Nell Zink - Mislaid

“To me, that sounds too much like a sensational case all over the papers.”

“So I’ll put a gag order on it. I’ll venue this in a little courtroom with, I don’t know, maybe six spots for the public? We’ll get a few friends in there early on, and there won’t be room for any gentlemen of the press. The only question mark is can we trust Lee and Trip to get up that early in the morning.” He drained his third martini.

Soon after that, the prosecutor called a press conference to present the results of the Thetan House sting to the waiting world.

He worked hard to prepare his talk. It was a tour de force of dialectics in which hundreds of task force members contributed details to a picture that assembled itself in his mind alone, so that all the credit was his. The villain: R. Byrd Fleming, wealthy degenerate. The prosecutor knew Byrdie didn’t have money. Byrdie was money. He was “old money,” and the prosecutor was the kind of suburbanite whose wife blows his salary hunting a quarter horse sidesaddle in a blue veil and chirps (Lee’s term for a fake riding habit, chaps plus skirt — he was not a famous poet for nothing!). Byrdie was money incarnate, and the prosecutor looked up to him as slightly glamorous and decadent in spite of himself. That’s what he thought the First Families of Virginia were: aristocrats. Not a passel of redneck landlords who think their serfs have cooties. He expected the reporters covering the case to feel as he did, since at that time it was still mostly rich people who owned newspapers.

But the press conference was canceled at the last minute. The gag order came through, and he had to stand up in front of the reporters and say the case had been affected by unanticipated developments. He looked helpless and unhappy and refused further comment.

During the winter, Karen saw Byrdie a couple of times on campus. She glanced at him and thought, Asshole! It made her feel brave.

Byrdie saw Karen only once. She was kicking a vending machine that refused to turn loose the bottommost soda she’d just paid for. He thought, I should go give her thirty-five cents now. Then he thought, No contact with the witness. Could be construed as pressuring. Plenty of time for that later.

Byrdie saw Temple several times — Temple was always conspicuous — and thought, When this all blows over, I will try to get that jacket back.

Temple saw Karen every day and Byrdie not at all. He had other worries. While pretending to study in the library, he had struck up an acquaintanceship with a zaftig junior girl who clearly thought he was very sweet. She was majoring in international relations and learning Chinese, a language she claimed had no verb tenses. She seemed sincerely perturbed that he would waste his time on Russian. “Russia is doomed to irrelevance. The Soviet Union is breaking up. God, Temple, why are you doing this to yourself?” He went to see his adviser and came back unhappy. Jefferson scholars were not supposed to struggle this way. Indecision, okay, but existential crises? Where was the accomplished kid they’d recruited? Did he need a semester off?

Karen remarked that he had started learning Russian because of a girl, and now he wanted to switch to Chinese because of a girl. “You’re like in Plato’s symposium,” she said. “You fall in love with any fat, ugly person who knows more than you do.”

“Plato was justifying pederasty,” Temple said. “You should read Xenophon’s symposium. That’ll open your eyes.”

“Give me a break, Mister Know-It-All,” Karen said.

“I’m the opposite of Plato,” Temple insisted. “If Plato was right, I’d be craving sex with my Russian professor. Maybe it’s not the worst idea. I need an A.”

Karen lay back on the bed, wriggling and caressing her body, and moaned, “Comrade Moody, nyet! Nyet! Pravda! Take A! I must give you A!”

He lay down on top of her. “My blond feeble goosefat whore,” he sighed.

“Don’t you James Joyce me!” she said. But it was too late.

The trial was set to start on the eighth of March. The weather was pretty and sunny, with soft carpets of crocus blooming everywhere.

Jury selection was brisk and efficient. Finding jurors sympathetic to handsome white students is not rocket science. Almost no one but middle-class retirees came to jury duty anyway. The defense felt safe on that score.

For the CA it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. White jurors might favor Byrdie, but they were also more likely to disapprove of drugs. His case hinged on how Karen presented herself. The jurors would regard drug use by an upper-class boy as sowing wild oats. Seeing that the wild oats had been sown on a black girl who looked white and too young would shake their faith in Byrdie’s probity. He felt they would believe Karen’s testimony no matter what. All the physical evidence was on her side: the notes, the drugs. So the more pathetic she came across, the better for the prosecution. Her unfitness would rub off on Byrdie. The jurors would send him to jail to teach him to pick on someone his own size.

The defense was pursuing the same strategy, while expecting a different outcome. If Karen was not credible, the prosecution had no case. So the strategy of the defense team, including the judge, was to make her nervous.

The venue was a tiny courtroom where the judge and jury took up nearly half the space. It was usually used for things like traffic infractions and divorce decrees. It was not the judge’s usual circuit court, but he had insisted on a small room to reduce threats to security. The courthouse had no guards at the outside doors. Reporters and hostile frat boys were wandering around at random. Byrdie’s brothers were out in force to support him, and other frats had joined the cause in solidarity. Hip flasks were making the rounds. The bailiff told Karen gently that the judge would rather violate protocol than have her get “lynched,” so he brought her in after the courtroom filled and sat her down by the door. She hunched there looking miserable.

Opposite the judge sat the lawyers, the court reporter, Byrdie, Lee, Trip, a few of Byrdie’s frat brothers to pack the house, the bailiff, and Karen. The room was wider than it was deep. Everyone in it was wearing a suit, except Karen in a gray rayon dress with a white lace collar. It was brand new and too large. It made her look like a thirteen-year-old Mennonite.

Outside in the hallway, the press, fraternity brothers, and assorted curious spectators were lurking with Meg, Dee, and Temple, who had arrived much too late to get inside.

“Why’s the docket say Virginia v. Fleming ?” Meg asked.

“I guess the frat boy’s last name is Fleming,” Temple said.

“Tell me what he looks like,” she said, rather unsteadily.

“Like imagine Paul Newman in a Cheech and Chong movie. He’s almost as tall as I am”—a fact Temple could readily verify, since he was wearing Byrdie’s clothes. Meg pulled her watch cap low over her brow. Raising her sunglasses, she stepped up to the double doors and applied her eye to the very narrow gap between them. She could see the back of Karen’s head. She maneuvered and contorted until a security guard asked her to step back. She felt a little ill. But she couldn’t run away from Karen. She clutched Temple’s sleeve.

Inside, the frat brothers glared at Karen evilly. Mike whispered “Bitch.”

Irritated by the noise, Lee turned to get a look at the star witness. And that was that. He stood up and said, “Your Honor, I request a recess.”

The judge said, “Mr. Fleming, let me remind you that you can fake being an attorney in a letter to the IRS, but here in a court of law you need to have passed the bar. So sit down, before I cite you in contempt.”