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Jimmy wipes his hand over his upper lip, then lays his palm on the desk. Before him: the LSAT, its white papers like a window cut into the dark wood. The more he looks at them, the brighter the pages seem, and he remembers sitting here in October, remembers the fresh-paint smell of the exam room.
It doesn’t smell of fresh paint anymore. The mint-colored walls have dried now, and colorful posters are tacked up along them, promotional things for the University of New Mexico, laughing students having a much better time than anyone in the room itself. Instead of paint, the room somehow already smells like dust, smells like opening an old book.
There’s fewer people taking the test than last time, too. The place is only half full, and Jimmy is sitting at a different desk today, right near the windows, so he can see the whole space. In last time’s spot sits a lanky kid, blond curtains surrounding his head on all sides like a fluffy monk, the hair at the base of his skull shaved short.
The kid’s twirling a pen between his forefinger and middle finger, flashes of blue.
Along the upright edge of Jimmy’s desk, someone has marked a long row of vertical lines, bars of blue pen up the wood. Some other prisoner counting down the days.
He jiggles his knee. Tips his head back. Square white lights divide the dropped ceiling like a chessboard, and the black spaces on the board are the grey ceiling tiles, pockmarked with tiny dots.
At the far end of the room, beneath the king’s space, sits the examiner. She waits with her fingers linked. A clock hangs on the wall behind her, yellow faced with red hands. The hands turn slowly, crawling little by little to the top of the hour.
Jimmy stares at the yellow clock face and divides it into chunks of time. This much for the first section. This much for the first question of the first section. Over and over for three and a half hours.
Then someone in the room clicks their pen, like a starter’s pistol, and the time ticks over, and the examiner makes the announcement, and the LSAT begins.
Question 1. Our tomato soup provides good nutrition: for instance, a warm bowl of it contains more units of vitamin C than does a serving of apricots or fresh carrots!
The advertisement is misleading if which one of the following is true?
“…and remember to read the end of it first, okay?” Kim says, sitting beside him on the long bench. “Read the question stem first.”
It’s bright and warm, one of the first bright and warm days of the year, of almost-spring. A pond ripples around the two of them where they sit on a little peninsula of manicured land.
It feels like they’re on an island.
“I know, I know,” Jimmy says. His study papers flutter on the bench between them, but the wind’s not strong enough to lift the bull-clipped bundle. “Just in case I die before I can finish reading the first bit, right?”
“The stimulus, the first part’s the stimulus.”
He smiles back at her. “Kim, I know that,” he says, softly.
She nods. “Yeah, well,” she says, and she looks at the fluttering study guide she’s helped him put together over the last couple of months. “Good.”
“Good,” Jimmy echoes, and he breathes out.
The clouds above the campus are tea-stained with orange sunlight. The water makes low noises against the shore. Over the pond, between a copse of tall trees, is the path that twists around to the geometric examination building. He and Kim had walked to the door together earlier that evening. The outside had been freshly painted, the front face now outlined with vibrant blue borders, the beige walls brighter than they’d been last time Jimmy was here.
He turns to Kim. “You sure they don’t need you at HHM? I mean, if I don’t know this by now, I’ll never know it, right?”
She looks back to him from the pond, as if she’s been running through his plan for tomorrow in her mind again. “Who told you that?” she says. “You can always know more.”
He chuckles. “Yeah?”
She makes a noise of agreement, short and decisive.
He waves a hand. “Sure, and I guess on the bar exam your score of, what, five-hundred thousand—”
“—not five—”
“— five-hundred thousand could’ve been a five-oh-oh-one if I hadn’t dragged you out to Flying Star the night before the test.”
She shrugs lightly. “And we’ll never know now, will we?”
He shakes his head, bangs drifting into his eyes with the wind. A group of ducks paddle toward the shore of his and Kim’s island then turn back, synchronous. The lead duck stops and dips its beak into the dark water. The spreading ripples hold flashes of the sun.
And Kim says softly, “So how are you feeling about tomorrow?”
He turns from the ducks. Her brow creases as she looks at him. He shrugs. “Same as I felt last time.”
She glances down to the study papers, eyes glinting.
“Nah, I mean,” Jimmy says, shifting his weight, twisting toward her, “I don’t know, Kim.”
