The Juror (4 page)

Then Eddie calls and tells him, “Vincent, she’s out the door. With the kid.”

“All right.”

The Teacher gives God’s balls a last playful squeeze, and he moves on to the next crate. He asks Eddie, “If she comes this
way, how much time will I have?”

“Two, three minutes.”

Above the next crate is a piece of sketch paper that says, “Alzheimer’s. For Mom.” The Teacher reaches under the skirt. His
hand finds a chamber shaped like the inside of a skull.

Says Eddie, “OK, now she’s pulling out of the lot. She don’t see me. She’s coming your way.”

There’s some sort of testiness in his voice.

“Eddie?”

“What?”

“What do you think of her?”

Moment of silence.

“What do you mean, what do I
think
of her? I don’t think nothing of her.”

“You seem protective of her.”

“Protective? I just think she’s bad news. I think she’s a fuckin nun.”

“But she couldn’t be an absolute nun, could she? She has a child. She’s had some kind of sex life. Don’t you think she’s sort
of sexy, Eddie?”

“Come on. She’s a fuckin
mommy
.”

“Those eyes? You don’t find them sexy?”

“Vincent, you getting out of there? She’s coming pretty fast.”

The Teacher’s fingers are running along the cracked delft tiling of that skull-chamber. Something grows in the cracks. It
feels like moss. And shreds of gossamer netting tickle the hair on the back of his wrist. Alzheimer’s. Falling into dereliction,
falling apart.

He tells Eddie, “I think she’s sexy and I think she’s also brilliant.”

“Yeah? Hot shit.”

“She makes sculptures that you can’t see. That you can only feel.”

“Hot steaming shit,” says Eddie.

There’s another box called
The Dream of Giving Notice
, and this title piques him, but there’s no time to give the box a grope. Another visit then. Something to look forward to.
He steps away.

It takes him less than a minute to set an “infinity bug” into the phone extension.

When he goes out he shuts the door softly behind him.

He backs the S4 out of the driveway and heads down Seminary Lane. Down, and then up a little rise, and then before he dips
again he checks his rearview mirror and gets a glimpse of Annie Laird and her child in their old Subaru, on their way home.

A
NNIE
and Oliver, that evening after supper, are up in Oliver’s room in the aquarium glow of his computer monitor. Oliver is working
on his bowl of ice cream. Annie’s at the game controls.

“What is this place?” she asks.

“Castle Keep.”

“Right, I know that. But what’s a keep?”

“I don’t know, Mom. It’s in a castle. It’s the keep. You know.”

“Oh God, who are
they?
”

“Don’t panic. They’re Troll-Slaves. No sweat.”

“I have the impression these gentlemen want to hurt me.”

“They’re retards, Mom. They’re real slow. Use your sword, they won’t hurt you. No! Don’t go that way!”

“Help! What’s
that?
”

“It’s a trap door! Don’t!”

“What? Where do I go?… Oliver!”

“Just chill, Momba. They come to you? You waste em.”

“Where? Where? What do I, they’re coming!”

“This button. Here, hit this button!… Yes! Now get the other one! Nail the fucker!”

“Oliver.”

“I mean sucker,
hit him!
Mom! Where are you going?”

“I don’t know! Help! How do I turn around?”

“Here! This! Get him! Yes! Yes!”

“Yes!”

“All right, Momba!”

“They’re dead?”

“They’re dead.”

“I did it?”

“You’re OK. How do you feel?”

“I feel good.”

“You should feel good.”

“I’m not thinking about the widows of these Troll-Slaves here. I know that little Troll-Slave children will be crying for
their fathers tonight, but I feel good. Very clear-headed. HOLY CHRIST! What’s that!”

“It’s a spider, Mom. Just chill. It’s only a Death-Spider.”

T
HE TEACHER
crouches and studies the lights of her house.

