Read Something Borrowed for Free Online

at Goldman Sachs, which blew away my nine-to-five
    summer internships and office jobs filing and answering phones.
    He was confident, relaxed, and so gorgeous that it was hard not to
    stare at him. I was positive that he would become the Doug
    Jackson and Blaine Conner of law school. Sure enough, we were
    barely into our first week of class when the buzz over Dexter
    began, women speculating about his status, noting either that his
    left ring finger was unadorned or, alternatively, worrying that he
    was too well dressed and handsome to be straight.
    But I dismissed Dex straightaway, convincing myself that his
    outward perfection was boring. Which was a fortunate stance,
    because I also knew that he was out of my league. (I hate that
    expression and the presumption that people choose mates based
    so heavily upon looks, but it is hard to deny the principle when
    you look around partners generally share the same level of
    attractiveness, and when they do not, it is noteworthy.) Besides, I
    wasn't borrowing thirty thousand dollars a year so that I could
    find a boyfriend.
    As a matter of fact, I probably would have gone three years
    without talking to him, but we randomly ended up next to each
    other in Torts, a seating-chart class taught by the sardonic
    Professor Zigman. Although many professors at NYU
    used the
    Socratic method, only Zigman used it as a tool to humiliate and
    torture students. Dex and I bonded in our hatred of our meanspirited
    professor. I feared Zigman to an irrational extreme, whereas Dexter's reaction had more to do with disgust.
    "What an
    asshole," he would growl after class, often after Zigman had
    reduced a fellow classmate to tears. "I just want to wipe that smirk
    off his pompous face."
    Gradually, our grumbling turned into longer talks over coffee in
    the student lounge or during walks around Washington Square
    Park. We began to study together in the hour before class,
    preparing for the inevitable the day Zigman would call on us. I
    dreaded my turn, knowing that it would be a bloody massacre, but
    secretly couldn't wait for Dexter to be called on.
    Zigman preyed on
    the weak and flustered, and Dex was neither. I was sure that he
    wouldn't go down without a fight.
    I remember it well. Zigman stood behind his podium, examining
    his seating chart, a schematic with our faces cut from the firstyear
    look book, practically salivating as he picked his prey.
    He
    peered over his small, round glasses (the kind that should be
    called spectacles) in our general direction, and said,
    "Mr. Thaler."
    He pronounced Dex's name wrong, making it rhyme with "taller."
    "It's 'Thaa-ler,' " Dex said, unflinching.
    I inhaled sharply; nobody corrected Zigman. Dex was really going
    to get it now.
    "Well, pardon me, Mr. Thaaa-ler," Zigman said, with an insincere
    little bow. "Palsgraf versus Long Island Railroad Company."
    Dex sat calmly with his book closed while the rest of the class
    nervously flipped to the case we had been assigned to read the
    night before.
    The case involved a railroad accident. While rushing to board a
    train, a railroad employee knocked a package of dynamite out of a
    passenger's hand, causing injury to another passenger, Mrs.
    Palsgraf. Justice Car-dozo, writing for the majority, held that Mrs.
    Palsgraf was not a "foreseeable plaintiff" and, as such, could not
    recover from the railroad company. Perhaps the railroad
    employees should have foreseen harm to the package holder, the
    Court explained, but not harm to Mrs. Palsgraf.
    "Should the plaintiff have been allowed recovery?"
    Zigman asked
    Dex.
    Dex said nothing. For a brief second I panicked that he had
    frozen, like others before him. Say no, I thought, sending him
    fierce brain waves. Go with the majority holding. But when I
    looked at his expression, and the way his arms were folded across
    his chest, I could tell that he was only taking his time, in marked
    contrast to the way most first-year students blurted out quick,
    nervous, untenable