The Tenth Justice

When Ober returned home, he was surprised to see Nathan and Eric sitting silently on the large blue couch. “Where’s Ben?” he asked, looking at his watch. “I thought you guys were going to blows at eight.”

“He must be stuck at the office,” Nathan surmised, looking up at Ober. “Did you get a haircut?”

“Absolutely,” Ober said, running his fingers through his blond hair. “You guys have to go to this barber. A guy in my office recommended him—he cuts all these senators’ hair. He once cut Jimmy Carter’s hair. Anyway, his name is Murray Simone, King of Hair.” Brushing his neck to remove some remnant clippings, he continued, “Naturally, I made up the ‘King of Hair’ part—his name’s just Murray Simone.”

“We get the idea,” Nathan said, immediately annoyed by the hair talk. “Finish the story.”

“So I go into the abode of Murray Simone, King of Hair, and I tell him that I like the top long and the sides short, and how I hate it when the top’s short. He surveys the terrain, and then he looks into the mirror and says to me, ‘What I’m gonna do for you is I’m gonna give you a short haircut, WITH ATTITUDE!’” Laughing at the mention of Murray’s words, Ober almost knocked himself over. “How funny is that? ‘I’m gonna give you a short haircut, WITH ATTITUDE.’” Touching his hair, he continued, “So what do you think? Did Murray Simone, King of Hair, give me attitude? I think so.” Looking at himself in the glass of a nearby picture frame, Ober said, “I have ATTITUDE!”

“Ober, maybe now’s not the time,” Nathan said, staring at Eric.

“Cheer up,” Ober said to Eric. “Your life’s only lasting another few hours—you might as well enjoy it.”

“Can you just shut up?” Eric asked, raising his voice.

“Don’t take it out on me,” Ober said, standing in the middle of the living room. “I didn’t dick over my friend.”

“Asshole,” Eric yelled, “why don’t you—”

“Ober, just shut up,” Nathan interrupted. “Both of you, relax.”

“Don’t forget what I said, though,” Ober said. “Murray Simone, King of Hair. And tell him I sent you.” When he heard a key in the front door, Ober leaped on the large blue couch and stared at Eric. “Round One. Ding. Ding.”

Ben stormed through the front door to find Ober, Nathan, and Eric on the couch. “So? What’s the explanation?” Ben said, crossing his arms.

“Ben, I know you’re mad,” Eric said. “Just let me explain.”

“Go right ahead,” Ben said. “That’s what I’m waiting for.”

“I can’t tell you if you’re pissed. You’re going to be mad at me no matter what I say.”

“Eric, even if I was in a good mood, I’m going to be mad.”

“I told you he’d made up his mind,” Eric said, turning to Nathan.

“Ben, just give him a chance,” Nathan pleaded.

“You have a chance,” Ben said, still staring down at Eric. “Just go. I’ve been waiting all day.” When Eric was silent, Ben added, “C’mon, tell me. I’ll keep an open mind.”

“Fine,” Eric said. “I just want you to know that when you told me about what happened with Rick and the Maxwell decision, I never thought about saying a word. I mean, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’d never turn you in or let anything damage our friendship. And I certainly wouldn’t write something that I thought would get you in trouble. But you have to understand the position I was in. I’ve been working at the Herald for almost five months, and I haven’t done anything but edit excerpts from the Congressional Record. The editors wanted to transfer me down to the Style section, and when the CMI thing happened, I couldn’t pass it up. I’m the low man on the totem pole, and I had to give them something. So I gave them that.”

“That’s it?” Ben asked when Eric paused. “That’s your reason? You might’ve gotten transferred to the Style section?” Ben’s voice boomed. “You tell me that there’s an explanation for your actions, and that’s what you come up with? Eric, you are a piece of shit!”

“My job was at stake.”

“So you risked my job to save yours?” Ben yelled. “You think that’s the answer to the problem?”

“You don’t get it. I wasn’t risking your job,” Eric said.

“Oh, no?” Ben asked in disbelief. “Don’t you realize what you—”

“You know there’s no way you’ll get caught,” Eric said. “They’ll never find Rick, and we won’t tell. You can’t get hurt by this.”

