The Paper Chase Read online

  “There was a promise to fix the hand back the way it was before,” Hart said.

  Kingsfield interrupted: “And what in fact was the result of the operation?”

  “The hand was much worse than when it was just burned …”

  “So the man got less than he was promised, even less than he had when the operation started?”

  Kingsfield wasn’t looking at Hart now. He had his hands folded across his chest. He faced out, catching as many of the class’s glances as he could.

  “Now, Mr. Hart,” Kingsfield said, “how should the court measure the damages?”

  “The difference between what he was promised, a new hand, and what he got, a worse hand?” Hart asked.

  Kingsfield stared off to the right, picked a name from the seating chart.

  “Mr. Pruit, perhaps you can tell the class if we should give the boy the difference between what he was promised and what he got, as Mr. Hart suggests, or the difference between what he got, and what he had.”

  Hart fell back into his seat. He blinked, trying to erase the image of Kingsfield suspended in his mind. He couldn’t. The lined white skin, the thin rusty lips grew like a balloon until the image seemed to actually press against his face, shutting off everything else in the classroom.

  Hart blinked again, felt for his pen and tried to focus on his clean paper. His hand shook, squiggling a random line. Across the room, a terrified, astonished boy with a beard and wire-rimmed glasses was slowly talking about the hairy hand.

  2

  HART HAD BEEN WORKING for more than five hours in his concrete dorm room just large enough for a desk, a chair and a bed. He kept on only the desk light. It made the room seem larger and blocked out distractions. Gradually, he had locked into the work, oblivious to time and the physical action of turning pages.

  His door opened, a boy peered in and said something. Hart didn’t move, didn’t even hear the question. The boy closed the door and sat on the bed, two feet away. The sight of Hart completely into his work, with one light on, made the boy feel reverent. It was a picture to put with the dark faces in gilt frames hanging in the classrooms in Langdell.

  Then Hart knew someone was in the room. It came slowly: first just sensing he was losing contact with his casebook, and then, more quickly, the realization that there was breathing in the room, that the breathing was not his, that someone was there. It passed through his mind like cue cards. He saw Ford on the bed.

  “How long have you been there?” Hart said. Ford was the only student Hart had met in the first two weeks. Ford had introduced himself after the first contracts class and the fact that it was Ford, not Hart, who had taken the initiative gave Hart a slight feeling of superiority.

  “I just came in,” Ford said. “I knocked, but you didn’t hear it. I came to ask you to join my study group.”

  “Study group?” Hart said.

  “You’ll hear about study groups pretty soon. Groups of first year students get together, review the classwork, the casebooks. They make outlines and then share them with the group. It helps at exam time.”

  “All right,” Hart said, “I’ll join the group.” He squirmed around in his chair and looked away from Ford.

  “Just think about it,” Ford said. “You don’t have to make up your mind.”

  Hart didn’t want to think about it. “I’ll join,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  Ford smiled and stood up.

  “Have you gotten a lot done?” he said. “Are you planning to study all night?”

  “No,” Hart said, “I’m really finished.” There were other things he wanted to say. He wanted to say thank you. He wanted Ford to stay with him for a while. “Want to get drunk?” Ford asked.

  ***

  “I had three roommates during my freshman year in college. One was a genius, one was crazy and one was inconsequential and kept to himself,” Hart said.

  “It sounds like a fairy tale,” Ford whispered. He was woozy. The bourbon had gone to his head and now he lay stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He let Hart’s words fall over him like music, lulling him to sleep. It was good that Hart was talking, that the wine had unlocked him. Ford wanted that.

  “The genius surprised us the first week. We were all trying to write our first papers. It scared the hell out of us. I’ve never worked so hard on anything. But the genius was cool: he didn’t do anything at all. We figured he didn’t give a damn.

  “The night before the papers were due, he swung into action. Sat down and started typing, faster than I ever saw anyone type. He started about eleven and finished at one. We hung around his door, wondering what the hell would happen.

