Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley Read Free Book Online

unconvincing explanation.
    “But where were you?”
    She flung her handbag onto an armchair, looked him straight in the face, and said, “With the President of the United States. At Camp David.”
    “Camp David,” Buddy said. “Really. And how is the President?”
    “Fine. He’s into bowling. Sends his best. You hungry? I’m starved. Want to go to that tapas joint? Grab some sangria. Fool around?”
    “First tell me where you were today. I was fucking frantic, for God’s sake.”
    “Baby, I told you. The phone rang, it was the President. He wanted to see me. They sent this helicopter for me and everything.”
    “Are you insane?”
    “No, starving.”
    “Pepper. Where. Were. You. All. Today?”
    “Camp. David.”
    “Dammit.”
    “What?”
    “You’re serious?”
    “As a heart attack.”
    “Well, okay, then, and what did he want?”
    “He’s a fan, turns out.”
    “The President of the United States watches the show?”
    “Apparently. Yeah.”
    “Jesus. Why didn’t you take me along?”
    “You were asleep, darling.”
    “Why didn’t you wake me?”
    “You were out. What time
did
we get in last night, anyway?”
    Buddy hesitated slightly too long. “Oh, I don’t know. Late.”
    Pepper said, “For a guy who divides his days into seconds, you sure get vague when it comes time to accounting for the nocturnal hours.”
    “Whoa with the cross-examination, Your Honor. You’re the one who disappeared all day without a trace. All right, all right. Let’s get something to eat.”
    “Not hungry.”
    “You said you were.”
    “Well, I guess I filled up. On bullshit,” she said, and stalked off to the bedroom.
    “Pepper.”
    “Kiss my ass.”
    “I thought,” Buddy said after her, “we’d been over all that.”
    “Well, I guess we aren’t over ‘all that.’ ”
    “All that” being a blind item that had appeared some months past in Page Six * : “Which unjudicious reality TV producer has just hired his fourth young-lovely ‘personal assistant’ whose duties include more than keeping him supplied with foamy lattes?”
    She slammed the bedroom door behind her, and then felt foolish for imprisoning herself while actually hungry. But then a few minutes later she heard the front door slam reciprocally. She walked to the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center and bought two shopping bags of books about the Supreme Court, including numerous autobiographies of justices. (There were a surprising number of them by sitting justices. She had been under the impression that they generally waited until later to sum things up.)
    Pepper opted for takeout at Shun Lee and, now looking like an expensive, thoughtful bag lady, lugged her trove back to the apartment and holed up in bed with the books. She read them late into the night. It felt weird and illicit—she kept listening for Buddy—as though she were back at summer camp after lights out, with a flashlight under the blanket reading
Nancy Drew and the Strange Supreme Court Nomination.
    The next morning she found Buddy asleep on the couch. She crawled in beside him and by the time they got up the previous night’s shouting match seemed to have been forgotten or at least duct-taped over.
    They mixed Bloody Marys and made a frittata and salad lunch while watching one of the Sunday talk shows with one eye each.
    Chopping scallions, Pepper said, “What’d you make of all that Supreme Court hullabaloo?”
    “They’re all assholes,” Buddy said thoughtfully.
    “Whole process has become sort of a zoo, hasn’t it?”
    “Who’d want it?” Buddy said, cracking eggs.
    “To sit on the Supreme Court? Are you serious?”
    “Nine old farts in robes sending footnotes to each other.”
    “Rehnquist. Warren. Brandeis. Frankfurter. Harlan. Black. Holmes. Marshall. Old farts in robes? I’m beginning to see why you went into TV, darling. You have a genuine talent for the old reductio ad absurdum.”
    “Don’t knock TV,” Buddy grunted. “It bought you this room