Legally Blonde Read online

  Professor Glenn-Fiddich arrived a full fifteen minutes late. Elle sniffed a strong odor of scotch as the professor wobbled down the steps to the front of the room.

  “Another lengthy liquid lunch,” Eugenia whispered, nodding at Glenn as he fumbled through his lecture notes.

  “If I taught Torts, I’d drink too,” Elle said.

  “Sorry I’m late, class.” Professor Glenn stood gazing aimlessly in front of him. His white hair was plastered against his forehead, as if he had been sweating. His olive-and-brown plaid jacket seemed hastily thrown on. The collar was raised in the back, causing one lapel to turn inside out. He seemed to have grown thinner since the previous class, so his eyes appeared large in his rosy face. A fly woke him from his haze, and he swatted the air around his head. “Damn fly.”

  Suddenly Professor Glenn announced the class topic. “Palsgraf!” His eyes darted around the room as if someone would challenge him. Satisfied, he continued. “Palsgraf’s the case for today, class.” He laughed, shaking his head. “This one’s a beauty. The kind of tort you just won’t see every day. My compliments to the lawyer who had the guts to bring this one, I tell you.”

  Having neglected to bring his seating chart, Glenn looked around the room for a student he recognized and could call on. “You,” he pointed at Ben. “Tell me what Judge Cardozo says in this case.”

  “Car-do-zo?” Ben scowled at the professor, who was proceeding out of cherished law school order. Facts were always supposed to come first. “Don’t you want me to describe the facts first, before the leg-al iss-ue?”

  “What the hell, you read it. Some idiot had a package with explosives in it, and the train stopped, and this lady bumped into somebody, and ten other things happened, and then all the minks Miss Palsgraf raised on her mink farm went crazy and ate their young.”

  Ben couldn’t take it. “The mink farm was in the Madsen case, Professor,” he corrected. “Palsgraf—”

  “I was speaking hypothetically!” Professor Glenn snapped. “Whatever happened, the important thing is what Cardozo held. What did the judge say in this case? How about you?” He pointed to Jeremy, snubbing Ben.

  “Cardozo said Ms. Palsgraf was out of the zone of danger, and so he denied recovery. He said her damages were unforeseeable. He said the railroad has a duty of care only to people within a foreseeable zone of danger.” Elle scribbled “no money for the plaintiff.”

  “Duty of care,” Professor Glenn repeated, staggering to the chalkboard. He drew two wiggly lines across the board, then crossed them with a series of tracks. “This is the Long Island Rail Road.” He stepped back, observing his picture. “The zone of danger describes the limit of people who are within the railroad’s duty of care.”

  “Like passengers,” Halley interjected. “And passersby, too, people at the crossings, maybe in the station.”

  “Right,” Professor Glenn started, forgetting what he meant to ask. “So we understand Palsgraf, then. Any questions, see me during my office hours. I’ve got an appointment.” The sodden professor collected his papers and teetered out the door.

  Chapter Twenty

  Elle parked her Range Rover on the quiet street and pulled down the vanity mirror. Scary. Underneath a kinked blonde mop stared vicious circles of heavy black eyeliner and two cruel streaks arching from her eyelids upward in a Cleopatra motif. Elle pulled out the cheap Wet ‘n’ Wild lipstick found only in lesser drugstores and traced a shocking black smile. She grinned devilishly.

  Adjusting the metal-spiked dog collar, Elle surveyed her extreme getup. Not to be toyed with, she laughed, feeling bold. She kept the light on long enough to read the directions she had scribbled on the back of a class syllabus. Warner had called her early that morning while she was out walking Underdog, leaving a message on her machine that tempted her to believe she still had a chance.

  “Elle, come to the party tonight,” he had said. “I’ll get away if I can. I know you hate the law school stuff, but I’d love to see you there.” It was then that she decided to go to the party, although she wasn’t sure what to say to him. Her costume, at least, would remind him of what he was missing.

  Confidently Elle and Underdog strolled across the lawn. Underdog was dressed as Dogzilla in a green-scaled one-piece costume. She wore hip-length vinyl boots, a peek of fishnet on the inch of her thigh still visible beneath the leather micromini. Studded skulls and crossbones on Elle’s plunging leather vest gleamed in the porchlight. Although she hadn’t written down the address, she knew the party was in the third house from the corner. It was awfully quiet. The partyers were probably in the basement. Anyway—she shrugged—she didn’t expect a wild crowd.

