Legally Blonde

by Amanda Brown

  Elle shrugged and walked ahead of him knowing the effect her pale pink cashmere sweater and tight silk skirt would have on him.

  He followed her outside. “Listen, I’d love to get away, Elle,” he said quietly, “but not for lunch.” Elle laughed.

  He glanced back over his shoulder to the law school. “I’ve got plans. Sarah, you know.”

  Elle grinned and pulled on her sunglasses. “I didn’t mean for lunch, Warner, sweetie. I simply need some good Sigma Chi muscle. Call me when you can come over tonight.” Impulsively, she kissed Warner on the cheek, then spun around and walked away.

  Elle had no doubt that he was looking forward to helping her move, even if Sarah would be furious.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Thanks for taking me, Josette.” Elle looked around at the empty salon. “I know it’s late. I don’t need a full manicure, just a couple of silk wraps to fix these.” She indicated two broken nails on her right hand. “You don’t even have to paint the others. I mean, you just gave me a manicure, what, Tuesday?”

  Josette’s ringlets shook briskly. “No pwob-wem, no pwob-wem. But we must do the whole hand. Painting coats over these two only,” she explained, “ees no good. It will be uneven. Ter-ree-ble! Here”—she tapped the table—“thees hand.”

  Elle, relieved, dropped her hand down on the table. Josette looked disapprovingly at Elle’s ragged nails.

  “I know, they’re a mess,” Elle said, following Josette’s stare. “I had to move over twenty boxes today. This afternoon. That’s why I couldn’t get in until so late.”

  “Again?” Josette interjected. “Just a few days ago…you were almost done with your move.” Elle nodded, but wasn’t sure how to explain.

  “So you’re moving again?”

  Elle blushed. “Josette,” she began, looking anxiously around her. The only other person in the salon was the receptionist, who, as usual, was excitably occupied on the phone. “Remember that guy, my old boyfriend, who I told you I followed up to this place they call a law school?”

  “Yes, hees name was Warner, I think. Right?”

  “Right. Warner.” Elle smiled. “Ow!” Her fingernails burned under Josette’s vigorous filing.

  Josette let up on the filing and brushed Elle’s nail with a purplish oil, which tingled pleasantly. “Warner, with the fiancée?”

  “Sarah Knottingham.” The smile died from Elle’s face.

  “Is thees”—Josette glanced at Elle’s bottle of pink nail polish meaningfully—“for Sarah…or for Warner?”

  Elle looked puzzled.

  Josette gripped Elle’s hand and held it up for emphasis. “Why do we make your nails beautiful?” She lowered Elle’s hand into a dish of moisturizing lotion and began massaging her fingers as she unraveled the mystery she had posed. “For him? Does he like zee pretty hands? Or to show her, maybe?”

  How French, Elle thought. “No, it’s not to show up Sarah. But I am seeing Warner tonight. He’s coming over to help me move.”

  “Move!” Josette rolled her eyes. “You will break zees all again!”

  “I don’t think so. This time I’ll have some help. See, Josette”—Elle glanced around again surreptitiously—“I called Warner. I wanted to see him, so I told him I was moving, and I sort of hinted that I could use his help.”

  “You’ll never get him back with nails like that!” Josette wrinkled her brow and indicated Elle’s broken nails. “Don’t worry. I will fix them.”

  “Thanks, Josette.” Elle blushed. “You won’t believe this. I’m just going to stop saying ‘This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done,’ because every time I say that, I run out and get myself into something worse.”

  “Yes, yes, what is it? What did you do?” Josette motioned impatiently with the brush for Elle to get to the point.

  Elle grinned sheepishly. “Okay, okay, this is pretty embarrassing. Today I skipped my afternoon classes and moved some boxes and furniture out of my new condo. The stuff I just moved yesterday. I moved it right back into my dorm room. It took a few hours; that’s why I couldn’t get here till late. Tonight I have to move it back to the condo all over again, but now Warner will help me!”

  Elle couldn’t see the broad smile breaking across Josette’s face as she worked to keep the nail-polish brush steady. Josette whipped the brush up above Elle’s hand to avoid smudging the polish as she shook with laughter. A pink stripe drew itself across the table underneath the arc of the flying nail polish. “You must be very much in love,” she said.

