Christopher Buckley - Supreme Courtship

“Where the hell were you?” Buddy said crossly when the click of her heels on marble announced her return. “I must have called you four hundred times. You didn’t answer your cell or your BlackBerry. I was going to start calling emergency rooms.”

“I know, I know, sorry, baby.” She gave him a kiss, which he did not return. “I needed to spend a little quality time with myself. Clear my head. Woke up feeling kind of cobwebby up here.” She tapped the side of her head, which at the moment felt anything but clear.

Buddy was looking at her either incredulously or suspiciously. He was sixteen years older than Pepper and at that age when an older husband begins to worry about a younger, attractive wife-who has gone inexplicably AWOL for a day, and returned with an unconvincing explanation.

“But where were you?”

She flung her handbag onto an armchair, looked him straight in the face, and said, “With the President of the United States. At Camp David.”

“ Camp David,” Buddy said. “Really. And how is the President?”

“Fine. He’s into bowling. Sends his best. You hungry? I’m starved. Want to go to that tapas joint? Grab some sangria. Fool around?”

“First tell me where you were today. I was fucking frantic, for God’s sake.”

“Baby, I told you. The phone rang, it was the President. He wanted to see me. They sent this helicopter for me and everything.”

“Are you insane?”

“No, starving.”

“Pepper. Where. Were. You. All. Today?”

“Camp. David.”

“Dammit.”

“What?”

“You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“Well, okay, then, and what did he want?”

“He’s a fan, turns out.”

“The President of the United States watches the show?”

“Apparently. Yeah.”

“Jesus. Why didn’t you take me along?”

“You were asleep, darling.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You were out. What time did we get in last night, anyway?”

Buddy hesitated slightly too long. “Oh, I don’t know. Late.”

Pepper said, “For a guy who divides his days into seconds, you sure get vague when it comes time to accounting for the nocturnal hours.”

“Whoa with the cross-examination, Your Honor. You’re the one who disappeared all day without a trace. All right, all right. Let’s get something to eat.”

“Not hungry.”

“You said you were.”

“Well, I guess I filled up. On bullshit,” she said, and stalked off to the bedroom.

“Pepper.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“I thought,” Buddy said after her, “we’d been over all that.”

“Well, I guess we aren’t over ‘all that.’ ”

“All that” being a blind item that had appeared some months past in Page Six [1]: “Which unjudicious reality TV producer has just hired his fourth young-lovely ‘personal assistant’ whose duties include more than keeping him supplied with foamy lattes?”

She slammed the bedroom door behind her, and then felt foolish for imprisoning herself while actually hungry. But then a few minutes later she heard the front door slam reciprocally. She walked to the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center and bought two shopping bags of books about the Supreme Court, including numerous autobiographies of justices. (There were a surprising number of them by sitting justices. She had been under the impression that they generally waited until later to sum things up.)

Pepper opted for takeout at Shun Lee and, now looking like an expensive, thoughtful bag lady, lugged her trove back to the apartment and holed up in bed with the books. She read them late into the night. It felt weird and illicit-she kept listening for Buddy-as though she were back at summer camp after lights out, with a flashlight under the blanket reading Nancy Drew and the Strange Supreme Court Nomination.

The next morning she found Buddy asleep on the couch. She crawled in beside him and by the time they got up the previous night’s shouting match seemed to have been forgotten or at least duct-taped over.

They mixed Bloody Marys and made a frittata and salad lunch while watching one of the Sunday talk shows with one eye each.

Chopping scallions, Pepper said, “What’d you make of all that Supreme Court hullabaloo?”

“They’re all assholes,” Buddy said thoughtfully.

“Whole process has become sort of a zoo, hasn’t it?”

“Who’d want it?” Buddy said, cracking eggs.

“To sit on the Supreme Court? Are you serious?”

“Nine old farts in robes sending footnotes to each other.”

“Rehnquist. Warren. Brandeis. Frankfurter. Harlan. Black. Holmes. Marshall. Old farts in robes? I’m beginning to see why you went into TV, darling. You have a genuine talent for the old reductio ad absurdum.”

“Don’t knock TV,” Buddy grunted. “It bought you this room with a view. By the way, I was thinking, what would you say to raising the show’s metabolism a little?”

Pepper said cautiously, “What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking, you know, instead of handing out these civil-type penalties, what if we could actually sentence people to jail?”

“Buddy,” Pepper said, “we try civil-type cases. A, people don’t get sent to jail for those, and B, I’m not a real judge anymore. So I’m not getting how we could send them to jail.”

“I thought of that,” Buddy said. “Instead of people signing these wimpy-ass agreements where they’re contractually bound to abide by your decisions-if they lose, they have to serve actual time.”

“What time? I can’t send people to jail. I’m not a real judge. What am I supposed to do, call up the Metropolitan Detention Center and say, ‘Judge Cartwright here, do me a favor, would you, and put some folks in jail for me?’ ”

“No-we build our own jail,” Buddy said, smiling triumphantly.

“What are you talking about?”

“With cameras in every cell. Say you lose your case-you get sent to the slammer. Our own slammer. For, like, a week or whatever. We create a prison. Build our own. Somewhere grim. Down south. With guard towers and-a moat. A shark-filled moat. Throw in some alligators. Do alligators and sharks mix?”

“I’d have to get back to you on that,” Pepper said.

“I hadn’t even thought of that until now. The guards would have uniforms. Darth Vader-type. Scary. And the prisoners-they’d have uniforms. They’d get points for good behavior, et cetera, so you could get out a day early or whatever. And-Jesus!-a cash prize if they escape.”

Pepper tried to concentrate on chopping radishes for the salad. “And if they get eaten by the sharks and alligators?”

“I’ll talk to Legal about it. Figure something out. But don’t you see it? Oz meets Survivor. [2]It could be incredible. What do you think?”

“Well, darling, you sure are innovative on the weekends. Let me think about it,” Pepper said, continuing to chop.

HAYDEN CORK had been at his desk for only an hour on Monday morning and already he was having a bad day.

“Sir, all I’m asking is that we postpone further discussion until Mr. Clenndennynn returns. His plane gets into Andrews at-”

Dammit, Hayden caught himself. Bad slip.

“Andrews?” the President said, looking up from his paperwork. “Since when do private jets land at U.S. Air Force bases?”

“He’s coming in on a military plane, sir. I sent one to bring him back.”

Hayden Cork braced for a stern lecture on wasteful government spending. Instead the President said, “Good work, Hayden.”

“Sir?”

“He’s going to shepherd her nomination through the Senate. That is,” the President chuckled, “if he can tear himself away long enough from helping overpaid CEOs negotiate debt relief with Chinese commies.” The President was of the old school. He still called it Red China, in private.