“No, no you didn’t interrupt. I was just squeezing in a call to my girlfriend,” he said, standing and following me to the elevator. “I was going to grab something to eat. Um, want to join me?”

“Actually, I’m meeting some other clerks for lunch,” I replied. We both stepped into the elevator. “You’re more than welcome to come with us.”

“Thanks, that’d be nice,” he said, nodding his head, smiling.

The elevator opened into the courthouse lobby. Standing before our eyes were Brian and a grim gaggle of geeks. Ten of them. Matthew and I made a dozen neat. Never mind my name or how I was doing, each one of them instantly wanted to know: “Who do you clerk for?” At the speed of light, I’d been asked that very question by all ten of them. So fast, in fact, that I was unable to answer before being asked again. Dizzy Gillespie.

Brian had made a reservation at the Continental, a Stephen Starr restaurant everyone in Philly raved about. In less than a decade, Mr. Starr had evolved into a local icon, with Ben Franklin his only real rival.

Even the duck buses, filled with harems of duck-shaped whistle-blowing children and their parents, would pull up in front of Starr’s restaurants. Then a twenty-something with a crew cut and Tommy Hilfiger jeans would retrieve a megaphone (shaped like a duck bill) and scream: “This here is a Ste-VEN Starr restaurant.” Everyone on the bus would scan their map and blow their whistles in proud recognition. The Continental was Stephen Starr’s gem. A Pan-Asian restaurant with specialty martinis (how novel!).

Within moments of having been seated, it became apparent that Evan wasn’t a statistical anomaly. Complex calculus wasn’t required to compute that Evan times ten was markedly worse than times one. Just about everyone there had attended Clerk Camp, where Evan was a B-list celebrity.

“Why didn’t you bring Evan?” Anne from Stanford Law wanted to know.

“I forgot Evan was clerking in Philadelphia. Awesome!” Jeff from Georgetown yelped gleefully like he’d just discovered King Tut’s tomb.

“That’s so cool—Evan’s your coclerk! He’s so funny!” NYU Nathan raised his hand for a high five. Had he accidentally dropped the word looking after funny, or had he meant to imply that Evan had a sense of humor? Either way, it was nothing short of distressing that Evan was my entree into this bizarro world. Even more distressing, when the conversation turned away from Evan, it took a plunge.

“Can you believe they granted cert? I think Bowers may be overturned!” Georgetown Jeff excitedly pulled out a printed sheet of all the cases the Supreme Court had decided to hear that term. Judging from the looks of unencumbered excitement, I knew it wasn’t a joke.