  “When he finished, he had twenty-five neatly typed pages. He’d proofread them as they came over the top of the typewriter. I got a C minus on my paper and the genius got his back with a note asking him to continue his work in English Literature for the sake of future generations. I had to work for a year before I got an A on a paper.”

  Hart sank down in his seat, staring at the light in the ceiling.

  “What about the crazy roommate?” Ford asked.

  “He was fixed on inviting his high school sweetheart up for a college weekend. He’d write her letters, tell us she was coming any day. But he didn’t have any money and his parents wouldn’t send him any. One day his girl told him to get lost.”

  Hart’s voice was sinking low, just a trickle sliding to Ford.

  “We were lonely during the first weeks. When there were dances, we could hear music through the window and see couples walking under the trees. One night, two couples sat down on the steps outside the dorm. The genius and I were on the third floor, listening to records. The crazy roommate came in with a wastebasket filled with water. He wanted us to help him dump it on the couples. We told him he was crazy, but he did it anyway. There was a tremendous scream. Then these two huge guys were in our room, saying they were going to beat the shit out of us. We told them we didn’t have anything to do with it, but we didn’t want to tell them right out who did. The crazy roommate had hidden in his bedroom, and the genius told the guys that if they knocked on the door, they’d get some valuable information.

  “So they knocked, and the crazy roommate came out dressed in his pajamas, saying why the hell couldn’t he get any sleep around the dorm.”

  “Jesus,” Ford said.

  “This made us hate him because he’d put us in the position of getting the shit kicked out of us. We had thought he was pathetic, his girl friend and all that, but now we saw he was dangerous. Anyway, then the soap in the bathroom started to disappear. I’d go in for a shower, turn on the water, reach into the soap dish to lather up and find it empty. I didn’t say anything about it, but when it happened to the genius, he got upset.

  “He set up this plan. I invited the crazy roommate into my room. By that time he was pretty anxious to make friends with someone, anyone. He felt pretty good about it. As soon as he came in, the genius went into the crazy roommate’s room. The soap was hidden in his socks. We confronted him, but he denied it all, and then we couldn’t find the soap in his socks. The genius went wild: took the crazy roommate by the neck, forced him on the floor, dug his fingernails into his skin. Finally he blubbered out that the soap was hidden in his shoes.”

  “God,” Ford whispered, “he was crazy as hell.”

  “Yes,” Hart said. “But that’s not the end. I mean, he was really crazy. About three in the morning, he came into my room and told me he didn’t care what the genius thought of him, but that he treasured my friendship. He started crying. Can you imagine what it’s like having one of your roommates crying and begging you to be his friend? I almost threw up. ”

  “What did you do?” Ford said. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I couldn’t think of anything. Anyway, he left school and that finished it.”

  I’ve been to college and I know. The things you hear about don’t really happen, or if they do, they aren�
�t interesting. Sex, riots, drugs: no one tries to hide them.

  What really happens has been happening for ever so long. People kill themselves. They hang themselves, jump out of windows, turn on the gas. Sometimes they blow their brains out with guns.

  Behind every good college are a hundred boys who killed themselves.

  It’s very unpredictable. My father is head of the history department. One day his best student-shy, earnest, likable- called up to say he had just killed himself. He said it very matter-of-factly: “I just killed myself.” He had cut his throat. So Dad rushed over in the middle of the night, and found the boy, still holding the phone, with the big blood vessel in his neck cut out with a razor blade.

  3

  ASHELEY GROVE, Mrs. Kevin Brooks, was a very simple girl. She thought of herself that way and regarded it as a compliment.

  It was her night out and she was sitting in the Cambridge Center for Adult Education listening to a very old professor, who looked as if he might collapse at any moment, talk about medieval history. Asheley didn’t believe half of what he said, but she liked listening to the stories. The professor was talking about Pietro di Murrhone, the “Holy Hermit” who came down from his cave to become Pope Celestine V, in 1294, and abdicated after five months, expressing doubts about his own salvation as a result of the experience.