Her expression softens. Her eyes are blue-flecked in the sideways light, locked to his, then her gaze shifts to the pond again. The low sun clings to the curve of her cheek. Her forehead crinkles.
He knows she’s returned to the game plan, knows she’s running over tomorrow in her mind. He smiles. “Wishing it was you, huh?”
And she looks to him, an eyebrow lifting.
Jimmy jerks his head in the general direction of the exam building. “Your favorite thing,” he says. “But instead you have to do the set up, the study plan, the test trip, and now Howard’s probably going to kick you back to the mailroom because you deigned to leave before midnight on a Friday. And then tomorrow it’ll all come down to”—he points a thumb at his face—“this schmuck.”
She smiles, tilting her head.
“And, lemme tell you, this schmuck’s already proved what he’s capable of,” Jimmy says, widening his eyes at her, as if he can turn them into two big fat zeroes, sitting there above his cheeks.
But Kim is shaking her head now. “Jimmy, I’d be happy to never sit that test again in my life.”
Jimmy raises his brows. “Yeah?”
“Are you kidding?” she says, and she leans back on the bench, hands rising and waving for emphasis. “It was horrible, the clock ticking down, feeling like I’m getting further and further behind time with every question—”
“Okay, okay—”
“—hand shaking as I try to fill in the bubbles—”
“All right, fine, just shut up,” Jimmy says, grinning. “I guess I can take this one.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better,” Kim says lightly. She taps her hand on the edge of the bench.
And they stare out at the pond, where the ducks are approaching the shoreline of their tiny island again, leaving trails through the dark water. Storming the beaches.
The papers flutter loudly in a stronger wind, and Jimmy stills them with a palm. He keeps his hand on top until the wind drops. Picks the bundle up. The top page is covered with Kim’s neat handwriting, the sheet divided cleanly into two columns. In red pen on the left are the different sections of the LSAT; on the right, the different question types.
Kim looks over to him again. He holds out the study papers, and she takes them, shifting closer over the bench.
One more time…
Question 2. The workers at Bell Manufacturing will shortly go on strike unless the management increases their wages. As Bell’s president is well aware, however, in order to increase the workers’ wages, Bell would have to sell off some of its subsidiaries. So, some of Bell’s subsidiaries will be sold.
The conclusion above is properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed?
“Do you want the main lights on?” Kim asks, lingering in the doorway of the second floor conference room.
Jimmy looks up at the ceiling. “Nah,” he says, and he looks back down to the line of lamps in the middle of the table. “I’m good with just these if you are.”
She nods, moving inside and setting her box down on the table with an echoing thud.
“Thanks,” he says softly. He rubs at his forehead, the pads of his fingers firm against his skin.
“Headache?” Kim asks, moving back to close the door.
He lowers his hand. “Nah, I’m good.” He touches the textbook on the table in front of him, then tilts his head at her. “So, what’re we doing tonight?”
Her eyes flick to him.
“Kidding, kidding,” he says, “just testin’ ya.” He flicks through the book Kim loaned him. It’s riddled with her own notes, and he peels back a Post-It from a page. “I’ve been dying to talk about necessary assumptions all day.”
Kim smiles, lifting a covered plate of pastries from the file box and setting it on the table. Still waiting in the box, he knows, is whatever work she’s carried up from the cornfield tonight, and, by the noise it made when it landed on the table, he can tell it’s even more work than usual.
He tops up his mug of coffee, then fills the empty one that’s been waiting for her and slides it over.
“Sure that’s the best thing for your headache?” Kim murmurs, as she sits next to him, swiveling the chair to face the desk.
Jimmy just watches her.
She shakes her head. “Right, right,” she says, holding up a palm.
He grabs one of the pastries—apricot, maybe—and polishes off the stale thing then washes it down with another long swig of lukewarm coffee. “So!” he says, dusting his hands. “Confused myself with this one.”
Kim brushes pastry from her own fingers and lifts her eyebrows.
“I read everything—loved this note, by the way,” he says, tapping a page in Kim’s book where there’s a pencil-marked, Obviously!
She inclines her head.
“But…so I don’t need to worry about if the conclusion’s actually true or not?” he says, looking between her and the book. “What if it doesn’t seem right?”
“Well,” she says, “that’s a good question.”
He goes in for another one of the day’s leftover pastries. Chocolate this time, and he lets out a little, mm! noise, then brushes his fingers off above the plate again.
