An Imperfect Spy (8 page)

“And why are they taking our seminar?” Kate reasonably asked.

“Because they suspect it will be easier than some other electives, and they like me, not for my blue eyes but because I occasionally remember their names without looking at a chart. And I don’t call on them unless they raise their hands. You,” he added with a certain wry effort at gallantry, “are an object of curiosity, insofar as they allow themselves
to indulge in that time-wasting emotion. And some of them will be the few really good students, returnees mostly, who come here bravely and go on to do fine things.”

“Thanks,” Kate said. “You’ve cheered me up considerably.”

It was Kate’s first day at Schuyler Law. The faculty was in the habit of holding a cocktail party, really a reception for the students, to mark the new semester; Blair had urged Kate and Reed to attend. “It’s supposed to be for the students,” he had explained, “and is compulsory for the faculty. In fact, the party’s developed into a kind of reunion of buddies, the sort I’ve always imagined is enjoyed by an army unit or a fraternity group now well into middle age. Many of the students do come, feeling the time was well spent if their absence might be held against them, but most of the second- and third-year students skip it, pleading other compelling engagements.”

Kate had arrived early to be shown the seminar room and Blair’s office, which they were going to share. “Visiting faculty women, however exalted, do not rate offices around here,” Blair said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s you who should mind. Won’t I be an intrusion?”

“Any intrusion is bearable one day a week. In the case of this particular intrusion, I expect eagerly to anticipate that day.” They had made their way from the basement floor to the higher floor devoted to offices. Blair flung open a door, held it
while waving her inside with a flourish, closed it, and sat down on a chair while pointing her to its mate opposite.

“My office,” he said.

Kate sat down and looked around with frank curiosity. When she had canvassed the books and the view, she let her eyes stray to a picture of a woman on his desk.

“Your wife?” she asked. It seemed the most direct and the best way, although to what she was uncertain.

“Yes,” Blair said. “But we’re divorced. She decided she preferred a lawyer who made a bit more a year—well, a lot more a year. I keep her picture there to dissuade me from any impulsive moves toward marriage. We’re quite friendly; she even admits that I’m more interesting than her present husband, and I refrain from pointing out the difficulty of finding anyone less interesting than her present husband. Enough of that. Shall we descend to the cocktail party? Perhaps if we were to arrive early, it would indicate a certain enthusiasm on your part that might well be worth the effort.”

“Surely they can’t object to me as much as all that?” Kate said.

“They object to you on the purest, frankest grounds of sexism. They’re much more worried by Reed and his clinic. Not only has it shown up the lack of other nonsynthetic clinics, it always makes the Schuyler faculty nervous when the students are in danger of getting ideas.”

“I hope we may prove a danger by inculcating ideas,” Kate stiffly said.

“Let’s hope.”

“Blair,” Kate said, “I’m not sure that you or anyone else can quite believe my ignorance about law schools. I don’t even know what you ordinarily teach. I know Reed teaches criminal law, but I don’t really know what that is, apart from reading the ever-drearier newspapers.”

“Ah,” Blair said. “What is criminal responsibility? That, as someone said, is the question. You don’t know, I don’t know, Reed probably has some idea, and I promise you no one at Schuyler Law has a clue, except to agree with Rehnquist and Scalia on all points, including instant implementation of the death penalty.”

“That the faculty of Schuyler is hardly on the cutting edge of progressive thought I have more or less gathered. What I need,” Kate said, “is a short rundown on the cast of characters before I meet them.”

“Like the beginning of one of those old-fashioned, voice-over films, I suppose,” Blair snorted.

“I like voice-over films,” Kate said. “I know they’re not in fashion, but they seem very British and interesting to me; so much better than the avant-garde sort where you can’t figure out what happened or hear what anybody’s saying until the end and often not even then.”

“Good,” Blair said, “because this is definitely an old-fashioned film. Let us start with contracts.”

“Our contracts?” Kate said. “They’re only for a semester, thank god.”

“The course contracts,” Blair said. “Has Reed told you nothing about law school?”

