The Juror (31 page)

When Carew unrolls the window, the kid hands him a small black leather notebook. “I would’ve told you right away. But I thought
you’d think I stole it but I didn’t, I found it in the gutter, right there, I mean I
would’ve
—”

The kid goes on like this, while Carew reads. He reads and turns pages, and reads some more. Harry peers over his shoulder.
Both of them hold their faces close to the page, trying to make out the god-awful handwriting in this dusky light.

“Flip to the end,” says Harry.

At some point the kid has shut up. At some point Harry has killed the engine so it’s quiet in the car, just the sound of evening
crickets and TV laughter from the houses.

Carew finds the last page. He sees the word
juror
. He sees the name BOFFANO and he sees the name
Caruso Hotel
and he makes a fist without knowing it. Lets it go, makes another.

Juror.

The court often takes rooms for jurors at the Caruso. He thinks, how could I have missed that—

It starts to branch in his head. His eyes leap all over that page and suddenly this little no-account drug-dealer hit is getting
bigger and bigger, and he raises his eyes and stares out his window at the kid. He doesn’t
see
the kid, he just stares while he cogitates, but the kid doesn’t know that. The kid sees this dangerous cop staring a death-stare
at him, and he knows he should not have taken that notebook, and he knows he’ll be spending the best years of his life in
a penitentiary somewhere in the Mojave Desert, and he’s trying to come to terms with this sudden plunge in his fortunes….

E
DDIE
in back of the courtroom, watches the jurors file in. There she is. Dragging. Keeping her eyes down. She takes her seat and
she shuts her eyes.

Says the court clerk, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict in this matter?”

Says the Forewoman, “We have.”

“As to count one in the indictment, murder in the second degree, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

Instantly two hundred sets of lungs suck all the air out of this courtroom.

“And as to count two in this indictment, murder in the second degree, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

Tallow demands that the jurors be polled, but it doesn’t do him any good. There’s a brisk farewell address from Wietzel, the
defendant is released from custody, and that’s it.

That’s this courtroom blown sky high.

Louie Boffano jumps up like he’s ten years old and then turns around and swats everybody in sight. Big luscious open-hand
swats bestowed on all his buddies and lawyers and wife and kid and cousins, and the courtroom is in an uproar. Jubilation,
dismay. Wietzel pounds the gavel but the noise seems to comes from far off, like the sound of somebody pissing next to Niagara
Falls, who cares?

Eddie’s still watching her. She’s still got her eyes closed.

Louie Boffano leaps into his lawyer’s arms. Little Bozeman trying to hold him up. Everybody laughing their asses off.

She’ll be all right, Eddie thinks. It’s all over now, Annie Laird. You did it.

Vincent and you together, you did this nasty piece of shitwork and now both of you, you can let it go? Annie, you can start
scrubbing us out of your head now?

Reporters push past Eddie to get to the aisle, to get out of here to a telephone. Old women push past to get down there where
they can smother their hero Louie Boffano in kisses. Everybody pushes past Eddie. He sees only flickers of Annie through the
crush.

Right, Vincent? I’ll never see her again? You’re going to let her go now, right, Vincent?

J
ULIET
, in Annie’s kitchen, slices up the large pizza and doles it out. Henri is here, and Oliver’s friend Jesse with his new earring.
Jesse eyes his slice warily. “What are these?”

“What are what?” says Juliet.

“These wormy things.”

“Anchovies. What’s the matter?”

Jesse gets a knotty chin. “What are anchovies?”

“They’re fish,” says Juliet. “Annie, here.”

She serves a slice to her friend, who smiles and then fades back into her thoughts.

“
Fish pizza?
” says Jesse. “The concept here is fish pizza?”

“If you don’t want them just pick them off,” says Juliet.

“Oh, don’t be a wuss,” says Oliver.

Jesse asks, “What do they taste like?”

“They taste sort of like sardines,” says Juliet.

Says Henri, “No.
Precisely
they taste like salt. But much saltier.”

Oliver picks up a long anchovy and dangles it over his mouth. He drops it in. Then he puckers up his lips and shuts his eyes.
“No, you know what they taste like
precisely?
” he says. “I mean
really
precisely?”

He brings his lips close to Jesse’s ear. A splash of whispering.

Says Juliet, “You telling him what I think you’re telling him?”

“Yes.” Oliver opens his eyes wide and blinks innocently.

“Gross insulting schoolboy stuff?” she says.

“Yes.”

Henri starts to chuckle.

“You’re comparing anchovies,” Juliet says, “to some part of the female anatomy that you know absolutely nothing about? Is
that it?”

“But that’s why I love anchovies,” says Oliver. “They’re all I’ve got.”

“You’re so disgusting,” says Juliet.

“They’re all I can
access
,” says Oliver.

“Access
this
,” says Juliet. She picks up an anchovy in her long fingers and flings it at him. It lands on his cheek and sticks there.
Henri barks out a laugh.

Then Jesse cries out, “Food fight!” which reminds Juliet that she’s dealing with a pair of adolescent boys here and this could
get quickly out of hand. She says, “No no no no. Not now. Not here. Sorry.”

Oliver smiles mildly. The perfect gentleman. He peels the anchovy off his cheek and eats it.

Everyone laughs, even Annie. But Annie laughs only because the others do. She’s not listening to the chatter. Her eyes are
focused somewhere else—at a high spot on one wall. Then they flick over to another wall. Juliet watching her, wondering what
she’s looking for.

Does she think that man is listening? Is she still frightened of that bastard?

“Hey you,” she says sharply. “Annie.”

“What?”

“This is a celebration. You’re free. Up from slavery. It’s over. Eat.”

