“Shit, Sheila, I’m going to have to start working out. I’m really scared I’m going to drop him everyday. Once may be OK, but I can’t drop a federal judge on a New Jersey sidewalk EVERY DAY. Shit. If I knew I was going to have to arm-curl an old person during my clerkship, I would have bagged Con Law Two in favor of the gym. Fuck.”

One couldn’t argue with that.

Chapter Six

Brian took me up on my offer. He had e-mailed me about lunch no less than five times over the course of several weeks. What lawyers lacked in personality, they made up for in sheer determination.

I tiptoed out of the clerks’ cave when the coast was clear (read: when Evan was in the bathroom). Evan had blossomed into a jewel of a jackass, one that I avoided at all costs. I’d learned of this the hard way.

During the second week of work, in an attempt to bond, I suggested a group lunch to Evan and Matthew. I joined them in the cafeteria after a pit stop in the bathroom, arriving moments after war had broken out. Evan was leaning over the counter screaming at Ernie: “It’s right there, can’t you see it!?”

“I am a blind man—BLIND!!!” Ernie yelled, sticking him with a huge plate of deep-fried chicken livers.

A few steps behind Evan, I carefully—and kindly—instructed Ernie to serve me the sweet potatoes and roasted chicken: “Hi, Ernie. How are you? Yes, the chicken, it’s to your right. Yes, thank you, Ernie.” Matthew followed my lead and walked away with exactly what he’d ordered.

Incredibly, pissing off the entire cafeteria (just as I’d done a week earlier) didn’t hinder Evan from staining my ears worse than Aunty Nirmila at my cousin’s wedding. This was quite a feat considering Aunty Nirmila had cornered me for two full hours, shoving glossy head shots of Lakshman, her best friend Anjili’s single thirty-four-year-old son from Bangalore in front of me. “But he’s engineeeeeeeer, Sheila. Baby, please, you’ll make us all soooo happy if you come meet him. You’re not getting any younger.” I’d just celebrated my sweet sixteenth. And Lakshman couldn’t have gotten any grosser. Glossy after glossy revealed a short, squat man grinning like a dog in heat and the only thing he might have engineered was the patch of curly hair spilling out of his pimply ear. The one of Lakshman with tight white jeans on top of a miniature pony was the final straw. Evan’s lecture was worse.

The moment we squeezed our way in between a pack of secretaries, Evan ditched his shame over openly ridiculing a blind man and dug right into the livers—then into Matthew and me.