Supreme Ambitions (26 page)

I called up Cravath back in New York, where I had an outstanding job offer, and said that I wanted to accept and start work as soon as possible (which I needed to, out of financial necessity). The firm was happy to have me, especially since I was coming off of a clerkship with a judge who had just been confirmed to the Supreme Court, and told me I could start as soon as I liked. I asked to start one week later, which would give me enough time to tie up loose ends—pack up my (admittedly few) things, find someone to sublet my apartment, and say my good-byes.

And my apologies. I began with Amit, whom I asked to meet me in the Little Mural Room, a random room in the courthouse that always seemed to be empty. Back when the courthouse was a hotel, it served as the “morning room,” where guests would enjoy coffee and read newspapers. It had a peaceful vibe, thanks to several murals of southwestern scenes painted in soft colors—a vibe that I thought might come in handy in case Amit got upset.

Amit and I had never exactly been friends, so as soon as he arrived and sat down, I got straight to the point.

“I'm leaving town soon to go back to New York and start at Cravath. Before leaving, I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I used my knowledge about your writing Beneath Their Robes to blackmail you into withdrawing your Supreme Court clerkship applications. I was blinded by my ambition, and I acted wrongly. I hope you can accept my apology.”

Amit smiled. Was he gloating?

“Apology accepted,” he said. “Yes, you acted unethically. But it's also true that I shouldn't have been writing BTR. So in a sense I'm glad that you stopped me before I got in too deep. I shut the site down and was able to go back to my legal career. No harm, no foul.”

“That's very gracious of you. I expected you to give me a harder time.”

“I was furious with you at the time. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want a Supreme Court clerkship. At least, not with the justices that our boss had the power to hook me up with.”

“Why is that?”

“I have a confession of my own to make. Remember how uncomfortable I looked at our Monday morning meetings whenever
Geidner
came up, and how I didn't volunteer that enthusiastically when the judge asked who wanted to work with her on it? Or remember how campy and over-the-top Beneath Their Robes was? One reader described Article III Groupie as the ‘drag queen of the legal blogosphere.' Audrey, I'm gay.”

Ha, I thought to myself, maybe Jeremy was right after all when he said there was a gay in every chambers in the Ninth Circuit. He just should have guessed Amit instead of James.

“Well, just because you're gay doesn't mean you have to disagree with
Geidner
,” I observed. “You can think gay marriage is good social policy but still think that states are allowed to ban it without violating the Constitution.”

“True,” Amit said. “I've been politically conservative my whole life, but it's only in the past few months that I've been starting to come out and deal with this whole ‘gay' thing. Doing Beneath Their Robes was helpful to me in exploring this part of me. Anyway, I just didn't want to be working on such a major case about gay rights while I was going through a very personal struggle—one that's not yet over. So I'm actually thankful to you for picking up
Geidner
.”

“And look where it got me,” I said with a laugh. “Hated by our boss. And persona non grata at the Supreme Court.”

“But you acted correctly. I'm not worried about you. I suspect the world hasn't heard the last of Audrey Coyne.”

Amit rose to his feet. I stood up too, and he hugged me.

“Whoa! So now that you're gay, you're a hugger?”

“Good luck at Cravath,” he said. “I'll be back in New York soon to start at Sullivan & Cromwell. Maybe I'll see you in the city sometime.”

That went surprisingly well. Next up was James, whom I texted and asked to come down to the Little Mural Room after Amit left.

“I just bumped into Amit in the elevator,” James said when he arrived. “You're like a doctor's office in here.”

“I don't have much time. I'm heading back to New York this weekend and starting at Cravath next week. Before I go, I have a lot of surgeries to do—to repair fractured relationships.”

James laughed. God, he had a great smile.

“I wouldn't say our relationship is fractured,” he said. “I still value our friendship and have so much respect for you.”

“That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to thank you for being my conscience. I don't know if I would have done the right thing if you hadn't urged me to. Yes, the
Geidner
secret was eating away at me, but I did manage to keep it to myself—for weeks. I might never have said anything if not for our conversation. To be honest, I don't want to think about what I would have done—or not done—if you hadn't spoken up.”

“But that was because you confided in me in the first place. You didn't have to do that. You could have just kept your mouth shut, clerked for Stinson on the Court, passed Go, collected your $200—or your $300,000 signing bonus, actually.”

Mention of the money I had basically given up made me momentarily ill.

