The Juror Read online

  “No, that guy turned out to be, I mean it didn’t work out….

  “Juliet, I’m saying I just don’t feel like it….

  “Well, I’ve got a rough schedule too….

  “Yeah I’m sure. I’m sure it’s a great story. But you know, I don’t, I really don’t want to hear it. I mean frankly I don’t want to hear about another little escapade. They sound like fun but they sound, I mean don’t you ever want to get close to somebody? Or just, don’t you get tired of these little adventures?”

  Oliver stands in the TV room and watches his mom’s back. She’s

  leaning against the back door looking out into the last daylight. She’s saying, “No, I’m not…

  “I’m not…

  “I am not, for Christ’s sake. It’s just, it sounds like empty sex. Like bodies, like numbers, don’t you ever want to grow up?…

  “Well that’s fine, Juliet, it’s none of my business, then don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to hear about it, and frankly I don’t want my son hearing about all this warped—

  “No you have the god damn attitude. You think you can come over here any damn time you feel like it, tell me some twisted story, is this a life you’re living? Look, I don’t—”

  She stands in silence a moment, then pulls the phone away from her ear. Oliver hears the aggrieved whine of the dial tone. She hangs up. Then she turns swiftly and she sees him. Her face is red, flushed. But her voice is still cool and steady when she tells him:

  “Don’t. Stare at me.”

  SLAVKO CZERNYK is staked out, sitting in his car, watching Eben Rackland’s condo. Trying to stay awake. Listening to WFAN. Tonight’s lively debate: Does the New York Giants’ salary/bonus structure achieve an optimal line/backfield balance in the offensive alignment? It seems every bozo in the metropolitan area has been mulling this thing over for months. Guys with the IQ of shoehorns are calling in with twenty-minute disquisitions.

  Slavko digs his knuckles deep into his eye sockets, trying to uproot boredom and weariness. Oh Jesus. What time is it? 8:35. That’s all? At midnight I’m cashing out no matter what. Nothing’s going to happen here.

  It’s Slavko’s conviction that the concept of the stakeout was de-signed by Satan’s elves to be the greatest torment possible in this mortal life.

  Slavko unscrews the thermos and chugs coffee.

  On the radio, some sport opines: “I see the difficulty, Jerry, as a plethora of performance-clausing in the multiyear contracts, particu-larly—”

  Slavko jabs his knee at the off knob. Kills that fool. Sits in silence. Again he unscrews the thermos. Chugs more coffee. Checks his watch: 8:36. Oh Jesus.

  This life is not working out.

  Of course if I’m patient I’ll eventually die and get to start all over again. Though what if they deny me a Bonus Round? Considering how bad I’ve screwed up on this go-through?

  He takes another chug of coffee.

  Some flutter of uneasiness that he can’t quite account for. A shadow? Then somebody raps on the passenger-side window.

  He jumps, but miraculously manages to keep hold of the thermos.

  Turns out it’s Sari. Smiling at him. He reaches over and unlocks the door.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks as she slips into the seat beside him.

  “Hey, I’m your employer,” she says. Tonight she’s in plain jeans and sweatshirt. Not a whit less gorgeous than last time, however. She says, “I wanted to see if you were earning your fee. Also I thought you might be hungry. Thought you might like a sandwich.”

  “Thanks, but Jesus—”

  “Yeah, and also I was going out of my skull sitting home alone.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Next block. I didn’t want him to see me. How’s my boy doing? Is he being a good boy tonight?”

  She glances up at Eben’s lighted window. But when Slavko doesn’t answer she turns back to him. “Is this OK, sitting here with you? I mean, it doesn’t—”

  “It’s fine.”