Then he hears that mocker again, slightly hoarse, a quick knifeplay of notes. He looks up. The bird’s song seems to come from
a nearby beech tree. Here at the edge of the woods, at the edge of Annie Laird’s lawn. He looks up. Studies the dark branches
of that tree.

He judges it to be a good climbing tree.

So he starts to climb.

The bird’s shadow flits away.

He ascends, spiraling around the trunk nimbly—though he has two heavy boxes strapped to his back. Two olive-drab 50 caliber
ammo boxes, each of them fitted into a bed of twigs and clay and leaves, so they look something like squirrel’s nests.

He climbs till he’s twenty feet up with a clear view of the bungalow. Then he shinnies onto a limb and hangs one of the nests.
This nest holds a battery pack. He runs the power cord from this battery farther out along the limb, and then he hangs the
other ammo box.

As he works, the mocker sings again. It’s a better tune now than the one it sang this afternoon. More ethereal, more pulse
under the melody line. Night always brings out the mocker’s highest art.

He opens the lid on the second box. Inside are five ICOM 7000 receivers, tuned to pick up the three “infinity bugs” in Annie’s
three telephones and the parasitic transmitters in the TV room and the child’s bedroom. He feeds the five pliable antennas
through a hole in the ammo box, and runs them out along the branch he’s clinging to, securing them with bungees.

The four receivers are tied into a Motorola multiplexer. He fits an earplug in his left ear and jacks the cord into the multiplexer,
and on the digital tuner he summons up channel one: 143.925 megahertz. The kitchen.

He listens. He hears a soft occasional
pinging.
Leaky faucet.

He touches the channel selector. The boy’s room.

The right place.

He hears the mosquito whine of a video-game theme song, and Annie’s voice:

“Kill it? How am I going to kill it! It’s bigger than I am!”

Then the kid, laughing: “Death-Spiders, you got to cut off
all
their legs.”

Annie: “What!”

Then the
snick-snick
of some video-game weapon.

Peals of laughter in the Teacher’s left ear. Meanwhile his right ear picks up a little of the real thing, the kid’s actual
laugh, coming directly, faintly, from the house.

“Die!” shrieks Annie. “Why don’t you
die?
”

“All its legs, Mom!”

“I can’t!”

“Watch out! Troll-Slaves!”

“Oh, for God’s, help!”

Snick-snick. Snick-snick.

Annie crying out, “Aaaaiiiieeeeee…”

The music plays a slow dismal dirge.

Oliver says, “You clown.”

Still, he begs her to stay and play another game.

She will not, though. She says she has to work. The Teacher sees movement at the bungalow’s upstairs window. The flash of
her maroon shirt, and then he hears her clopping down the stairs.

He adjusts the channel selector and picks up the kitchen. He hears her humming that video-game tune. He sees her in the yellow
light of the kitchen window. She pauses at the fridge. Three leaves go tumbling past the windowframe, the frame of light.
She takes a long pull from some bottle. She stands there, not moving. She looks out the window into the absorbing dark. He
hears her sigh. Even from this far, he can see a wooziness in the way she’s standing—she’s utterly worn out.

Then she collects herself. And with her weight on her toes, forced jauntiness, she steps outside. Letting the screen door
slam behind her, she moves into the darkness of the driveway. The light comes on in her barn-studio. She goes in and shuts
the door.

A minute later a Joan Armatrading song comes pouring from her boom box.

The Teacher pulls the earplug from his ear, and from its jack.

In the ammo box beside the multiplexer is an industrial cellular phone. He lifts the receiver, punches in a number.

His lover, Sari, answers on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“Sari. How are you?”

“Horny,” she says. He hears a slight rustle over the phone, and he pictures Sari lying back against the pillows. She asks,
“How about you?”

In almost a whisper he tells her, “The same. But since you’re always in my thoughts, I’m
always
horny. So this isn’t news. The news, the real news… the news isn’t good.”

He’s straddling the limb, breathing this cool loamy air, watching the single slender window of Annie’s studio. He can’t see
Annie, though. Only flickers of her shadow as she works.