“Why doesn’t this seem right? I mean,” she says, pointing to the page in the workbook, leaning closer, “so the conclusion here is that Julie won’t be able to attend her water aerobics class.”
“Right,” Jimmy says, nodding sharply. “I got that, sure. But what if her class is late in the evening, like this?” He turns to the windows behind them, black squares, the cold January night waiting outside. He turns back. “Maybe she does her water dancing at midnight, too, so then it wouldn’t even matter that her boss needs her to stay until nine o’clock.”
Kim’s nodding. “Right!”
He holds up his palms hopelessly. “So?”
She smiles softly. “Well, that’s what this type of question is asking for, Jimmy.” She ghosts a finger down the list of answers. “One of these is the right missing piece of the argument. You knew that it didn’t feel right. One of these options will turn it into a valid conclusion.”
Jimmy nods slowly. His eyes scan the writing, trailing over the question, the conclusion, the possible answers. He looks to Kim. “So my job is to make it true?”
Her smile stays, glowing. “We can start there.”
The rest of the room is dark, and it’s dark outside, and everything is just the line of glowing lamps down the middle of the table, and their hands working, and the soft hue of the lights on the table’s surface in a sea of black.
Question 3. Roses always provide a stunning display of color, but only those flowers that smell sweet are worth growing in a garden. Some roses have no scent.
Which one of the following conclusions can be properly drawn from the passage?
The teeth move in and out of the sun. The hand holding them is scrunched like an empty wrapper. At the end of the hand is a spotted arm and at the end of the arm is his grandpa.
Jimmy looks away and slides his matchbox car over the dirt. You can’t drive on the petals, only the dirt and the grass. The big red car can drive on the petals, but he’s playing with the little blue one.
When Jimmy looks up at his grandpa, he can’t see a face because of the sun, just the teeth on the end of the hand on the end of the arm.
But then his grandpa moves, sitting on a different patch of grass and creaking like Pop’s chair way back home. “Huh, kiddo?” Grandpa Davenport puts the teeth back into his dark mouth and then smiles. “See? Just like that.”
Jimmy steers the little blue car around a petal, tires screeching.
The big voice says, “You racing? What’s the prize?”
He shrugs.
“Hah!” his grandpa spits. “You’ve got to have a prize for the winner, kid.”
Jimmy drives the car to the finish line, then he shrugs again.
“Got something here, actually,” Grandpa says, hand curling into the front pocket of his striped shirt. “Might work.” And he shows a shiny coin in the scrunchy palm of his dark hand.
Jimmy’s parents are over the grass: his mother in the big yellow hat and his father in the green jacket.
“So? What d’you think?” Grandpa says.
“Okay,” Jimmy says, and he reaches for the coin.
The crinkled fingers close. “Not so fast, kid,” the old man says. “I earned it, and now you gotta earn it from me.”
The ridged fingers are like some animal guarding the treasure. A dragon. Jimmy tips his head. “How?”
“Hmm,” his grandpa says, and his old face turns up to the sun. The lines under his chin stretch and pull. “I’m gonna need a good young memory by my side, soon.” He smiles toothily at Jimmy. “Can you remember where the quarter is?”
Jimmy points to the scrunched dragon hand.
“Yeah?” Grandpa says, shaking the dragon. “In here?”
Jimmy nods.
The hand turns over again and the fingers uncurl and it’s empty.
“You dropped it!” Jimmy says, and he bends down to look at the grass and petals beneath his grandpa’s hand. Nothing there. He looks at the hand again, at the lined palm. “It was there!” He frowns. “Not fair.”
“Fair?” his grandpa says, and it’s almost like his dad when Jimmy repeated the word Marco told him. “Who said anything about that?”
Jimmy frowns. He picks up a dark green leaf and tears it down the line and then drops the little sharp pieces. “Chuck,” he mutters. “I hid a toy from Maxie in the throwing game.”
His grandpa makes a sound with his loose teeth. “Prff! I’m nearly seventy years old, kid. You listen to me. If everything was fair I wouldn’t have had that quarter in the first place.”
Over the grass, the yellow hat of his mother stands and moves back toward the house. It’s a short, white house with dark windows. His mother says that his Grandpa Davenport built the house a long time ago, on this square of grass and dirt and flower gardens beside fences.
