Chambermaid Page 3

  “Yep. I take it you are, too. Who are you clerking for?” The question rolled off my tongue before I even knew what I was saying.

  “Judge Fleck,” he said so proudly you’d have thought the pope had just canonized him. He graciously followed up with a pregnant pause to allow me to congratulate him for landing a clerkship with the chief judge, yet another rung in the endless hierarchy. The appellate clerks were better than the district court clerks. Clerking for the chief judge made you clerk king.

  Who was I to dethrone Brian? Not to mention, he was wearing an American flag pin on the buttoned-down collar of his grainy shirt. It would have been unpatriotic of me not to salute him.

  “Wow, that’s great.” I barely got out the last word before Brian started giggling like a slumber party princess.

  “Yeah, he’s sooooo cool. My coclerks and a couple of other clerks I’ve met around are over there,” he said and pointed to his audience, all of whom were watching our conversation in awe. “What about you? Who are you clerking for?” This was clearly going to be the year’s million-dollar question.

  “Friedman. Judge Friedman?” What I muttered sounded more like a question than an answer. A mere week earlier, I had said that name with such pride. I was going to Philadelphia to clerk for Judge Friedman! Now, I could barely say the words as a statement, as if I myself didn’t believe them.

  “Wow, I hear she’s tough,” Brian quickly said, before adding, “but really really smart.”

  Of course. One could never say something even remotely negative about a judge without a qualifying compliment. But I couldn’t blame him really. He’d spent three long years in law school, too, where judges are sacrosanct.

  “What do you mean by tough?” I asked curiously.

  Brian started fidgeting. “Uh, nothing, nothing, like, you know, she’s really tough on lawyers, I think.” Then he looked behind him, as if the boogeyman were standing there.

  “Hey, Brian, I really have to get back,” I lied, staring at my full plate of carcass. Silence. “We should definitely get lunch sometime,” I blurted. Classic. The paradigmatic panic invitation. To escape one awkward social situation, I’d suggest a longer, planned awkward social situation. I tossed the bird and fled.

  The judge was standing in front of Janet’s cubicle when I returned.

  “Hi, Judge. How are you?” I asked, smiling.

  “What does that mean? That is a totally irrational question!” She marched off toward her elevator.

  Had I accidentally told her to fuck off or something? Maybe I’d developed Tourette’s and nobody had the heart to tell me? Had my mother taught me bad manners? Maybe “How are you” was irrational?

  Ding! Thirteenth floor, going down.

  I reached for the phone to call Puja. I was hoping she could shed a little light on my irrationality.

  “What do you think you’re doing?!”

  I swiveled my chair around. There was Janet, standing with her hands on her hips.

  “Ah, I was going to call my sister?” Another statement-turned-question in less than ten minutes.

  “Well, you cannot use the telephone. I don’t know who you think you are, but the only time law clerks and secretaries can use the phone is to answer it for the judge.” Full stop. She clenched her hips.

  “O-K. What about emergencies? Can we not call nine-one-one, say, for fires or death, or—”

  “Only the judge has emergencies.” Janet returned to her desk.

  “Oh, and Sheila, don’t think about using the Internet. She gets really mad about that one,” Janet hollered from the other room.

  Terrific. That left staring as the only option for procrastination. It started to make sense. Staring seemed to be everyone’s favorite pastime. The judge had stared at me all morning. Aside from Janet’s ten-second lecture, all she and Roy had done since I’d arrived was stare (Janet in a not so nice way, Roy in a brain-dead sort of way).

  The place was a training camp for mimes.

  I set in for a good long stare at Camden, New Jersey, but was forced to resume working once the judge returned from lunch. In fact, I was knee-deep in laborese when she sauntered through the clerks’ room, the bags hanging from her hands and arms signaling her departure for the day. Laura and I turned to face Her Honor. I stopped myself from saying anything that could be perceived as subrational. You know, like “Good night” or “Bye.”

  The judge’s lips turned downward.

  “Oh. I forgot to say earlier. There are no vacations. I do not take a vacation, so why should you?! After all, I’m the judge and you are my clerks and if I’m not going anywhere, why should you?!”

