I walk into Treasury’s underground parking garage with my head angled downward, hands in the pockets of my blue jeans, my leather shoes moving softly along the asphalt. I am not the only person down here at this hour, so my presence is not conspicuous by any means, though I’m dressed more casually than the departing employees of the Treasury Department, with their suits and briefcases and ID badges. It’s easy to hide among the sounds of heels clicking on pavement, car remotes beeping, automatic locks on cars releasing, and engines turning over, especially when the departing employees are more concerned with their weekend plans than with the guy in the cotton button-down and blue jeans.
I may be in hiding, and this is no joyride, but I can’t deny the small thrill of release I feel while moving about in public without being noticed. It has been more than a decade since I’ve set foot in a public place without being on display, without feeling like someone might snap a photo of me at any moment, without seeing dozens of people wanting to approach me for a handshake or a quick hello, a selfie, a favor, or even a substantive policy discussion.
As promised, the car is the fourth from the end on the left, a nondescript sedan, an older model, silver, with Virginia plates. I hold out the remote and push the Unlock button for too long, causing every door to unlock and then a series of beeps to sound. I’m out of practice. I haven’t opened my own car door for a decade.
Behind the wheel, I feel like someone fresh out of a time machine, transported into the future by this mysterious contraption. I adjust the seat, turn the ignition, gun the gas once, throw it into Reverse, and turn my head to look back, my arm over the passenger seat. As I slowly back out of the space, the car emits a beep that grows more urgent. I hit the brakes and see a woman walking behind the car, on the way to hers. Once she has passed by, the beeping stops.
Some kind of radar, an anticollision device. I look back at the dashboard and notice a backup camera. So I can drive in Reverse while facing forward, watching the screen? They didn’t have that ten years ago, or if they did, my car sure as hell didn’t have it.
I navigate the sedan through the garage, the lanes surprisingly narrow, the angles sharp. It takes me a few minutes to get the hang of it again, jumping forward too abruptly, braking too harshly, but then it feels like yesterday that I was sixteen, driving that beater Chevy off the lot of Crazy Sam Kelsey’s New and Used Autos for twelve hundred dollars.
I watch the cars in front of me in the line to leave the garage. The gate lifts automatically as each car reaches the front. No need for the driver to reach out the window to press a card against some reader or anything like that. It occurs to me that I didn’t even think to ask about that.
When it’s my turn at the front, the gate rises, letting me leave. I pull slowly up the ramp, approaching daylight, wary of passing pedestrians, before I pull into the street.
Traffic is thick, so my urge to gun the car, to feel the freedom of this temporary independence, is stymied by the congestion at every intersection. I look up through the windshield at the bruised sky, hoping it won’t rain.
The radio. I click a knob to turn it on, and nothing happens. I push a button, and nothing happens. I push another button, and the sound blares out, sending a shock wave through me as two people are arguing, talking over each other about whether President Jonathan Duncan has committed an impeachable offense. I push the same button, kill the sound, and focus on driving.
I think about where I’m going, the person I’m about to see, and invariably my mind wanders back…
Chapter
16
Professor Waite strolled across the well of the lecture hall, hands clasped behind his back. “And what was the point of Justice Stevens’s dissent?” He returned to the lectern, looked over his name chart. “Mr.…Duncan?” He looked up at me.
Shit. I’d thrown a lump of Copenhagen in my cheek so I could stay awake after a night of getting my paper done. I’d only skimmed the case for today. I was one of a hundred in this class, after all, so the odds of my being called on were slim. But this was my unlucky day. I was on the spot and unprepared.
“Justice Stevens…disagreed with the majority in…with…” I flipped through the pages, feeling the heat rise to my face.
“Well, yes, Mr. Duncan, dissents do typically disagree with the majority. I do believe that’s why they’re called dissents.” Nervous laughter rippled through the lecture hall.
“Yes, sir, he…he disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment—”
“You must be confusing Justice Stevens’s dissent with Justice Brennan’s dissent, Mr. Duncan. Justice Stevens’s dissent did not so much as mention the Fourth Amendment.”
“Well, yes, I am confused—I mean confusing…”
“I think you had it right the first time, Mr. Duncan. Ms. Carson, would you be so kind as to rescue us from Mr. Duncan’s confusion?”
“Justice Stevens’s point was that the Supreme Court should not intervene in state court decisions that, at worst, would have the effect of raising the floor of the federal constitution…”
Burned for the first time by the notorious Professor Waite, this being only the fourth week of my first year at UNC Law, I looked across the room at the woman in the third row who was speaking as I thought to myself, This is the last time you come to class unprepared, you maggot.
And then I fixed my gaze on her, seated in the third row, confidently, almost casually giving her answer. “…It is a floor, not a ceiling, and so long as an adequate and independent state ground exists for the decision…”
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
“Who…is that?” I whispered to Danny, seated next to me. Danny was two years ahead of me in school—he was a third-year—and he knew pretty much everyone.
“That’s Rachel,” he whispered back. “Rachel Carson. A 3L. The one who beat me out for editor in chief of the law review.”
“What’s her story?”
“You mean is she single? No idea. You’ve made a great first impression, though.”
My heart was still pounding as the class ended. I jumped out of my seat and hit the door, hoping to catch her in the hallway amid a sea of students.
Cropped chestnut hair, jean jacket…
…Rachel Carson…Rachel Carson…
There. I spotted her. I navigated the crowd and caught up to her just as she was breaking away from the forward movement of the masses and angling toward one of the doors.
“Hey,” I said, my voice shaky. My voice was shaking?
She turned and looked at me, liquid green eyes, eyebrows raised. The most delicate, sculpted face I’d ever seen. “Hi…” she said tentatively, trying to place me.
“Um. Hi.” I hiked my backpack over my shoulder. “I, uh, just wanted to say thanks for, y’know, bailing me out in there.”
“Oh. No problem. You’re a 1L?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Happens to all of us,” she said.
I took a breath. “So, uh, what are you…I mean…what are you, y’know, doing right now?”
What the hell was wrong with me? I’d taken every smoke session Sergeant Melton could dish out. I’d been waterboarded, beaten, strung up, and mock-executed by the Iraqi Republican Guard. Suddenly I was tongue-tied?
“Right now? Well, I…” She nodded to one side. For the first time, I focused on the door she’d been about to enter—the ladies’ bathroom.
“Oh, you were gonna…”
“Yeah…”
“You should, then.”
“Should I?” she said, amused.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not good to—to hold it in, or—I mean—if you gotta go, you gotta go, right?”
What in holy hell was wrong with me?
“Right,” she said. “So…it was nice meeting you.”
I could hear her laughter inside the bathroom.