“Besides,” the big gravelly voice says, leaning closer, “you only think it’s not fair ‘cause you don’t know what I know.”
The dirt is still empty and Jimmy looks back. “What?”
“I know that little boys have magnetic ears,” Grandpa says. He reaches to the side of Jimmy’s head and there’s a brush of the soft crinkly skin and the spotted arm passes right near Jimmy, and then the arm and the hand are moving back and the coin is lying in the middle of the hand again.
The dragon flexes around its shining treasure.
And Jimmy takes the coin this time. He mutters a thank you and puts it down beside a pink petal and tries to decide if the little blue car can drive on the round coin and he thinks that it probably can.
Question 4. When workers do not find their assignments challenging, they become bored and so achieve less than their abilities would allow. On the other hand, when workers find their assignments too difficult, they give up and so again achieve less than what they are capable of achieving. It is, therefore, clear that no worker’s full potential will ever be realized.
Which one of the following is an error of reasoning contained in the argument?
The lights flick on above him, bright and burning.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” Pop says, stepping into his bedroom. “These new bulbs, hey?” And for a moment Pop squints at the bulb in the ceiling as if he can figure out a way to make it less bright right now. As if he can fix it tonight. Then he looks back to Jimmy. “Want ‘em on, or off?”
Jimmy shrugs, and his dad leaves them on. He lowers the National Geographic and leans back on his pillows, waiting. A lamp burns on the nightstand beside him, orange in the pale blue sun of the winter evening.
Pop doesn’t leave. He looks at the line of old matchbox cars along the top of the dresser and hums beneath his breath, then props his hip against the wall and tilts his head at Jimmy. “What’re you reading about today?”
Jimmy holds up the magazine. There’s a teenager on the cover with rugged blond hair and a determined expression. “He sailed all around the world by himself.”
His dad nods slowly, taking it in. “Did he?” A rush of breath: “Wow.” Then Pop scratches his face. “Would you like to do that?”
Jimmy shrugs. “Well, I don’t have a boat.”
His pop chuckles. “No, that’s true.” Pop frowns like he’s considering it further. “And even if you set off from Lake Michigan, I don’t suppose you could get very far, hey?”
Jimmy flicks over another page. There’s a picture of the blond teenager climbing the rigging. Running wing and wing on a fair breeze, Robin sets his mainsail to starboard; a whisker pole steadies the striped genoa jib to port. They’re good words even if Jimmy doesn’t know what they mean. He thinks about reading them out to his dad.
But then Pop clears his throat. “I used to go sailing on the lake with your grandpop, you know.”
Jimmy’s never seen his dad’s dad except in old photos and the pictures he thinks of when he hears the stories. He adds a wrinkled blue fisherman hat to his imagined version of the old man, like in a movie. He thinks about adding a parrot.
“Yeah,” Pop says softly. He smiles. “We never caught any fish. Pa always said back home in Cork the fish’d be swarming around his line as soon as he got on the water. But after all those years in the Western Electric factory…Pa reckoned he could just dip a finger in the water and zap all the fish stone dead if he wanted to, and he said the fish could sense it.” A shrug of fabric. “So they never even came near.”
Jimmy nods, and the bed dips by his feet as his dad comes over and sits on the edge of it.
Pop looks back down from the bright light again and rubs his eyes. “Why’d I keep looking at that?” he says, chuckling, and he rubs a hand over his leg. Brushes something invisible off of Jimmy’s bedspread. “You know, there’s a famous story about that big factory where your grandpop worked. A scientist came to visit there when I was just a baby, when Pa was still working.”
Jimmy closes the magazine now. The blond teenager glares at him from the front, out on the ocean somewhere.
“The scientist ran a bunch of tests on the workers—nothing bad,” Pop says, holding up a placating hand, as if he’s worried Jimmy’s already imagining something even worse than all the pictures of lions tearing up weaker animals in the magazine on the bed. “Nothing bad. He wanted to find out if people worked better in brighter light or in dimmer light. So he came and he turned up the lights in the factory.”
And Jimmy tilts his head now. He feels the glow of the ceiling bulb.
“And my pa and everyone else did work better,” his dad says.
Jimmy nods. “Because they could see better?”
“Well, maybe,” Pop says, and he pats Jimmy’s foot again. “That’s a good thought, Jimmy. But the funny thing was, when the scientist came back the next week, he turned all the lights down low again.” He studies Jimmy, glasses glinting in black frames. “And Pa and everyone didn’t work worse, they worked even better.”
