Intimacies

by Katie Kitamura

The Court was run according to the suspension of disbelief: every person in the courtroom knew but also did not know that there was a great deal of artifice surrounding matters that were nonetheless predicated on authenticity.

In the end, I am not so sure it has to do with moral flexibility, he said, certainly less than appears at first glance. Everyone deserves fair legal representation, even the most depraved criminal, even someone who has performed unspeakable crimes, the kind of acts that defy the imagination, the mere description of which would make most of us cover our ears and turn away.

The defense lawyer does not have recourse to such cowardice, he or she must not only listen to but carefully study the record of these acts, he or she must inhabit and inhale their atmosphere. The very thing that the rest of us are unable to endure is the very thing inside of which the defense lawyer must live.

That was, I thought, the prospect offered by a new relationship, the opportunity to be someone other than yourself.

I wondered then what it was like to be a man, so often surrounded by such deliberate features, more vivid than actual nature.

Every certainty can give way without notice.

was caught off guard, the distance between my elation—because that was what I had felt upon hearing his words, elation unbidden and uncontrolled, that pulsed through the whole of my body—and his frank unhappiness was overwhelming.

because contrary to popular belief, charisma was not inherent but had to be constantly reinforced.

He surveyed the lawyers around the table, he could not bear them because they were the physical manifestation of his culpability, of which I had little doubt.

We didn’t know each other well enough for these disclosures to bring us closer together, we had exposed ourselves in the wrong way, at the wrong time.