down at the podium. My heart is pounding, my ears tingling. I curse Bitter Man, for humiliating me, and Richard Nixon, for appointing him to the federal bench.
“Pretty please? With a cherry on top?” The judge’s voice is thick with sarcasm.
Not a soul in the gallery laughs. The courtroom deputy avoids my eye, busily examining the buttons of the tape recorder. Christ. It’ll be on tape. “Your Honor—”
“Miz DiNunzio!” Bitter Man is suddenly furious; he looks like a volcano about to blow. “Sing!”
The courtroom is as quiet and stone-cold as death.
I close my eyes. I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here. I’m back in my girlhood, back in midnight mass on Christmas Eve, lost in the airy heights of “Ave Maria.” I open my mouth and the notes fly out, unexpectedly clear and strong. They soar high over the congregation like the hymn, lovely and resonant in the wintry air. “Harbison’s The Hardware People. We take the haaaaaard out of hardware!”
When I open my eyes, Bitter Man’s anger has evaporated. “That was quite . . . beautiful,” he says.
I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic, and I don’t care. “May I begin my argument, Your Honor?”
“You may.”
So I do, and the argument sounds punchy and right, fueled by my fury at the judge. I rattle off the local court rules that Starankovic has broken, then segue into my cases, transforming each into the parable of the Careless Lawyer Who Undermined Our System of Justice. Bitterman begins to bare his canines in an encouraging way, which means he’s either happy or hungry. I finish my argument and return to counsel table.
“Your Honor, if I may respond,” Starankovic says. He pushes down the shiny pants that are static-clinging to his socks and walks to the podium like a Christian into the Roman Colosseum. “May it please the Court, I’m Bernard-”
“Save it, Mr. Starankovic. We both know that defense counsel is right on the law. Your conduct as class counsel has been a disgrace—even my law clerks could do better. How could you miss the deadline on your motion for class certification? It’s the one thing you have to do and you couldn’t even do that right.”
“But Your Honor . . .”
Bitter Man holds up a hand that looks like a mound of Play-Doh. “Stifle, Mr. Starankovic, as Archie Bunker used to say.” He glances around the room to see if anyone appreciates his joke. The gallery is too terrified to laugh, but the courtroom deputy smiles broadly. Your tax dollars at work.
“Yes, Your Honor.” Starankovic bows slightly.
“Now, Mr. Starankovic, even though Miz DiNunzio thinks she has you, you and I know that I have total discretion in deciding whether to grant her motion. I may grant it or I may deny it purely as a matter of my own inherent powers. Am I right?”
Starankovic nods.
“Of course I am. So your work is cut out for you. Your job is to give me your best argument. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t grant Miz DiNunzio’s motion.”
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—
“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 a 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.
