you,” Karolyne said.

  “Well, I’ve appreciated being close to both of you. Have you decided on breakfast? I’m hungry!”

  “Just don’t be hangry,” I said. “You know that word?”

  “What? Hangry? Angry because you’re hungry?”

  “Right. It’s a portmanteau word.”

  “Okay. Let’s order!”

  We did. Soon we were talking about our Hong Kong trip, just two months away.

  As we finished our breakfast, I changed the subject.

  “Nino, Lyne brought along 42 books to sign. You know how people are always asking us to sign books.”

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  “In her purse,” I said.

  “You’re joking,” he said, turning to Karolyne. “What’s he talking about?”

  “I ordered some bookplates that we can use in a pinch,” she said. “Why don’t you two sign them while I go check on the room?”

  So we did. We were both using fountain pens. His was black, mine red. When he saw that, he said, “Don’t you have another color? Red’s no good for signing books.” So I changed to blue for my last 38 signatures.

  “I don’t know what you have against red,” I said. “It’s a great color.”

  “I don’t want to sign in black,” he said sportively, “alongside a coauthor who signs in red. You might as well w
ear two-tone shoes when we lecture together.”

  Our San Antonio presentation went smoothly, and soon we were saying goodbye. It was perhaps the shortest meeting we ever had on the day of a joint presentation. But it was still enjoyable, and we all left feeling enthusiastic about our trip to Singapore and Hong Kong.

  Change of Travel Plans

  On the morning of Thursday, January 21, four days before our departure for Asia, a call came into the office. “It’s Justice Scalia,” my assistant said. I picked up, and it was Angela.

  “Hi, Bryan. This is Angela. Please hold for the Justice.”

  “Sure.”

  With hardly a pause, he came on: “Hi, Bryan! Listen, I’ve got a problem. The blizzard is coming into Washington, and if I don’t get out of here on Friday, I may not make it out at all. The airport’s probably going to close tomorrow afternoon, and then our whole trip may have to be postponed.”

  “Come down to Dallas early. Fly down tomorrow morning.”

  “Would that be okay?”

  “Sure. We’ll just have an extra day together here in Dallas. Karolyne and I are hosting a reception at the house tomorrow night, and then of course on Saturday we’re having dinner with Chief Justice Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Harriet Miers. You know Harriet.”

  “Yes. Sounds good.”

  “Otherwise, we’ll just do whatever you like—perhaps work on Reading Law. I have a few little assignments for you.”

  “I can do a little of that, but you know I have work to do on opinions.”

  “I’ll set you up in the library. And we can do some last-minute things to get ready for the trip. This’ll be great. How soon can you get here tomorrow?”

  “I’m checking. But if this snowstorm shuts down the airport before I get out, everything’s going to be thrown off kilter.”

  “Let’s get you out of there early.”

  Karolyne teamed up with Angela, and soon Justice Scalia was set to fly the next day.

  I knew that U.S. marshals would be coming by the house: this would be the third time that Justice Scalia had stayed with us. But unlike the other times, we had no events scheduled for him in advance, apart from Saturday’s Hecht–Miers dinner. Karolyne and I would have to keep him productively entertained and otherwise well rested. The Sunday flight to Hong Kong would be in business class, so the seats would lie flat for sleeping. Even so, 16 hours on a transpacific flight to Hong Kong—followed by another 4-hour flight to Singapore—would tax anyone.

  Oh, and breakfast! His most important meal, as we well knew: we must have eggs and sausage for Saturday and Sunday. And oh again! We must find a Sunday Mass for him. We’d have two Sundays with him, in Dallas and in Hong Kong, and he’d want traditional Masses—preferably in Latin, if we could find them.

  On Friday, Justice Scalia would arrive just before midday. Karolyne and I spent the morning at LawProse. For me, it was snoot-time: this was the final window of opportunity to approve page proofs for my new book, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. I was eager to show it to Justice Scalia. Along with tables, sentence diagrams, and other graphic elements, the book sports many Scalia-inspired shaded boxes: choice quotations from scholarly literature interspersed throughout the text.

  “Bryan, you’re going to be late!” Karolyne said about 11:15 a.m. “The Justice will be landing any minute!”

  “Have you verified that with Angela?”

  “No, I checked the flight status online. Go home!”

  “I just have to get my final printout of The Chicago Guide to show him. You know it’s going to press today. We’re sending it through to Chicago now.”

  “I’ll bring your copy home with me. Go! Make sure his room is ready. Make sure he has shampoo and conditioner.”

  Justice Scalia’s Arrival

  My dash home took ten minutes. No marshal was out front. I went straight up to the second-story pink bedroom where Justice Scalia always stayed. The window looks out onto the front yard. Once there, I saw that now there was a marshal’s car in our front cross-drive near the street. I made sure Justice Scalia had plenty of bottled water, and I noticed that Karolyne had put a bottle of Campari on his side desk. Shampoo? Check. Conditioner? Check.

