The Juror Read online

  After a moment he tells her, “By the way, I am going to buy your boxes. The three at the gallery, of course. And these also—if we can work out a fair price.”

  “Forget it,” she says. “I don’t, I’d rather—”

  “I insist. I want to do something for you. I realize that placed beside the fear you’re feeling now, this can’t amount to much, but still.”

  He rises. “Annie, I’m sorry about the fear. If I had any choice, any choice… I know this is going to be a scary time for you. And lonely. But please don’t breathe a word of this. To anyone. Because anyone you tell, you’re putting their lives at risk. Do you follow that?”

  She gazes at nothing. Finally she sniffs, and he takes it for assent.

  “When I need to see you I’ll send for you. Someone will say to you, ‘I met you at the bakery.’ Do what he tells you. Now what will he say to you?”

  “I met you at the bakery.”

  “Annie, this will all be over before you know it. And after that our paths will never cross.”

  He goes to the door. When he opens it, the air that eddies in is sharp, cold. The three candle flames dip and then crane their necks and dip again.

  He shuts the door behind him.

  The candles steady themselves and she hears his car start. She hears the Vivaldi start up midstrain, instantly exultant. Proud, willful, dominant by virtue of its design. Not a note that hasn’t been called for, prepared for, not a note out of place, those towering scales of discipline, and then the music and the engine-purr fade and leave her to this room full of silence, to her own raw crude weak and shadowy sculptures, the beating of her heart, and not a single thought in her head that’s of any use to her.

  SLAVKO CZERNYK hunkers down tonight in this old clawfoot bathtub because his tightass landlord still hasn’t turned on the heat and this is the only way to get warm. He lifts his foot out of the water and gets a toe-grip on the H knob. Twists it.

  Treats the tub to a nice scalding pick-me-up.

  He’s chewing a Nicorette and smoking a Lucky Strike at the same time. A cupful of Jim Beam (with a drop of honey) rests on the tub sill. He’s holding a book above the waterline. The book is called The Essential Derek Walcott. He owns this book because once a woman told him that Derek Walcott was the greatest poet ever, oh my god. He was in love with this woman. He still is. So he keeps the book at all times in this bathroom across from his office, and whenever he takes a crap or a bath he opens The Essential Derek Walcott and makes a stab at civilizing himself.

  He glares at a poem.

  The poem taunts him.

  The poem says things like

  … and read until the lamplit page revolves

  to a white stasis whose detachment shines

  like a propeller’s rainbowed radiance.

  Circling like us, no comfort for their loves!…

  He squints. He tries that part again. He still doesn’t get it. He turns the book upside down and reads:

  … and read until the lamplit page revolves

  to a white stasis whose detachment shines

  like a propeller’s rainbowed radiance.

  Circling like us, no comfort for their loves!…

  This is never going to work. He takes a long pull from the Jim Beam, a long pull from the Lucky, and turns the page.

  In his office across the hall, the phone rings.

  Who have we got here? he wonders. Who’d be calling the Czernyk Detective Agency at this hour?

  Probably Grassman Security. They’re on a stakeout and no relief, and Slavko, could you please hustle your ass down here? So you can make eight bucks an hour sitting with Bill Farmer in a colder-than-shit Mercury Zephyr and keep tabs on a murky motel door across a murky street and listen all night to Bill Farmer’s two-part snore-and-fart harmony, OK, Slavko?

  All the god damn livelong night, how about that, Slavko?

  No thanks.

  Thanks but I’d rather stay here and read, read until the lamplit page revolves to a white stasis whose detachment shines like a propeller’s rainbowed radiance, you know what I mean?

  Second ring.

  He lets himself sink down to his chin in the water.

  Or maybe the Caruso Hotel needs me to babysit a postal carrier’s convention. Like that bunch last week. Stuck in the hall all night on a folding metal chair. Keeping a sharp eye on the Coke machine, in case maybe it was one of those mass-murdering postal workers in disguise.

  By four in the morning he’d sort of hoped it was.