Jimmy looks to his bedspread. It’s checkered in blue and grey.
“Doesn’t seem right, does it?” Pop says. “I guess that’s the point of the story.” He shrugs, the fabric of his shoulders rustling again, his tired old green shirt. Presses a hand to his mouth and then lowers it. “Or maybe the point of the story is that people just like when someone shows an interest in them.” He pats Jimmy’s socked foot one last time and then stands, the bed falling and rising with his movement. “Dinner’s almost up, okay?”
“Okay,” Jimmy says, still frowning.
There’s a moment of quiet, and then: “Come down and help your mom,” Pop says, and he jerks his head to the door. “Tell her about the sailing boy. I bet she would’ve loved to do that, your mom.”
And Jimmy rolls off his bed, socks landing with a thud on the carpet. He kills the lamp, then turns off the burning overhead light, too, so the room is blue and dim again.
Question 5. Because the statement “all pink rabbits are rabbits” is true, it follows by analogy that the statement “all suspected criminals are criminals” is also true.
The reasoning above is flawed because it fails to recognize that…
His brother’s words hang in the twisting smoke of the bar. Jimmy flicks his fingernail against the neck of his bottle, a high pitch plink, and then taps it downwards. A scale descending. He has another sip. The Old Style is bitter and light and then finally sweet on his tongue.
One more slip up—but Chuck’s been saying that for years. One more, one more, one more, like throwing back drinks.
The bar stool digs into Jimmy’s thighs as he sits there, the soles of his sneakers pressed tightly to the crossbar to keep himself from sliding further. He drags his beer bottle by the neck through the wet, chain-linked rings on the scratched wooden surface. Lifts the bottle and drains it and then sets it down again.
One more slip up.
Chuck, who had come to the police station this morning, who was in town, perfect timing as always—though really, if he wasn’t in town, Jimmy wouldn’t have gone out again last night, wouldn’t have gone looking for something to do on Cermak at three in the morning, which was dumb in the first place because he knows the cops are just a block down from the factory corner there. But that’s where the all-night bars are, filled to the corners with tired workers and bright lights and bartenders who never give a shit about fake IDs—unless, apparently, when the cops are all drinking there that night, too.
Marco’s across the room. He never looks directly at Jimmy, and Jimmy never looks directly at him. But Jimmy can follow the train of the distant conversation by Marco’s movements, by the shrugging shoulders and the flash of a gold coin.
He can tell from a tilt of Marco’s head that his friend is waiting for him to come and play his role. He looks away. People behind him are throwing darts. They whip through the air.
One more, one more, one more, Jimmy thinks, the thoughts landing with each new dart.
He waves for another drink. Merna’s never cared and the cops never care about this place either, and he tips it back. The first cold spark of beer hits his tongue and then travels down his throat as he finishes the rest of it, waiting. Like something knocking on a door, he feels the warmth at the back of his mind, tapping to be let in.
He waves for another. Tonight, he feels like Paul Newman in that old movie, drinking and drinking and waiting for the click—
Then he’s part of the bar again. Everyone snaps up like elastic bands around him, like they’ve appeared out of nowhere. Ghosts. And he’s Jack Nicholson in The Shining, turning now to face the room, as suddenly the hotel fills with party goers and guests in a rush of noise and activity and the whistling of darts through the air, flick flack, thud.
Jimmy snaps on a smile. He pulls a handful of darts out of the dartboard, spinning back to face the darts players. He swaggers over, holding them crushed in his palm.
“Hey man, what’re you—”
“Lemme go, lemme have a go,” Jimmy murmurs. He licks his lips and eyes up a shot. Shakes his hair back from his face and tries to hold his hand steady.
He can’t throw darts, he’s about as good at darts as he is at pool, but the point isn’t to win here, or to hustle, the point is to make this guy feel bad for him. He sways on his feet.
The point is to make this guy trust him, trust him enough so that in three hours, at four in the morning, when Jimmy and Marco run a pigeon drop in a back alley somewhere, beside a brick wall stinking of piss and beer and surrounded by broken glass, the guy won’t question anything.
And then Jimmy won’t be Jimmy anymore, he’ll be a knife blade cutting through pockets, a knife blade cutting through a knotted rope, gone again before the guy even realizes that this was never fair to begin with.