  Elle, face-to-face with her own desperate romantic ploy, gave herself over to the giddy truth. She tossed her head back against the manicurist’s chair and laughed openly, feeling a gleeful absence of shame. She was in love. The bulb-framed mirrors, Amber Valleta wall prints, and Kiehl’s products swirled together with her pink nail polish into one preposterous joke, with herself as the punch line.

  “You’re right!” Elle said. “Josette, I’m a mess. I’m a lovesick fool!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elle collapsed on the couch in her new condo, surrounded by a multitude of thrice-moved boxes.

  “Warner, my arms and legs are aching! Whatever’s left, I don’t even want it. I’m exhausted. Please, let’s call it a day.”

  She lifted her hand to let Warner examine the damage. “See? I’ve already broken a fingernail.”

  Warner took the examination of Elle’s fingernail as an opportunity to hold her hand.

  “Elle, this place looks like the basement of a museum! I can’t believe all these things ever fit into your dorm room.” After a pause, he said, “I don’t guess we’ll dig out that videotape tonight.”

  “No.” Elle smiled. “Not tonight.” The Vegas tape was the one string she still had tied to Warner. “Warner, it’s going to kill me to part with that videotape,” she said dreamily. Her head tilted back and she let her eyes travel over the ceiling. Then she began to reminisce. “That tacky Imperial Palace. I’ll always love it, all of it, the ceiling mirrors and plastic bamboo. Las Vegas, of all places. Still, it was our palace.” Her eyes sparkled with the memory. He was still her prince.

  The time had passed when it still made sense for Warner to be holding Elle’s hand. He dropped to his knees, level with the couch, interrupting her words with a long kiss. She looked into his half-closed eyes with wide, adoring delight. And then, suddenly, to her surprise, she giggled.

  All of her pointed yearning for this moment, all the tension of waiting, evaporated into dizzy girlishness. Covering her mouth with her hands, Elle brushed Warner’s face accidentally.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped as she watched him draw back, looking perplexed and slightly angry.

  Warner stood up brusquely and moved to the door, trying not to show his anger and embarrassment. Elle had never laughed at him before. “I should have left when we finished moving. Just leave the videotape in my mailbox at school, okay? Sarah would kill me if she knew I was here.”

  At the mention of Sarah’s name, Elle’s mood changed abruptly. She shook her head in self-reproach. “What was I thinking, Warner? You don’t want to be here, you’ve got a life, practically a wife! All you want from me is that tape. Well, you don’t have to kiss me for it.”

  “Elle,” Warner protested, moving back to her, his eyes slowly traveling up her body. “It’s not like that at all. I’m not here just for the tape. I wanted to see you.” She quieted, but stared at him suspiciously.

  “Elle,” Warner explained, holding her shoulders, “I have a lot to lose. Sarah’s very sensitive about this. She doesn’t want me to have anything to do with you.”

  Elle backed out of Warner’s grip. “Please just go, Warner,” she said. She crossed her arms and stared miserably at the door, avoiding his eyes, humiliated by her own tears and the fact that she thought about him every day.

  Elle choked back quiet sobs until she heard the door close, then listened intently to Warner’s footsteps departing in a hurry outside. Once certain he had
left, she dropped her head into her hands, confused.

  What a disaster. Underdog jumped playfully up on the couch. “Hey there, Underdog,” Elle said, scratching his head. “I’d better start getting serious about all of this reading for Contracts. I think I just blew my marriage chances.” She had chased Warner to law school, she hated law school, law school hated her, and Warner was hog-tied by his fiancée. On top of that, she had become romantically challenged, reacting like a giddy teenager when Warner made his move.

  Her boxes were packed, and she considered moving them all the way back to L.A., escaping and saving herself while she could. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Yes, she still loved Warner, but she wanted him to love her and only her. If she couldn’t tear him away from Sarah, she’d have to think of something else.