“Well then, today’s my lucky day,” Ben said. “Thanks, Eric! Since they’ll never find Rick, I’m off the hook. Do you have any idea why I was late getting here? It’s because for the past hour, I was getting grilled by the Marshals Office at the Court. And in case you’re totally clueless, the marshals are responsible for all Court security. They sat me down and raked me over the coals about my involvement with the CMI leak. The head of security wanted to know about my relationship with you, since his friend at the Herald said we were roommates. He said that if they find out I’m involved, I’ll be fired. They want me to take a lie detector test to prove my innocence, and they’d love nothing more than to throw me to the press and watch them rip me apart.”

“Oh, shit,” Nathan said.

“Oh, shit is right,” Ben repeated. Pointing his finger in Eric’s face, he continued, “And since it’s obvious you didn’t take a single moment to anticipate the consequences of writing that story, you should also know that every paper in the country called the Court today to find out if it was true. At this point, they won’t turn me in, but they say it’s only a matter of time before the press finds a source who’ll talk. And I don’t think it will take long before someone puts the story together with the fact that you and I are roommates.”

“All I did was write about a possibility,” Eric said.

“No. All you did was plant a seed in everyone’s mind. Since that rag you write for doesn’t give a crap about reality, they ran it. The result screws no one but me.”

“But I didn’t even give a source,” Eric said.

“IT DOESN’T MATTER!” Ben yelled. “Get your head out of your ass. Not giving a source just means it takes longer for them to investigate.”

“Listen, don’t get mad at me,” Eric said, getting up from the couch.

“Then who the hell should I be mad at?” Ben asked, throwing his hands in the air.

“Well, I’m not the one who leaked information from the Court. I hate to burst your bubble, but what you did was illegal. I didn’t make it up.”

Ben shoved Eric in the chest. “You selfish son of a—”

Nathan jumped up, knocking over the coffee table, and wedged himself between the two friends. “This is not turning into a rumble. Both of you, relax.”

Clenching his fists, Ben stepped back from Nathan. “You really are a lowlife,” he said to Eric.

“Don’t pull that with me,” Eric said, his voice racing. “You have no idea what I was going through. You always have everything handed to you. You have no idea what it’s like to struggle on your own. My editor was breathing down my ass for a source. I didn’t care, though. I never once named you! Never!”

“Then how did the Marshals Office know that I was the source for your story about Blake’s resignation?”

Eric was silent.

“What’s the matter? You don’t have an answer for that one?”

“The Blake story was different and you know it,” Eric shot back. “For CMI, I didn’t say a word. No matter what they said, I wouldn’t give them a source. My editor told me people would call me a hack. But I kept quiet.”

“Well, you’re just the best friend a guy could have. Maybe next week you can do me a real favor and slice my throat. That’ll be the greatest.”

“I’m serious,” Eric said. “I was flooded with calls today. I got calls from Newsweek, Time, USA Today, The New York Times. You name it, I got a call from it. And I could have blown your story to any one of them. I could ride this one to fame and fortune. I could write a book about the whole thing. I’d have movie deals, a syndicated column, the whole world if I blew the lid off this one. You know it’s true—”

Before Eric could finish his sentence, Ben rushed toward him and pushed him against the back wall of the room, holding him by the front of his shirt. “You say one word, and I swear I’ll rip your fucking heart out!”

“Ben, let go!” Nathan demanded as he and Ober pried him off of Eric.

Straightening his shirt, Eric said, “Listen, I understand you’re pissed, but that was good journalism. The point is, I protected your ass, and I wrote a page five story my first time out.”

“If you killed your mother, you’d make page one,” Ben screamed. “Does that mean you should do it? You didn’t blow this story open. You would’ve been clueless unless I told you. So don’t fucking act like you’re doing me any favors by not signing away the movie rights!”

Taking a deep breath, Eric said, “Ben, do you have any idea how hard this CMI thing has been on me? From the moment you told me about how Maxwell got the info, I wanted to write the story. I waited, though. I waited until all the smoke cleared, until all the papers were finished obsessing over Maxwell and the decision. I waited until all the hoopla was over. And all I ran was a small piece that tried to explain it.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying?” Ben asked, shaking his head. “Are you trying to say I should thank you for waiting a bit before you put the knife in my back? Do you have any idea how warped that logic is?”