Question 6. The National Association of Fire Fighters says that 45 percent of homes now have smoke detectors, whereas only 30 percent of homes had them 10 years ago. This makes early detection of house fires no more likely, however, because over half of the domestic smoke detectors are either without batteries or else inoperative for some other reason.
In order for the conclusion above to be properly drawn, which one of the following assumptions would have to be made?
At least it’s warm.
He stands out in the night in his short sleeves, in an old pair of jeans, quickly tugged on over his boxers. They have holes in the knees. He hadn’t even realized he brought them here with him. Other guests are hovering on the forecourt nearby, too, in robes or pajamas. A siren wails.
“Someone must’ve been smoking right by the censor,” the woman beside Jimmy says for the fifth time since they got outside. She blows hair out of her face. “Yeah, right by the censor. Asshole.”
“Mmm,” he says, pressing his fist against his mouth, stifling a yawn. “Guess so, huh?”
The firemen are gathered around the Ramada Hotel, chatting idly. One of them is still inside talking to the manager. The alarm finally shuts off, and the ringing of it hangs in the air for a few moments afterwards, like smoke.
Jimmy runs a hand through his too-short hair. He keeps forgetting about it until he touches it. It feels empty, and makes the rest of his head feel empty, too, until he can forget again.
A plane goes by overhead, red lights flashing on the wings, descending to the nearby airport. It passes in front of the yellow-stained clouds, loose and fluffy things that slowly dissolve into the air.
“So, business or pleasure?” the woman says, and it takes Jimmy a moment to realize she hasn’t just made the same comment about the fire alarm censor again.
He turns. “Huh?”
“You in Albuquerque for business or pleasure?” she says, tightening her arms around her chest like she’s somehow cold out here. “You know, like they ask in the airport?”
“Right,” he says, looking up at the glowing sign of the hotel. It throws off a red light. “Uh, business.”
The lady sniffs. “Oh yeah? Where do you work?”
He shrugs his shoulders. Thinks about how he should answer, then says, “Law firm.”
“Lawyer, eh?” the lady says. She laughs sharply, machine-gun-like. “Maybe you can sue these guys over a disturbed night’s sleep, huh? That’d be rich.”
He chuckles, too. “Yeah, maybe,” he says, and stills. Softer: “Maybe.”
If Marco were here, standing with the others in the warm forecourt beneath the yellow-stained night, Jimmy would give the signal. He’d tap his thumb on the edge of his pocket, he’d flag this lady, who hears law firm and assumes lawyer of a guy in hole-filled jeans waiting outside a Ramada Hotel, aas a ready mark.
Question 7. Switching to “low-yield” cigarettes, those that yield less nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes when tested on a standard machine, does not, in general, reduce the incidence of heart attack. This result is surprising, since nicotine and carbon monoxide have been implicated as contributing to heart disease.
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy?
The smoke tastes bitter and burned on his lips, and then she pulls back, looking down at him as he floats at the edge of the pool. Her eyes glitter in the early spring sun, and it’s like she’s seeing something he isn’t seeing, something other than the green pool at the Beachcomber Apartments.
“C’mon, Kim,” he says, treading water slowly, hands on the tiles either side of her knees.
She’s sitting at the edge of the deep end. She just smiles.
He reaches for the beer beside her and drinks, then pops his lips off the end. “Come on, I led you all this way to the water.”
She chuckles. “I think you might’ve misunderstood that saying,” she adds, lightly, taking the beer from him. She has a sip and then sets it back beside her.
“Don’t think so,” Jimmy says, wet hands squeaking on the tiles as he keeps himself afloat. “So come on…”
“I have to finish reading this, Jimmy,” Kim says, talking about the thick textbook that’s sitting next to her hip, waiting for her. She doesn’t actually look at it. Instead, she tips her head back and lifts her cigarette to her lips.
He smiles. He watches as she exhales plumes of glimmering smoke. His hands grip the cold tiles. As she stares off, silent, he lets himself sink down beneath the surface of the water, first chin then nose then eyes dropping into the pool.
He looks up at her through the tangled threads of gold light that twist in the green. The water sounds low and deep in his ears, and he crosses his ankles over each other and floats, just above the bottom, his hands whirling slowly to keep his balance. The threads sparkle.