  He’s taking in her fragrance, and the gestures of her long spidery hands. He’s thinking how ashamed he is of this car of his, this 1980 rotten-to-the-gunwales Ford Granada, which he calls the Buzzard and which is saturated with the stink of thousands of Lucky Strikes, years of backed-up exhaust. Junk mail and greaseburger wrappers and two beer bottles are kicking around at Sari’s feet. At his feet is a gash, half a foot long, where the floor has simply rotted through. He usually keeps it covered with an old piece of linoleum, but today when he was hunting for a quarter to pay a toll he must have moved that piece of linoleum, because it’s not there now, and he has to slide his shoe over to cover the hole. So that Sari won’t notice the light seeping up from outside.

  Though she wouldn’t notice anyway. She doesn’t care. The only thing she cares about is Eben Rackland’s lighted window.

  She says, “I know it’s wrong to be spying on him. But it’s kind of, it’ll make me feel better. Just to be here. Hey, you want this sandwich? I brought you this sandwich. It’s roast beef. I don’t take you for a vegan.”

  “Sari.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think your boyfriend’s in there.”

  She looks back at his window. Then she quickly scans the parking spaces. “No, he has to be there,” she says. “I mean there’s his car.” She points at the handsome red Lotus.

  Says Slavko, “Well, that’s been here since I got here. Which was five o’clock.”

  She ponders. “Well, maybe he stayed home from work today. But he’s in there, Mr. Czernyk. He phoned me from there an hour ago.”

  “He did? Call me Slavko. What did he say?”

  “Same as always. He’s sorry, lots of research, this new client, won’t be able to get out—”

  He interrupts her. “The light in that window there came on at 6:37. Wait.” He draws from his jacket pocket his little black logbook and checks it. “6:37 and twelve seconds, by my watch.”

  “So?”

  “At 6:42 and twelve seconds, exactly five minutes later, the porch-light came on. At 6:52 and twelve seconds, that downstairs light.”

  “So what does—”

  “It means your boyfriend didn’t switch those lights on. Unless you’re dating an electronic timer. All night long, not a sound from there, not a stir, not a shadow, nothing. I don’t think anybody’s in there.”

  “Then where’s Eben?”

  “Well, that’s a good question.”

  Suddenly she opens her door. In the dome light he gets a clear look at her wrath. “He better be there,” she mutters.

  She gets out and shuts the door and marches across the drive and up to the condo stoop. She leans into the buzzer.

  Slavko picks up the sandwich she’s brought. He starts to unwrap it.

  He watches her jam her finger at the buzzer.

  She beats on the door with the side of her fist. She shouts for her lover.

  Slavko shakes his head and thinks, No, honey, he’s not there. Our little Ebenezer, he’s playing hooky, he’s playing hooky from his own life. One of those kind of guys. Bad news. Always. Those guys. I’m sure next time you talk to him he’ll have a really good reason for his behavior but whatever it is? Sari? Don’t listen to it.

  OLIVER sits in one of the plastic scoop-chairs at the Laundromat and tries to do his homework. But it’s hard on account of the racket from the washers and the dryers and that family of five pale kids over there who are playing some version of American Gladiators. Bouncing each other off the cinderblock walls. Soon Oliver gives up on the book and picks up a dog-eared crayoned-over Highlights for Children.

  Then he forsakes that and tries a People magazine.

  Then he plays with the drawstring on his parka, twisting it around his wrist. He peers into the maelstrom of a washing machine.

  The mother of the kids tells them to quit roughhousing. They ignore her. What a bitch, and what a batch she’s got. They’re all so eerily pale they’re nearly
blue.

  Oliver gathers his math book and notebook and crosses the room and plunks down next to his mother.

  She’s going through her stack of newspapers. The Times, the Post, the News, the Reporter Dispatch, the News-Times. In each one, she heads straight for news of the trial, ignores the rest. She reads. She says nothing, no expression on her face.

  “Hey Mom.”

  “Yeah.”

  She raises her eyes and looks straight at him, but she doesn’t seem to see him. Then she goes back to her article.

  He says, “I was waiting till you were in a better mood.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But that might be a while, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I gotta show you this.”

  He takes the math quiz out of his notebook and gives it to her. It’s covered with lots of violent red ink.