  Third ring.

  Forget it, guys. I don’t need the money that much. I mean, I do need the money, I’ve lost my apartment and soon I’m going to be tossed from this rathole office, but still… when I get out of this tub I’m crawling right into beddy-bye.

  His machine picks up.

  He hears his own grungy growl on the tape: “You’ve reached the Czernyk Detective Agency. We’ve stepped out of the office for a moment…”

  He sounds to himself like a cross between an iguana with a hangover and a haunted cellar door.

  He brings the Lucky to his lips, takes a little sip of it, then holds it there between his fingers while he slides his head under the water. But he can still hear his grunting from the machine.

  And then some other voice, a liquid and whispery song of a voice, and he lurches up out of the water.

  This angel-voice is leaving her name. Sari Knowles. What a beautiful name. And her number. She says:

  “… I need, um, I may need your help, with something, I mean I guess it’s not an emergency and I know it’s late and I don’t know you, really I just got your name out of the Yellow Pages but if you can—”

  “Hello.”

  “Hello? Mr. Sir-nik?”

  “Czernyk. ‘Ch’ as in choo-choo. I, um—wait, I just got out of the tub, I was, I was across the hall, wait—”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be there, I mean—”

  “It’s OK. It’s OK.”

  Freezing in here. He shuts the door to the hall. He lies down on the mattress on the floor and pulls the covers over him. Pulls them over his head, scrunches way down. Yesterday’s newspaper, a box of Oreo cookies, and a forlorn copy of Penthouse are down here with him. And the telephone. “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No. Not with the law or anything, I’m, it’s…” She fades off.

  “You married?”

  “Uh-uh, no.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  She takes a breath. “Yeah.”

  “Problem?”

  “Mm.”

  “You don’t know where he is?”

  “But he’s not in any danger, it’s…”

  “You think maybe he’s with someone else?”

  “I don’t know what he’s doing.” She’s on the edge of tears. “He doesn’t tell me anymore. I mean, he’s, he’s busy. He manages a commodities fund, and, so I don’t know, I guess he’s busy. He’s says he’s got this new client? This woman?”

  “And you’re a little jealous.”

  “Oh damn. This isn’t like me. You know? I mean I know how late it is, I should have waited till tomorrow, but I can’t, I can’t think about anything else, I can’t sleep. I mean I should handle this better. I’m a businesswoman, I have my own travel agency. I’m a responsible—I mean I should—”

  “No, I understand. It’s tough sometimes. Can I ask you something, Ms.—”

  “Sari Knowles. Sari.”

  “Sari. This is kind of private and you don’t have to answer me, but are you seeing a therapist?”

  No answer.

  He tells her, “It’s only that, when you’re going through—”

  “But if he’s seeing somebody else what difference would it make? You know? If I’ve lost him?” A rib of near panic running underneath her voice. “Then what difference would it make if I’m sane or not?”

  Slavko knows this tone. W
hen he hears this tone on the telephone he knows he’s got himself a client. Do you feel the walls trembling? Do you feel your lovelife starting to cave in all around you? Does it feel as though the walls of your lovelife are rotten at the foundation and they’re starting to bow and bulge and crumble, and does it feel as though loneliness is about to come rushing in?

  Then dial a private investigator.

  Because you’ve made up your mind that what’s really killing you is the not knowing. And you think that all you need for what ails you is a dose of the truth. So you call a detective, to unearth this truth.

  Of course this is a dumb move.

  The truth is, there’s nothing a detective’s ever going to find out for anybody that anybody really wants to know.

  The truth is, ma’am, that if the walls of your lovelife are crumbling and tumbling, how the hell is a private investigator supposed to prop them up?

  And if I were an honest man, I’d tell you that right off. If I were an honest man, I’d hang up on you.

  Says Slavko, “So how can I help you there, Sari? How can I be of service?”

