Black fishnets, OJ and me

Offices didn’t have live TV in those days. I worked at an advertising agency called Waring & LaRosa and we’d all been watching the OJ trial like a sitcom whose characters we knew almost as well as Ross and Rachel. We laughed about Kato Kaelin, said unkind things about Marcia Clark’s hairdo, and made Judge Ito jokes. The supporting characters almost overshadowed the star of the show - the villain who’d charmed us since we were kids. The Juice had been loose for as long as I could remember, but now, whether he’d stay that way was very much a question.

All of it made for endless conversation. Which inevitably included the White Bronco Chase. Who could forget that Friday night? I was in my studio apartment on 10th Street watching Game 5, when my neighbor knocked.

“Miss Fried, you have to come over and turn my TV on,” he said.

Ken called me Miss Fried because that was what the doorman called me and it made us laugh. He was Orthodox, and while my Judaism was much less pronounced than his, I understood. So I crossed the hall, clicked the remote he couldn’t touch until after Shabbat, and settled in to watch the game with my friend. But what we watched wasn’t the Knicks vs the Rockets. It was the Knicks and Rockets vs The Bronco. Like the rest of New York, we bounced back and forth between the two, until, to our delight, the network gave us a split screen.

And then the trial. A reality show like no other. Everyone watched. And gossiped. And speculated. We knew how it would end, but were glued anyway. I wondered if the mentions of Bruno Magli and bloody footprints would help or hurt the brand.

“Debra, did you see it last night?” my friend and partner Lou asked one morning. “That Johnnie Cochran, man…”

“If it fits, you must acquit,” I said theatrically.

Lou shook his head.

“That is the worst fuckin’ impersonation ever, Debra,” he said. “Your voice went up a whole fuckin’ octave on ‘fits.’”

He shook his head, amazed at how little I knew.

“It’s like this,” he said, clearing his throat, as if he was about to read Shakespeare.

“If it fits… you must acquit.”

He looked over, to be sure I’d taken it in.

“See how I did it?” His hand made a horizontal line through the air. “Flat, like I mean it. No up and down bullshit.”

“Oy,” I said, and recited the line again.

“No,” he wiped the air with his hand, to erase my poor performance.

“You gotta stop - just for a second, right after ‘fits.’ And then you look around, just with your eyes, not your whole head…. like this.”

He studied his imaginary jury.

“You see? That’s what you call theatric.” He chuckled. “Fuckin’ Johnny Cochran, man, he’s a fuckin’ showman.”

Lou. It took one to know one.

He got to grandstand a lot that year. Because every morning, we talked about the the trial’s highlights that we’d seen the night before. Back then, if you wanted to know what had happened while you were at work, you watched the news. Quietly. Without the benefit of dinging phones that told you what to think before you could form even the germ of an opinion.

The day of the verdict announcement felt like a work holiday. No meetings were scheduled. Deadlines were pushed. Restaurants set up TV’s and tables were reserved. Ours was at PJ Clark’s, where we sat at a long table in the crowded back room.

We were giddy. Lou ordered a martini. The rest of us had beer. Over burgers, we debated how long the verdict would take.

“Fuckin OJ, man, he’s goin’ down,” Lou said. He twisted his wedding band, the way he always did when he had something to say. Actually, it was a two-step process. First, the twist. Then, a long, thoughtful sniff. Followed by a fuck-laden pronouncement.

“People fuckin’ loved OJ, but no more, man. I’m not a sports guy, but that guy had everything. Looks. Talent. Funny as fuck.”

“Funny?” I said. But Lou ignored me. He was on a roll.

“When people get that big, they think they can do whatever the fuck they want and get away it with it. That’s when you lose your fuckin’ soul, man.”

Someone said “shhh” and a hush spread over the room.

“It’s about to fuckin’ happen, man,” Lou said, and everyone said “shh,” again, to which he rolled his eyes and took a sip of his drink.

And then it did happen.

The ending we didn’t see coming.

The room was silent.

Lou went fuck-less.

We stared wordlessly at the TV.

When we spilled onto the sidewalk, it was with the same silence. My friends walked back to the office, but I split off. I was gearing up for a trip to Club Med and had been told to bring something for their Halloween party. The idea of forced fun on a vacation I was dreading made me anxious, but I figured if I had black fishnets I could wear a dress and beret and pretend to be Bonnie. A Bonnie with no Clyde.

I walked toward the store, exchanging disbelieving head shakes with people at red lights. Strangers united in shock.

I ducked into the shop - I think it was a Strawberry’s.

The stockings were along the back wall and I plucked a package of fishnets from a hook.

At the register, two saleswomen stood talking about the only thing there was to talk about that day. But they didn’t shake their heads in disbelief. They shook them with joyful wonder.

“Finally!” the older of the two said, smiling.

“Justice,” the second one replied.

They noticed my raised brows and we shared an awkward second.

“Wait,” I said, “Do you mind if I ask….you genuinely thought he was innocent?”

They looked at me. Suddenly, uncomfortably, I realized that everyone I’d watched with was white.

“You really think he’s innocent?” I repeated, genuinely wanting to know.

“I think,” said the first woman somewhat gently, “that he won.”

Our eyes locked.

“But… but… the blood, the testimony… the shoe print….” I said.

She shook her head, because, clearly, I didn’t get it.

I shook mine back.

We kept looking at each other, not with anger, but disbelief. And maybe sadness. Because it had just become clear, dumbly clear, at least to me, how divided we were. The moment felt frozen as we stood there, on opposite sides of the counter. She rang up the fishnets that seemed utterly ridiculous suddenly.

For the second time that day, I walked out a door in stunned silence.

A few weeks later, I went to Club Med, and to my surprise, met my Clyde, although he wasn’t dressed for Halloween and didn’t seem to realize I was.

Lou has been gone for years.

When OJ died, he was the first person I thought of.

The second was the saleswoman.

And our shared silence.

And our shared belief that we were looking at someone who couldn’t see the truth.

Which may have been the only thing we fully understood that day.