Orange light glints above as she has another smoke.
Then he finally breaks the surface again and he gasps. Grips his fingertips to the edge of the pool and floats before her. The Shiner Bock still lingers in his mouth, hoppy and bitter above the tang of the chlorine.
And he bats the back of his hand against Kim’s knee. “Come on,” he says. “The book can’t get to you in the middle of the pool, Kim. It’ll never know.”
“Oh, it’ll know,” Kim says dramatically, widening her eyes.
“Come out into the middle with me,” he says, swimming away and then drifting back, like he can trick her into following. “This’ll be a moat. No more law school out there in the middle, no more third year…”
“Hmm,” she says lightly, “I think that’s stretching the definition of the word moat.”
And he shakes his head, doglike, whacking damp hair against his temples and sending droplets of water over everything.
“Hey!” Kim says, kicking a foot through the water and jostling him in the ribs.
Jimmy grabs her leg. He holds onto her, not pulling. Treading water. “It is so a moat. What does a moat have that this pool doesn’t have?”
“A castle.”
He squeezes her leg. “When we’re in the middle we’ll be the castle.”
“Alligators.”
Another squeeze. “We’ll be the alligators, too.”
And Kim lifts her cigarette to her lips for another drag. She nods slowly, lungs full, then exhales. Snubs out the cigarette on the old tiles, and she leans down, but instead of sliding into the pool she just kisses him again, the taste of tobacco on her lips.
Her hands come down to hold his head, fingertips pressing around his ears. He clings onto her leg, his feet turning below, turning and turning to stay afloat. The sun is hot on his back and he can feel his skin tightening, feel the drips of water drying there. His hairs over his body stand on end.
Then Kim pulls back, smiling down at him again, that same look on her face again, like she’s seeing something he’s not seeing. She strokes her thumb over his cheek. “What about the electric eels?”
“We can be those,” Jimmy murmurs, finally letting go of her leg. “Easy.” He wedges his hands either side of her knees, wet fingers squeaking on the tiles. “D’you know, my grandpop made telephone wires?”
“Did he now?” Kim says softly, and then she leans down.
His body tingles, waves of electricity running beneath his skin and out into the water. His skin tightens again as the sun burns, and the air smells of chlorine and Kim’s cigarettes. He wishes he could rise up out of the pool, out of the moat and onto the shining shore; or maybe drag Kim in here with him, down and down into the electrified water.
Question 8. Slash-and-burn agriculture involves burning several acres of forest, leaving vegetable ash that provides ample fertilizer for three or four years of bountiful crops. On the cleared land nutrients leach out of the soil, however, and the land becomes too poor to support agriculture. New land is then cleared by burning and the process starts again. Since most farming in the tropics uses this method, forests in this regionally will eventually be permanently irradiated.
The argument depends on the assumption that…
“The honorable”—he presses his lips to her clavicle—“the honorable Kimberly Wexler.”
“Not a judge,” she says, pulling him back up to her mouth, fingers twisted in his hair. “Not even a lawyer yet.”
“Mmf—” Jimmy gets out before she’s kissing him again. He wedges his knee between hers on the sofa, trying to keep his balance as she runs her hands up his back in sharp points of pressure.
Tonight, his secret burns warm and exciting in his chest, burns so bright he worries if he opens his mouth too wide she’ll be able to see the light of it in there.
He pulls back. His fingers tangle in the red and black of her graduation gown. He tugs the zipper down her chest further, teeth buzzing. “You’ll be a lawyer soon, though,” he murmurs, fiddling with the buttons. “Be up there, fighting for the law.”
“Fighting for what’s right.”
“—fighting for what’s right,” he says, pushing the gown and her blouse apart.
She stills, breathing heavily, eyes on his hands. He rubs his thumbs beneath her bra. Her chest moves under his skin.
“Up there, fighting the good fight…” he says softly, and again his secret flares like oil thrown on a fire, and he adds, “Fighting the other side.”
“Oh yeah?” she murmurs, gaze following the curve of his thumbs along her skin.
Jimmy nods, tracing little patterns now, little letters, maybe. “Mmm, Clarence Darrow,” he says, thumbs curling up and over her breasts again. “A sexy Clarence Darrow—”
Kim’s chest shakes. “Clarence Darrow was already plenty sexy.”