  Elle imagined how satisfied Sarah and her friends would be to see her parachuting out of law school, scared and beaten. The Barbie doll who couldn’t take it. Elle scowled, recalling Sarah and Claire’s whispered joke on the first day of class, remembering Dean Haus’s mockery of her homecoming queen crown. They would all love to see her fail. And oh, wouldn’t it kill them to see her graduate.

  Setting her jaw with renewed determination, Elle tousled Underdog’s fur. “We’ll both be underdogs,” she said, encouraged by her dog’s calm, devoted eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Balancing the empty coffee mug that she had drained during Contracts class, Elle did her once-a-week law school mailbox check, prepared to throw away all of the law-related flyers. In the nearly two months that Elle had been at Stanford, she hadn’t found anything more in her mailbox than notices of student meetings or the occasional Barbie doll ripped from an ad to tease her. But today her mailbox was stuffed with an enormous stack of papers tied with a red ribbon. A small envelope addressed “Elle” lay at the top of the papers.

  She peeled the envelope open and withdrew a single page of white bond stationery. A poem, marked with calligraphy, done in strange scrawls of fountain-pen ink, caused her to gasp.

  I’m staring at your picture now,

  Don’t be alarmed or nervous.

  I’m not some weirdo off the street—

  I plan to do you service.

  I am your Secret Angel

  And I’m sure you will agree

  That as I stare into your eyes

  The pressure is on me

  To give you gifts of cunning

  To give you gifts of grace

  To give you presents worthy

  Of the beauty in your face.

  What better way to win your heart

  Than with a simple rhyme?

  What better way to keep you here

  Than with a class outline!

  Don’t leave law school, Elle. You are one of a kind.

  Your Secret Angel.

  Elle leaned against the row of mailboxes, stunned by the cryptic offering. With an astonished quiver, she untied the stack of papers and read the thick black type on the top page. “Criminal Law, Slaughter-Haus, Fall ’01.” Set apart by a cardboard divider was a second title page atop a separate stack. “Torts, Glenn [Fiddich], Fall ’01.” A quick peek at the pages confirmed what the poem had promised. Someone had given her class outlines, the key to law school success!

  Week one discussed subrogation, the same topic Professor Glenn had led with this semester. The outline followed the same format as her class. At that Elle grinned broadly, tucking the papers into her Prada bag with confidence. Elle wondered who could have sent her such a gift.

  “Take that, Sarah,” Elle said defiantly. “You haven’t beaten me yet.”

  Mr. Heigh had brought his wife to Criminal Law again today, Elle noticed, as she stared at the woman who was poking through her cooler to grab a snack before the lecture began. A late-in-life achiever, Mr. Heigh decided while running a health food store in Berkeley that he was “smarter than any of the damn lawyers I deal with.” Smart enough, of course, to become what he despised.

  A marketing genius, Mr. Heigh dressed frequently in promotional items from his store, which was called, imaginatively, Heigh on Health. When he was low on laundry, he also fancied running shorts about two sizes too small and vulgar tank tops, expressing sentiments like “How do you spell relief? S-E-X” or, Elle’s personal favorite, “Sexy Grandpa.”

  Mr. Heigh brought his wife to class because they believed in “sharing their experiences.” Mrs. Heigh seemed to enjoy the field trips, packing bean-sprout pita pockets with carrot or prune juice in a Heigh on Health cooler that never left her side.

  Professor Kiki Slaughter-Haus sputtered through another episode of Criminal Law. Elle was relieved to see that at least today Kiki had the sense to work with a visual aid, in the form of a diagram on the chalkboard:

  “Another day in the slaughterhouse,” Eugenia said, prompting a shushing noise from fixated Gummi Bear Man. As usual, he had Gummi bears and a New Republic lying highlighted in front of him, ready to cite.

  “Uh…the uh…Speedy Trial Act, has what as its goal?” Kiki trailed off, and Halley, always trigger-happy, piped up, “A speedy trial!” Her twin nodded in agreement.

  This would be their issue, thought Elle, glancing at the speed demons. The Speedy Trial Act directed prosecutors to bring defendants to trial within a fixed amount of time from indictment.

