Legally Blonde

by Amanda Brown

  “Enough for everybody I like.”

  “Thanks.” Elle accepted a handful of M&M’s before walking to Property class, where she and Eugenia sat together.

  Elle poked her friend when she saw Sarah enter the room. “Check out the power suit,” she giggled, indicating Sarah’s severe figure approaching in her navy Brooks Brothers uniform with a paisley bow strangling her neck.

  “Hey, is this dress-like-your-mother day?” Eugenia whispered.

  “Certainly not my mother!” Elle laughed.

  Sarah made a point of walking by Elle’s seat. “I was at Christopher Miles’s office this morning,” she said. She looked quizzically at Elle. “He’s already got me doing document review,” she said with an air of self-importance.

  “Have you had a meeting at Miles & Slocum yet?” Nosy Claire said, having just joined Sarah. They were both quite unaware that Elle had been to one deposition in L.A. and out to dinner with Christopher twice. During both dinners they had discussed the case in detail, and Elle felt she was gaining an edge on Sarah and the other interns.

  Elle smiled. She told them that Trent’s deposition had been a great way for her to dive right into the case, that she was convinced of Brooke’s innocence, and that today “her client” would be coming to stay with her.

  By this point she had all but given up class reading and attendance, keeping abreast with Eugenia’s notes and her two Secret Angels, the poet and Emanuel. She was devoting all of her time and tremendous effort to the case, which genuinely interested and challenged her.

  “There’s more to this case than document review,” she added.

  Elle’s confidence came through in her voice, and Claire looked discouraged. Claire turned abruptly, and Sarah clomped behind her in heavy, thick heels to her seat.

  Elle peered at the phrase “Fructus perceptos villae non esse constat,” Barrister Hightower’s lexicon lesson of the day. Another worldly wise word for the collection, Elle thought despondently, remembering torturous grade-school vocabulary books as she copied the phrase into her notes. Barrister Hightower was crouched invisibly behind the podium, preparing his lecture.

  The enormous deposition could not be hidden even from wee Whitman Hightower, so Elle opened Interview magazine under the desk and began reading an article on Stella McCartney’s latest collection.

  Elle’s reading was rudely interrupted when Witless Hightower called her name. She looked up, surprised, as he bounded from the chalkboard back to his notes.

  “Well, Ms. Woods, we are waiting for an answer.” Hightower weaved back and forth, probably on his tiptoes, beady eyes peeking over the podium.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t hear the question,” Elle mumbled.

  Hightower persisted. “Ms. Woods, the query posed for your comment relates, as I have said, to this maxim.” He waved impatiently at the board behind him. “Fructus naturales, Ms. Woods. The products of nature alone,” Hightower muttered. Sarah turned around, disappointed.

  “Gathered fruits do not make a part of the farm,” interjected Drew Drexler, the irrepressible Rhodes scholar. He was translating the bizarre phrase on the board, and the professor nodded with satisfaction.

  “The question, Barrister,” Drew continued, “is whether they belong to the farmer. It is my judgment that they do.”

  “Excellent, Counselor,” Hightower said.

  Grateful to be spared further humiliation, Elle returned to reading her magazine.

  Brooke’s one-day planned visit turned into six days, on the last of which Elle and Eugenia skipped their classes to spend the morning with Brooke at the Museum of Modern Art. Brooke was terribly homesick for her life and friends in Malibu, especially her support group. Elle and Brooke arrived that afternoon at the office of Miles & Slocum in a wave of breathless and cheerful chatter. The intern and the client had become fast friends. From the kitchen, Elle got a diet Coke and Brooke poured herself a cup of black coffee before they made their way to Elle’s tiny office.

  “I still think Eugenia was right about Tied Tubes,” Brooke said, taking a seat. Her reference was to a sculpture in which the barrels of two handguns were twisted together. “It was a socially critical piece about birth control. She’s right, it’s a tool to limit our life force. If I had seen it a year ago, maybe I would have had Heyworth’s child. He wanted to, you know.” She began to cry softly.