A
NNIE
at eleven the next morning, steps into her studio for the first time since the night she invited him in here, and it’s like
going back to some childhood place, some place she’d forgotten mattered so much.

Used to be an artist.

But her Grope Boxes look dull, dun, inert. They look like the crates they are.

She stands before the piece she’d been working on when all this started.
Second-Grade Passion for a TV Lion
. Or so it says, in her own handwriting on a note pinned to the wall. But she has no memory of calling it that. Now the name
seems blithely postmodern, frivolous. Not like her at all.

Well OK, I’ll find some other name.

The important thing is to get back to work, get back into rhythm.

The covering-box itself has been hoisted high to reveal the piece’s innards as they rest on her worktable. Annie flips a switch
to start the little motor. She passes her hand between a pair of whirring rotors and lets the hundreds of satin snakes slap
at her. She reaches up farther and gets gusts of hot muggy air from the steam machine. Like the breath of a panting animal.

Right, OK. Clever.

But what else? Wasn’t there supposed to be something else?

She casts her gaze around and spots the piece of soft deep-pile fur she found at a thrift shop. The mane, yes. The lion needs
a mane.

She remembers that on the day she met the Teacher she had been about to attach the lion’s mane.

She disengages the pawl on the winch, and lowers the covering-box carefully to the worktable. Upends it. Sets the fur inside
it, finds some screws and a Phillips screwdriver, and begins to affix the fur to the inside of the box. After a few minutes
of this work, after a few of the screws are in, she starts to relax a little—and then that memory comes back to her. Oliver’s
on his bike and she’s in that car and the car is bearing down on him and she’s trying to get out of her skin—

She grits her teeth. She squeezes the handle of the Phillips as hard as she can and the plastic fluting digs into her skin.

She waits, and after a minute the box comes into focus again.

This box.

What the hell is she doing?

This mane she’s lining this box with? This fuzzy sweet sentimental… what is this?

Is this really the kind of art she used to make? Was it
all
like this?

Warmhearted precious bric-a-brac?

This isn’t going to work.

She shuts her eyes again.

She stands there, rocking on her heels, and then she starts pacing, back and forth in the small space with her head down,
eyes on the paint-splattered wood slats, and she doesn’t know what she’s looking for but after a long time it finds her. An
image. Of a house. A homey farmhouse with samplers and lace doilies and calico curtains and lovely burnished antique furniture.

But the walls are lined with shards of glass.

Thousands of twisted razor-sharp pieces of glass,
growing
from the inside walls like thorns. Walk carefully. If you stray to the left or to the right you’ll cut yourself.

If you stumble you’ll kill yourself.

And there’s some churning sound, the cadence of an immense machine for
crushing
, as you pass through the rooms.

Is this a new piece?

But you could never make this, Annie.

Where in the world could you come up with a farmhouse? And all those shards of glass? Someone
will
stumble, someone will be cut. Someone will sue. Even if you could find a way to make this piece, you could never
show
this piece.

But who gives a damn? she thinks. I’ll make it for myself.

She sits on the floor. She stretches out on her back and stares up at the ceiling. A staircase? Yes, there will be a staircase
up to a dark bedroom. Wait, no. No,
nothing
will be dark. Every window must be spotlessly clean so the sun can come pouring in. Everything must be neat, all organized
by some finicky spirit. But a garden of glass shards will grow out of the goose-down quilt on the bed, and there will be homemade
glass shards in the oven, and—

The telephone rings.

She lets it.

After four rings the machine picks up, and in a moment she hears Inez, her dealer:

“Hey babe. When are you going to call me? I’ve got to talk to you. Zach Lyde gave me a call. Told me he wants a piece he saw
up at your studio. He says it’s called, urn,
Second-Grade Passion for a TV Lion?
Says he’ll pay twelve for it—do we have a deal? Says he’d like to know immediately—he’s having dinner with one of his Asian
friends and he wants to be able to offer it. My god, did you charm the pants off him, or what?
Twelve thousand
, Jesus. Call me! Where are you? What is going
on!
”

Annie slams her screwdriver into the floor beside her.

She thinks, What if I don’t answer the summons, what if I don’t do anything?

But then I’d be simply waiting and waiting for his chastisement, wouldn’t I? And what good would that do?

She rises. She fetches her jacket.

She gets in the Subaru and backs it out of the drive.

As she heads toward the village of Pharaoh, she looks in her rear-view mirror and notices a car pulling onto Seminary Lane
behind her. A green sedan, two passengers. Two men.

But she bears down on the pedal, and it’s easy to lose them, and in a minute she forgets them.

At Pharaoh Drugs she uses the pay phone. She calls Maretti’s Restaurant in Larchmont. Maretti tells her about a stretch of
abandoned railroad right-of-way near Mahopac. She’s expected there in half an hour.

When she gets back into her car and pulls onto Ratner Avenue, the green sedan gets behind her again.

So she takes a right at Bullet Hill Road just to see what the green sedan will do.

It stays behind her.

She slows way down. Slows to a crawl. Fifteen miles an hour, what do you think, gentlemen? You want to come up close so I
can see your faces?

Abruptly the car behind her turns into a driveway. Annie roars off.

Oh thank you, Teacher, I appreciate your attentiveness, but you needn’t have bothered. I
am
coming to you. You called, I’m coming. In this as in all things I obey you, my beloved Teacher.

T
HE TEACHER
stands inside the ruined relic of a boxcar and watches as Annie hurries along on the old half-buried ties to meet him. He
loves to watch this: her blurry beauty coming out of the mist toward him. Her fury. She seems to be having a hard time reining
in her gait to match the cadence of the ties. Even the steam she’s breathing: it’s on account of the bitter cold, of course,
but it adds to her dragon mien.