  Asheley wasn’t really serious about medieval history and she had been afraid to come to the class, thinking that she would have trouble getting to know the other students. As it happened, most of the people were like herself: wives of law or business school students, conservatively dressed quiet girls who had completed two or three years of college. They’d managed to turn the class into a social club. When the lecture ended they would have coffee together and talk about what life was going to be like when their husbands graduated.

  Most of the girls were envious of Asheley. Most had to work. They didn’t have Asheley’s father, who was paying for Kevin’s education at the law school. They didn’t have the time Asheley did to think about the babies they were going to have and the houses they were going to decorate.

  After coffee, Asheley said good-bye and began her meandering walk home. She could have gone by a more direct route but she kept to the lighted streets. She didn’t like walking home alone. She wished Kevin had continued his practice of walking her there and picking her up. In fact, she’d tried to insist on it and the result had been a real fight. Kevin was upset. He was studying very hard.

  Once she had tried to visit him in the big library in Langdell Hall. She had made some cookies and wrapped them in tinfoil. But the dark gray building was too imposing. She’d made it into the lobby and then she’d met a group of students. She couldn’t do it after that, knowing that there would be more students upstairs, and that she’d have to search among them for Kevin. She’d hidden the tinfoil package in her coat and fled.

  She felt more comfortable in the apartment. She’d decorated it, and she liked its warmth and closeness-the way it was protected by the apartments around it.

  Ahead, waiting in the street for the bus, Asheley saw seven or eight teenagers. The group was playing a game that looked like tag. Perhaps they were just having fun touching each other. Asheley moved away from them, toward the buildings.

  As Asheley passed, one of the girls, dressed in a fringed coat that came down over her shoes, pulled on her shoulder.

  “Hey, lady,” the girl said, smiling from behind the mass of curly hair around her face, “give me twenty cents for the bus, O.K.?”

  Asheley shuddered at the girl’s touch. She pulled away, jerked backward and slapped the girl’s hand down. The others in the group watched Asheley as she backed away from them down the street.

  In ten minutes she was home. She sprinted up her stairs. Kevin was in the living room, bent down over his books, flipping the pages like a machine. She dropped her things on the couch, threw her arms around him and put her face down on his neck. His hand jerked forward over his notes, twisting a line down the center of the page.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he said, dislodging her. She turned sideways to him, looking meek and ashamed.

  “I’m just happy to see you,” she said, and came forward again, reaching out for him. He lay down on the sofa, and stuck his head into a pillow.

  “Oh, Kevin, don’t put your feet on the sofa,” Asheley said, sitting down and rubbing his back.

  “Jesus Christ, you made me mess up my notes. Do you want me to work or not?”

  He was so perfect looking. His blond hair, blue eyes. It melted her. She wanted to touch his face, trace the lines with her finger.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said. “If you work harder, you’ll hurt yourself.” She slid a hand around his neck and kissed him.

  4

  “LOOK,” TOOMBS SAID, “you guys have any questions? Anything else you want to know about the dorm? The rules? Don’t worry about the rules – screw, anything you want. I don’t give a shit. I’m not an advisor, I just sort of watch the dorm.”

  Hart shifted, getting comfortable on Toombs’ bed, wondering if Toombs was really supposed to watch over the dorm or if he’d made it all up. Ford was in the corner looking through last year’s law school yearbook.

  “I guess I’ve covered everything I’m supposed to tell you,” Toombs said. “Thanks for coming. I’m inviting everyone in the dorm in for these talks. Wish I’d got to you sooner.”

  Hart started to rise.

  “Oh yes,” Toombs said quickly, “the only second and third year students around here are failures. Don’t listen to them. They still live in the dorm because they couldn’t find a roommate, or Cambridge scared them. They never leave the law school, except to take a taxi to the airport. Their skin is pale from spending so much time in the tunnels.”