  Laura and I simply nodded. It was perfect. What better thing to hear on your first day of work than it’d be another 364 days until a day off.

  “Sheba, you are rilly rilly thin,” the judge said.

  Huh?

  And then the judge glared in Laura’s direction.

  OH GOD!

  Laura was at least thirty pounds overweight. And, the judge had just told her that in so many words. I prayed that Laura’s fixation on the Fourth Amendment had precluded her from processing the insult.

  DING! Thirteenth floor, going down.

  And she was off!

  Just as I was about to snatch my purse and run, I felt a tap on my back.

  TAP! TAP! TAP!

  I swiveled around. It was Laura and she’d managed to pull up a chair right behind me. She must have caught on after all. I was prepared to provide the necessary counseling.

  “Hey. Do you notice how homophobic everyone is here?”

  Had she meant to say fat-a-phobic?

  “Do you even know what it’s like to be a lesbian in this country?” Her mouth went improbably vertical.

  I didn’t. I also didn’t know what it was like being a periodontist. But it didn’t matter. Laura didn’t seem to want an answer at all.

  “Well, it’s really really hard.” She looked pained.

  I was suddenly intrigued. A real-life lesbian! And she was my coclerk. I would actually have a lesbian friend! Puja had recently convinced me that lesbians were more fabulous than gay men. She’d just left a big investment bank for a loftier job with a leveraged-buyout shop. It wasn’t the insane amounts of money that wooed her but the fashionable lipstick lesbian with an even more fashionable Hamptons home where she regularly entertained the glitterati.

  “Everybody is so cruel,” Laura blurted, her eyes getting bigger and bigger, mouth larger and wider. Suddenly she looked like a Moonie. I wondered if lesbian Moonies were fabulous. I had a feeling Puja would say no.

  “I mean, when I was at Brown, like barely anyone outside the Women’s Studies Department would talk to me. And then at Chicago, people would just stare. Stare at me.”

  “Laura, wow, I’m so sorry that—”

  “Well, whatever, have a good night.” With that, she ejected herself from my personal space and returned to her cubicle, restoring a silent order.

  I walked into my empty apartment that night and collapsed onto the yellow velour couch I’d inherited from my parents years earlier, while a junior at the University of Michigan. It had been a long day.

  I closed my eyes and prayed. Puja and I had been raised part Hindu (Dad), part Catholic (Mom), and part Episcopalian (grade school). While incoherent in the formative years, this theological medley proved very useful as an adult. It allowed us to unabashedly beg for favors from the Man Upstairs (Catholic), drink when the prayers were or weren’t answered (Episcopalian), and ultimately not give a crap because we’d probably be reincarnated as frogs anyway (Hindu). I was at stage one and started crossing my heart, hoping to die. I needed salvation, or a little help at least.

  How would I endure twelve months in such an environment?

  A boss whose hobbies included mimery and fat jokes, a patronizing, persecuted lesbian for a coclerk, and a macraméing medievalist as a secretary? It was a bit more than I’d bargained for. Not to mention, I had not one single friend in
Philly and felt deathly alone.

  I’d asked Sanjay to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for the final year of his residency. He’d scoffed at the request, citing a would-be disruption to an “impeccable group synergy.” Maybe I should have demanded it nevertheless. A live-in boyfriend, even one who had to be kidnapped, would have been welcome. And James, my friend from Columbia, wasn’t starting his clerkship in Camden until the following week.

  I was all alone in Pennsylvania.

  Are you there, God? It’s me, Sheila.

  Chapter Three

  DING! Thirteenth floor, going down!

  “Roy! Roy! I smell smoke! Did you smoke in here!” Her voice was shriller than most fire alarms. I jumped out of my seat. I imagined Roy probably peed in his.

  “Um. Uh. Your Honor.”

  For the love of all that’s holy and good, just spit it out, Sir Felemid McDowell. I quietly arose and peered around the corner. Tall, grown medievalist shaking so fiercely his mullet and fanny pack rattled. Little woman with squinty eyes, bun touching fanny pack, shaking fist at said man.

