The Greatest Lie Part 11

As I strode, tight-sweatered an open-jacketed across campus to catch he bus to the suburbs, I realized that my new profile was attracting appreciative looks and smiles from nearly every guy who saw me. As I ran to catch the departing bus, boobs bouncing painfully, a stranger interceded, yelling to the driver to stop, and held the door for me gallantly as I boarded. I rewarded him with a "thank you" and a demure smile, and got a "Wish I were going your way" from the handsome stranger. Another guy offered me his seat, and then chatted me up the rest of the ride. God, this is great, I thought. Every guy who saw me, noticed me, feasted his eyes, and then wanted to please me. Life is going to be a party.

Avoiding the foul weather to which Tran and I had returned, Epstein had stayed late in Acapulco, and had assigned a thousand pages of legal cases: we would have a triple session at his house in Edina to make up the lost class time. His girlfriend Lynn, a third year student, participated as a student. What a class! It was an upper level seminar, so everyone wanted to be there and had an opinion. Let me tell you, Minnesota, hell, America, is a pretty weird place, if you grew up in West LA. I mean, it was a strange brew.

On one had, you'd find hipsters from Madison, Ann Arbor, even Berkeley; on the other hand, you found the bright but naďve hicks: strict Lutherans from Duluth or wherever that had been brought up to believe dancing to be sinful and that gays had been sent by the devil to pervert the innocent. I mean, in LA, you'd have to go to West Covina or someplace to find such rustics. And there we were, in Epstein's breakfast room, me and Lars from Fargo, head to head on the Kansas Supreme Court's decision In the Matter of The Estate of Marshall G. Gardiner.

I had been up half the night, reading, and then having nightmares about the case. J'Noel, a forty year old post op had made good, become a professor, and then married Marshall, an eighty-something millionaire: like Anna Nicole Smith, but trans. Good 'ole Marsh had promptly left us for that great board of directors in the sky, leaving behind no will. His son wanted the money, and went after J'Noelle. Epstein turned to me. "Ms. Rivers, please state the facts and holding of the Gardiner case."