  “Why did you stay?” Hart asked. Toombs didn’t look like a failure. He looked like what a lawyer should look like: a good suit, vest, a little wrinkled so you knew he’d been working.

  “Me?” Toombs said. “I get an allowance for watching the dorm, for watching you guys.” He started to unbutton his vest and noticed that Hart was staring at the yellow lines set in the dark blue silk like stays in a corset.

  “That,” Toombs said, “is what getting a job will do for you. Congealed sweat. It costs too much to clean it after each interview.”

  Ford looked up from the book.

  “One more thing,” Toombs said. “All that stuff about grades is true. You’ve got to work like hell. Next time you think about bugging out of the library, don’t.”

  “Christ,” Ford said under his breath.

  “You think I’m kidding? You think I’d joke about grades? You try getting a job if you don’t have them. Either you’ve got to look right, or you’ve got to have the grades.”

  Hart was thinking that you didn’t wear professional clothes unless you were good.

  “I was supposed to do well,” Toombs said, “but I choked up. Like in the interview today. My only chance was to stall on the grades, while I showed how much experience I had. It didn’t work. It’s all stacked against you, if you don’t have the grades.”

  “What are you interviewing for?” Ford asked.

  “A job in New York.” Toombs nervously ran his hand through his curly black hair. “I need the money. Don’t think you’ve got it made because you go to Harvard. You can’t wear Harvard on a sign around your neck. Like I said, you’ve got to look good, or have the grades.” He stubbed out his cigarette and hitched up his feet on the lower rung of his chair.

  “Well, thanks,” Hart said, starting to rise again.

  “I walk in, the room is dark as hell, just this one light bulb, about fifteen watts, hanging from a string. And the wind blows the light bulb so it throws weird shadows all over the room. They plan it that way so you can’t hide things.”

  “Well,” Ford said, “we don’t have to worry about that yet. Thanks.” He looked at Hart.

  “Either of you from New York?” Toom
bs said. “New York firms hate to hire people from New York. I’m from New York. They want people from the South. They don’t have to teach them manners. Anyway, this fat man is sitting behind a desk. He says to me, ‘Mr. Toombs, what courses have you liked at Harvard?’ Then he leans back, and the bulb sways in the wind, hanging strange reflections over his glasses so I can’t see his eyes. You know, like he’s wearing those sunglasses that have mirrors on the front? He just wants to know my grades. That’s what the question is for. I stall him. I say I liked property. New York firms always like property law.”

  “I hope you get a job,” Hart said.

  “Then the fat man leans over, out of the shadows, and says right out, ‘How did you do in property?’ I got a D in property, and if I tell him that the interview is over. My only chance is to keep the fat man guessing. I say, ‘Well, I did O.K.’

  “The fat man slides back into the shadows and I think I’ve done it, that he thinks I’m just modest, that he thinks I did real well. I mean, it makes me feel good because this is life or death.

  “But I see he’s peeking a look at his watch, back in the dark, and I know he wants to be on a plane home with a drink. He swings right in front of my face and says, ‘Toombs, exactly how did you do in property?’ I feel like he’s shot me. It caught me off guard in the dark and all.”

  “Thanks for telling us about grades,” Hart said. “We’ll remember.”

  “I didn’t give the fat bastard the satisfaction of knowing how bad I did. I knew he didn’t like the way I looked, they don’t like curly hair, and telling him I got a B minus average would have sealed it, made him feel objective. So I spit out: ‘I don’t remember how I did.’ It’ll keep him awake nights, thinking maybe I was on Law Review.”

  Ford and Hart had reached the door. Toombs seemed to be contemplating things.

  “We’ll remember the rules,” Ford said.

  “You see, you don’t want to go through that shit. So don’t slack off on the studying. That’s the main thing to remember around the dorm. That’s the main rule.” He saw they were halfway out the door.