  “I don’t smoke here,” Roy managed to spill.

  There. He’d said it. He didn’t do it.

  “Well, I smell it and it’s awful. THERE WILL BE NO MORE SMOKING! Not here. Not there. Not anywhere!”

  The judge was banning smoking? In all of Pennsylvania? The country? The world? She couldn’t do that. It’d be tough even for Congress or the United States Supreme Court to do that. Surely Roy would point out this logistical snafu. The only person who could make Roy quit smoking was Roy.

  “Yes, Judge.” Just like that, he was taking it. Maybe the judge was more powerful than I’d initially thought. A little fist-shaking and she could make smokers quit.

  The judge whipped around to Janet.

  “Bob is not doing well today,” she barked. Bob was the judge’s husband. The word on the street was that he was a billion years old and had been trying to knock off for years. In addition to being deaf and suffering from dementia, Bob had lived through ten or so heart attacks, and each time, the judge apparently would order the doctors to electrocute him back to life.

  “Sorry to hear that, Judge,” Janet replied.

  “What!? What is that supposed to mean? That’s so stupid! What are you sorry about? You’re sorry!” The miracle worker had miraculously turned empathy into a curse within five seconds flat.

  And now she stood in the doorway, staring directly at me. What about my prayers?

  “Shaylee!”

  “Yes, Judge,” I said, forcing myself to face her.

  “How are you coming along with that case?”

  “Um. Ahh—”

  “What’s the issue?” she demanded. To be fair, I should have known the issue after two full days.

  “Um. Well, it’s this union and they’re mad because they say that, um—”

  ZAP!

  “I do not have time for this nonsense. You’re rilly rilly slow and not at all clear. I have law clerks to quickly—and succinctly—state the issues. I want that bench memo on Monday!”

  That gave me three days to figure out how to escape the chamber, change my identity, and find a nice two-bedroom Afghani cave.

  As soon as the judge assumed staring position in her office, she picked up the phone. This was a first. For such an important woman, the judge didn’t receive many calls. Over the past two days, the phone hadn’t rung once. She didn’t call anyone either. I was curious. She was probably just calling Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds to let them know she’d just put them out of business. It was the least she could do.

  RING! Speakerphone. I’d get to hear the whole thing!

  “HU-LLO,” a very old, dear-sounding man answered.

  “BOB! BOB! BOB!” Heavy breathing from his end. “Go outside! Sit on the patio—that’s why I had it built, damn it!” With that, she slammed the phone and started screaming again. “Where’s what’s-his-name? What’s-his-name! What’s-his-name!!”

  What the heck was going on? What was what’s-his-name? I pretended to keep working. At this rate, I’d definitely have the memo finished within three to four years.

  “Where. Is. He?” Type. Type. Type. “Shandraaaaaa!!!!” I jumped for the second time that day, and it wasn’t even 9 AM.

  “Yes, Judge.” Maybe I’d been too harsh on Roy. The words “Yes, Judge” were the only ones that produced themselves.

  “Where is who’s-it?”

  Who was who’s-it and how was I supposed to know his or her whereabouts? And wasn’t it totally clear that I didn’t know anything about anything.

  “Him. Him!” She pointed out the door, in the direction of Roy.

  Case cracked. Roy apparently had multiple personalities. In addition to being a middle-aged, fanny-pack-wearing secretary and a twelfth-century tribal poet singer from Ireland, Roy was also “what’s-his-name” and “who’s-it.” How obvious.

  “Um. I’m not sure, Judge. He must have just gone to the bath—”

  “Yes, Judge!” Who’s-it came plowing into her office from who-knows-where. Thank God.

  “I know you can’t do anything, but xerox this,” she snarled, shoving a crumpled piece of paper in his traumatized face.

  “Yes, Judge.” He bowed like a drunk samurai and stumbled off. Incredible. The woman exposed her tonsils to the East Coast just to get a copy made? Maybe she was nuts? I’d never been around a certifiably crazy person before, so I couldn’t be sure. But for two days straight, all she’d done was alternately glare and stare. Today, she was pistol-whipping anyone in her path. It was clear she hated Roy most, which was particularly sad as it seemed like he was lacking in the self-confidence department to begin with.

