Barring Complications

by Blythe Rippon

Victoria took a healthy swig of her tea, hoping it would soothe her frayed nerves. She strove for some kind of detachment, the ability to listen intellectually to the facts as though they had happened to someone else. She failed.

  “Where is he now?” she asked, because she had to know.

  “That’s classified, Madam Justice. He’s in our custody,” said an FBI agent seated in the corner. He seemed to think that was all there was to say about the matter. She thought about the black hole that swallowed people who had become national security threats. After Damien Fitzpatrick called one of her decoy cell phones and Pollard had summoned her to his office, she never heard from Fitzpatrick again. His name disappeared from the masthead of the Star Reporter. One night when she couldn’t sleep she had spent some time Googling him and came up empty. The next day she asked Wallace whatever became of his roommate. He shrugged and said that Byron and all his stuff were gone from the apartment the day after their meeting with Pollard.

  The FBI agent leading the meeting resumed her presentation. “We are in the process of dismantling the organization. We’re currently sifting through personnel to determine which individuals masterminded this attack and which ones are misguided teenagers with nothing better to do.” She took a drink of water. “FBI will continue to manage the investigation, and the Supreme Court Police will turn over to our special task force all surveillance material gained while tailing Justice Willoughby. Until we determine that the organization is no longer a threat, the US Marshals will establish protection details for the six justices who voted to overturn DOMA.”

  “What?” Victoria cut in. All eyes in the room turned to her. “Is that really necessary? I’m quite certain that none of us want a protection detail.”

  “Standard operating procedure, Madam Justice,” the agent continued. “Besides, we don’t anticipate you’ll need it for very long.”

  Victoria shook her head. “Could you be more specific about your time frame?”

  “Not really.”

  “And none of us has a choice in the matter?”

  “No.”

  She drank her tea and waited for the meeting to continue. It appeared to be over, however, and the agents and officers in the room stood and gathered their things.

  A very tall man with broad shoulders and black eyes approached her. “Justice Willoughby, I’m Agent Hernandez. I’ll be your escort for the afternoon.” He was older than she was, and strands of gray peeked through his dark hair.

  Victoria shook his hand and smiled. Rosie was going to love this one.

  Chapter Ten

  Genevieve

  Genevieve parked her car in Georgetown and double-checked the address Tori had texted her. Yep, this was it.

  Twenty minutes ago she had sent Tori a text that read, How did it go?

  The reply said simply, Meet me at 355 Potomac St. in Georgetown.

  Not exactly an informative response. Genevieve had spent the morning at HER completely distracted, worried about Tori, and unable to get any work done. It wasn’t hard to drop everything and drive to Georgetown, considering she hadn’t been able to hold anything in her mind for longer than thirty seconds.

  She crossed the street and admired the charming storefront. Ivy crawled up the red brick and covered the edges of a wooden sign that read “Bloomsday.” As she walked through the entrance, a bell above the door tinkled back and forth.

  “Just a moment!” a raspy voice called from the back of the store.

  She perused the various flowers in their buckets, and was sniffing a lily when Tori entered. The smile on her face filled Genevieve with relief. Thank God—she’d thought Tori would be a mess after the debriefing.

  Stepping across the flower shop, she took Tori’s hand. “Isn’t it customary to buy someone flowers without asking them to trek all the way to the flower shop to meet you?”

  “Who says I’m buying you flowers?”

  “Hmm. Did you invite me here so I could buy you flowers? Because that’s awfully presumptuous.”

  Tori smiled at her. “You’re ridiculous, you know that. And I love you.”

  Genevieve was about to kiss her when a voice behind her said, “Well, what have we here?”

  She turned around, a little guiltily, and pushed her hands into the pockets of her suit pants.

  “Rosie, I want to introduce you to someone,” Tori said.

  Rosie put her scissors down on a countertop and her hands went to her hips. She studied Genevieve. “So you said on the phone. You also said you were going to have a US marshal tailing you. You said he was tall and dark and strong. She is not my type.”

  Tori laughed. “He’s outside, in his car. Rosie, this is—”

  “Oh, I know who this is.” Genevieve raised her eyebrows and Rosie continued. “And what, pray tell, is she doing in my shop?” Her voice sounded stern, but Genevieve thought she could make out a smile hiding behind her eyes.

  “Well, I—” Tori began.

  “You woke up?” Rosie asked.