  ANNIE’s sitting up in bed. It’s three in the morning. Her TV is on. A Gong Show rerun, which is the liveliest pablum she can find. She’s not watching it. She’s watching a stain on the wall above the TV, an ancient water-seep stain. She only glances at the set when they hit the gong. She wishes they’d do that more often. The rest of the show doesn’t reach her consciousness.

  All the lights are on. Every light in the house. And she’s got the radio going, an oldtime reggae station from the city, with the bass line, the underbeat, coming in furred by lousy reception.

  When she turned the TV on, she forgot to turn the radio off.

  She wonders if she can’t go fetch Oliver. No, it’s too late. She’d wake up everybody in Jesse’s house. Embarrass him in front of his friend. Best to wait till morning. He’s OK, he’s fine. He’s OK. Wait till morning.

  She has the sense that the Gong Show has ended and something else has come on, but she doesn’t have the energy to lower her eyes to the set to find out what.

  The telephone rings.

  You bastard, what did you forget? What? Some threat you didn’t make clear enough? Some new torture you want to detail for me—

  Still, it could be Oliver.

  So she picks up. “Yeah?”

  Crackle and snap. A little wait, then, “Hi, Annie? What’s up?”

  Turtle.

  He says, “You working? You on some hot date, what are you—”

  “Turtle! Jesus, how are you?”

  “I’m good,” she thinks she hears.

  “Wait!” she cries, and she stretches to the radio and slaps it off and she reaches for the TV and turns that off too. Abruptly the house is cast into deep silence except for the static on the telephone. The call is coming from the mountains of Guatemala. Whenever Turtle calls he calls from the Guatel office in Huehuetenango, the nearest town of any size to the little pueblo where he runs his clinic.

  “I can’t hear you very well,” she says.

  He shouts. “Can you hear me now?”

  “Yes!” she cries.

  She’s so glad to hear his shout she’s almost weeping.

  He says, “I had to bring one of the kids down to the hospital here, and I thought about you, and we haven’t talked in… how long?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Spring? In the spring.”

  He asks her, “How are you?”

  “I’m OK,” she says.

  But her voice trails off.

  Anyone you tell, you’re putting their lives at risk.

  She can’t do this. She has to get rid of him before he says something that will let Zach Lyde know who he is, where he’s living.

  Zach Lyde could be listening this moment.

  Is he? Is he here right now, is he hanging over me, is his ear pressed up against the receiver—

  Of course he’s listening.

  So hang up.

  But Turtle would call back.

  Unplug the phone then.

  No, she knows Turtle. If Turtle can’t get through at all he’ll start to worry. He’ll catch the next bus to Guatemala City and then a plane up here….

  “Annie, weren’t you supposed to be in a group show at that gallery of yours? Wasn’t that supposed to open last month?”

  You know what you have to do.

  He says, “How’d it go? Those artworld shits, they’ve cottoned on yet? They know how good you are?”

  Get it over with.

  “Hey, Turtle? I don’t want to talk to you.”

  The hissing, the slow wheeze of the connection. Sounds like desert animals, sick and thirsty, a chain of whimpering animals from here all the way to Guatemala.

  Finally he says, “This isn’t a good time?”

  “There isn’t any good time. Look, we had something between us years ago. And since then we’ve tried to be friends, but it doesn’t work, does it? I’ve got somebody with me now. OK? And he doesn’t like these phone calls. OK? And frankly I don’t either.”

  Only those cracklings. They go on for so long, she starts to wonder if he’s hung up—and then she hears him blow out some breath and say, “Woo. Jesus. God. I’m sorry, Annie.”

  She thinks, For Christ sake, I’m being the asshole and you say you’re sorry. That’s why we never made it in the first place, Turtle. You’re too god damn nice.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal,” she tells him. “Just leave me alone now. OK?”

  THE TEACHER lies half-asleep in his bed in this ancient one-room schoolhouse, listening to channel four: her bedroom. He hears her cradle the phone. He waits for the sound of her crying, but no such sound can be heard.

  He knows that to banish her friend couldn’t have been easy for her. He’s proud of her.

  He hears her bed sigh and the creak of a floorboard. Then her footsteps as she walks out to the hall, descends the stairs.

