“Well,” she said, grinning at Kevin, “Adams is, like, really the best. The woman is hysterical. Like today, for example, Kevin”—she snapped him to attention—“Kev, did you see it when she handed me that brief in that trespassing case and it was, like, huge and she just said”—and then Jana took a time-out to chuckle, which made the rest of us feel compelled to chuckle also in spite of not knowing the punch line—“‘this brief ain’t so brief.’” Then, full-fledged hysteria. Tears ran down her face. Our respective spaghetti and meatballs came.

Through one particularly large bite, Jana continued: “And, like, yesterday, the judge came into me and Kev’s area and it was, like, totally quiet back there, and she just said, ‘Wow, you guys are quieter than Justice Thomas is on the bench’”—cackle, snort, cackle, piece of meatball went flying from Jana’s mouth and landed splat on the left lens of James’s glasses. To think they’d be doing it later. Kevin eeked.

James quickly blotted the ball, which smeared his lens. Jana just kept talking. I yanked what was left in the carafe from James’s weary grasp.

“Yeah, so all of the clerks are like supercool. I mean, Kev for one, of course. Then there’s Walt. He went to, like, NYU. As you know, I went to Virginia. I loved Virginia. I was on the Law Review. Were you on the Law Review, Sheila? I was on the Law Review. Walt was on NYU Law Review. The judge always gets, like, one guy from NYU. And Betsy, that’s our last clerk. She went to Duke.”

I wondered if I could choke myself if I ate a meatball whole. Stealing a glance at James, I silently implored how sex could be worth this.

Walking outside, Jana hailed a cab and tried to drag James along with her. Politely lying that he had an early morning conference with the judge, he managed to free himself and walked home with me and Kevin, during which time he assured us that he was done with Jana. If only he’d stuck to that plan.

About an hour after we returned to our respective apartments, James slipped back out to pay Jana a surprise booty call. Brian answered Jana’s door, holding a bottle of champagne, wearing nothing more than a Mickey Mouse towel and his fedora. Unsettling to visualize. Psychologically damaging to witness.

James stayed long enough to entertain Brian’s weighty question: “Hey man, how’s the fuckin’ district court treatin’ you?”

Chapter Seven