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Authors: Sadie King
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parents-in-law of George Walker Bush. So much for the John Quincy Adams Law Library.
And it just so happened that the place was bursting with busts. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Clarence Darrow were two that Zora remembered reading the names on out of idle curiosity. She’d passed by at least a dozen more without paying them much mind. The head of Holmes had jumped out at her because of the freakishly large handlebar mustache it sported, something out of an impossibly hirsute Oktoberfest. And Darrow’s head stood out because it faithfully reproduced one of his many failed combover attempts.
Zora powered down her PC, grabbed her keys and pocketbook, and headed over to Welch. Once she had a cup of java from Starbucks in hand, soy milk swirling into creamy diffusion, it would be merely a matter of time before she tracked down the head of Voltaire. That would point her to the meeting-place of the Juris Club. The first step in the ecstatic journey Victor was taking her on.
It had become obvious to her that the revealing of the clue was a much more fulfilling process, a vastly more passion-stirring process, than the solving of the clue.
Seven busts down, at least a dozen to go. A voice. One she knew.
“Zora, wait.”
She hesitated, she was walking fast, frenetically fast, buoyed along by the promise of the next revelation, the next mysterious touch. She turned her head to the slant of the voice. There was Jack, striding at her pace, stumbling and bumbling to keep up, parallel, one aisle of books to her left. She’d been looking to the right at the gold-painted alcoves that held the busts, perched disembodied on four-foot marble pedestals.
He’d first spotted her about five aisles back, three over. He’d been sitting at one of the study tables, he should really have been glued to his Oil and Gas Law casebook, finishing up Enron v. Worth , shit he was sick of reading about surface easements. Instead he’d been looking around, people watching, careful not to stare, fashioning stories of their lives, their secrets, plotting out in his mind their trials and tribulations. And ecstasies.
Jack shot down the aisle, stood before her huffing.
“What’s the hurry, Zora? Trying to get the last copy of The Bramble Bush on reserve?”
Classic Jack, smirk written all over him. His sense of humor danced for her. Where Judge Ras had a wit that waltzed, Jack had a smirk that flamencoed.
She skipped over pleasantries, time was running short and so was her coffee. Law school loans being what they were, she couldn’t afford to keep refueling at Ahab’s caffeine shack every half hour. Her parents were historians, for Chrissakes, not fucking hedge-fund managers.
“If you must know, I’m looking for Voltaire.”
“Which one, I’m guessing either Candide or The Man of Forty Crowns . Not one of his better known works, but let me tell you, the Geometrician is a riot. I could read it to you in the original, you know.”
“Jack, what in God’s name you talking about?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know this, I was a French major. At Harvard.”
His H-bomb made a muffled explosion among the cavernous stacks.
“Actually they’re not called majors there, little known fact, they’re called Concentrations, and—”
Zora cut him off. She was plenty proud of Vanderbilt. Go Commodores!
“Good to know, I’ll put that in the mental file.”
She made a gesture of a metal file drawer closing against her head, a mocking metal clanging noise from the back of her throat.
“I’m looking for the head of Voltaire. You know, one of these busts.”
She gestured to a bust on her immediate right, which turned out to be the bronzed head of Arabella Mansfield, the first female lawyer in America and one of the most ironically named.
“Of course—I know exactly where that is.”
He started to walk, not forward, but back down the aisle whence he’d come.
“You do? What are you, obsessed with busts or something?”
Jack smirked for the
And it just so happened that the place was bursting with busts. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Clarence Darrow were two that Zora remembered reading the names on out of idle curiosity. She’d passed by at least a dozen more without paying them much mind. The head of Holmes had jumped out at her because of the freakishly large handlebar mustache it sported, something out of an impossibly hirsute Oktoberfest. And Darrow’s head stood out because it faithfully reproduced one of his many failed combover attempts.
Zora powered down her PC, grabbed her keys and pocketbook, and headed over to Welch. Once she had a cup of java from Starbucks in hand, soy milk swirling into creamy diffusion, it would be merely a matter of time before she tracked down the head of Voltaire. That would point her to the meeting-place of the Juris Club. The first step in the ecstatic journey Victor was taking her on.
It had become obvious to her that the revealing of the clue was a much more fulfilling process, a vastly more passion-stirring process, than the solving of the clue.
Seven busts down, at least a dozen to go. A voice. One she knew.
“Zora, wait.”
She hesitated, she was walking fast, frenetically fast, buoyed along by the promise of the next revelation, the next mysterious touch. She turned her head to the slant of the voice. There was Jack, striding at her pace, stumbling and bumbling to keep up, parallel, one aisle of books to her left. She’d been looking to the right at the gold-painted alcoves that held the busts, perched disembodied on four-foot marble pedestals.
He’d first spotted her about five aisles back, three over. He’d been sitting at one of the study tables, he should really have been glued to his Oil and Gas Law casebook, finishing up Enron v. Worth , shit he was sick of reading about surface easements. Instead he’d been looking around, people watching, careful not to stare, fashioning stories of their lives, their secrets, plotting out in his mind their trials and tribulations. And ecstasies.
Jack shot down the aisle, stood before her huffing.
“What’s the hurry, Zora? Trying to get the last copy of The Bramble Bush on reserve?”
Classic Jack, smirk written all over him. His sense of humor danced for her. Where Judge Ras had a wit that waltzed, Jack had a smirk that flamencoed.
She skipped over pleasantries, time was running short and so was her coffee. Law school loans being what they were, she couldn’t afford to keep refueling at Ahab’s caffeine shack every half hour. Her parents were historians, for Chrissakes, not fucking hedge-fund managers.
“If you must know, I’m looking for Voltaire.”
“Which one, I’m guessing either Candide or The Man of Forty Crowns . Not one of his better known works, but let me tell you, the Geometrician is a riot. I could read it to you in the original, you know.”
“Jack, what in God’s name you talking about?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know this, I was a French major. At Harvard.”
His H-bomb made a muffled explosion among the cavernous stacks.
“Actually they’re not called majors there, little known fact, they’re called Concentrations, and—”
Zora cut him off. She was plenty proud of Vanderbilt. Go Commodores!
“Good to know, I’ll put that in the mental file.”
She made a gesture of a metal file drawer closing against her head, a mocking metal clanging noise from the back of her throat.
“I’m looking for the head of Voltaire. You know, one of these busts.”
She gestured to a bust on her immediate right, which turned out to be the bronzed head of Arabella Mansfield, the first female lawyer in America and one of the most ironically named.
“Of course—I know exactly where that is.”
He started to walk, not forward, but back down the aisle whence he’d come.
“You do? What are you, obsessed with busts or something?”
Jack smirked for the
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