  After she rang the doorbell a second time, the porch door creaked open. A gray-haired man holding a TV Guide and a remote control stepped from the dark foyer.

  “Can I help you?” The middle-aged man peered with great interest at the chain that attached Elle’s dog collar to her waist.

  Elle froze, dumbstruck. Then, looking down at her costume, she faltered, afraid he would call the police.

  “Oh my God!” Elle said, horrified. “This must be…the wrong house.” She shifted nervously and held her directions up for him to see. “I, uh…I must have gotten the address wrong. I’m looking for some…for some law students?” Underdog shifted nervously at her feet.

  The man smiled at Elle. He strolled out onto the porch and stood facing her.

  “I like your outfit,” he smiled. He made no move to return to his TV dinner. “Maybe I can be your party?”

  Elle flushed crimson when she realized this creepy old man assumed she was for hire. “Oh no…it’s no…it’s not what you think. It’s Halloween!”

  “Of course not,” he said, playing along.

  Elle backed up with Underdog under her arm and scurried toward her car.

  After her humiliating brush with the solitary TV watcher, Elle was actually relieved to get to the party. As it happened, the house was the third from the next intersection with Oxford Street. Following directions had never been Elle’s forte. She was still blushing when she approached the open front door and headed for the noisy blend of music and chatter inside.

  She and Underdog clanked down the stairs in a racket of chains and boot heels, and grimaced when the fever-pitched whine of yammering law students assured her that she had found the right house. Immediately she stood face-to-face with Sidney: or a head above Sidney, whose frame appeared even more dwarfed than usual in a costume of flowing black robes.

  Had she been behind him, Elle would have noticed that Sidney’s old graduation robe was emblazoned in gold lamé with the name “Chief Justice Rehnquist.”

  Too familiar as always, Sidney reached out to grab hold of Elle’s spiked leather wrist-cuff. From the orange stains around his mouth, Elle surmised that he had been at the punch bowl frequently that evening. She yanked her hand free from his grasp.

  “You look sooooo hot,” Sidney whimpered. “You drive me bananas.” He gawked at Elle, swaying, a bit off balance, almost stepping on Underdog’s front left paw.

  “Save it, Sidney.”

  “Beam yourself into the chamber.” Sidney pointed inside. “But I’m not going back in until my brother Justice Scalia arrives.”

  “Thank God.” Elle had no interest in who was dressed as Scalia. She surveyed the room for a sign of Warner.

  Cari barged by in a severe navy suit and wig of tight black poodle curls, briefcase in hand. Marcia Clark. Elle looked critically at Cari’s imitation of the avenging prosecutor, certain that O.J. would have been convicted if Cari had been at the helm.

  Sidney was groping again for Elle’s arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t come as one of your Star Trek…figures,” Elle remarked, stepping safely beyond his reach.

  Sidney’s glassy eyes lit up. “Well I am. I’m Captain Kirk, you know.” He stood proudly in his graduation robe.

  “Of course.” Elle wouldn’t recognize Captain Kirk anyway.

  “Not tonigh
t, Elle. I mean in the great enterprise of life, I am the captain. Aaron said he was coming as Captain Kirk,” Sidney blurted, “and he insisted I would have to be Scotty. Scotty!” he spat, insulted. Elle walked away fast. Braving the rest of her law school peers seemed the better option.

  “I am greater than Captain Kirk,” she heard him slur behind her. “The only man greater than the captain of the Enterprise…Rehnquist!”

  At least I should shake things up a little bit, Elle figured, turning the corner to make her entrance. Striding through orange and black streamers that draped the doorway, she did look out of place. Two Star Trek-clad figures stared noticeably.

  Fran, dressed as Gloria Steinem with a hippie-middle-parted wig and an “ERA Now!” button, dropped her drink. “Look who graced us with her presence,” she hissed, typically talking about Elle, but not to her. Picking up the empty plastic cup, Fran scowled at Elle’s cleavage spilling out of the leathery bra beneath her studded vest. “I can’t believe that even you, Elle, would wear an outfit like that. It is so degrading to womyn.”