Sari asks him, “What is it?”

Her voice is drooping. She’s guessed what it is.

He says, “I can’t come tonight. I have an immense presentation tomorrow, and tonight I have to research a client.”

“Where are you?”

“I miss you,” he says.

“Where are you?”

“On the road. Near the village of Pharaoh, I think.”

“It sounds quiet.”

“Well, I’ve pulled over. I’m sitting outside. I’m sitting here with trees all around me, and there’s a light on in somebody’s
window and it’s making me a little lonely. I’m thinking about you lying in bed and I know your eyes are getting narrow now
and I know you’re pissed as hell and listen, I’m really sorry. You’re absolutely the most stunning woman in the world and
if anyone hears me talking out here they’re going to think it’s a burglar and they’ll come out with a shotgun and the line
will go dead suddenly and I’ll never get to meet your mother—”

She tries to laugh.

“And I’m sorry,” he says.

He waits a moment, to give his voice time to sink into her, then he asks, “Is it, Sari, is it OK?”

“Not really. I shouldn’t let you do this to me, Eben. You just work all the time.”

“I do… love… this work,” he says slowly and softly. Just then Annie Laird, pacing, thinking about her own work, passes her
studio window. Repasses. “But Sari, I miss you. What we need to do is figure out a way that I can stay inside you and meet
with clients at the same time.”

This time she does laugh some. Some of the tension lifts.

“We’ll try Thursday?” he says.

“How about tomorrow?” But she bites off the tail end of “tomorrow.” Maybe she hears the clingingness in her voice.

“Tomorrow? I’m sorry. Tomorrow I’ll be having dinner with this same client.”

The light from Annie’s window, rippling. He does love this work. This night, that thrush, the sharp spicebush, the fine-tuned
power of his own pulse, all the leaves stirring around him…

A
NNIE
can’t find parking anywhere in SoHo. Now and then there’s a gap in the cars but the space is always guarded by a jealous
hydrant. Finally she gives up and leaves the old Subaru with its butt nudging a crosswalk. Take a chance. How often do I get
off like this, I’m going to waste the whole sunny day cruising for a place to park?

The gallery is over on West Broadway. She walks east by way of Spring. Clocking along. She peers into the bric-a-brac boutiques,
the chichi pet shops. She checks out the latest sidewalk stencil-graffiti. She slows when she passes a bakery, and again at
a shop for exotic coffee.

Now that she no longer lives here she loves this city.

A pair of lovers at a sidewalk cafe. Sitting side by side, reading. Their novels tipped toward the raking sunlight, the man
absently stroking the woman’s forearm with the tips of his fingers. Annie checks herself for signs of envy. For any nostalgic
pining.

Perhaps she does sense a small subterranean shift or shudder.

And later she gets another tremor when she’s coming up West Broadway and some beautiful city guy with gothic cheekbones passes
her and gives her the eye, and she finds herself giving it right back. After he passes she drags her feet and even considers
taking a quick look behind her—just to see if
he
’s looking back.

But tremors like these fly quickly.

The real ache hits her when she goes by a toy store for rich kids and gets a glimpse of a complex mechanical dragon. A blast
of smoke from its blue-green nostrils. To possess such a creature, Oliver would sign over his soul. She almost veers to go
inside to ask the price. Almost goes
seeking
that chastisement.

If you have to ask, lady, we don’t mind humiliating you.

But she averts her eyes and picks up her stride, and by the time she gets to Prince Street she’s forgotten the toy, she’s
forgotten the lovers and the looker, she’s carefree and playing hooky again. She crosses the street, then turns into a big
iron loft building. She breezes up to the third floor, to Inez Gazzaraga’s gallery. Where Annie has three pieces on one wall
of the front room, part of a group show called
Hermetic Visions.

She nods to Lainie, the intern, at the desk, and heads for Inez’s office in the back.