“Nothing,” Kate said. “He would have, but I never asked. He doesn’t teach it, so it never came up. Reed teaches criminal procedure; I have heard about that. Sometimes he teaches evidence.”

“Doesn’t he teach any first-year subject?” Blair asked.

“Only on occasion, I think. Except for those who request it, they alternate on first-year courses.”

“O Reed, among the blessed. At Schuyler Law, everybody teaches the basic courses.”

“And they are?” Kate firmly said. “I await your voice-over.”

“The other basic courses,” Blair said, “—I trust you are taking notes, I’m not going to repeat this, ever—are, in addition to Contracts: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Property, Procedure, and Torts.”

“We’re moving right along,” Kate said cheerfully. “I’ve now got the six basic courses, and I have no intention of asking you about advanced courses. We’ll save those for another time.”

“To which I look passionately forward,” Blair said. “All law-school courses are advanced, but some are core and some are not. That is, the core courses are taken by all students regardless of their interests in other areas of legal study, whereas the noncore advanced courses are taken according to the special interests of the students.”

“So what do they do in clinics?” Kate asked. “And why has Schuyler had only synthetic ones?”

“Don’t be a snob,” Blair said. “Synthetic clinics teach much the same as real clinics. They’re both involved with lawyerly skills. But Reed’s kind of clinic—about which I’m frankly even more of a snob than you—teaches substantive law by working with students, clients, administrative agencies, or courts in a particular area of law. Simulated clinics only get you so far; they’re okay for practice, but they don’t provide help to real people in need.”

“That’s just what Reed said. On to the basic courses at Schuyler Law.”

“Contracts.” Blair took a break while (apparently) trying to picture the catalog description. “Contracts studies the laws regulating agreements for commercial purposes. It also studies how the state enforces contracts. That’s a lot to study, and it always occupies two semesters. As does constitutional law.”

“Don’t tell me,” Kate said, “let me guess. It studies the Constitution.”

“Well done,” Blair responded. He was getting into the spirit of the thing. “It also considers the legislative and judicial spheres, federal and state, government and individuals.”

“In short,” Kate said, “Rehnquist versus Brennan, or Marshall vs. Thomas.”

“You could put it that way, yes,” Blair agreed. “Except that questions of original intent get rather hairy.”

“Sorry for the uncalled-for remark,” Kate said.

“Apology accepted. I’m doing my humble best.”

“You’re doing wonderfully,” Kate told him,
meaning it. “As to what you learn in Torts,” she said, “I cannot even guess.”

“Well, I have taught it,” Blair said, “but that’s not going to be much help. It’s to do with injuries not covered by criminal law. It also deals with the principles of liability.”

“What do you teach, besides literature and law with me?” Kate asked. “I should have asked that question long ago. Were you in literature, I would have ascertained your field in the Oak Room before we had ordered a drink. There is too little understanding between the professions.”

“A condition we are trying to remedy with our lit-law course,” Blair gallantly said. “I teach Procedure. Who can sue whom? When? What do courts do? What are the rules, the role of lawyers, the costs? Perhaps we can discuss the details some other time over a drink.”

“That would be lovely,” Kate said. “Now, what does that leave us? No, don’t tell me; I’ve got to get this clear. Property; how could I forget?”

“In an American law school you can’t and shouldn’t. Some forward-looking schools actually include environmental as well as historical and economic perspectives. At Schuyler, they study property, meaning land and water, chiefly in the context of mine versus yours and, above all, versus the state. And speaking of Schuyler, we’d better get down to that reception. Follow me.”

“Do they serve alcoholic beverages to oil the wheels of social intercourse?” Kate asked, remembering her recent visit to the Theban.

“That they do,” Blair said. “Bourbon is the drink of choice.”

“I should have guessed,” Kate said. “It figures. Reed and I drink scotch.”

“They’ll probably run to a small allowance of scotch for you and Reed. I’m a scotch drinker myself.” He bowed her out of the office, locking the door behind him.

The reception turned out to be much less difficult than any of them had anticipated, largely because of the alcohol. Kate, despite her questions to Blair concerning alcohol, decided not to drink, feeling the need to connect the names she hardly knew with the courses she had just heard about, and wanting to get an impression that might not be offered to her again. Kate never drank when she was working. She considered this reception, unlike that at the Theban, work. Why, I wonder? she asked herself.