  Ah, Annie, he thinks, why don’t you get some sleep now? I know you’re troubled. But it will seem better in the morning.

  All of us can use some sleep.

  He switches to channel one. The kitchen. He hears something slippery. Her jacket? Yes, she’s putting on her jacket. The back door. Then faintly the whining screen door. Nothing for a moment. He turns up the volume. He hears the fridge, the stutter of a clock. Then her car engine starting up.

  “Annie,” he murmurs. “Oh, come back, girl. Come to bed.”

  He puts his hand wearily on the phone and waits for Eddie to call.

  Eddie’s been posted near her bungalow tonight as a precaution. In case the Teacher has misread her, in case she panics and has dreams of flight. But the Teacher knows he hasn’t misread her.

  The phone buzzes. Eddie tells him, “She’s going, Vincent, she’s in her car. I don’t know where she’s going.”

  “I do,” says the Teacher.

  “Where?”

  “Jesse Grabowski’s house. Where her child’s staying.”

  “She’s picking up her kid? She’s gonna take off?”

  “I don’t think so, Eddie. I think she just wants to be close to her child.”

  EDDIE, ten minutes later, drives through a silent hillside development and spots her car parked across the street from a mailbox that says GRABOWSKI.

  He sees her silhouette. She’s sitting there in the car. He sweeps past her quickly and tells the telephone, “Yeah, she’s here.”

  But there’s no answer. Vincent has fallen asleep again. Eddie has to say it again. “She’s here.”

  “Good,” says Vincent.

  “Like you said.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t get it, though.”

  “What don’t you get, Eddie?”

  “I don’t get what the fuck is she doing? I mean how does it do her any good to be parking across the street from where her kid is sleeping?”

  Says Vincent, “It’s a mystery.”

  “Why doesn’t she go in t
here and get him?”

  “Wake them all?”

  Oh, thinks Eddie. That’s reasonable.

  But he also thinks, How the hell does Vincent know the deal here? Vincent has no kids. How does he know more about what a parent thinks than Eddie does? Eddie’s got a daughter, and he’s practically raised her by himself. Vincent has nothing. Vincent’s got nobody, so how does he know? How does that cocksucker always know?

  “Hey, Vincent.”

  The voice comes back sleepily. “What?”

  “Let me ask your advice.”

  “My advice? My advice is to call it a night. She’ll be fine, really. Pretty soon she’ll go home on her own.”

  “No, you gotta help me.”

  “With what?”

  “It’s about my daughter. Roseanne.”

  A sigh. “OK.”

  “She’s fourteen years old, you know?”

  “Close. She’s fifteen, Eddie.”

  “What?”

  “Your daughter’s fifteen. She just had her birthday. I sent her a present.”

  “Bite my crank, Vincent. You mean those roller blades? She loves those fuckin roller blades.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Vincent, did she send you a thank-you note?”

  “She did.”

  “Yeah? Well, OK, now get this. Got a call from the doctor the other day. He was giving Roseanne her physical exam? For school? Standard shit? And he says, get this, her labia, he says. Her lips. Her pussy lips, my daughter.”

  “What about her labia?”

  “She had em pierced. And she’s got rings in em. One on each side. And she’s got this little padlock that goes through the rings. So nobody can get into her pussy if they don’t got a key. She’s fifteen fuckin years old, Vincent. You hear this? And guess what? She don’t got a key. Only her boyfriend’s got a key. I come home? I says, Roseanne, tell me the boy’s name. No, she says. I says, this prince among men, tell me his name. She says no. I says, Roseanne, I mean, I got ways I can find this out. She says, Oh yeah? You gonna throw me in the East River? I says, listen, Roseanne, my dear fuckin child, I ever hit you? She says no. I say, well I shoulda! You fuckin psycho, I shoulda knocked the brains outta your skull! Padlock on your pussy! And still she won’t tell me the guy’s name. So what do I do? Vincent, I’m losing this kid, what the hell do I do?”