4

      Empty shopping bags; a Saturday afternoon horror story

      WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED there wasn’t a simple black dress in her size in town? Lilly didn’t after the first store, and even after the second. But at store number three and counting, the trend was becoming pretty clear. No dress for the judge who’d done that terrible thing to poor Mike Collier. No shoes either, unless the size fives Mrs. Milhouse tried to force onto Lilly’s size sevens counted. “Wasn’t that a bit harsh, throwing Mikey in jail?” Mrs. Milhouse asked, practically bending back Lilly’s big toe to wedge a pair of black pumps on her foot. “Oh dear, did I pinch your toes?”

      Then there was the ice cream cone, plain vanilla, something that should have been a nice treat in the middle of a futile shopping spree. The scoops right before hers were generous, overflowing the cone. Her scoops, though, were so dinky she thought about asking for a magnifying glass to find them in the cracked cone, one that dripped out the bottom.

      In spite of the clogs in her shopping expedition and the ice cream stains down the front of her shirt, Lilly did find her dress and shoes—thank you, Big Bob’s Discount Mart. It was a clearance special, where everything must go: heaps and heaps of clothes on tables, more heaps of shoes in piles of boxes. After some elbow-to-elbow excavating among a bunch of frantic shoppers who were whipped into a dress-tugging, shoe-flying frenzy, Lilly managed to escape without bruises, carrying a dress that was a little too slinky and short for Ezra’s party, and a pair of shoes way too platform and clunky for anything other than a high school dance. But they were black, and that’s all that mattered.

      On her way home from Big Bob’s, Lilly detoured over to the jail. It was only a couple of blocks out of the way, and she’d overhead some Big Bob’s chitchat about the protestors at the jail. Professional curiosity, she told herself, regretting her decision the instant she turned the corner. The first sign she saw read Loony Judge Lilly. People were actually marching in a circle with them. And along with Loony Judge Lilly, there was an abundance of Free Mike Collier signs. The group was shouting at cars passing by, telling them to honk if they were in favor of freeing Mike Collier. Naturally, everybody was honking…everybody, that is, except Lilly, who, stalled in a Mike Collier traffic jam, couldn’t take her eyes off a steadily growing line of compassionate and, most likely, husband-hunting women lining up at the jailhouse door, armed with home-baked cakes probably concealing metal files for sawing through iron bars, and notes of hopeful marriage proposals. Something about a man behind bars that got the ol’ hormones flowing, she guessed, putting on a pair of sunglasses as though people wouldn’t recognize her in them.

      And they did recognize her. Halfway through the traffic snarl, and just when she thought she just might make it all the way past, one fervent Mike fan recognized her and shouted the war cry to the rest of the protestors. “It’s the judge,” he yelled, and everybody ran to the curb. Lilly expected rotten tomatoes or something similar to the riot she’d survived in Big Bob’s, but the group of people merely frowned at her. One old lady did shake a mean index finger at her, and one brave vigilante held his Loony Judge Lilly sign a little higher than the rest of them.

      It took Lilly five whole minutes to inch her way through the gauntlet, one scowl at a time. And by the time she turned off the block, she’d decided she’d take a good wrestling match at Big Bob’s over this any day. At least at Big Bob’s she’d walked away with a battle trophy. Here at the jail, she was the battle trophy.

      Saturday night and the perfect potted palm

      LILLY MANAGED TO GET out of town, though not looking quite as polished as she would have preferred, and an hour later than she wanted. Consequentially, when she arrived at Ezra’s she was frazzled, her hair frizzled, and overall she wasn’t in tip-top form. Then she discovered that Ezra’s “few people” turned out to be a veritable jackpot of notoriety in the judicial world—her first time invited into such hallowed ranks and she was looking like a dowdy interloper in her Big Bob’s special, while they were looking austere and accomplished in their distinguished, well-cut grays and charcoals. A federal judge, several superior court judges, a supreme court judge, dean of the law school…Lilly almost turned around and ran before she was all the way inside. “Don’t you think I’m a bit out of my league here?” she whispered at Ezra as she exchanged her Big Bob’s five-dollar mark-down shawl for a manhattan, the ingredients of which probably cost more than her entire outfit.

      Ezra, now retired from teaching at the law school, hobnobbed with all the big judicial names. He could have been one of those names, and probably should have been, but his love was in the classroom, where he could teach the pure elegance of the law. Over the years he’d had offers from prestigious firms and yes, even a judgeship. But he was a permanent fixture in the classroom, and now, after his retirement, he still taught from time to time, just not as much. “You’re out of your league only if you want to be, my dear,” he replied. “And if you don’t dazzle them with your legal repartee tonight, that dress will go a long ways.” Soft and round, with abundant white hair not a whole lot less wild than her own, and sagacious thick eyebrows over bright brown eyes, Ezra Kessler was her mentor, her friend, her substitute grandfather. So many important roles in her life all wrapped up in one person, and she loved him dearly, in spite of the fact that since he’d retired from teaching, he’d been spending a little of that free time meddling. Like tonight, tossing her in the mix with all the heavy hitters—for her own good, he’d tell her. It was and he was right. That was Ezra, who, no matter what, had always been in her corner. “And your little exploits down in Whittier made the paper here, by the way, so I’m guessing a few of my friends will be eager to hear the particulars. It’s not every day a judge gets to send a member of the press to jail, you know. Even though I think that’s every judge’s secret fantasy.” He chuckled. “And for parking tickets. I’ve got to hand it to you, Lilly, what you did takes courage. Makes an old teacher proud.”

      “It made the paper here in Indy?” she choked out. “No way.”

      Ezra nodded. “On television, too. Good picture of you, I might add. The robe looks a little big though, but it suits you.”

      “A judicial hand-me-down. The guy before me was a line-backer in college or something, and a robe in my size isn’t in the city budget until next year. Tight money or something. The mayor’s always harping on city funds.” Shaking her head, she tossed back the manhattan in a couple of gulps to brace herself for the onslaught, ridicule…whatever her esteemed colleagues might throw at her. “You might have had the decency to warn me about this, Ezra,” she said, sidestepping her way over to his hulking potted palm in the corner. Sanctuary in any form…an evening communing behind nature.