Blair introduced Kate to Professor Zinglehoff, who immediately intrigued her. He had two characteristics she found compelling, in the sense in which a horror scene is compelling. First, Zinglehoff never finished a sentence, always interrupting himself just before the eagerly anticipated end to introduce another qualification, and second, he wore under his dark jacket a black turtleneck sweater instead of a shirt and tie, which made him look exactly like a turtle. A tendency to thrust his head forward as he made his never syntactically concluded points increased the resemblance. Kate, who liked turtles, tried to turn this aspect into a compliment, but faltered.
My god, she thought, I’m describing someone without even meaning to. But Zinglehoff is someone deserving of description; just think what Dickens might have made of him.

“It must be a new experience, being taught by a woman,” Zinglehoff remarked, “not that there is anything untoward about a woman teaching in a law school, particularly a woman who is not a lawyer, and many intelligent women are not lawyers, in fact, I suppose you could say most intelligent women are not lawyers, but I have been curious as to how our students, who are a hardworking lot, particularly when you consider their outside jobs, and some of them are women like yourself—”

“What do you teach?” Kate rudely interrupted. She wondered how his wife, if any, managed to converse with him. Perhaps she left notes. Perhaps at home he was unalterably silent. One could only guess. “Do you teach a basic course?”

“Basic courses are, of course, the heart of any law school, unlike all those frills that can be added afterward, well, some of them are useful, I don’t doubt it, in their own way, and I have even taught Real-Estate Transactions from time to time, when the need arose, which in a small school like ours it sometimes does, due to leaves and other emergencies, and I can’t say that I approve of hiring adjunct professors to take up the—”

“You teach Property?” Kate asked. She felt an overwhelming urge to shout, “Answer yes or no.” And indeed, a yes, trailing a long sentence behind it, had just passed his lips when Reed appeared to
the rescue, saying: “Kate, Professor Abbott would like to meet you. He’s over there; let me introduce you.”

“Excuse me,” she said to Zinglehoff.

“You looked in need of rescue,” Reed said, “and Abbott did ask to meet you. Be brave.” He grinned, and headed her toward Professor Abbott, who was indeed notable; in addition to being the only non-white person in the room, he was large, and handsome, and stately.

“You’re not a lawyer,” he informed Kate, shaking her hand. “Blair Whitson has tried to explain to me why we want a nonlawyer teaching in a law school, but I’m afraid I didn’t altogether get the picture. Could you clarify it for me? I’d be grateful.”

“Certainly,” Kate said. She looked at her empty glass.

“Let me get you another drink,” Abbott said. “What was it? Gin?”

“I’ve had enough,” Kate said, “but thank you for the offer. Actually, I was looking into my glass for inspiration to answer your question rather than for a drink.”

“I know,” Abbott surprisingly said, “you think I’m an ‘old boy,’ as my daughter calls all academics my age, and I proudly proclaim that indeed I am. It is a privilege for me to be here, in such a fine law school, and I would like to see it continue to offer what I was so glad to be allowed to learn when I went to law school many years ago.”

“And instead they are offering the sort of irrelevance
I teach,” Kate said. “I see your point, I really do.”

“It isn’t alone what you teach,” Abbott said. “It’s what the students seem to expect these days. They don’t come to learn, they come to argue before they know what they’re arguing about. They know how to challenge but not how to acquire the information that gives them the right to challenge. Very old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“No,” Kate said, rather liking him. “It’s gone too far, I do see that. Even in literary studies, many students don’t want to study texts or, as we used to say, literature, they want to discuss the social, cultural, gender, and economic conditions surrounding and infusing the text. One can’t help feeling annoyed with this shift in emphasis from time to time, but I tend to look on it as an extreme but necessary inter-generational adjustment.”

“That’s put magnanimously,” Abbott said. “But why did this extreme adjustment just happen lately? Generations of students studied law as it was taught, and they probably studied literature that way, too. Why need we change so dramatically? Are you sure you wouldn’t like another drink?”