  I walked out the front door to see the marshal. He emerged as I approached his car.

  “Hello,” I said. “Good to have you here. I’m Bryan Garner.” We shook hands. He was a young marshal I hadn’t met before, perhaps in his mid-30s. “Is he close yet?” I asked.

  “He just landed. He’ll be here about seven minutes after he gets into the car.” The marshals always had precise times, down to the minute.

  “Excellent. Let me know what I can do for you while you’re here. Do you need water? Would you like a Diet Dr Pepper? I have plenty of those.”

  “No thank you, sir. We have everything we need.”

  “Will a marshal be here at all times?”

  “Yes.”

  “Front and back? Is there somebody stationed in the alley?”

  “Intermittently. We’ll be checking on the house, but we won’t disturb you.”

  “Do you sleep in the car out here?”

  “No, sir. We take shifts. We’re set up in a hotel room nearby, so we get to sleep. But when we’re here, we’re awake and alert.”

  His phone rang. “Roger.” It was 11:35.

  “He’s on his way.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be right out when he drives up. Thanks for your help this weekend.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  I went in, made some coffee, plumped the couch pillows, and otherwise made ready. I had prepared two matching accordion folders of 23 law-review articles for us to review together: one labeled “Justice Scalia—Asia 2016” and the other labeled “BAG—Asia 2016.” The contents were identical. The articles contained commentary on Reading Law, some laudatory and some critical. I figured these articles would give us plenty of fodder. Mind you, we had already added some 55 pages of new material for the second edition of Reading Law, so at this point we merely needed to add finishing touches. We planned to bring out the second edition in the fall of 2016.

  As his car pulled up in the front drive, I walked out.

  “Hello, Bryan!” He was in a full suit, as always, with a dapper gold-and-blue tie. He looked as if he might have shed some weight. His complexion was rubicund from the cheeks down, a little whitish in the forehead.

  “Hello, Nino! How was your trip?” We shook hands and walked into the house to the front foyer, accompanied by two marshals.

  “Good, but that food on Virgin America isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

  “No? That’s a shame. What was it?”

  “Some kind of curry. I didn’t like it. Mushy. Boy, I got the last flight out of D.C. The very last one. I think they shut down the airport ten minutes after we took off. I’m really, really lucky to have gotten out.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it from the weather here in Dallas, would you?”

  “It’s beautiful here. A world of difference. I built a fire for Maureen. It should last her at least 36 hours. It’s a big one. I hated leaving her. I feel bad about it. At least I built a fire.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Where’s Lyne?”

  “Still at the office. She has lots to do this afternoon before we leave.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “On this extra day? Guy stuff, I figure. Maybe you need a haircut.”

  “A haircut? Are you serious?”

  “You’re getting a little shaggy, and so am I. Let’s get a haircut.” The truth was that I needed one badly—but I could see that he did, too.

  “Okay. Nobody but my regular guy in Washington has cut my hair in, let’s see, 30 years.”

  “I’ve got a great barber. It’s an old-fashioned barbershop. You’ll like it.”

  “But I’m a little tired after that flight.”

  “You want a nap?”

  “I want a nap,” Justice Scalia
said emphatically, stressing each word. He would often respond to a question in just that way, echoing the question but with avuncular, jovial emphasis. “When can we get a haircut?”

  “How about tomorrow morning?” I said.

  I turned to Ralph Tenorio, the senior U.S. marshal in the area, a man I’d known for years. Ralph wanted to know the particulars about the barber and the shop so he could make arrangements. Justice Scalia listened as we went through the immediate itinerary.

  “We’ll be having dinner here tonight. I have three guests coming at 5:00 p.m. for wine and cheese, and then we have a Trinity University alumni reception at 7:00.”

  “Am I expected to go to that?” Justice Scalia objected. “An alumni reception?”

  “No, Nino. We’ve just had it on the books for quite some time.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be part of that. Is it a fundraiser?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that. I’ll work in my room. I have opinions . . .”

  “Of course. We’ll be having barbecue, and we’ll bring a plate to your room. How does that sound?”

  “Barbecue? Sounds good.”

  “It’s from Sonny Bryan’s. You’ll like it. Promise.”

  “So you won’t be leaving the house tonight?” Ralph asked.

  “Right. We’re set for the afternoon and evening.”

  “What about tomorrow morning?” Ralph wanted to nail down all the logistics.

  “We’ll have breakfast at Angela’s Cafe, just 300 yards to the south of us. Is 8 o’clock okay for breakfast?” I asked Justice Scalia.

  “Sure.”

  I turned to Ralph. “Then we’ll leave about 9:50 for a 10:00 haircut. I’ll get you information on the barber first thing in the morning. You can make sure his chair is open at 10:00, I think.”

  “Right.” The U.S. marshals always needed to know our movements an hour or so in advance, especially for restaurants. I figured I’d call Ivan, my barber, to tell him what was going on.