“Oh God, don't remind me!” I moaned. “Instead of a six-figure signing bonus, I have a six-figure student loan balance.”

“Join the club. But it's nothing that a few years of working at Cravath can't fix.”

“Speaking of fixing things—I'm sorry about how badly I ended things with us. It came at a time when I was under an incredible amount of
stress, working on the
Geidner
opinion and prepping for my interview with Justice Keegan, and I just snapped. Do you think there's any chance we might someday … pick up where we left off?”

James paused—a long, long pause.

“I don't know,” he said. “We're going to be on opposite sides of the country. You're going to be in New York, working insane hours at Cravath. I'm going to be up in San Francisco at Morrison & Foerster, also working long hours …”

He must have seen the disappointed look on my face, because he quickly changed his tone.

“But look,” he said, “I think you're amazing, Audrey. Let's stay in touch—and what will happen will happen.”

Vintage James, sensitive as always. Even I, in all my romantic cluelessness, could see what James was doing here: letting me down easy.

“That sounds good,” I said. “Let's keep the channels of communication open.”

Channels of communication? I sounded like a middle manager ending a team meeting.

We stood up and hugged—a long, long hug. Maybe I was engaging in wishful thinking, but I felt a sense of possibility in the embrace.

My next meeting was with Lucia at the scene of the crime, so to speak: Bodega Wine Bar. It wasn't for another few hours—we were meeting up during that brief window of free time for Lucia when Judge Polanski was driving home—so I decided to walk from the courthouse to downtown, which would give me the chance to clear my head.

Looking back at my botched and brief relationship with James, which was over before it had really begun, I thought about how I had so much to learn about matters of the heart. I was a 24-year-old law school graduate, but I felt like a 14-year-old high school girl in terms of emotional maturity. And perhaps this wasn't surprising: I probably had about as much relationship experience as a high school girl, considering how I had devoted most of my energy over the past decade to my career rather than my personal life. I resolved to focus more on romance upon return
ing to New York. And even if I'd be working long hours at Cravath, I would at least have more psychological energy to devote to finding a love interest, now that my quest for the immortality of a SCOTUS clerkship was over.

I ran a few errands downtown and still arrived at Bodega half an hour early. I took the same seat at the bar that I had the fateful night that Lucia and I had met up for drinks, saved the same seat for her, and ordered a glass of merlot—but barely touched it, waiting for Lucia.

Lucia arrived punctually, as usual, and ordered a glass of pinot noir. I thanked her for the role she played in exposing the jurisdictional defect in
Geidner
, and we drank a true “law nerd” toast: to jurisdiction. After the toast, I took a generous sip from my glass of wine and plunged right in.

“Lucia, I have a confession to make. And an apology. Remember the night that we came here before your interview with Justice Keegan? When I flirted with you, and urged you to drink more, and we kissed?”

She continued to nod, but I detected a slight darkening of her expression.

“That was … dishonest of me. I'm straight—I always have been—and I was never interested in you romantically. I flirted with you and egged you on in terms of drinking that night because, well, I knew you had your big interview the next day—for a clerkship that I badly wanted for myself. And you just seemed so well prepared and so unstoppable, with your Fay Diploma from Harvard and your clerkship with Judge Polanski and all of that. So I, well—I guess you could say I sabotaged you.”

As soon as the gush of words escaped me, I felt better—like when I unburdened myself about
Geidner
to James.

But Lucia didn't feel better. Seconds after I finished, she picked up her wine glass and flung its contents at me (yes, she was drinking red). By the time I had blinked the wine out of eyes and wiped my face down with a napkin, she was gone.

I went to the ladies' room and cleaned myself up as best as I could. I was wearing dark jeans, fortunately, but I didn't hold out much hope for
my white blouse. And I didn't have time to go home and change before my next appointment at Bodega.

“Miss Audrey, what the hell happened to you? That shirt looks like a modern art project.”

I told Jeremy about my meeting with Lucia.

“Hell hath no fury like a lesbian scorned. At least she didn't slug you. Think of it like a spa treatment: she gave you a red-wine facial.”

“I should probably apologize to you before you order a drink,” I said.

“I'm sorry I accused you of envy and bad faith when we argued over Judge Stinson. You were right: she turned out to be, well, a politicized judge.”

“In other words, a conservative political hack.”

“Yes. One who put her ambitions ahead of the law. But many of her issues were specific to her.”

“So you still have faith in ‘the law,' then?”