  “Well, you had his love,” Elle said gently. “Better to have loved and lost,” she added softly. So easy to tell somebody else. It never consoled her when she thought about Warner. “And anyway,” Elle changed the subject as much to dodge her own maudlin sentiment as to avoid upsetting Brooke, “what about Madonna and Twins in Jell-O? How could you want to have children after seeing that?” The painting portrayed a mother dressed in an apron that read “EAT JELL-O” gazing distantly at the television while stirring a bowl of green slime. A set of twins were hanging limply by fangs implanted in her bloody neck.

  “I’m telling you, it had nothing to do with children,” Brooke said. “It was an exposé on the use of animal gelatin in Jell-O products. People think it’s a family food, but it gets its consistency from animal fat. Eating Jell-O is as cruel as eating veal!”

  Brooke was a vegetarian. Elle doubted her critical analysis, but found herself increasingly confident that Brooke lacked the heart of a murderer.

  “You’re like the calorie Rain Man, Brooke. Do me a favor and leave my lunch quotient a mystery today. Please?”

  “Knowledge is power,” Brooke said.

  “Then tell me who was at your Shopper Stoppers meeting, Brooke, so we can prove that you didn’t kill Heyworth.” Elle narrowed her eyes. “Please, Brooke, you don’t have a single alibi witness,” she said in a whisper.

  Now it was Brooke who spoke gravely. “Shut the door,” she motioned.

  Elle jumped from behind her desk and pulled the door closed. How proud Christopher would be if she got the name of an alibi witness out of Brooke! Brooke trusted her, she thought; Brooke knew Elle believed she was innocent. She returned to her desk as casually as she could manage, restraining an anticipatory quiver with great effort.

  “Please, Brooke, who can testify for you?”

  “Elle, you don’t understand,” Brooke said, her voice definite. “I won’t hurt the people who have helped me. I won’t embarrass them, and I won’t set their lives back. The only people who knew where I was when my husband was shot are in my support group in Los Angeles, and I won’t expose them. Even if nobody will testify for me.”

  Elle’s heart plunged. She cursed herself for being too forceful. Brooke had been so close to telling her something.

  “Elle, I have what they call an addictive personality. That’s why I had the discipline to lose all that weight. I committed all of my energy to that single goal. In that direction it was useful, but when I got hooked on the Home Shopping Network, I turned all of my commitment and energy to the power of spending. It’s immediate, but it’s transitory. I lost sight of the future,” she said, her eyes dimming from sharp turquoise gems to the pale, blank blue of a faded day.

  Elle drooped in her chair, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Then suddenly, like a mood ring, Brooke’s face lit up again.

  “That was before I met the life leaders,” Brooke said. “The group leaders at the Shopper Stoppers meetings…they gave my future back to me. I regained what Heyworth loved about me, and he was so happy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Heyworth met me at the wellness center, he was trying to get in shape, and I made him my project. His whole attitude had to change. He was almost ready to die. He was so world-weary at first, and I couldn’t blame him. Everyone treated him like some old patriarch with all of his achievements behind him like ghosts.”

  Elle reached for her diet Coke while she listened intently.

  “It wasn’t his past that I cared about. His companies, equity shares, or vineyards weren’t my interests. We started working out together, an
d he was like a child, with all of the energy that made him his millions turned toward improving his health and getting stronger. That’s what I cared about. He clung to his life after that. He felt vigorous, and capable. Together, we had our eyes set on the future. On our future.”

  “What does that have to do with your alibi, Brooke?” Elle said with exasperation. “What would Heyworth want you to do?” she said. “Just give up?”

  “We understood loyalty and support, Elle. He’d want me to stand by my friends. He’d want me to do just what I’m doing, which is moving forward. I’ll face this trial and I’ll tell the judge and jury the truth. I won’t involve anyone who I’ll hurt. Come what may.”

  Elle thought of Warner, and how hard she had tried to resurrect the love of their past days. Brooke was crazy. Loyalty was fleeting. Look what Warner had done to her, even if she had changed her entire life to match his like a newly fashionable tie. Sarah was his future, and what was hers? What was Brooke’s?

