The Tenth Justice - Brad Meltzer [7]
“Who cares?” Ober asked. He swallowed a huge piece of his candy bar. “I haven’t had a Snickers in months. I figured it’d be a nice way to celebrate Ben’s first day of work.”
A half hour later, the three friends were seated at the kitchen table. “Honeys, I’m home!” Eric announced as he kicked open the front door.
“Can he have worse timing?” Nathan put down his fork as Ben and Ober headed toward the living room.
“The good son has returned!” Eric announced as soon as he saw Ben.
“It’s about time,” Ben said. “I thought you ran away.”
With a half-eaten sandwich in hand, Eric embraced his roommate. Wearing an unironed button-down and creased khakis, Eric was the sloppiest of the four. His thick black hair was never combed, and his face was rarely shaven. The darkness of his sparse beard was heightened by his bushy black eyebrows. Only a few millimeters from touching, they created the perception of a constantly furrowed brow. “Sorry about that,” Eric said. “I’ve had a deadline every night this week.”
“Every night?” Ben asked, confused. “For a monthly?”
“He doesn’t know about your job,” Nathan said, walking into the living room. “Remember? He hasn’t been here for six weeks.”
“No more Washington Life magazine?” Ben asked.
“No, sir,” Eric said. He scratched his head with vigorous pride. “Just when I thought I was going to spend the rest of my journalistic career covering local antique shows and the best new restaurants, I get a call from the Washington Herald. They had a staff writer opening in the political bureau. I started two weeks ago.”
“You’re working for a bunch of right-wingers?” Ben asked.
“Hey, it may be this city’s secondary paper, but it’s got circulation of eighty thousand, and they’re all mine!”
“That’s fantastic.” Ben slapped his friend on the back.
“And by the way,” Eric said to Ober, “guess what they’re putting on the crossword page?”
“Don’t toy with me…a word jumble?” Ober said, grabbing Eric by the front of his shirt.
“WORD JUMBLE!” Eric screamed. “Starting next month!”
“WORD JUMBLE!” Ober repeated.
“JUM-BLE! JUM-BLE! JUM-BLE!” the two friends chanted.
“Ah, what entertains the ignorant,” Nathan said, putting his arm around Ben’s shoulder.
“I have to admit, I really missed this,” Ben said.
“They don’t have simpletons in Europe anymore?” Nathan asked.
“Funny,” Ben said as he turned back to his jumble-obsessed roommates. “Hey, wonder twins, how about getting back to dinner?”
“I can’t,” Eric said. Taking another bite of his sandwich, he explained, “This is dinner for me. Tomorrow’s edition beckons.”
Later that evening, Nathan walked into Ben’s room, which was arguably the best-decorated room in the house. With his antique oak desk, oak four-poster bed, and oak bookcase, Ben was the only one of the four roommates to actually care about matching anything. Nathan had once thought about working on his room, but he reconsidered when he realized he was doing it just because Ben had done it. Three professionally framed black-and-white pictures hung on the wall over Ben’s bed: one of a half-completed Washington Monument, one of a half-completed Eiffel Tower, and one of a half-completed Statue of Liberty. Ben was a pack rat when it came to memorabilia. On his bookshelf were, among other things, the keys to his first car, a personalized belt buckle his grandfather had given him when he was nine years old, the hairnet Ober used to wear when he worked at Burger Heaven, the hideous tie Nathan had worn to his first day of work, the visitor’s pass he’d been given when he interviewed with Justice Hollis, and his favorite—the gavel Judge Stanley had given him when his clerkship ended.
“Still catching up on your mail?” Nathan asked, noticing the stack of envelopes Ben was flipping through.
“It’s amazing to see how much junk mail one person can amass in a six-week period,” Ben said. “I’ve gotten three sweepstakes offers, about fifty catalogs, a dozen magazine offers, and remember last year when Ober was watching Miss Teen USA and he called the eight hundred number