  “There are…uh…different incentives that operate at different times in the process.” Professor Slaughter-Haus moved her pointer to the word “Crime.” “To require a speedy trial from the time of the crime would put pressure on the investigation. The incentives would be on the police to work quickly. Why might we not want a trial…uh, to start up that soon?”

  Professor Slaughter-Haus turned to Cari, who answered promptly. “The incentive might make prosecutors charge the defendant too quickly. We don’t want to put that kind of pressure on prosecutors; we don’t want them to prosecute until their case is solid. Right after the crime, if they had to bring a speedy trial, it might trigger premature prosecution.”

  Eugenia poked Elle in the shoulder and said, “Premature prosecution! I hear with love and understanding you can work together and make it last long enough for both of you.”

  Elle burst out laughing, then whispered back: “I think you can get counseling for that.” Kiki glared but ignored them.

  “Yes, Cari, but…um, there is also delay to consider. The defendant wants a prosecution to be triggered so it will be over sooner. As the delay gets longer and longer, the defendant will object. The innocent defendant might want a speedy prosecution.”

  “The poor prosecutor,” Eugenia whispered, “maybe he just has performance anxiety.” Elle hid her face in her hands, shaking with held-in giggles.

  Jeremy butted in, unable to attract Kiki’s call with his jumping-frog routine. “The prosecutor doesn’t have forever,” he declared. “The defendant’s in jail all this time, okay, while the prosecutor gets his case ready to go. Nobody wants to trigger premature prosecution, but sooner or later the defendant will start objecting and the prosecutor will have to pull out.”

  Elle exploded when she caught Eugenia’s flashing eyes, and her laughter echoed through the quiet room.

  “Ms. um…Woods, do you have something to add, uh, about the, um…the problem of delay? We have time for one more comment.”

  Elle noticed Jeremy’s scowl and imagined it was because she had stolen his limelight.

  “It’s not just the length of the delay,” Elle said, “it’s what the prosecution does with it that counts.”

  Elle glanced at Eugenia, who looked as if she could hold out no longer. They grabbed their books to make a speedy exit.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I don’t know if I can take it anymore,” Elle said, turning her hand over so Josette could massage the silky cream into her palm. “I’m getting calluses from writing so much.” She pointed to the nail-polish bottle on the end of a row of bottles.

  “Not zee black?”

  Elle shrugged
. “It’s Halloween, Josette. I’ve got a costume party tonight. You’re an angel for taking me on your lunch hour.”

  “Ees it a school party?”

  “Well, maybe. There’s a law school costume party I was thinking about stopping by.” Warner might be there, and Elle wanted to show him she was unscathed, beautifully cool, and over him.

  “You are sure you want zee black?” Josette repeated. “Are you dressing up like a weetch?”

  “No, I’ll leave that to Sarah,” Elle sniped. “I’ll dress in this ultratight black getup that I actually used to wear to parties, back when all that techno-industrial music was hip.”

  Josette smiled. “You zee boss.” She applied a single coat of heavy tar-colored polish, and within an hour Elle was hurrying back to school.

  Looking around at her classmates in Torts, Elle realized that any day could have been Halloween at Stanford Law School. If anyone had showed up at her sorority house wearing a polyester undershirt with iron-on dragons, she’d have handed them a piece of candy and closed the door.

  Layer-dressing was also popular, maybe because the school’s central heating system was so out of whack. The temperature du jour was a warm one, yielding a panorama of T-shirts even beyond the standard Ben & Jerry’s selection. T-shirts with a message, like twenty-four-function digital watches, were a trendy Stanford Law School item. The point was often to display some grand devotion to a worthy cause or fabulous accomplishment like a summer in Guatemala building “infrastructure,” whatever that meant. Gramm Hallman, devotee of the Spanish Succession, had today opted for “Yale, Bored of Education.”

  Fran paraded her “Peace Corps Sarajevo ’99” gear for maybe the third time in as many weeks.

  Andrew Walton, the Harvard M.B.A. who carried a Motorola flip phone that never rang, wore “Harvard Business School…There’s Nothing Quite Like It.” For that, Elle decided Andrew Walton got the Honesty Award of the day.