Damn it. It was an old trick, and she dodged it perfectly. Nigel and John had prepped her well. Damn them too.

I looked at Sarah on the stand. I didn’t want to hurt her. She’d trusted me. I liked her. Maybe more than like.

I don’t want to do this, I thought. I won’t do this.

I could see it now. It was a dead heat. All those weeks of sleepless nights, endless motions, skipped meals, nightmares, sneaking into the men’s room to puke my nerves away. I hadn’t talked to my parents in a month. I hadn’t gone on a date, seen a movie, had a beer. I was so sure that this was the way to the V &D-to success beyond my wildest dreams-that I hadn’t studied for my classes or even attended them. God help me if I had to rely on those grades! I had all my eggs in this one basket. This case. I couldn’t lose. Not to mention Daphne, who hadn’t laid a hand on me since that night outside my dorm room. Goddamn her lips! My career, my future, my life. The whole damn thing hung in the balance.

I don’t want to do this.

On the stand, Sarah looked relaxed now, calm. She caught my eye, and there was a hint of a smile-a shared secret. She’d already decided I wasn’t going to hurt her. It was almost smug when you thought about it. So confident in her power over me-that I would throw away my life, my future, everything-to cover up for her lie.

Who did she think she was?

I felt a shock of guilt, or pain-that voice saying Please, I don’t want to hurt her-but somehow it lost out to other dreams and urges.

I made a decision.

“Dr. Casey, you are appearing as an expert witness, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And this jury is trusting your opinion because of your credentials, right?”

Suddenly she seemed wary.

“Yes.”

She looked at me hard, searching.

“You are a neurosurgery resident in the top program in the country. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Getting this position, it shows you had top grades in medical school, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And all of this-your grades, your position in a top residency-all of this is the basis for your expertise here today, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered, looking at me desperately, trying not to reveal anything, begging me with her eyes.

“And that’s not all. Your honesty. Isn’t that part of your expertise here today? The jury can trust what you say because you are an honest person?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes starting to well up, perceptible only to me, standing so close.

I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath.

Daphne was swept up in my new rhythm. She looked curious, excited. I found my own righteous anger and turned back to the witness.

No going back.

“Dr. Casey, isn’t it true that your application to this program contained serious misrepresentations about your abilities and accomplishments in medical school?”

John and Nigel erupted.

They had no idea where I was going, but they let out a string of objections.

“Yes or no?” I pressed.

Sarah froze, stunned.

“Yes or no, Dr. Casey? Why are you hesitating?”

She shook her head no.

“Dr. Casey,” I said, the word doctor now sounding absolutely pornographic, “did you or did you not allow your father to cover up numerous failed classes during your medical school education?”

“I don’t have to put up with… this isn’t real.”

Her lips were trembling.

“Yes or no, Dr. Casey?”

No answer.

“YES OR NO?”

Her face started to break.

“Did you or did you not get this prestigious residency as a result of lies and cover-ups?”

“Yes,” she said softly, her voice cracking.

“Did you allow this cover-up to occur?”

“Yes,” she repeated, now sobbing.

“Did you go from interview to interview, passing yourself off as something you are not-to get a job you did not deserve?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

The objections were raining down now, washing over me.

I didn’t pay attention.

I didn’t even listen for her last answer.

The damage was done. The witness was toast.

I sat back down at our table. Daphne gave me a look of such pride it was almost lustful.

I heard Sarah’s steps as she left the courtroom. But I couldn’t find the courage-not even for a single second-to look up and watch her go.

13

We won. That’s what the head juror announced, holding a sheet of paper. The judges critiqued our performances, but I can’t remember a word they said. I just kept repeating the phrase-part cheer, part question-over and over in my head: we won, we won, we won.

The sun was nearly down, the courtroom filled with purple light. The judges were gone. Most of the crowd had gone home.

“Let’s go celebrate,” Daphne said.

“Sure. Hang on a second.”

I walked toward John and Nigel. “Where are you going?” she called after me.

They were still sitting at their table. John was staring at his notes. Nigel looked ahead blankly, like a kid who has just learned his dog died.

“Come on,” I said to them. “We’re going out.”

They looked at me like I was crazy.

“I’m serious. We’re going out. It’s over. We’ve been killing ourselves for a month. Come on. I’m buying.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Nigel said.

“I don’t care. I’m buying us a round of drinks. After that, you can leave if you want. You owe me that much.”

I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Somehow I bullied them into joining us at The Idle Rich. Mostly, I think they were numb. The four of us sat around an oak table with the rapport of funeral directors, until the second round of drinks, when things loosened up a bit.

“Something about this place,” I said. “It’s corrosive, isn’t it? When did we get so serious?”

“You didn’t have fun destroying our case?” Nigel asked. His tone was only halfway bitter, a major improvement over the last hour.

“How did you know that about our witness?” John asked, shaking his head. We hadn’t met each other’s experts before the trial. We hadn’t even known their names. He must have been baffled.

“I know her,” I said. “We met on campus.”

“Lucky her,” Nigel said dryly.

I shook off a sinking feeling in my stomach, changed the subject.

“Seriously, though. Did you guys ever just hang out, act stupid? Or were you always future Supreme Court clerks?”

“John used to be crazy,” Daphne said.

“Bullshit.”

“What are you talking about?” John asked her, making eye contact with us for the first time since the verdict.

“You know, the table story?”

“You are not bringing that up.”

“If you don’t tell it, I will,” Daphne said, grinning.

“Fine. Go ahead.” John leaned back, closed his eyes, and held a bottle to his forehead.

“It’s an Oxford story,” Daphne said. “John and his friends decide they want to start a poker game. So after a few drinks, one of his brilliant friends-who was it, Tom?-suggests that one of the big round tables in the dining hall would make a perfect poker table. You have to imagine it: these are giant wooden tables, maybe seven or eight feet wide. It took five of them to lift it. So after dinner one night, when the dining hall was empty, John and his friends snuck back in and carried out the table. That was their whole plan. Just walk out with it. Rhodes scholars, right?”

“Oh no,” Nigel said, shaking his head. “You stole a table from Oxford?”

“We did,” John said. I saw the hint of a grin.

“They almost made it too. They were halfway across campus, carrying this table in the middle of the quad, when a security guard stopped them.”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“That’s the best part,” Daphne said. “As the story goes, everyone’s panicking except John. He looks right at the security guard and says with a straight face, ‘Do you think I want to be carrying this table across campus?’ He says it just right. The guard blinks at him for a few seconds. Then he lets them go!”