  Claire, who seemed to have taken up with Fran, stared with wide-eyed amazement at Elle’s costume.

  “If I wanted to degrade myself, Fran darling, I’d have come as a brunette,” Elle shot back in Claire’s direction.

  Claire was outfitted in a poor copy of Elle’s favorite pink quilted Chanel suit as “Lawyer Barbie.” Claire pushed the play button and smiled victoriously at Elle. A recording played from her Dictaphone, repeating in falsetto the phrase “Law school is really hard!”

  Brushing by her toward the punch bowl, Elle tugged on Claire’s fake blonde wig. “Don’t you wish,” she laughed without turning around.

  If Elle had been making predictions, she would have assumed Michael would come as Count Dracula or some such hero of gore. Instead, she was amazed to encounter Michael at the punch bowl dressed as Andy Warhol. His typically slicked-back hair was powdered into a gray mop, and he had somewhere found a black wool turtleneck and tight Studio 54-era jeans. He peered through round-eyed spectacles approvingly at Elle’s dark getup, and silently offered her the drink he had poured.

  Elle took the cup gratefully. Maybe some people around here do have a little imagination, she thought. But the appearance of Dastardly Dr. Dan shattered her charitable mood.

  Dr. Dan, formerly a cardiac surgeon, had come to law school to launch a second career. He attended class in his scrubs as if he had just left the operating room, claiming not only that they were “comfortable,” but that he had a lot of old scrubs that he didn’t think should go to waste. He often paired his scrubs with too tight T-shirts that he believed showed off his overdeveloped chest and disguised his short stature. He ran his fingers through his too black to be real and obviously blow-dried hair constantly, as if he couldn’t get over his own beauty. Elle suspected that Dan was picking up premeds over at the main campus. Even after losing his medical license for malpractice, Dan could not rid himself of that personality trait of self-intoxication peculiar to doctors. The insufferable doctor of ego headed straight in Elle’s direction.

  Elle almost giggled when she realized that Dr. Dan, draped front and back with posterboard playing cards, was dressed as the King of Hearts. He eyed Elle through his tinted contact lenses. “Good thing there’s a cardiac surgeon here, Elle,” Dan joked. “Your outfit might give someone a heart attack.”

  “An ex–cardiac surgeon,” Elle pointed out. She looked dismally around the crowd for Warner.

  Another Trekkie approached. “Captain Kirk here,” Aaron introduced himself, sticking out his hand to greet Elle. She sighed and managed a half-smile, scrutinizing Aaron’s bizarre neon stretch suit with the mark of the starship Enterprise. She offered her free hand. “I heard.”

  Sidney, ever possessive, rushed over.

  “You know, Sidney,” Aaron began, “I think it is just splendid that you have come as the Chief. Rehnquist.”

  “Well,” Sidney whined, “you should not have tried to be the Captain. Kirk. You are much more a Scotty figure.”

  Aaron cocked his head but didn’t respond.

  “Scotty is not the leader,” Sidney continued, “and not terribly eloquent. But he works harder, and in the end he knows how the Enterprise operates.”

  Not to be one-upped by Sidney’s taunt, Aaron rejoined, “Well, you are well suited to be Chief Justice Rehnquist. The reason is because he is Darth Vader: an evil, dark force of power used to destroy the constitutional enterprise.”

  A. Lawrence Hesterton, who had been staring over Aaron’s shoulder waiting for a lull in the conversation to compare Elle to a harlot in The Canterbury Tales, was not entertained by the lowbrow discussion. Also known as Literary Larry, A. Lawrence was like a soft-voiced teddy bear with wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes so deeply set behind his round spectacles that they appeared almost sunken. A two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, Larry had left his English professorship at Harvard when his tenure was denied. He considered himself superior to any conversational allusions that derived from nonliterary sources. Aaron, still chortling at his joke, turned to Larry. “What would you wear if you were a justice?” he challenged.

  Larry arched his bushy left eyebrow superciliously. “I am precisely as amused by this conversation as Queen Victoria by peasants.”

  Elle took this as her cue to leave, since the conversation was taking a turn for the worse. She departed amid a chorus of “May the force be with you”s from the Trekkie Admiration Society. Ben, greeting Elle with a surprised stare, was dressed in suit and tie, white socks poking out underneath the high-water hems of his ill-fitting pants.