  “Your future doesn’t look so bright, Brooke. You’re going to have your entire life, not just your alleged involvement in the murder, put on trial, I can promise you that.”

  Brooke dropped her head into her hands. “Elle, I lost both of my parents when I dug up their business. They’re like strangers to me now. Without Heyworth, the only people who care about my future”—she paused, glancing at Elle—“besides you and Christopher, who I’m paying, are the Shopper Stoppers. So I won’t bring them down by exposing them, even to save myself. They still have families. And they’re my family.”

  Brooke wouldn’t budge. She clung to the last family she had. She wouldn’t sacrifice her friends on the altar of self-preservation, and yet she had everything to lose.

  Elle thought of Serena and Margot. They ridiculed her for taking this job, defending a Theta…an unpardonable crime, forgetting the primacy of her Greek letter label. Their paths were separating. But Elle also had the misgiving that she too had filled her college days with superficial judgments. Good fraternities, bad fraternities, whispers about sisters, china pattern dreams. Her old friends seemed so remote now.

  Margot was a “we,” having ceased to refer to herself in the first person singular since she became a charm bracelet on Snuff’s arm. Serena, always the same, was a scattering of crystals, drugs, dates, and diets. They were the friends of habit and memory, to which she now clung like lint. She sensed that she had lost them, coming to law school, maybe for good, but then maybe inevitably. Either way, she was left with a sense of loss.

  She had strayed from her old life and had found fulfillment where she least expected it, but she still hadn’t given up on getting Warner back. Law school had not changed her in Warner’s eyes, so she’d found a way to get him, with Brooke’s case as a front and the Elle he had loved as the bait.

  She’d see Warner after class, and she’d be holding a Property textbook in one hand and a deposition in the other, but to him she might as well be holding a dog-eared copy of Cosmo. So Cosmo it would be. Elle had a plan to work out at the gym available to Miles & Slocum employees. Positive that she’d run into Warner there, she dutifully packed her gym clothes and the latest Cosmo to read while she was on the StairMaster.

  The rest of her class looked upon her like an alien. Barbie paraphernalia still made its cowardly, anonymous assault on her school mailbox. She found herself bored in classes, which she attended with less and less frequency. She sighed, and Brooke’s obstinate expression caught her eye. It reminded her of Eugenia, and she smiled. Eugenia was as stubborn as a mule.

  Eugenia was a miracle who strengthened her resolve to get through law school and, as hard as it was, helped her see Warner for what he really was. A happenstance of a seating chart. Another gift was her lovelorn Angel, sending her aid and comfort in ribbon-tied outlines. There were people who wanted to see her make it.

  Elle set her jaw. Brooke believed in herself and Elle believed in Brooke. The underdog.

  “Take me to a meeting,” Elle said all of a sudden. “I won’t say a word to Christopher or anyone. I want to meet your friends.”

  “If you’ll take me to law school. I want to see what your prison is like.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  That night Elle wondered which would be more bizarre, Brooke at law school or a Shopper Stoppers meeting. Her mind wandered from the Rule of Perpetuities. It was impossible for anything else to be this boring, Elle thought, slamming her Property book shut. The phone rang, and figuring nobody could have anything worse to say than the words printed in her casebook, she answered the phone without even screening.

  “So what’s up on the job scene…or should I say job scheme?” Eugenia asked, always amused by Elle’s romantic ploys.

  “The internship is great…and it’s actually yielding a way to see Warner!” Elle exclaimed enthusiastically. “The firm is adjacent to a building that has a gym, and we’re allowed to use it. Warner works out twice a day, so I’m sure he’ll take advantage of it. My lit bag and my gym bag are dutifully packed for tomorrow, and I’ve been working out every day.”

  “So have you seen him there yet?”

  “Not yet. It’s only been two weeks, and I hadn’t figured out his schedule yet, but now I’ve got it. I’m positive I’ll see him there tomorrow. We used to work out together every day,” she added in a dreamy tone.

  “Well I was just calling to catch up, since I never see you anymore,” Eugenia said, but Coerte beeped in on call waiting before any good gossip could be exchanged.

