“Look,” Tarek said then. “For example, I don’t completely agree with everything that President Bush did, but he did a good job of keeping the country safe after 9/11.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “And the president’s job is to defend this country. I hate how some people seem to think that a president’s success is somehow measured by his popularity overseas. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Foreign nations want a weak United States, that’s the bottom line. When a U.S. president is weak, most foreign governments prefer that,” Tarek said.
“That’s what I’ve always said. When the U.S. president is strong and doesn’t take any crap, that’s when his popularity overseas goes down. But a president needs to protect American interests, not make them subservient to the interests of other nations.”
“I agree. And by the way, I agree with what you said in class the other day.”
I smiled, another genuine one, and looked at him. “Why didn’t you back me up then?”
He looked at me. “I thought maybe it would have offended you somehow.”
“It wouldn’t have. It would have been nice to know I wasn’t alone.”
“Well, I’ll remember that for next time.” He smiled.
We were pulling into the Pentagon City area.
Tarek directed me to his apartment building, which was only a couple of blocks from the shopping center.
He told me to pull into the area in front of his building.
“This is a really nice building,” I said. “All that oil money must really be working out for you.”
He looked at me, and I half-smiled.
“You’re joking again, oh my God.”
“I do joke occasionally, you know? People say I should do it for my health.” I put the car in park.
He looked at me. “You actually have a good sense of humor. I hadn’t expected it.”
“Yeah well, it takes too much energy to be a bitch all the time.”
“You’re not a—what you just said.” He really did have a tough time cursing. Maybe I should temper my cursing around him, I thought.
We sat there for a moment. “Look,” I began, “you asked me last Monday why I’m so closed off. Now you know. People in this town are totally intolerant of others’ views. A couple of those bumper stickers—I’ve had to replace them three times. People keep ripping them off my car.”
“I understand.” He paused. “And I want to apologize for what I said the other day, about you shutting people out. It was rude.” His eyes were downcast.
“It’s OK. I was rude first.”
There was another pause.
“Look,” his eyes lowered for a second, “do you want to get a cup of coffee or something?” Then he quickly added, “Because I don’t have anything else to do today.”
I wanted to. I really did. But I had more reading to do. At this point in the semester, I needed to stay on track; otherwise, I would get overwhelmed really quickly. At least, that’s what I told myself. But the real reason that I thought I shouldn’t was because I was afraid. I was afraid of having feelings again. Having feelings meant being vulnerable, and I hated that.
“I’d like to,” I said honestly, “but I can’t today. But another time, sure.” I glanced at him then looked away. The thought occurred to me that maybe he thought I was flirting, but I really wasn’t. I was a bit nervous.
“OK,” he said, smiling.
“Hold on, I’ll help you with your stuff.”
I got out and opened the trunk. He took his bag and I shut the lid down hard.
We turned toward each other.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told him.
“See you tomorrow, Isabel.”
I felt a thrill when he said my name. I got in the car and put it in drive. He waved to me as I pulled away.
Stranger things than that haven’t happened for a long time, I thought, smiling.
THIRD WEEK: MONDAY
I had been thinking about Tarek pretty much constantly since I dropped him off the day before. I still hadn’t quite figured him out. He seemed interested in me, but was he really? Men who had been interested in me in the past had been pretty forward. They would ask me out, or kiss me, if we were in a bar or a club. I was confused, but even more intrigued than I had been when he had first approached me that day to ask me to study with him.
I had gotten to work early that day because I wanted to leave early. I wanted to get to campus way before class, so that I could corner Josh if I could. Mondays were the best day to do that. The later it got in the week, the more Josh would slack and the more time he would have to make up at work, and the later he would work. Typical Venezuelan, I thought, smiling. He would show up for class at exactly 6:00 p.m., slinking into his seat as the professor was starting class. Dinesh and I always made fun of him for it. But Josh was a really good sport and had a great sense of humor.
I was wearing a black suit today with a red silk, sleeveless blouse. Even though the suit material was lightweight, I was still warm. As soon as I stepped into the law school building, I found a small table to sit by myself and took off my blazer. After going to the gym at lunch, I had been lazy and had put mousse in my hair and let it air dry. It hung in loose waves around my shoulders and I kept pushing it out of my face. I needed a haircut.
Tarek usually got here before Josh did, so I sat in a corner, trying to hide myself from people walking along the halls. I sat past the area where the stairs and elevator were that led to the upper floors. I hoped that if Tarek came in before Josh, he would go straight upstairs to class and wouldn’t see me skulking here.
After a few minutes, I struck gold. Josh came in, talking with some girl I didn’t know. I got up and waved him over to my table.
“Hey,” he said as he approached.
“Have a seat,” I said. He sat. Then I dove right in. I didn’t know how much time I had until Tarek showed up.
“Dude, you’ve been talking to Tarek about me.”
Josh looked surprised at first, then smiled knowingly.
“It’s not my fault,” he said, holding his hands up.