  “Why aren’t you dressed up?” she asked.

  Ben had been waiting for the question. “I am,” he cackled, pointing at his outfit: “I’m a law suit!” He erupted into another fit of laughs.

  Distraught, Elle looked at the unromantic downbeat setting. She noticed that Mr. Heigh and his wife were dressed like Lyle and Erik Menendez. She had the toupee; they were both in tennis clothes, and he carried a plastic gun. Heather, complete with frizzy blonde wig, scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad and introduced herself as the brothers’ lawyer, Leslie Abramson.

  “How witty,” Elle addressed no one in particular. She glanced around again with mounting despair. Of course Warner’s not here, she thought. I don’t even see Sarah. They probably have a date. She sniffed. And here I am, flanked by the entire starship Enterprise, Lawyer Barbie, half the Supreme Court, Gloria Steinem, Marcia Clark, and even the Menendez brothers. Everybody but Warner Huntington.

  As Elle turned to leave she noticed Fran launching another offended tirade near the door. “O.J.! What an outrage! You would sympathize with that wife-beating murderer!”

  “It’s a good thing Sarah’s not here to see this,” Claire chimed in.

  Elle’s ears perked up. Warner, in a USC football uniform, number 32, was dragging a ball and chain on his foot as he headed for the punch bowl. O.J.! He had not strayed too far from L.A. after all. He smiled at the insulted women and pacified Claire with a kiss on the cheek. “He was acquitted,” he pointed out, silencing even Fran, who stared agitated at the floor.

  Elle, obvious in her excitement, rushed to the punch bowl. “Warner!” she exclaimed.

  “Jesus, Elle,” Warner gasped, looking her outlandish costume up and down several times.

  “Well”—she shrugged—“I don’t have you to monitor my wardrobe anymore.”

  “You look really hot,” he whispered, motioning with his head for Elle to join him away from the crowd. A keg out on the back patio was spent and unoccupied. Elle and Underdog walked out and were joined quickly by Warner. Underdog greeted him as enthusiastically as his costume would allow. He couldn’t jump as high as usual in his Dogzilla costume.

  “What are you supposed to be?” he asked, pulling gently on Elle’s dog collar.

  “Whatever you want me to be,” she whispered back in her smokiest 1-900 voice.

  Warner smiled. “Did you get my me
ssage?”

  Elle nodded. “Where’s your other ball and chain?” she said, pointing at the shackle on his leg.

  “Home.”

  Elle smiled wide like a child. “Home?” She paused thoughtfully. “Postparty at my mondo condo,” she offered, thinking that this time Warner wouldn’t leave her apartment until the morning. “This one goes all night.”

  “It’s a little dicey, Elle. Sarah’s feeling kind of sick. She has a cold, and I don’t know, I’ve been sort of tending to her.”

  “Nursing a cold?” Elle asked, amazed. “You?” That was so un-Warner. It really was all over. She turned to leave.

  “It’s not really the cold that’s got her down.” Warner stopped her, grabbing her arm. “See, her dog…back in Greenwich, the one she’s had since she was a kid…well, her parents finally put it to sleep. I mean, it was really old, I don’t know, I swear it’s been in and out of the vet every weekend since I’ve known her. But she’s bummed out. That’s why she didn’t come to the party.”

  “Oh that’s terrible,” Elle replied, dejected. “Postmortem dog blues.” She looked at Underdog and felt sympathetic. “But you came here anyway?” she asked more hopefully.

  “Yeah. I needed some new faces. See, Sarah doesn’t think I need to go out anymore. Since we’re getting married and all.” He paused, a little exasperated. “But I wanted to see you tonight.”

  Elle glanced back at the party and saw Claire glaring at them. “We probably shouldn’t stay here together much longer.”

  “You’re right.” He looked inside at the motley assortment of gossiping law students.

  Elle shook her head, reminding herself she had planned to act cool. “Anyway, I need to go, Warner. I’ve got another party in the city,” she lied. “Unless you’re coming over. It’s your call.”

  “I’ll be fifteen minutes behind you,” he whispered quickly. “If you promise not to behave like a laughing hyena.”