He scoffs, grinning, and Kim’s chest vibrates even more. “So regular, hot Clarence Darrow,” he says, kissing the trembling part of her chest, and then he lifts up again. “Or, hey, it’s like Hepburn and Tracy fighting each other in court, and you’re regular, hot Katharine Hepburn.” He can see the spark in Kim’s eyes as she’s about to laugh more with him, but he’s going somewhere else with it, and he shifts on the sofa, straddling her legs now, and softer: “And I’m Spencer Tracy…”
She tilts her head. “Spencer Tracy?”
He nods, leaning down to kiss her collarbone again, and her hand’s in his hair and then she’s pulling him back.
Her eyes soften as she looks up at him.
“No?” He gives an exaggerated frown. “Can I be sexy Clarence Darrow, then?”
She makes a little face. Runs her thumb over his cheekbone. “Or you could just be you.”
Another flash in his chest, the light brightens even more. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and he runs his palms over her skin, and he can feel his mouth hanging open.
She tugs on his jeans, pulling him up, and he grinds against her.
“So you’re you”—he kisses her throat then moves back—“and I’m me, and you need to convince me to drop the case—”
Kim cuts him off with another kiss, holding him close for a moment, then she gasps a breath and shakes her head. “Mm—won’t need to do that.”
He chuckles against her lips. “Yeah, ‘course not. Never need to do that.”
There’s a loud explosion on the television and he remembers that it’s going. Some damn movie. He doesn’t care about it, because now Kim’s trailing her fingers up his neck and into the dip of his jaw, and she keeps her hands so light, almost not there at all. Like she can hold him in place with those ten ghosted hints of pressure—and she can.
He makes a soft sound into her mouth and tries to keep his head still, tries not to break the ghosts of pressure.
Then she pulls her lips away, anyway. “But after the case, I see you,” she says, still right there, “because I’ve been looking at you the whole time, anyway…without you noticing—”
And he kisses her again, grunting against her lips, and her hands finally tighten on his face. Her fingers press into him for a moment and then push him back, making space again.
“So when I see you in the halls…” she says, her breath tingling, warm on his lips, “I know I can’t let you leave the courthouse without pulling you into the empty chambers, without locking the door…”
“God,” Jimmy says, leaning down again and catching Kim’s gasp with his mouth. He fights with the zipper on the gown, then the rest of the buttons on her blouse. “Get this—damn—” he grunts, and Kim’s hands join him, flashes of white in the dark space between them, in the pool of blue light that’s spilling over the sofa like a spotlight. Just their fingers twisting together and the glow of their bodies in the sea of darkness.
And he wants to say, Me too, Kim, I’m here now, too, I’m right behind you. I’m coming with you now, too.
Question 9. No one knows what purposes, if any, dreams serve, although there are a number of hypotheses. According to one hypothesis, dreams are produced when the brain is erasing “parasitic connections” (meaningless, accidental associations between ideas), which accumulate during the day and which would otherwise clog up our memories…
The parasitic-connection hypothesis, if true, most strongly supports which one of the following?
But he doesn’t dream about them fighting. He dreams about them standing on the same side.
He dreams about what he’ll have to do to make that true.
The clouds outside the examination center are tea-stained with red, dark with the promise of rain. Above the campus, the sun shines through a gap of blue.
Jimmy rubs the heel of his palm against his neck. His whole back is stiff from bending over the LSAT for the last three and a half hours, from squinting at the bright white papers in the mint-walled room.
He told himself he would try to remember some of the questions this time, remember them well enough to tell Kim tonight. But, as he steps out into the light they slide out of his head, like his brain emptying, and he’s just left with the humming feeling of trying to move through it as fast as he can, of trying to keep pace. Of trying to remember all of Kim’s advice and hear her voice in his head. Trying to hold on, and hold on, and hold on.
But there she is, anyway, leaning against one of the newly-blue railings along the tree-lined path. She stands upright when she sees him, taking a step closer. Her hair is free and she’s in jeans, pink t-shirt tucked in.
“Hey there,” he says.
“Hey there.” She smiles carefully, a small thing on her face.
He returns the smile. Shrugs his shoulders.
And she twirls her keys around in her hand with a jangle of metal, then jerks her head. “Going my way?”
Jimmy grins. He looks back to the room then looks to her and lets the grin grow and grow. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I reckon I am.”
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