  Before Roy could screw up the xeroxing, it started again.

  “JANET!!!!”

  “Yes, Judge.” Those magic words again. Janet jumped into the torture chamber.

  “Have we heard from Judge Adams in Morgan versus Taylor?” she asked, lips pursed.

  “Um, er, Judge, her secretary just sent me an e-mail saying she needed to talk to you about Morgan before signing on.” Janet braced herself.

  “What! What! Why are you just telling me this now?”

  “Because I just got the e-mail a minute ago and—”

  “Let’s not forget something! You work for me! Not for Judge Adams!”

  “Yes, Judge.”

  “That woman is getting way too big for her britches. I’m not taking this from her!!!” Judge Friedman obviously didn’t like Judge Adams. Then again, she didn’t seem to like anyone, not even her husband. Janet, the messenger, was caught in the crossfire.

  “Judge, er, um, do you want me to call Judge Adams’s chambers?”

  “No! I’ll call her myself. This is RIDICULOUS!” The fact that another judge actually read and wanted to comment on an opinion before it became law for thousands of people—that was ridiculous? “Give me her number,” the judge demanded.

  “Um, OK, I’ll go get it.” Janet turned toward her desk.

  “What? You don’t have it here? Forget it. I’ll do it myself. Can’t you do anything? You, you, you’re so stupid you make me want to die. Get out!”

  The judge never called Judge Adams. Instead, she sat behind her desk for the rest of the day, muttering to herself about “big britches” and how “this will have to stop.” The woman talked to herself all afternoon, which I strangely preferred to her staring. Having her occupied with something enabled me to make headway on the labor case. By the time she picked up her phone, I’d waded through a dozen cases and was about to commence my bench memo.

  “Good afternoon, Judge Fleck’s chambers,” said a timid-sounding voice. It was Brian.

  Lucky for me, the judge seemed fond of the speakerphone.

  “It’s Judge Friedman. Give me Judge Fleck.”

  “Sure. Um, um, Your Honor.” Brian was such a Goody Two-shoes. He was one of those law students who often stayed after class to tell the professor how “interesti
ng” his or her lecture had been. But when faced with a real-life judge, Brian could barely speak.

  “Hello, Helga,” Judge Fleck said flatly.

  “Richard, this is getting ridiculous. I mean, Linda is way too big for her britches. This has to stop!” Why was she calling Judge Fleck to complain about Judge Adams’s britches? Granted, I didn’t know much about the inner workings of the federal judiciary, but I was quite sure that chief judges were supposed to ensure that their courts ran smoothly, not to derail the process of editing and reviewing opinions and surely not to referee playground politics.

  “Helga, I just don’t understand why you get so upset with her. What has she done now?” He was definitely annoyed. My ears perked up.

  “I sent her a beautiful opinion last week. And she just won’t approve it, damn it! She always wants to talk about it. You, as chief, really need to talk to her,” she ordered.

  Judge Fleck sighed loudly. He clearly wasn’t buying any of it. I hadn’t known Helga Friedman for long, but I knew enough to know that standing up to her took guts. It was no wonder Brian and his coclerk went around reiterating Supreme Court justice jokes. Even I would laugh at a Scalia joke delivered by a human brave enough to actually sigh at Judge Friedman.

  “Helga, I’ll talk to her about it,” he lied before hanging up.

  Before I could glance over, the judge was hovering above me, standing in my cubicle.

  “Did you know that I was the first woman ever to have been given the presidential commission?” She smiled, patting her bun.

  I wondered if she knew that two long, slightly curly hairs were coming out of her right nostril.

  “Ah, yes, Judge, I did know. That’s really amazing. Really amaz—”

  “Well, I don’t have time for this! And you should make time for eating. You’re rilly rilly thin.”

  I should have been thankful. Puja and I had been trying to catch anorexia since we were tots. I’d never been successful. Not that I was fat, I just wasn’t rilly rilly thin. It had to stop. How could Laura take much more?