“I don’t know why you’re so crazy. They’ll never be able to prove—”

“That’s not the damn point!” Ben yelled. “Stop rationalizing your actions and think for a second! You knew this would happen. You knew it, and you didn’t care.”

“Ben, I never meant for you to get in trouble. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry. I’m sorry a million times. What the hell else do you want?”

“I want you out of this house.”

“What?” Eric asked.

“Ben, you can’t do that,” Ober said, his voice cracking.

Ben looked at Eric. “You heard me. I want your ass out of this house.” As Eric shook his head in disbelief, Ben continued, “I’m not joking, Eric. This isn’t some silly high school fight. I don’t want you in my life anymore. I don’t trust you, I don’t like you, and I no longer need you as a friend.”

“What if I won’t leave?”

“Then I will,” Ben said. “Our lease is up on the first of the year. That gives you a month and a half to find a new place. If you want to fight me on it, we’ll take a vote. If no one wants to vote, we’ll flip a coin. Either way, I refuse to have you in my life anymore.” Turning his back to his friends, Ben stormed up the stairs to his room.

“Eric, just let him cool off.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Eric said, walking to the front door. “I’ll be at the paper if anyone needs me.”

When the door slammed, the room was silent. “I really think he’s serious,” Nathan finally said.

“He can’t kick him out of the house,” Ober said. “We can’t let him do that.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Nathan asked, surprised by Ober’s reaction.

“We can’t let him break us up. When I moved here, it was to be with the four of us.”

“Ober, you have to relax.”

“Do you think he’ll really kick Eric out?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “But when he went flying toward Eric, I thought Ben was going to kill him. This isn’t an easy thing to forgive.”

“You have to talk to him,” Ober said. “Promise me you’ll talk to him.” When he saw Nathan heading toward the stairs, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“To talk to Ben.”

“Are you going to talk about Eric?”

“No, I’m going to talk about Murray Simone, King of Hair.”

“What’d he say?” Lisa asked the moment Ben arrived at work the next morning.

“It was a disaster,” Ben said, hanging his coat in the closet. “He had no excuse.”

“Nothing?” Lisa asked. “He didn’t even make up an excuse?”

Ben grabbed the cup of coffee from Lisa’s desk and took a sip. “He tried to tell me he was going to get demoted, but it was pathetic.”

“Did you at least take a swing at him?”

“Lisa, I’ll have you know, I’m a man of words, not violence.”

“But didn’t you want to rip his face off? Didn’t you want to just bust his teeth in? Didn’t you—”

“I get the idea,” he said, fidgeting with his red and gold tie.

Wait a minute,” Lisa said. “You hit him, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t hit him.”

“Ben, don’t lie to me. . . .”

“I just threw him into the wall, threatened him a bit, and told him to move out.”

“All right, Mr. Tough Guy!” Lisa said. “Give me all the gore.”

“It wasn’t anything. I just lost it for a second.”

“I can’t believe it. I can’t even imagine you losing it.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you’re such a wuss.”

“Oh, and you’re so tough?”

“Trust me, I kick ass when I have to. And given time, I’ll kick your little ass as well.”

“Lisa, I don’t want to hear your sadomasochistic fantasies in the office. That’s sexual harassment, and it’s against the law.” Ben’s phone rang. “Hello, Justice Hollis’s chambers,” he answered.

“Ben, is it okay to call you now?”

“Mom? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. Are you in court?”

“No, we don’t have court on Fridays,” Ben said nervously. “Why? What’s wrong at home?”

“Well, I was wondering if there was something you had to tell me,” his mother said.

Either she was talking about Eric’s story or she’d gotten another letter from Rick. Either way, Ben saw trouble. Hoping to pry before he gave up any information, Ben said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Benjamin, don’t play games with me. Now, do you have anything you’ve been meaning to tell me?”

“Mom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, then, perhaps you can explain why I had to hear secondhand from Barbara that you have a very serious girlfriend.”

“Oh, my God,” Ben said as Lisa looked up from her desk. “Mom, I don’t have a serious girlfriend. Ober’s mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Don’t lie to me, Benjamin.”

“Mom, I swear I’m not lying.”

“Then who was the woman your friends were raving about at Katie’s house last week?”

