The Juror Read Free

is thoughtfully pursing her lips, and her alien gray eyes are glimmering and she says, “Well, then, then I think
     I could get someone to take care of my son. For when I’m sequestered.”
    “And you
would
like to serve?”
    “Um. Yes. I would. Yes.”
    It dawns on Eddie that here we’ve got the dumbest woman ever to walk the face of the earth.
    Says Wietzel, “I commend you for your good citizenship, and I ask that you return tomorrow for further examination by the
     prosecution and by counsel for the defense. Thank you, you’re excused for now.”
    Juror 224 rises. She seems exhausted. It hasn’t been easy for her, arriving at that noble bonehead resolution. She’s confused
     and doesn’t know which way to go. The bailiff beckons her, and she follows him. She’s a small woman. Her walk is plain but
     with a wisp of a wobble. A holdover maybe from when she was a kid trying to act like a starlet. Or maybe she’s just unsteady
     from sitting around all day waiting to be called.
    Whichever, that walk gets to Eddie.
    He watches her go, watches the nice flip side of that wobble.
    And then he sees Louie Boffano turn. Just for an instant, to glance at someone sitting way over on the other side of the spectators’
     gallery.
    Louie Boffano has his lower lip tucked under his teeth. It’s as thoughtful a look as you’ll ever get out of the guy. He wants
     someone back there to see that look.
    Then he looks away again. And no one knows that Louie has flashed a sign with that glance.
    It’s OK by me if that’s the one you want. She’s yours.
    Eddie swivels his head.
    The man Louie was signaling to is all the way back near the corner of the gallery. Surrounded by trial freaks, a nobody. He
     wears a bland turtleneck and moony tinted glasses and a furry fake blond mustache. He has no presence at all. He’s gazing
     at nothing. At vapors. He looks to be lost in what you’d guess—if you didn’t know Vincent the way Eddie knows him—were the
     most trivial and commonplace of thoughts.
    Suddenly he gets up.
    Eddie glares at his own fist in his lap and he thinks, OK then you brain-dead bitch, this is what you wanted? OK you got it.
     Who’s going to help you now?
    When he looks back, the space where Vincent was sitting is now empty.
    Eddie silently counts to twenty. Then he rises and pushes his way down the row of spectators out to the aisle. He keeps his
     head low, and he nods to the guard and pushes open the huge door, and he leaves the courtroom. He passes quickly through the
     ugly jagged-edge Buck-Rogers lobby.
    He goes to do what he’s paid to do.

    A NNIE sits in the old Subaru and waits on her son Oliver, who’s studying the buckle of his seat belt. He’s always studying things.
     He stares too long at even the simplest tasks before he gets down to work. Sometimes he’ll stare so long he forgets what he’s
     supposed to be doing.
    Dreamland. He drives her crazy.
    “Oliver. Let’s go.”
    He gets the belt snapped in.
    She backs out of Mrs. Kolodny’s driveway and turns onto Ratner Avenue.
    “Hey guess what,” she says. “You were a star today.”
    “Bull. I was the
zero
kid today. You know where Jesse is on DragonRider?
Fifth
Dome—he did it last night. I can’t get into the Second Dome without some Troll-Slave clobbering my ass. Jesse and Larry say
     I’m a retard ’cause I can’t find the Invisible Potion.”
    “Maybe the Invisible Potion is in the Fallen Keep?”
    “Wrong again,” says Oliver. “Larry says it’s in the Western Shire. The freakin Western Shire.”
    “Maybe Nintendo’s not your forte and you should concentrate on something else.”
    “It’s not Nintendo, Mom. It’s Sega.”
    “Maybe you should take up some other specialty. Like school-work.”
    “Yeah, right,” he says. “No
doubt
.”
    “Or maybe Jesse’s trying to throw you off the track. Maybe there isn’t any Invisible Potion.”
    “The kid’s a lying weasel all right.”
    “You shouldn’t say that