  Up at the top, the grade: 37.

  She glances at the first page. The second. “OK. That’s good.” She holds it out to him.

  “You got to sign it,” he says.

  “I don’t have a pen.”

  “Here.” He passes her one. She signs. She gives him back the test and the pen and returns to her reading.

  “Mom, you gonna remember you signed it? If she calls you?”

  “If who calls me?”

  “My teacher.”

  “Right.”

  “You gonna remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mom aren’t you gonna say anything? I got a thirty-seven.”

  No answer.

  “Thirty-seven out of a hundred, Mom.”

  “You want me to say something?” She gives him a bitter bolted-down look and she tells him, “Keep up the good work.”

  Then nearly a minute ticks by while she turns newspaper pages.

  The mother of the blue kids starts shoveling her clothes out of a dryer. Her kids keep slapping into the wall.

  Mom folds up the newspaper she’s been looking at. She sets it on the scoop-chair beside her.

  “What should I say, Oliver? Should I say, ‘Oh Oliver, you’re not trying. It’s not so hard, why don’t you just apply yourself?’ Is that what you want to hear? But why should I bother? You know as well as I do, you know what you could do if you tried. But you prefer not to. You prefer to draw your dragons and to hell with all the rest. The rest is no fun, so you sit there and you gaze at that math test and dream about how you want to be an artist like your mom. How you want to get fucked over like your mom. And so what if you never have any money? So what if you feel like shit because you can’t pay your electric bill and you have to work all day as a data processor and you can’t go anywhere because your car broke down and you don’t have the money to get it fixed? Who cares? You’re an artist. You can just sit there and gaze at the life that everybody else is having. Till you’re dead.”

  She keeps getting louder and louder and her voice is lined with a double spiral of razors, and this is the longest speech he’s ever heard her deliver. Their dryer has quit, which means that right now there’s nothing going in this Laundromat. The sallow brats have left off their game to gawk like tourists at Oliver’s mom. Even their mother has stopped offloading her laundry, and she watches with the same impudent stare.

  Says Mom, “And so what if every important decision in your life is made by people you don’t even know? Asshole curators and collectors who can’t tell art from that wallpaper there. I mean if that’s your attitude, Oliver, if you think So what—what am I supposed to do about it? You want to let the bastards tell you you can’t pass math? What am I supposed to do? No one can stop those sons of bitches except you. You got to have the guts. You want to let the bastards tell you who you are, I can’t help you. I can’t help you! All I can do is show you what they’ve done to me.”

  “Mom,” he says.

  “What they’re doing to me.”

  “Mom.”

  “What.”

  “You’ve got… to stop.”

  She does stop. She glares at him.

  He gets up and spills his notebook and his math book onto the floor and walks past the leering washed-out family and finds his way to the door. He pushes out into the autumn dark. He heads toward the Grand Union supermarket and then holds up in front of some stupid mechanical horsey for little kids. He’s crying, he can’t stop it. Please don’t let any of the kids from school come by. He stands there with his head down, hiccuping air, and some old guy is asking him if he’s OK.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “Just leave me alone, will you?” He injects some of his mom’s nastiness into it and it works, it chases the guy. After a while he looks up and sees his mom walking toward the Subaru, with the laundry basket under one arm and his books in the other.

  ANNIE dumps the clothes and the books in the back of the car. Shuts the hatch, and walks toward the Grand Union, passing by Oliver, who’s still staring at that mechanical horse like he wants to take a ride.

  She says crisply, “Oliver.” Her voice echoes in the dark lot.

  “What.”

  “Come. Now.”

  In the Grand Union she plows the aisles, Oliver trailing. Up one aisle, down the other. Since she has only an anti-appetite, a revulsion toward food, it’s an act of will every time she puts something in the cart. No fresh vegetables. She’s not up to cutting veggies. But Rice-A-Roni, sure, four boxes. She hasn’t had Rice-A-Roni since one summer in Pittsburgh with her aunt. A raft of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners and Stouffer’s pizza. Oliver mopes along, keeps his head low. Once or twice she asks his opinion about what to get, but he doesn’t give a damn. They pause before the cereals. A fat puffy-faced guy in a Day-Glo windbreaker can’t get past her cart, and she jerks it aside for him. She tells Oliver, “Pick what you want.”