“What the fuck does that mean? Did he torture you? Or do you mean you can’t help gossiping like an old woman?”
“I didn’t volunteer any information. He asked me about you.”
“Oh, and you were forced to answer,” I said sarcastically.
“What would you have preferred me to do? Plead the Fifth?”
This line of questioning was a waste of time. It had already happened, I figured. At this point, I just needed information.
“Tell me what he asked you, and what you told him.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Josh, I swear to God, I will kick your ass,” I told him in a low voice. “Tell me.” Then I added, “Please.” Sometimes Josh responded better to politeness.
“He asked me where you were from. He asked me if you were dating anyone.”
“And you told him no?”
“Yes. I mean yes, I told him that you weren’t. I told him that as long as I had known you, since the beginning of law school, as far as I knew you hadn’t dated anyone.”
“OK.” That was a true statement.
“What else did you tell him?” I probed.
“I told him that you had excellent grades, and that you studied more than anyone I knew.”
“Did he ask that specifically?”
“Not really. He mentioned that you seemed really into law school.”
“What, like he thought I was a nerd?”
“No,” Josh shrugged. “He seemed like he was impressed.”
“OK. Did you tell him anything else?”
Josh thought for a moment, pursing his lips. “I don’t think so.”
“OK, then.” I nodded.
“Isabel, why do you care?”
“I don’t know that I do.”
“Did you study with him this weekend?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “And?”
I shrugged. “And what?”
“How did it go?”
“Really well. He’s very smart.”
“So you think maybe you’ve finally met your match?” Josh was grinning so much that lines showed around his brown eyes.
Maybe, I thought. I gave Josh a snarky look and shook my head quickly.
After a little while, we walked upstairs to class. Tarek was already in his seat. As I approached, he got up to let me pass and take my seat next to him. Josh sat in his usual space behind Tarek. Dinesh was there too next to me.
“What? Is Josh rubbing off on you?” Dinesh laughed. “You’re going to start showing up late too?”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help smiling. “You’re full of shit,” I told him. Then I looked at Tarek.
“How are you?” I asked him.
“I’m doing well.” He had learned proper English, at least. He had said ‘well,’ not ‘good’ like most people did.
“How are you doing?” he asked me then.
I looked at him and nodded, opening up my laptop. “Doing OK.”
Then he said something that surprised me. “I didn’t know that your hair was curly. I thought it was straight.”
“Um, it’s naturally curly. Today after the gym I didn’t blow-dry it.”
“It looks really good,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. Your hair always looks incredible, I thought, like the rest of you.
“Yeah, who are you trying to impress today?” Josh said then from behind us.
I half-closed my eyes and shook my head to myself. I was going to kill him.
“No one,” I said, then wondered why I had even dignified that question with a response. I could feel the color rising in my cheeks and knew that in a matter of seconds my face would be as red as my silk shirt. I looked at my laptop.
The truth was, I had been in too much of a rush to blow-dry my hair after the gym, and I hadn’t thought about impressing anyone. But Josh’s comment had embarrassed me.
Thankfully, class started and Josh and Dinesh were both forced to stop talking.
After class, I was packing up and asked Tarek if he was going to the metro. He said he was.
I told Josh that we would meet him downstairs.
“Josh always takes forever to leave,” I told Tarek as we walked down the stairs. “He’ll catch up with us.”
Then I thought of something. “Hey, did you get your car fixed?”
“Yes, I did, thankfully.
“What was wrong with it?”
“The brake pads needed to be replaced, and one other thing.”
“So you have a lead foot?” I smiled. “Is that why the brake pads needed to be replaced?”
“Maybe,” he smiled and looked at me.
“That’s the thing about European cars; the maintenance is pretty expensive. But they last a really long time.”
We reached the first floor. Dinesh was with us. I introduced him to Tarek. We were chatting when Josh caught up with us. Eric wasn’t coming, he told us. He had something to do.
“Let’s go,” I said then.
The four of us were walking out the door when this guy I sort of knew, Saul, passed us. I looked at him, and our eyes met for the briefest of seconds before I looked away. It made me uneasy.
Saul was a guy who I had had a brief fling with about a year ago. I had been horribly lonely and craving physical contact. He was just a guy I knew from one of my classes, but we hadn’t really talked that much. I had been out dancing with Josh and Eric, I had run into Saul and I hooked up with him. We had slept together like two, no three, times. But then I didn’t want to see him anymore. It had only been physical for me. Beyond that, I wasn’t attracted to him on an intellectual level. We were too different. He, however, apparently had other ideas. He had wanted to keep seeing me. I knew for a fact that he had no intention of being with me long-term. However, he had wanted to keep sleeping with me, but at that point I was done. He had called and texted me for a while, and had tried to talk to me once in a while, but I hadn’t been interested. I avoided him after that and had been fairly successful at it.