“I do,” I said. “There are judges out there who do their best to follow ‘the law,' to interpret it as opposed to make it. Maybe not Justice Stinson—and, no offense, not your boss either. But we can both name judges on the court who call cases as they see them. Like Judge Polanski. Or Judge Dennis O'Sullivan, up in Portland. Or Judge Samantha Garber, also in Portland. And a few others, including a lot of the senior judges.”

“That's fair,” Jeremy said. “I just fear there will be fewer judges like them over time and more political hacks. But I guess we'll see.”

“And you were right about another thing: I had a gay co-clerk.”

“James?” Jeremy couldn't hide his giddiness.

“No. Amit.”

“Oh.”

“I stopped by the courthouse to say good-bye to him and he came out to me. And hugged me too.”

“I guess that doesn't shock me—that Amit's gay. He could be a bitchy little queen at times.”

“It takes one to know one.”

“Touché. Now please get Her Royal Highness a drink.”

My last day in Pasadena, a Saturday, arrived before I knew it. I surveyed my apartment, now entirely empty (I had tossed the IKEA furniture), and admired its cleanliness. But I wouldn't miss the place. It had gotten the job done, being cheap and close to the courthouse, but I had never taken the time to make it my home. I supposed this was typical for law clerks and young lawyers, nomads moving from city to city, chasing one professional opportunity after another.

My luggage, a bulging blue suitcase and the black rollerboard I had taken to D.C., sat by the door. All of my other possessions I had previously packed into boxes and shipped to my parents' place in Woodside, where I'd be staying for a few weeks while I hunted for an apartment of my own. I looked forward to getting my own place—and one that I could plan on living in for more than a year. I'd probably live in Queens, an easy commute to Cravath but significantly less expensive than Manhattan—just not as far out as Woodside, maybe Long Island City or Astoria.

I heard a knock at the door. Who could it be? Harvetta was driving me to the airport, but she wasn't supposed to come by for another half hour or so. (I had asked Pervez to drive me to the airport, for old times' sake, but he had another commitment: a party in honor of his cousin Ahmed, who after losing in the Ninth Circuit had won relief from deportation from the attorney general, thanks to a grassroots campaign and the intervention of some prominent politicians.)

I looked through the peephole: Lucia. Not seeing a wine glass in her
hand, I let her in.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” I said. “You're just in time. I'm about to leave for the airport.” I gestured toward my bags, then toward the emptiness of the apartment—so empty that our voices echoed in the small space.

“I'm glad I caught you,” she said. “I'm sorry about the other night.”

“I deserved it. Dousing me with wine was nothing compared to what I did to you.”

“About that—apology accepted. I can't really be that angry about it because, honestly, I would have done the exact same thing if I had been in your shoes. All is fair in love and SCOTUS clerkships.”

I laughed.

“Plus,” she said, “it all worked out in the end. I just got hired to clerk for Justice Liotta!”

“Congratulations!”

We hugged. Yes, I was envious of Lucia. But in keeping with the new, better me, I tried to suppress it.

“When are you clerking for her?” I asked.

“This coming term. She was all hired up, but then she had a clerk who asked to postpone the clerkship, due to a family issue. I interviewed with her last week and she made me the offer last night.”

“That's awesome.”

“I'm thrilled. She's also Italian American—I knew the interview was going well when we conducted part of it in Italian. She's a better fit for me than Justice Keegan. Instead of being the Court's major crusader against gay rights, she's our champion.”

“It will also be cool to clerk for the ‘swing justice.' She casts the deciding vote in so many major cases.”

“Yup. And she uses her clerks a lot as emissaries to the other chambers. It's supposed to be a lot of fun.”

Just then, as if summoned by all the Supreme Court talk, Harvetta appeared in the open doorway.

“Hello, ladies! Did I hear some talk about fun?”

“Harvetta, meet Lucia, who's clerking for Judge Polanski now and who will be clerking for Justice Liotta. Lucia, meet Harvetta, who's clerking for Justice Lin now and who will be clerking for Justice Wilson. You'll be clerking at the Court together, so it's great that you're meeting now.”

They shook hands. I tried to sound cheery, but inside I was heart-broken. They would be clerking at the Court together—making history, walking the marble halls of One First Street, knowing the outcomes of headline- and history-making cases before the public—while I'd be toiling away at a law firm. Getting over not getting a Supreme Court clerkship would take time.

“Okay girl,” said Harvetta, turning to me and grabbing my blue suitcase, “you ready? It's time to ship your ass back to New York.”