  He shrugs.

  She grabs a box of Corn Chex, tosses it in the cart.

  Says a voice, “Hey, I know you.”

  She turns. The puffy-faced guy has spoken to her. Nose crushed. One cheekbone looks like it got pushed in by some giant thumb. He gives Oliver a friendly smile. He says to Annie, “You’re the artist. The box lady.”

  He has a merry chuckle. But how does he know her? Probably from the little show she had at the Pharaoh Library last year.

  “From the library?” she says.

  “From the bakery, don’t you remember? I met you at the bakery.”

  Forcing herself to breathe. Now what does she do? What is she supposed to do, she can’t remember.

  The ugly man looks at Oliver and says, “This your boy?”

  OK. He wants her to lose Oliver.

  “Hey hon, we need some… What are those frozen things you like?”

  He mumbles. “RoboPops?”

  “Go get some.”

  He starts off. Sleepwalking.

  When he’s gone the man says, “Tomorrow. Seven A.M. YOU know where the Park & Ride is? In Banktree? Off 684?”

  “Mm.”

  “You gotta know.”

  “I know.”

  “You wait there. I’ll come, you get in my car. OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “You OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look kinda woozy.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “What did I say?”

  “The Park & Ride off 684. I wait, I wait and then I… get in with you.”

  “That’s right.”

  He looks like he’s about to go but he doesn’t. He says, “Listen, you gonna be just fine. He’ll take care of you. He’s a good guy. I mean he can be tough. Somebody crosses him, he goes crazy. But you do what he says? You’ll be fine.”

  She stands there trying to get a grip on her breathing.

  He says, “I got a kid too. I got one just a little older than him. I know what you’re going through.”

  Then he starts pushing his cart away from her, up the aisle.

  “What’s your name?” she says.

&nb
sp; He turns. “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “You don’t want to know my name. How can I—I can’t tell you my name.”

  “What do I call you then?”

  “Don’t call me nothing. Call me what you want. Call me—” He looks around and his eyes light on a display of Johnny Appleseed granola. “Call me Johnny Appleseed, I don’t give a shit.”

  Oliver comes back with two boxes of RoboPops.

  She says, “OK. Johnny. Thank you. For what you said, thank you.” She’s thinking, Maybe if you can make them like you, if you can let them know who you are, and who Oliver is, maybe they’re less likely to hurt you.

  SLAVKO waits till Sari gets into the car, shuts the door and puts her head in her hands. Then he hands her a greasy napkin. It’s all he has. No idea what to say so he keeps his mouth shut. He wouldn’t mind holding her but that’s probably not called for either.

  She gets hold of herself and takes a deep breath and shakes her head sadly. Slavko thinks maybe now’s the time to speak. But then the line of her mouth starts to give way again. Then the tears come spurting out of her eyes and she’s bawling and banging her fists against the dash.

  It takes her a long time to regain the ground she’s lost.

  Finally she says, “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Anything. Talk to me. Tell me a story.”

  “What can I tell you about?”

  Long silence.

  “Tell me about her,” she says.

  “Who’s that?”

  “You said you’d been through this. So who was she? Was she a pathological liar? Like this bastard of mine?”

  “No. She was, she just didn’t love me. She’s a doctor. I mean a resident. At St. Ignatius, you know where that is? We just went out for a little while, maybe a month or two.”

  “How long ago was it?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Jesus. And you still think about her?”

  “Oh no, not so much anymore. I mean nowadays sometimes five or six seconds will pass and I won’t have had a single thought about her.”

  Sari giggles, sniffs. She asks him, “So why didn’t she love you back?”

  “Amazingly unbelievable, isn’t it?”