“They were probably talking about my co-clerk,” Ben said, frowning at Lisa.

“You’re sleeping with your co-clerk?”

“I’m not sleeping with anybod—Mom, I’m not sleeping with Lisa. Nathan and Ober were just joking around with Aunt Katie. We’re just co-workers.”

“Well, Ober seemed to say it was more than just a working relationship.”

“When did you speak to Ober?”

“This morning. You had already left for work. What time do you go in anyway? They must be working you like a dog there.”

“It’s the Supreme Court. We tend to work hard,” Ben said. “Now tell me what Ober said.”

“That’s none of your business. William and I had a wonderful conversation. Now, tell me, is this co-clerk from Washington?”

“No. She’s from Los Angeles.”

“Is she there now?”

“No, she’s not here now,” Ben said, looking up at Lisa. “She’s taking depositions.”

“HI, MRS. ADDISON!” Lisa called out.

“I knew she was there!” Ben’s mother said. “Put her on the phone.”

“Mom, I’m not putting her on. Get it through your head.”

“Ask her if she’s going home for Thanksgiving.”

“Mom—”

“If I need to, I’ll get her number from Ober and call her myself.”

Laughing, Ben said, “Lisa, my mom wants to know if you’re going home for Thanksgiving.” Ben mouthed the words “Say yes.”

“No, I’m completely free!” Lisa shouted.

“Wonderful,” Ben’s mother said. “Tell her she’s invited to spend it with us. She’ll come home with you.”

Glancing over at Lisa, Ben said, “My mother wants me to tell you that she’s glad you’re going to be alone on Thanksgiving. She hopes you have a miserable night, and that your heat gets turned off, and that you die alone without the comfort of family and friends.”

“Benjamin!”

“She wants you to come home for Thanksgiving.”

“I’d love to,” Lisa said, sticking out her tongue at Ben.

“Great,” Ben said, turning back to the phone. “Mom, you may want to prepare an extra turkey or two. I don’t know if Ober told you, but Lisa eats like a cow and a horse and a whole barnyard of animals.”

“If you’re seeing her, I want to meet her,” his mother said.

“Fine, I give in. You caught us. We’re going out. Mom, this one’s the one. Lisa and I are in love, and she’s pregnant, and we’re thinking of naming the baby Hercules, after Aunt Flo.”

“That’s not funny,” his mother said.

“Listen, I really have to go.”

“Just tell me one last thing: What happened between you and Eric?”

“Mom, nothing happened. Why? Who said something happened?”

“Ober.”

Closing his eyes, Ben spoke in a calm voice. “Nothing happened between me and Eric. We just had a small argument. That’s it. We’ll make up later tonight.”

“Just remember what I said to you when you left for college: ‘There’s nothing like childhood friends.’”

“That’s great, Mom. Thanks for sharing that for the eighty-fourth time. Can I go now?”

“So Lisa is coming to Thanksgiving?”

“Yes, Mom. Thanks to your meddling, she’ll be there.”

“Wonderful. I’ll call you later. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Say hi to Dad.” Hanging up, Ben turned to Lisa. “You really think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, guess again, missy, because you just made the biggest mistake of your life. In your infinite wisdom, you’ve just gotten yourself invited to the seventeenth circle of hell—my house for dinner.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Hold on,” Ben said, pulling out a small pad from his top drawer. “I have to write this one down.” As he scribbled on the little pad, he announced, “On Friday, November twenty-first, Lisa Marie Schulman said ‘I can’t wait,’ as she referred to her upcoming meal of death.”

“It’ll be fun,” she said.

“‘It’ll be fun,’” Ben said as he added that phrase to the pad. “I think that’s what Napoleon said right before he went to Waterloo.”

“Ben, my family is still impressed with the lava lamp. How much worse can your family be?”

“I’d say a great deal worse. A world of worse. Maybe a whole universe of worse.”

“Just stop it already.”

“Lisa, I’m not exaggerating. My parents are mutants. They’re sick, bizarro freaks who were spawned to bring guilt and angst to all the innocent children of Earth.”

“Well, I can’t wait to meet them. They sound like wonderful people.”

“‘They sound like wonderful people,’” Ben said as he resumed his writing on the pad of paper. “Ho, boy, I can’t wait until you eat these words.”

