Starankovic blinks rapidly. “Your Honor, if I may, the class is composed—”
Bitter Man holds up a finger. “I said, one good reason.”
“I was about to, Your Honor. The class is composed of some five hundred employees, and counting—”
“No. No. You’re not listening, Mr. Starankovic. Repeat after me. ‘The one good reason …’”
Starankovic licks his dry lips. “The one good reason …”
“‘You shouldn’t grant the motion …’”
“You shouldn’t grant the motion …”
“‘Is …’” Bitter Man finishes with a flourish, waving his hand in the air like a conductor.
“Is …”
“No, you idiot! I’m not going to finish the sentence for you. You finish the sentence.”
“I knew that, Your Honor. I’m sorry.” The man is sweating bullets. “It’s hard to explain. I—”
“One good reason!” the judge bellows.
Starankovic jumps.
The courtroom deputy looks down. The gallery holds its breath. I wonder why judges like Bitter Man get appointments for life. The answer is: because of presidents like Nixon. Someday the electorate will make this connection, I know it.
“I made some mistakes, Your Honor, I admit it,” Starankovic blurts out. “I was having a rough time, my mother had just passed, and I missed a lot of deadlines. Not just on this case—on others too. But it won’t happen again, Your Honor, you have my word on that.”
Bitter Man’s face is a mask of exaggerated disbelief. He grabs the sides of the dais and leans way over. “This is your best argument? This is the one good reason?”
Starankovic swallows hard.
I feel awful. I almost wish I’d never brought the motion in the first place.
“This is the best you can come up with? The one good reason I shouldn’t grant the motion is that you were making a lot of mistakes at the time—and this was just one of them?”
“Your Honor, it’s not like—”
“Mr. Starankovic, you said your only concern was for your clients. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Do you care enough to give them the best lawyer possible?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Would the best lawyer possible fail to file his motion for class certification on time?”
“No … Your Honor.”
“But you failed to do so, didn’t you?”
Starankovic blinks madly.
“Didn’t you?”
Starankovic opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Didn’t you fail to do so, Mr. Starankovic? Yes or no will do.”
“Yes,” he says quietly.
“Then you are not the best lawyer possible, are you?”
There is silence as Starankovic looks down. He can’t bring himself to say it. He shakes his head once, then again.
Socrates would have stopped there, but Bitter Man is just warming up. He drags Starankovic through every deadline he blew and every phone call he failed to return. I can barely witness the spectacle; the back rows are shocked into silence. Poor Starankovic torques this way and that, eyelids aflutter, but Bitterman’s canines are sunk deep in his neck, pinning him to the floor. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There’s only pain and suffering.
When it’s over, Bitter Man issues his decision from the bench. With a puffy smile, he says, “Motion granted.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I say, dry-mouthed.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” says Starankovic, hemorrhaging freely. He shoots me a look that could kill.
“Next!” says Bitter Man.
I stuff my papers in my briefcase and turn to go, as another corporate shill takes my place at counsel table. The pews are jam-packed with us, padded shoulder to padded shoulder, because the argument schedule is so late. I hurry by the freshly shaved suits in rep ties and collar pins. I feel like I’m fleeing the scene of a murder. I avoid the eyes of the men in the gallery, some amused, others curious. I don’t want to think about who sat among them at this time last year.
I promised myself.
I’m almost past the back row when someone grabs my elbow. It’s the only other woman in this horde of pinstriped testosterone, and her red-lacquered nails dig into my arm.
“This has gone far enough!” the woman says.
“What do you mean?” My chest still feels tight, blotchy. I have a promise to keep and I’m failing fast. I try to avoid looking at the pew where she sits, but I can’t help it. It’s where my husband sat with his first-grade class and watched me argue my first motion. The rich mahogany of the pew has been burnished to a high luster, like a casket.
“He hates us! He hates women lawyers!” she says. She punches the bridge of her glasses with a finger. “I think it’s high time we did something about it.”
I only half hear her. All I can think about is Mike. He sat right in this row and had to quiet the class as they fidgeted, whispered, and giggled through the entire argument. He sat at the end of the pew, his arm rested right here. I touch the knobby arm rest with my fingertips. It feels just like his shoulder used to feel: strong, solid. As if it would never give way. I don’t want to move my hand.
“We have to file a complaint of judicial misconduct. It’s the only thing that will stop him. I know the procedure. You file the complaint with the Clerk of the Third Circuit, then it goes to the Chief Judge and …”
Her words grow faint. My fingertips on the shoulder of wood put me in touch with Mike, and in touch with that day. It was a morning like this one. My first argument in court. I remember my own nervous excitement, presenting the motion almost automatically, in a blur. Bitter Man ruled for me in the end, which caused the first-graders to burst into giddy applause. Mike’s face was lit up by a proud smile that didn’t fade even when Bitter Man went ballistic, pounding his gavel. …
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Reality.
I pull my hand from the cold, glossy wood of the pew. Mike isn’t here, Mike is gone. I feel my chest flush violently. “I have to go.”
“Wait? How will I find you? I need you to sign the complaint,” the woman says, grasping at my arm. “I have at least two other incidents. If we don’t do something about this, no one else will!”
“Let me go, I have to go.” I yank my arm from her grasp and bang through the courtroom doors.
My promise is broken; my head is flooded with a memory. Mike and I celebrated the night I won the motion. We made love, so sweetly, and then ate pizza, a reverse of our usual order. Afterward he told me he felt sorry for the employees whose discrimination case I had gotten dismissed.
“You’re a softie,” I said.
“But you love me for it,” he said.
Which was true. Two months later, Mike was dead.
And I began to notice a softer-hearted voice than usual creeping into my own consciousness. I don’t know for sure whose voice it is, but I think the voice is Mike, talking to me still. It says the things he would say, it’s picked up where he left off. Lately