“Yeah, but you also iron your socks.”

“Just my dress socks,” Nathan corrected. “As if you’re one to speak.”

“Don’t give me that,” Ben said. “I may be organized, but you’re King Anal.”

Nathan brushed the side of his shoe and added a little spit. “In your dreams.”

“Is that why your credit cards are alphabetized in your wallet? Or why none of the clothes in your closet can ever touch each other?”

“I just want everything to have its own personal space,” Nathan explained.

“Sure you do-and it’s not because you’re a freak.” Staring at the loafer on his right hand, Ben added, “If Lisa saw me doing this, she’d have a field day.”

“I can’t believe you still haven’t brought her by.”

“I think you’ll really like her,” Ben said. “She’s got spunk.”

“Then why don’t you date her?”

“I can’t,” Ben said. “We’re too close. It’d be like dating my sister.” He slipped his feet into his gleaming loafers.

When the doorbell rang, Ben went to answer it. “Nice place,” Lisa said as she stepped inside. “Better than I thought it’d be.” Against the far wall in the living room sat a large, deep-blue couch. A smaller striped love seat served as a way station for jackets, briefcases, wallets, and keys. Both had been bought with the proceeds from the roommates’ first paychecks in Washington. Over the larger couch hung an enormous, empty gold frame, surrounding a splattering of red, blue, yellow, and green paint, which Eric had painted directly onto the wall when they first moved in. In Eric’s words, it was “primary colors in action”; in Ben’s words, “a nice first attempt-if you’re into the whole Jackson Pollock thing.” In Ober’s words, “it didn’t suck.” Nathan proclaimed it “a disaster.”

Ben walked into the living room with Lisa and introduced Nathan, who was still polishing his shoes.

“Nice to finally meet you,” Lisa said. Sniffing the air and noting the shoeshine kit, she added, “If you guys want, we can go catch a movie. They have a senior citizens’ discount.”

“Make fun if you like,” Ben said.

“Oh, I definitely like,” she said, glancing around the room. “By the way, what’s with the coffee table?” The coffee table in the center of the room was actually a poster of Elbridge Gerry-according to Ben, the country’s worst vice president-mounted on a piece of Formica, resting on concrete blocks.

“That’s the most politically obscure coffee table in town,” Ben explained proudly. “Where else can you rest your feet on the face of someone who refused to sign the U.S. Constitution?”

“You’re really freaky sometimes, y’know that?” Lisa said. Walking past the glass dining-room table that was set up between the kitchen and the living room, Lisa entered the kitchen and approached a calendar attached to the refrigerator. “Is this a Miss Teen USA calendar?” she asked, noticing the logo under the picture of a young girl in an evening gown. Flipping through the months, she said, “This is pathetic.”

“I knew you were a flipper,” Ben said, watching her from the living room. “There are two types of people in this world: those who never look ahead on a wall calendar so they can be surprised every month, and those who flip ahead, racing to see all the months at once.”

Lisa headed back to the living room. “I thought you said there were only two types of people: spaghetti-twirlers and spaghetti-slurpers.”

Ben paused, then eventually said, “Okay, there are four types.”

Suddenly, Ober walked in the door. “I’m home! Is the lesbo here yet?”

“Actually, there are five types,” Ben said.

As Ober approached Lisa, Ben shut his eyes and prepared for disaster. “You must be Ober.” Lisa extended a hand. “That’s funny. Ben said your palms would be much hairier.”

As Nathan laughed, Ober said, “Really? He said you’d be more butch.”

“He said you couldn’t walk upright,” Lisa countered.

“He said you could pee standing up.”

“Cute,” Lisa said. “He said you didn’t have opposable thumbs.”

“I don’t get it,” Ober said, stumped. “What’s an opposable thumb?”

“If you didn’t have them, you’d be hanging out with monkeys. Or reptiles. Maybe bacteria. Lower life forms-”

“Ooookay, I think we get the idea,” Ben interrupted, stepping between his two friends. “I can see you two will get along great. Now what are we doing for dinner?”

“I thought Lisa was cooking for us,” Ober said, taking a seat next to Nathan on the large couch. “No-that’s right-she was going to fix my car.”

“Don’t start,” Ben warned. “How about we order in some Chinese?” With a nod, the three agreed and Ben called in the order. As he hung up the phone, Lisa reached into her bag. “Ben, I meant to show you this.” Pulling out a ten-page document, she explained, “I just pulled this off of Westlaw. It’s our first published opinion.”

Ben smiled as he read through the official document. “I can’t believe it! These are our words! This is the law!”

“I still don’t understand this,” Nathan said. “You decide the cases for the justices? Is that legal?”

“We don’t decide the cases. We just write the opinions,” Ben explained, waving the document in the air. “Every Wednesday and Friday the justices have Conference, where they vote on the cases. Based on our memos and research, they determine what their decisions will be. Say there’s a civil rights case before the Court. The justices vote and five think the defendant is liable, while four think he’s not. He’s therefore liable. But the decision doesn’t just get announced. The actual opinion has to be assigned and written. That takes from one to six months. So if Hollis is assigned the opinion, he comes back from Conference and says to me and Lisa, ‘We’re writing the majority opinion; the defendant is liable. I’d like to see you approach it from a Fourteenth Amendment perspective.’ We take a shot at it and hand it in to Hollis. Usually, he makes significant changes before it emerges in final form, but it’s still primarily our work.”

“And here it is,” Lisa said, pulling the document from Ben’s hands and giving it to Nathan. “Hollis decided this months ago, but it just came down this week.”

“Very impressive,” Nathan remarked.

“See this paragraph over here?” Lisa pointed to the page. “We worked on that for two days straight. Hollis didn’t want to overrule one of his earlier decisions.”

The doorbell rang. “Food. Food. Food,” Ober said, running to the door.

“It’s not the food,” Ben called out. “We just ordered.”

Ober opened the door, but was disappointed to discover Eric.

“Sorry, I forgot my keys at the office,” Eric said, running his hands through his uncombed hair.

“Perfect,” Ober said, excited. “C’mon, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Dragging Eric into the living room, Ober said, “Lisa, this is Eric. He’s a virgin.”

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Eric said as he shook Lisa’s hand. “He’s so proud of me, he can’t contain himself.”

“Nice to meet you,” Lisa said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You, too,” Eric said.

Ignoring Ober, Ben asked Eric, “Do you want to have some dinner? We ordered Chinese. It should be here any minute.”

“That’d be great,” Eric said. “Meanwhile, have you heard about the CMI merger?”

“No. What?” Ben asked.

“I was in the newsroom when it came across the wire. Just as the market closed, Charles Maxwell bought another twenty percent of Lexcoll stock. Lexcoll stock shot up fourteen points in the closing three minutes, and investors are predicting CMI will rocket up thirty percent by nine-thirty-five tomorrow morning. The traders on the floor were ripping their hair out.”

“Maxwell couldn’t have known, could he?” Lisa asked Ben.

“No. No way,” Ben said, a chill running down his back as he remembered his conversation with Rick. Maxwell couldn’t have known, Ben told himself. “There’s no way. It was a lucky guess. The Court’s decision isn’t completely unpredictable. Maxwell must’ve spoken with his legal experts.”