Skinny-dipping by Claire Matturro Page B

damn Rules of Civil Procedure again. Angela scampered to gather it up.
    Judge Goddard nodded at Stephen. To Angela and me, he said, “Good afternoon, ladies. Ms. Harper and Ms. Cleary. Are we ready?”
    No, I thought, but that’s beside the point.
    After introducing himself for the sake of the court reporter and the transcript, Stephen informed the judge the hearing had been set on his motion for a pretrial conference, and that I was improperly trying to piggyback my motions for a continuance and to amend the witness list onto his motion. Stephen maintained that he learned of my plans to argue my motion for a continence only when his secretary had called him on his cell phone just minutes ago.
    Oh, yeah, right. As if she’d waited three hours to call him on that.
    â€œBut you were served with the original motion for continuance, what, three weeks ago?” Judge Goddard asked.
    â€œFour, your honor,” I said.
    â€œAnd the grounds haven’t changed, have they?” The judge peered at Stephen with much the same look I’ve seen Olivia give one of her Rottweilers after he’d piddled on the Oriental rug.
    â€œYes, sir, but . . .”
    I stopped listening and tried to visualize my safe place, my crystal blue waterfall. I was so wholly un-prepared that listening to Stephen prattle wouldn’t help me. Nothing would, I thought, as the waterfall crumpled into a vision of canned hash.
    Angela nudged me. Judge Goddard looked at me. Stephen had shut up, so it must be my turn to speak.
    â€œGood afternoon, your honor,” I said, as Angela shoved a memorandum in front of me. “I have a memorandum of law prepared for you, if I may.”
    â€œI trust you have one for me,” Stephen said.
    â€œOf course she does,” Judge Goddard answered, a hint of a growl deep in his throat.
    Okay, this is going all right, I thought, making myself breathe and sliding the copy that had the pages out of order to Stephen and taking the perfect copy to the judge.
    â€œIf my motions for a continuance and to amend the expert witness list are granted, your honor, then Mr. LayBlank’s pretrial conference would be premature.”
    â€œLa-Blanc,” Stephen corrected. “There is no y and no k in it.”
    â€œWhat my memorandum establishes is that where a need for a continuance is occasioned by some fault of the other side, which I can demonstrate here, and there is no undue prejudice to either party, then it is a matter of discretion with a judge to grant a continuance. I refer the court to the case of, er,...” Here, I had to stop while Angela turned the page of my copy of the memo and jabbed her finger emphatically at a citation of law on page two.
    â€œThat’s all right,” Judge Goddard said. “I can read. Tell me how this is his fault.”
    â€œWell, your honor, Mr. LayBlank here hired away our top medical expert witness by offering him twice the hourly rate the liability insurance company authorized me to pay him, and I am in the process of locating another expert witness. I need—”
    â€œTime,” Judge Goddard finished for me and eyed Stephen as if he were guilty of some personal affront against me.
    Encouraged by the judge’s expression, I wandered through my explanation, pointed out that nobody would be unduly prejudiced by a delay and that justice would be served, et cetera, et cetera, and threw in a couple of the case names that Angela kept waggling her fingers at, and hoped I had made some kind of sense.
    The court reporter typed, paused, looked up, and nodded, and Judge Goddard turned to Stephen and said, “Mr. LayBlank.”
    I noticed Stephen didn’t correct that as he launched off without notes or sweat or mispronunciations and slung out rules and citations and hundred-dollar words and then turned and looked at me and said, “Ms. Cleary is clearly engaging in sophistry, your honor, but I must insist....”
    Sophistry?