The worst part now was that Tarek had greeted him on the way out. So they knew each other. Dammit. Saul saw me with Tarek, so now what if he told Tarek about what had happened between us? Well, if he told him that, then it was my own damn fault.
It actually made sense that they knew each other. Saul was Turkish; they both spoke Arabic. I had noticed that all the Arabic speakers at the law school seemed to gravitate toward each other, like all the Spanish speakers seemed to do. Maybe Tarek and Saul didn’t know each other well enough for Saul to dish. Although, I had to admit, as far as I knew men certainly liked to dish about their conquests.
I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. There was nothing I could do about it now.
The four of us chatted on the way to the metro. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long for a train. The train was unusually crowded for being after 8 p.m.
“There are seats over there if you want to sit,” Tarek told me.
“Thanks, but it’s OK.” I smiled. “I’ve been sitting most of the day.”
Tarek and I stood holding on to the same rail by the train doors, as the train sped off.
“How was work?” he asked me.
“All right. I actually had to do a Catalan to English translation today. I don’t get the chance to do Catalan very often.”
“So Catalan is a Latin language, right?” Tarek seemed interested.
“Yes, it actually developed from the same strain of Latin that French developed from—from which French developed,” I corrected hastily. “So there are a lot of words in Catalan that are similar to French words. For instance, ‘window’ in Catalan is finestre.”
“Ah, like fenêtre.”
“Right. And formatge—“
“Fromage?”
“Right. So since you speak French, if you read Catalan, you could probably understand a lot of it.”
“Interesting. So, the company you work for—”
“It’s a government contractor, so we do a lot of translations for federal agencies.”
“Intelligence-related?”
“Some, yes. A lot of business-related stuff too, like contracts, employment agreements, etc. But we also have private multinational clients. We translate websites, marketing materials, even pharmaceutical research, all that. I also do some linguistic stuff. For example, if someone needs help identifying accents, mostly Spanish and Latin American accents.” I paused for a breath. “I’m also a ‘Senior Translator/Linguist,’ ” using my air quotes, “so I also review other translators’ work.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“A few years, since I moved back to the U.S.”
“And before that, you were in—?”
“Barcelona.”
He nodded. “What did you do there?”
“Mostly translation, interpreting, and some marketing work.”
“Why did you come back to the US?”
Goddamn, he was asking a ton of questions. But I couldn’t think of a good reason not to answer them. I was also starting to get tired.
“I wasn’t happy with the employment market in Spain. It’s difficult for women and foreigners to advance in their jobs.” And I missed my mother and my sisters terribly, but I didn’t say that.
“But you weren’t a foreigner there. Your father was Spanish, right?”
“Yes, but I was born and grew up in the U.S. They treat you differently.”
He nodded. “I know what that’s like.”
“It must have been similar for you in France,” I told him, “because you look different.”
“Yes, it was.” He gave me a look of understanding then, almost like we were co-conspirators.
Then I overheard part of Josh’s conversation with Dinesh. They were arguing.
Josh was Scalia-bashing. This was somewhat
of a regular occurrence at the law school. To be fair to Josh, he wasn’t the only one who engaged in it. But Dinesh usually didn’t agree with Josh.
I felt the need to jump in. I almost always did. “Josh, look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t agree with Scalia’s opinion in Kyllo.”
Josh and Dinesh both looked at me.
“Well, I—” Josh began.
This was typical, and it annoyed me. None of the liberals at school would ever say anything that could be construed as even remotely good about Justice Scalia. It was like they all took an oath or something.
I continued. “So you think the government should be able to use thermal imaging sensors to find out what you’re doing in your house?”
“No, I—”
“So Scalia was right! Say it. Say it, Josh!”
“The Kyllo decision was correct, yes.”
“Jesus Christ! Let everyone here remember the day that you agreed with Scalia!” I held my hands up skyward.
Dinesh laughed.
“Lower your voice,” Josh whispered to me urgently. Other people on the metro were staring at us.
“Scalia’s almost always right,” Tarek said then. “Josh is upset because deep down, he knows it.”
“I agree,” I said.
“You wish,” Josh said.
“Oh, so you agree that it’s a matter of federal law whether to enforce a forum selection clause in a contract case?” I pressed. Many contracts had such clauses, which indicated, in the case of a legal dispute, the forum (i.e., court or alternative dispute resolution method, such as mediation), in which the case would be heard.
People on the train were still staring. They must be thinking about how lame law students were. They were right.
“What?” Josh said.
“Don’t you remember the Stewart case from Civil Procedure?” I asked.
Dinesh was guffawing. “He doesn’t remember the cases we talked about yesterday!”
I smiled. That may be true but it wouldn’t stop me.
But Tarek answered before I did. “The question is, in a breach of contract case, is it correct for the court to transfer a case from state to federal court under 28 USC 1404(a) in order to enforce a forum selection clause, by framing the issue as whether or not to transfer a case under 1404(a), thus framing it as a procedural question governed by the Rules Enabling Act, when the real issue is—”
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