“Who do you think you are?!” Her eyes were filled with hatred. I didn’t have a good answer. I used to be a well-liked, affable, relatively charming, somewhat intelligent Indian American woman. Now, I was a stupid lunch-whoring Pakistani.

“I do NOT go to lunch. I am nice enough to let you people go. But you’ve taken advantage of me one too many times.”

Heavens to Betsy Ross! What was she talking about? We had no vacation days, weren’t allowed to be sick, worked ten hours a day, couldn’t speak, could barely move, and cranked out more bench memos than the Catholic Church cranked out pedophiles. All for a pittance. And we were taking advantage of her because we’d been held up for five minutes getting lectured about habeas corpus! This was outrageous. Yet she was the one outraged. My silence caused further infuriation.

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE LUNCH!!! NO MORE LUNCH!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND!!!????” Actually, I didn’t. Was she outlawing the entire, age-old concept of lunch?

“Yes, Judge,” I lied.

When I walked back into the clerks’ cave, Matthew silently beckoned me to his cubicle.

“Sorry I left you in there like that,” he whispered.

“I’d have done the same thing,” I assured him. “What do you think sparked that episode? I mean, did we just deserve that?”

“I don’t know, can’t really answer that one,” he mumbled uncomfortably. My cue to leave.

As I stood, I noticed a shimmering frame on Matthew’s desk. The picture inside revealed a blond waif who managed to sport such a severe camel toe that it resembled a forklift.

“Oh, that’s Heidi,” Matthew explained. “That’s her at her parents’ house down the Jersey shore.” I nodded, soaking in the cheese factor. “She, ah, she gave me this frame in case you’re, you know, wondering,” he quickly added. I wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed by (a) the glitter, (b) the fact that he had a picture of his girlfriend in a string bikini at work (or anywhere, for that matter), or (c) the toe.

“That’s nice. That’s, ah, really nice. She’s lovely,” I muttered. Returning to my cubicle, I caught a glimpse of the judge, who pursed her lips at me, nodding her head disapprovingly.

I was in a foul mood when I got home. Out of sheer panic, before leaving work, I’d e-mailed my contact at the ACLU about the application process there. She hadn’t e-mailed me back. Granted, it’d only been a few hours, but in that time I’d managed to convince myself that Brian was somehow masterminding the death of my legal career. Never mind that he had no clue that I had either worked at the ACLU or had any desire to work there in the future.