“Sure, Evan. What do you need?” Pretending not to know he failed was the best I could do.

“Well, I don’t know if you know this. But”—he took a deep breath—“I failed the bar.” Passable shock. Emphatic nod. “And the judge just buzzed me and said she needed to talk to me. I know this is what it’s about. I’m petrified.” His knees wobbled. Instinctively, I hugged him. He started sobbing.

“Listen, Evan. It’s fine. First of all, you’ll take the bar again and you’ll pass. Don’t even sweat that. As for the judge, don’t cry in front of her. She’ll destroy you.” While not the most comforting advice, it certainly was the most sound.

“EVVVVVAAAANNNN!”

I took a deep breath, prompting Evan to do the same. Matthew stood to salute Evan as we Lamazed our way through the clerks’ cave.

Then Evan disappeared into the abyss.

Matthew and I accompanied Evan to the Las Vegas Lounge that evening. The afternoon hadn’t been a good one. The judge’s castigation (“You’re an embarrassment to yourself, to this chamber, and to the judiciary itself”) seemed unnecessary, considering that Evan had punished and would continue to punish himself enough. His reaction—immersing himself in his pocket-size Constitution from cover to cover—was at once peculiar and respectable.

We walked into the bar. There were dozens. No hundreds. Thousands maybe? More people were crammed into that smoky bar than bathed in the Ganges on a sweltering August afternoon. It seemed that every law clerk in America had shown up with the express intent of making Evan feeling like a colossal jackass. Was this really the profession that I had chosen? One in which schadenfreude was veiled as concern?

“Evan, I’m so sorry!” “Evan. How are you?” “Evan, I can’t even imagine how you must feel.” I loved histrionics as much as the next drama queen, but everyone was treating Evan as though he had just been diagnosed with a fatal disease.

Matthew pushed his way in front of Evan, shielding him from the misplaced condolences. I grabbed Evan’s arm and pulled him toward the bar. The last thing my body needed was a drink after the night before, but this clerkship could have made an alcoholic out of a teetotaling Mormon.

“Hold on. Hold on. Where are you going?” Brian said. The proud party planner had emerged displaying what must have been a bar-passage gift from his mother—a sparkling BlackBerry cradled in a plastic holster, which was pinned to his braided belt.

“We’re just getting a drink,” Evan responded. “We’ll be back in a second.”

“Hey, we should get out of here,” Matthew suggested. “How about if the three of us go out solo?”