  To Genevieve’s surprise, Tori laughed. “Something like that.”

  “About time.” She marched right up to Genevieve and took both her hands. Her hands were scratchy, and Genevieve immediately liked her. “Well. It is nice to finally put a face to the name.” She turned to Tori. “Well done. She’s very pretty.”

  Genevieve blushed, and Rosie dropped her hands. “Okay. You have your eye candy. Where’s mine?”

  “Outside. Vee, you might as well meet him too. He’s going to be following me around for a while, and since I plan on following you around for a while, I ought to at least introduce you.”

  They walked out of the shop and partway down the block, where an unmarked black car was parked on the street. Tori tapped on the driver’s window and waited as it lowered.

  “Agent Hernandez, this is my friend Rosie and my…” She stopped and stared at Genevieve, unsure how to continue.

  Genevieve shrugged and extended her hand into the car. “I’m hers.”

  “I like that,” Tori whispered in her ear.

  After Genevieve shook the agent’s hand, she moved aside to give Rosie better access.

  “Aren’t you a handsome one,” she said, shaking his hand. “You will take good care of my little Victoria, hmm?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Rosie held onto his hand. “If you ever need to buy flowers for someone—a special lady perhaps—I own this shop. You may stop by any time.”

  He grinned. “And what if I don’t have a special lady?”

  “Stop by anyway!” Rosie laughed.

  “You know, my sister owns a flower shop in Portland,” he said.

  “Does she now? Well, we would have much to talk about, you and me. If you ever wanted to come visit.” She winked at him.

  Genevieve and Tori smiled at each other. When Tori reached out and slid a strand of Genevieve’s hair behind her ear, her knees went weak.

  “Want to take the rest of the day off work?” Tori asked, and Genevieve nodded enthusiastically. “Good. Because I’ve been wanting to go to the zoo.”

  Genevieve stared at her in disbelief, and she just laughed.

  Epilogue

  10 months later

  The alarm was buzzing and Victoria moaned, hoping Genevieve would hit the snooze button. She moaned again, louder, but the buzzing continued. Sighing, she pried her eyes open to find Genevieve’s place in the bed vacant. She turned off the alarm, slid a robe on, and headed down the stairs.

  “…no doubt they’re going to appeal, Jamie. An issue like this, no way they don’t. First of all, it’s too juicy. But also, there’s an opportunity to create a single, prevailing law on this, rather than the patchwork state-by-state laws. The administration agrees that gay couples have rights over their children in every state, so they’ll want the Court to weigh in.” Genevieve glanced up from her phone call as Victoria entered the kitchen. With a smile of greeting, she nodded her head toward the coffee machine.

  Victoria fetched t
hem each a cup and settled at the table with her laptop. As it booted up, she listened to Genevieve’s conversation.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. First off, I don’t know the background of this particular trial as well as you. And second…” She trailed off, shot Victoria a sidelong glance, and left the room.

  There were two more months left in the Court’s session, and it was crunch time for the justices. Opinions needed to be handed down before recess and there were still a handful of cases that hadn’t even come before the court. Victoria’s staff was hammering out three opinions on government regulations and one on intellectual property.

  She scrolled through a long list of new emails and stopped at one from Wallace. He had taken a job in San Francisco when his clerkship ended, but was going to be in town next week and wondered if she and Genevieve wanted to have dinner. She smiled at that. Wallace was one of the few people in her professional life who treated them as a couple, probably because he was one of the few people in her professional life who even knew they were together. Maybe it was time to start working on that.

  She was writing an email to her staff requesting a scheduling meeting when Genevieve returned, kissed the top of her head, and sat next to her to peer at her own laptop. Victoria knew she would need a minute or two to sort through emails before she’d be ready to talk. To kill time, or perhaps because she hadn’t done so in a while, she typed “I Fought the Law” into the search engine. The most recent blog post was about upcoming law school graduations and listed placement records for Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. She scrolled down to the second post and froze. There, in a big color photograph, was an image of her and Genevieve. Their foreheads were touching and they were smiling, their lips inches apart. Their arms were wrapped around each other, and just visible in the background was the end of the Pont St. Benezet. The picture had been taken last month when they visited Genevieve’s parents in Avignon.

  “Mmm. Good picture. We look very happy,” Victoria said, leaning back and pointing. As Genevieve stared at the screen, Victoria kissed her cheek.

