The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online

I was twelve.”
    “Yeah, but you also iron your socks.”
    “Just my dress socks,” Nathan corrected. “As if you’re one to speak.”
    “Don’t give me that,” Ben said. “I may be organized, but you’re King Anal.”
    Nathan brushed the side of his shoe and added a little spit. “In your dreams.”
    “Is that why your credit cards are alphabetized in your wallet? Or why none of the clothes in your closet can ever touch each other?”
    “I just want everything to have its own personal space,” Nathan explained.
    “Sure you do—and it’s not because you’re a freak.” Staring at the loafer on his right hand, Ben added, “If Lisa saw me doing this, she’d have a field day.”
    “I can’t believe you still haven’t brought her by.”
    “I think you’ll really like her,” Ben said. “She’s got spunk.”
    “Then why don’t you date her?”
    “I can’t,” Ben said. “We’re too close. It’d be like dating my sister.” He slipped his feet into his gleaming loafers.
    When the doorbell rang, Ben went to answer it. “Nice place,” Lisa said as she stepped inside. “Better than I thought it’d be.” Against the far wall in the living room sat a large, deep-blue couch. A smaller striped love seat served as a way station for jackets, briefcases, wallets, and keys. Both had been bought with the proceeds from the roommates’ first paychecks in Washington. Over the larger couch hung an enormous, empty gold frame, surrounding a splattering of red, blue, yellow, and green paint, which Eric had painted directly onto the wall when they first moved in. In Eric’s words, it was “primary colors in action”; in Ben’s words, “a nice first attempt—if you’re into the whole Jackson Pollock thing.” In Ober’s words, “it didn’t suck.” Nathan proclaimed it “a disaster.”
    Ben walked into the living room with Lisa and introduced Nathan, who was still polishing his shoes.
    “Nice to finally meet you,” Lisa said. Sniffing the air and noting the shoeshine kit, she added, “If you guys want, we can go catch a movie. They have a senior citizens’ discount.”
    “Make fun if you like,” Ben said.
    “Oh, I definitely like,” she said, glancing around the room. “By the way, what’s with the coffee table?” The coffee table in the center of the room was actually a poster of Elbridge Gerry—according to Ben, the country’s worst vice president—mounted on a piece of Formica, resting on concrete blocks.
    “That’s the most politically obscure coffee table in town,” Ben explained proudly. “Where else can you rest your feet on the face of someone who refused to sign the U.S. Constitution?”
    “You’re really freaky sometimes, y’know that?” Lisa said. Walking past the glass dining-room table that was set up between the kitchen and the living room, Lisa entered the kitchen and approached a calendar attached to the refrigerator. “Is this a Miss Teen USA calendar?” she asked, noticing the logo under the picture of a young girl in an evening gown. Flipping through the months, she said, “This is pathetic.”
    “I knew you were a flipper,” Ben said, watching her from the living room. “There are two types of people in this world: those who never look ahead on a wall calendar so they can be surprised every month, and those who flip ahead, racing to see all the months at once.”
    Lisa headed back to the living room. “I thought you said there were only
two
types of people: spaghetti-twirlers and spaghetti-slurpers.”
    Ben paused, then eventually said, “Okay, there are four types.”
    Suddenly, Ober walked in the door. “I’m home! Is the lesbo here yet?”
    “Actually, there are five types,” Ben said.
    As Ober approached Lisa, Ben shut his eyes and prepared for disaster. “You must be Ober.” Lisa extended a hand. “That’s funny. Ben said your palms would be much hairier.”
    As Nathan laughed, Ober said, “Really? He said you’d be more butch.”
    “He