  Elle giggled as she hung up the phone. She was genuinely happy for her friend. Exhausted from her desperate, useless attempt at trying to understand her Property reading, she fell asleep immediately.

  The next day, Elle got to the gym around 4:30, figuring from the schedule she saw pinned to Mia’s bulletin board that Warner would arrive around 5:00.

  The usual crew of secretaries and paralegals were on the StairMasters while bankers, lawyers, and other businessmen pedaled the Lifecycles that were strategically located behind the StairMasters.

  Five o’clock arrived, and as Elle looked up from a compromising position on one of the machines, the unlikeliest candidate entered the gym. Sarah. “Great, now it’s Sarah and Warner who work out together,” she muttered; but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Sarah took a nervous glance around, her pale arms clutching her Property book! Elle couldn’t believe it. Noticing that the Lifecycles were all being used, Sarah headed for a StairMaster. Elle watched her. Clearly Sarah hadn’t seen her yet.

  Elle stood up, and Sarah’s mouth gaped open. Elle’s blonde hair was still hanging perfectly, her makeup un-smudged, and her pink leotard, cut to show maximum cleavage, was clinging to all the right places.

  Elle’s usual stiletto-gouging walk was now a long athletic stride. All eyes shifted to watch her athletic beauty as soon as she hit the floor. “Sarah!” Elle exclaimed in mock surprise as she approached the StairMasters. “I didn’t know you worked out here.”

  “Well, today’s my first day,” Sarah admitted. She was maintaining an unsteady balance as she tried to keep up with the advanced level she had set the machine on. Stair-Master ruin stared her in the face. “I’m not used to these things,” Sarah said as she gasped for air.

  Elle reached over and lowered the level to novice. “Maybe I can help you,” she said tentatively.

  “Warner wrote out a schedule for me to follow,” she said, and indicated a piece of paper with Warner’s unmistakable scrawly handwriting sticking out of her casebook. “He said you used to do it twice a day, but I’m so exhausted from this…I don’t know if I can do…step aerobics.” She glanced at the sheet dubiously.

  “Step aerobics? I can’t believe I ever put myself through that torture. Did Warner mention my step aerobics instructor was Brooke Vandermark?” Elle asked.

  “You’re kidding!” Sarah exclaimed. “Not that she doesn’t look like she could have been.” Sarah poked irregularly at the buttons until the machine stopped.
<
br />   “I’m really glad Warner doesn’t work out here. He’s dying to use this gym, but he doesn’t want Christopher to think he’s a slacker. I would have died if Warner had seen me! But I’m even more embarrassed that you did, to be honest,” Sarah said.

  “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’ve seen my answers in Property,” Elle joked, glancing down at Sarah’s casebook. “How about we make a trade?” Elle offered.

  “Well…what kind of trade?”

  “I’ll show you how to find your way around the gym and work out with you, minus the step aerobics, if you’ll help me out in Property. I’ll need your notes and some tutoring weekly and your outline at the end of the semester.”

  “It’s a deal,” Sarah agreed, “but only if we can start tomorrow with the gym tutoring.”

  Elle laughed. “No problem.”

  The two girls showered and then headed back to Miles & Slocum for Elle’s first Property session. Although Elle had passed all of her first-semester classes and was feeling increasingly confident, Property, only a second-semester course, was still a stumbling block. Sarah helped Elle with the cases that weren’t covered by the commercial outlines, and Elle even withstood briefing a case for class the following day. She was determined to succeed at the entire law school game, Property included.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Elle remembered a time so distant it seemed prehistoric when the week after spring break was dedicated to the wholesome activity of comparing tan lines, piña coladas, and stories from Mexican jails.

  Over the March vacation, selections for the Stanford Law Review had been made on the basis of first-semester grades and a writing competition that had taken place in February.

  On the morning of her first day back, Elle found Eugenia by the coffee machine. Eugenia watched the excited members jump around as if they were on speed while the rejects muttered plastic congratulations. She shook her head and motioned for Elle to follow her to the dreaded law library.