Christopher Buckley - Supreme Courtship

“No way.”

Pepper reached across the table and took his hands and held his wrists with her thumbs and forefingers. “Look into my eyes and tell me that you loved me. I mean, loved me.”

“Sure I did.”

Pepper released his wrists. She laughed. “That was a homemade lie detector test, darling, and boy did you flunk.”

“I’ll learn. Whatever. I want you back.”

“No, you don’t, baby. I think-and this isn’t a criticism, honest, we’re past that-but I think the only way you can be real is on TV. I don’t think reality measures up for you as well as whatever’s on a fifty-two-inch plasma-gel screen at eight o’clock on Monday nights. What’s the matter?”

“That’s a horrible thought.”

“Maybe. But I figured it out the night you locked me out of our apartment. Which, by the way, wasn’t very nice.”

“It wasn’t ‘very nice’ of you to sic the FBI on me.”

“We’ve been through that, Buddy.”

“Well, let’s go through it again.”

“What would that accomplish, other than mutual annoyance?”

“Objection. Evasion.”

“Honestly, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. But it remains a fact. I’ve got to go, baby. I’m in the middle of a constitutional crisis. This job,” she smiled. “Remind me-why did I take it?”

“Don’t look at me.”

Pepper stood. Buddy said, “I’m still dropping the breach of contract suit.”

“Your call.” Pepper shrugged. “But I think we might as well see the other one through.” She held out her hand. “Either way, I’d still like to go on calling you buddy.”

Buddy looked at her for a moment, smiled, said, “Motion granted,” and took her hand.

As she headed off, he said after her, “Hey, Pep?”

She turned. “Um?”

“Supreme Court. Make a hell of a show.”

“ ‘Nine old farts sending footnotes to each other’? I don’t know,” Pepper said. “Sounds kind of dull to me.”

Are you sure you’re up to this?” President Vanderdamp said.

The thin, wintry morning light was slanting through the French windows into the Oval Office. Graydon was on his way to the Court for oral argument in Mitchell v. Vanderdamp. He looked to the President quite splendid in his London suit, but Vanderdamp saw traces of exhaustion in the old man’s face. The eyes, normally vivid blue, seemed pale and watery. He had a stoop and dabbed at his nose with a monogrammed handkerchief.

“No, I’m not,” Graydon said, “but it’s too late now. Alea jacta est.” [30]

The President smiled. “Save the Latin for them. You may need it.”

“I was trying to think when I last argued up there, and it took that story in the Post today to remind me. ‘Clenndennynn’s Last Stand.’ I’d have preferred ‘The Return of the King’ or something more Augustan. Less Custerish, at any rate. Well, I need to review my notes and put something in my stomach. Do you know-unpleasant but not unrelevant detail-the first time I argued, I threw up. Not during argument-thank God. Well, Donald, aren’t you going to wish me luck?”

“I’m not sure,” the President said. “Do we really want to win this one?”

“I feel your conundrum. But the prospect of the Republic falling into Dexter Mitchell’s hands?”

“Good luck.”

“Did you see in the paper,” Graydon said, “about that woman, Señorita Cha-Cha or whatever her name is? What could he have been thinking? Rather good timing from our perspective. But yes, I think we do want to win this one and keep Dexter Mitchell’s mitts off an actual nuclear button.”

“Thank you, old friend.”

“Not at all. Not at all. It’s been an honor to clean up after your messes. If you do get another term, promise you won’t call me.”

IT HAD NOT BEEN A GOOD WEEK, PR-wise, for Team Mitchell. Ramona, despite silky handling by Blyster Forkmorgan, had correctly smelled a raton [31]and, making good on her threat, had ventilated her grievance on national television.

“Ramona,” said the interviewer, “is it true Dexter Mitchell asked you to marry him?”

“Many times,” Ramona said, looking suspiciously chaste in a Marc Jacobs that looked like it might have been designed as a convent school graduation dress. “Many times. The first time, after he win the Iowa cow-kus…”

“ Iowa caucus?”

“That. Then after the New Hampshire primary. And the South Carolina primary. Every time he wins a primary, he says to me, ‘Ramona, I am divorcing my wife to make you Primera Dama.’ ”

“First Lady. The role you played so memorably on POTUS?”

Ramona dabbed at her eyes with a tissue-a beautiful television moment.

“Ramona, I have to ask you-why are you telling us this now?”

“Because Dexter Mitchell is a horrible person and he should never be President of the United States. I love this country too much. You know?”

DEXTER WATCHED the grotesque spectacle with his eyes closed, in the company of a somewhat somber Team Mitchell at the Hay-Adams suite which, though on the eighth floor, had of late taken on the feel of a subterranean war-bunker.

Ramona’s lurid revelations did nothing to enhance Dexter’s postelection ratings, which had been in free fall following President Vanderdamp’s public offer to resign-his Finest Hour, it was being called, to Dexter’s great vexation. But Mitchell v. Vanderdamp having been granted cert, Dexter went before the cameras and manfully announced his intention to see it through, that being, as he put it somewhat opaquely, “the only honorable course.” Blyster Forkmorgan, his warrior instincts aroused, and Ms. Alvilar’s claims of affection-or alienation-being extraneous to his client’s arguments, nodded, strapped on buckler and sword, mounted, and rode to battle.

O YEZ! OYEZ! OYEZ!…”

“It just came to me,” Crispus whispered to Pepper as they filed in, “it’s Old French for oy vey.”

Any other day, Pepper might have giggled. Not today. She was too nervous.

Taking her seat at the bench, Pepper, trying to appear calm and collected, briefly let her eyes wander over the assembled. She and Graydon’s eyes instantly locked. It was the first time she had ever viewed him from above. He looked small but formidable; peregrine-nosed, impeccable in three-piece suit and gold watch chain. He gave her the briefest smile and nod. Pepper glanced over and got her first live look at the famous Blyster Forkmorgan: grave, knife-lean, eyes like beads of mercury.

Mitchell v. Vanderdamp boiled down to two arguments, the first technical, the second more philosophical. The first was that President Vanderdamp’s election was invalid because the term limit amendment took legal effect the moment it was ratified by Texas, two days before the election. Mitchell’s second argument centered on the larger issue of governance, that is, whether the Court should recognize a validly adopted amendment, or the People’s decision in the election. Forkmorgan’s brief asserted that the validly adopted amendment took precedence over “metaphysical, however admirably intentioned, considerations,” i.e., the will of the people as expressed in the popular vote.

Chief Justice Hardwether managed to make the preliminaries sound so mundane it might have been another routine day in traffic court. (Which was, indeed, his intention.) And began.

“Mr. Forkmorgan, in your brief, you make two separate arguments.” He smiled. “Does that signify that one argument is stronger than the other? Or are you just piling on?”

“Either argument should be sufficient to carry the day, Mr. Chief Justice,” Forkmorgan said. “As to ‘piling on,’ perhaps I am attempting to overwhelm the Court with a veritable feast of reason.”