  Genevieve’s eyes widened. “Tori? Are you okay?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She watched as Genevieve tried to wrap her mind around her casual attitude.

  “What’s the caption say?” Genevieve asked.

  Victoria scrolled down, revealing a headline declaring “Sweet Justice.” She read the post out loud.

  “This spring, in the historic district of Avignon, Supreme Court Justice Victoria Willoughby and President of Her Equal Rights Genevieve Fornier danced together on the ruins of the Pont St. Benezet. For years, rumors have flown that Willoughby is a lesbian. It would appear that these rumors were correct after all.

  We at I Fought the Law congratulate these two women, who have had quite an impressive past year. Willoughby authored two landmark decisions, one unanimously proclaiming the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo illegal, and one overturning Section 3 of DOMA. Fornier assumed leadership of HER, the largest women’s rights organization in the country, where she won the DOMA case at the Supreme Court as well as two district-level gay adoption cases.

  So, the question remains: now that gay marriage is federally legal, who will propose to whom? And will Alistair Douglas perform the ceremony?”

  Victoria leaned back. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, are you proposing to me, or am I proposing to you?”

  For a moment Genevieve’s eyes got big, and then she shrugged. “I thought my oral arguments in front of the Court were one big proposal to you. I’ve just been waiting for you to say yes.”

  It was Victoria’s turn to look surprised, and Genevieve laughed. Victoria kissed her neck and whispered, “For the record, I do want a ring.”

  Genevieve grinned. “If you get one, I get one.”

  “Seems fair. What did Jamie want?”

  Genevieve’s smile faded. “Nothing. Hungry? I could make breakfast.”

  “Please don’t ruin my cookware.”

  Genevieve stood and walked to the fridge. “I’m sure I can manage something. Yogurt and fruit?”

  Victoria crossed her arms. “What did Jamie want?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “He wants you to argue the appeal on the gay adoption case from Florida, doesn’t he?”

  Genevieve closed the door to the refrigerator and turned. “He doesn’t know we’re together.”

  “We should talk about this. I could always recuse myself.”

  “We’re getting so far ahead of ourselves. The appeal won’t even be filed for a couple of months, and then you and your gang will have to decide if you even want to hear it.”

  “Gang?”

  “Posse? Cronies? Sticks-in-the-mud?”

  “Let’s assume the Court decides to hear it,” Victoria said. “You’ve argued and won two huge trials on adoption-related issues in the past year alone, and you’ve won at the Supreme Court already. You know Jamie doesn’t have the panache to win this. You’re the perfect lawyer to give oral arguments.”

  “I think the case needs your vote more than it needs my voice.”

  “We could arm wrestle for it.” Victoria put her elbow on the table and raised her hand into position.

  “Please tell me this is not how you and Alistair decide things at work.”

  Victoria lowered her arm. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Are we still on for swimming tonight?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. I was thinking maybe I could teach you flip turns tonight.”

  Genevieve pulled her up and into her arms. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s very complicated, though.” Victoria ran her hands up Genevieve’s back and into her hair. “I might have to get a little physical with you.”

  “In the middle of the pool? What if someone sees?”

  Victoria smiled, thinking that they were pretty much recreating their pose from the picture on I Fought the Law. “Since when has anyone ever paid attention to us in the pool?”

  “Well, it would be just our luck. And of course it would be someone with a camera phone.”

  “Then I guess we’ll be on I Fought the Law again. Maybe we should see how many times we can get them to post about us this year.”

  “Hmm. Let’s shoot for four,” Genevieve said.

  “Oh, at least five. There’s one already up there. So, one in the pool, one at some fancy restaurant when I propose to you, and one at our wedding.”

  “You’re missing one.”

  Victoria kissed her, long and slow. “I guess you’ll have to get creative, Counselor.”

  “Oh, just you wait,” Genevieve promised.

  The End

  About Blythe Rippon

  Blythe Rippon holds a PhD in the humanities and currently teaches writing to undergraduates. Until now, her publishing has been of the academic variety. When not grading papers or imagining plots for future novels, she is usually holding forth about the political injustice of the day, hiking, or experimenting in the kitchen. She has lived all over the United States and at present can be found in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her wife and children.

  Connect with Blythe online

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  blythe.rippon@gmail.com

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  https://sites.google.com/site/blytherippon/

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