“Whatever you say,” Lisa said, opening up one of the many brown folders on her desk. “Meanwhile, have you finished with the Russell opinion? You said you’d have it done two days ago.”

“Don’t rush me. It needs more work.” Ben returned the pad to his desk. “And by the way, can we meet at your house tonight? I want to go over my meeting with Rick before tomorrow.”

“Absolutely. Oh, and Ben? I don’t mean to be a dick, but I really do need the Russell decision.”

“Lisa, I said I’d get it to you. What do you want?”

“I want you to finish it. I believe you when you say you’re working on it, but you’ve been doing the first draft for over two weeks now.”

“Well, I’m sorry I had a busy week, but my life’s been a bit chaotic lately.”

“Don’t pull that with me,” Lisa scolded. “You know I completely sympathize with everything you’ve had to deal with. All I’m saying is that you have to do your best to ignore it all. Like it or not, this Court is more important than whatever’s going on in your life.”

Ben was seething as he turned to a clean page of his legal pad. “Fine. I understand. Let me get to work now.”

“Ben, stop it. What do you want me to do?”

“How about being a bit more understanding!” he shouted. “It’s easy for you to be diligent, but I’m the one who’s chasing the psychopath. Every time my mom calls, I’m terrified he’s contacted my family. On top of all that, my friend betrayed me and the Marshals Office is threatening me—and the week’s not over yet.”

“Y’know, for one second, I wish you could see things from another perspective besides your own.”

“And I suppose your perspective is the optimum one?”

“I’m serious,” Lisa said. “Hollis knows I always go over the decisions before he sees them, so he’s gotten used to asking me for them. For the past week, he’s been asking me, and I’ve been making up excuses. On Tuesday, I said we were working on a few points. On Wednesday, I said we still hadn’t resolved them. Yesterday, I avoided him completely. I don’t know what to tell him today. We’re in this together, and I don’t mind taking the fall with you, but this is stupid. Russell is a nonsense procedural issue. Hollis told us exactly how he saw this one, but we’re dragging our feet on it. Just finish it and give it to me. Even if you’re halfway done, give it to me and I’ll touch it up. I just have to hand him something by the end of today. I’m sorry if that means I have to ride you, but at this point it’s the only way you’ll take me seriously.”

Ben stared at his legal pad. “I’m sorry,” he said coldly. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll have it for you before lunch.”

“Ben, I—”

“No explanation’s necessary. You’re right. If I couldn’t get it done on time I should’ve passed it to you.”

“That’s all I was trying to say.”

“Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Looking in the mirror, Rick pulled his tie into a perfect knot. “Of course I’m ready. The real question is: Will Ben be ready?”

“You know he’s plotting against you.”

Dissatisfied with the length of his tie, Rick undid the knot and started over. “He can do whatever he wants. I’m not worried.”

“How can you be so confident?”

Rick turned away from the mirror. “Because I understand Ben. After that disaster with Eric, he’s going to have a hard time saying no to my offer.”

At a quarter to one, Lisa returned to the office carrying a small brown bag. She pulled out two cups of coffee, a bran muffin, and a chocolate croissant. “Lunchtime. Eat up,” she said, handing Ben the croissant and one of the coffees.

Twenty minutes later, Ben still hadn’t touched the coffee or the croissant. A half hour after that, he finally looked up from his computer screen. “One Supreme Court decision coming up,” he announced as the laser printer started to hum.

“Great,” Lisa said as she walked to the printer. When she had picked up all seventeen pages, she returned to her desk and pulled out her red pen. As Ben watched her expression from his desk, Lisa read the decision, her red pen primed for corrections. Slowly and meticulously, she scrutinized each page, placing it facedown on her desk. After fifteen minutes, she turned over the final page and looked up at Ben.

“So?” Ben asked, picking at his croissant. “What’d you think?”

“Ben, this is a phenomenal job,” Lisa said as she turned over the pile and shuffled the pages. “Usually, I hack your first drafts up. My pen only touched the paper twice.”

“Three times, actually,” he said. Walking over to Lisa’s desk, he grabbed the small pile of paper and searched for her corrections.

“It was just grammatical stuff.” Lisa leaned back in her chair. “I’m amazed, though. This first draft is like one of our third drafts.”

