Stan smiled and patted her hand. "You underestimate me, honey. Little Stanley knows how to take care of himself. I knew there'd be a crowd tonight, so...." He drew two tickets from his pocket. "If you don't reserve 'em, you don't deserve 'em, I always say!"
He took her hand, and they started across the street toward the courthouse. It was a bleak, gray, stone-faced building whose ornate sculptured trim was weather worn and darkened with age. Once an aspiration to architectural beauty, it was pathetically ugly, a melancholy reminder of a bygone and possibly better era.
A modern theater marquee had been incongruously added to the old structure and, atop the shiny new addition, huge letters of light spelled out NIGHT COURT. Smaller cast aluminum letters protruded upward from the metal rim of the arcing canopy and formed the words of a motto: "Judge not, that ye be not judged". Bold type plastered across the gleaming glass facade of the marquee loudly proclaimed: "NEW SHOW NIGHTLY".
Stan and Julie pushed through the congestion outside the entrance of the court. A dizzying confusion of elbows and backs and sweating, eager faces surrounded them. Stan squeezed through the seething mass of people and, holding tightly to his hand, Julie followed. For the tenth—or hundredth—time, she was sorry that she had come. But it was too late to turn back now.
Stan showed his tickets to the guard at the door, and they were ushered politely inside where a uniformed woman with a military bearing guided them to their seats.
"Your ID cards, please," the young woman said.
Julie was startled by the request, and alarmed. A confiscated ID card meant trouble—police trouble! "Why?" she asked, nervously, "What did we do?"
Stan smiled knowingly. "It's just a formality," he assured her. "They give it back to you when you leave." He handed the usher his card.
"And yours, miss?"
Hesitantly, Julie took out her wallet. A cold premonition urged her to stop, to leave now, before it was too late. Then she saw Stan's amused eyes grinning at her and she reminded herself that it was already too late for her to leave. She gave the girl her ID card.