“Well, this time I was trying.”

“Why the hell don’t you try like that the rest of the time? Usually you do an excellent job, but this is a finished product. You probably saved us a whole extra day of work.”

“It was an easy case,” Ben said. “It’s not that big a deal. I just work well under pressure.”

“I should get pissed off more often.” Lisa got out of her seat, took the pages back from Ben, and put them in one of Hollis’s brown folders. “I’m going to walk this over to Hollis as is. Hopefully we can be done with it by this afternoon.”

“That’s fine,” Ben said, pulling his black overcoat from the closet. “I have to run to the restaurant, but I’ll be back within an hour.”

“Planning for tomorrow?” Lisa asked.

“Absolutely,” he said. “At this point, I’m not leaving anything to chance.”

At three-thirty, Lisa returned to the office. “That’s it. We’re done with Russell,” she announced as she tossed the seventeen-page document on Ben’s desk.

“He liked it?”

“Did he like it? Let’s put it this way. At one point I had to wipe away the drool that was hanging off his lower lip.”

“Be serious.”

“I’m not joking,” she said. “Hollis loved it. He said it was well argued, and organized exactly the way he wanted. He especially liked the conclusion, where you called the dissent ‘an attempt to empty the endless ocean of logic with a thimble.’”

“He’s keeping that? I thought for sure he would cut it. He always cuts my metaphors-as-insults.”

“Well, he liked this one. Apparently he thinks Osterman is out of his mind in the dissent.”

“Damn,” Ben said, slapping the desk. “If I’d known he was going to be open to wordplay, I’d have come up with something even better. I was thinking of saying that the dissent is ‘trying to piss on the inferno of common sense.’”

“I don’t think that one would have flown,” Lisa suggested.

“Why not?” Ben asked. “You don’t think he’d agree with the parallel I’m drawing between common sense and fire?”

“I don’t think Hollis wants to go down in history as being the first justice to ever use the word ‘piss’ in one of his opinions. He’s crazy like that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Ben said, flipping through the seventeen-page document. “So tell me what else Hollis said.”

“Nothing really. He’s happy we’re done with Russell because he says that Grinnell will almost definitely be decided tonight.”

“How does he know it’ll be assigned to him?”

“He already spoke to Moloch and Kovacs, and they don’t want to touch it. Whether he’s in the majority or the dissent, Hollis’ll be the most senior justice who wants to write the decision.”

“Any word yet on whether Veidt has hopped the fence?”

“They’ll know tomorrow. Hollis said Veidt is having dinner with Osterman and Blake tonight.”

“Ah, another Supreme Court case is going to be decided based on how hard one justice schmoozes another.”

“Welcome to Washington.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ben said. “You’re so politically astute. Now I know how this town works. And all along I foolishly thought it was democracy that ran our nation.”

“Listen, when I first got to law school, I always used to say that if the Supreme Court was really about true justice, then every issue, no matter who was on the Court, would come out with the same result. If Roe v. Wade granted abortion rights in 1973, then the decision shouldn’t be overturned just because some conservative justices came onto the Court. But over time, I’ve realized that that’s the beauty of the law. We decide each case individually. No fact pattern is exactly the same, and every justice takes all the different facts into account. If we wanted the same decision every time, we wouldn’t need judges—we’d get robots we could plug the facts into, who could reach the same cold, logical decision. But who the hell wants a robot deciding their life?”

“That depends—are they conservative or liberal robots?”

“That’s exactly my point. Stop seeing everything in black and white. No two people see anything exactly the same way. That’s what makes it great. We sacrifice ourselves to people’s particular mores, but we gain an individualized judicial system. I mean, would you really want to live in a world where there were no Ostermans or Veidts?”

“Actually, I probably would,” Ben said. “But I guess that would also mean that the entire madras golf pants market would crash.”

“Ben, be serious.”

“I know, I know,” he said, picking at the hardened remains of his croissant. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed when a case is decided on personal politics.”

“No, you should definitely be annoyed. But just realize that the personal side of the judicial process also provides a lot of benefits that ensure democracy as we know it.”

“That’s wonderful, General Washington. I’ll keep that in mind every time I tell the story of how Veidt sold his vote away.”