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me in the hall and said, his eyes skittish, that he was interested in history.
    I liked him a good deal.
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    I t would be another four days before we heard a word of evidence: it would take four more panels to round out a full complement of jurors and alternates. The judge does nothing to make this delay any easier on those of us picked first. Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we show up, and wait. And wait, still in the hall, as a trickle is added to our number after each long round of selection. For a while there is, among us, a woman reading a book of Camus short stories. Then she stops showing up.
    One afternoon (we are seven now who have been sworn in) I walk to the Canal Street subway stop with a fellow juror, picked the second day, Jessica Pollero, who wears elegant knit dresses with bold geometric patterns and carries a large pigskin bag. Is she in her early thirties? A streak of gray in her dark, full hair may be deceptive; but so, too (in the other direction), her flawless complexion. She writes advertising copy for a city agency, but wants to go freelance. We talk about France (she found the people rude), and the location of a restaurant in the Village (is it too close to the scene of the killing for her to go? The judge keeps warning us to stay away from the area, but she has plans). She is very nice, but less exotic, somehow, than I had imagined. Later, she would grow interested in a television show that involved marrying a millionaire. She sought the opinion of other jurors on this show: Could we believe it?
    I do not own a television, and this was to surprise her.
    Each day ends the same way: tomorrow we ought to get going. One of us, the quiet guy named Jim Lanes, freaks out on Tuesday and starts yelling at the bailiff after roll call, saying he isn’t waiting around anymore, and isn’t coming back. At first the officer tries to soothe him, and then, when that has no effect, gets serious, telling him that he is subject to arrest if he leaves.
    Lanes is a nice man in his mid-forties, handsome, and dressed in a tastefully quirky way—a chocolate-brown houndstooth shirt and an elegant maroon bow tie with white fletches. We chat going down in the infuriatingly slow elevator. His advertising business is a partnership with his wife, a designer. For all his dashing appearance he is quiet, polite, almost retiring in conversation. In this light his anger earlier seems bizarre, sudden, exaggerated.
    Paige Barri wears clogs, and red socks that sparkle; she talks on the phone in the hall a great deal, and seems to be friendly already with Leah Tennent, who is taller, the same twenty-something age, carries a backpack, has a kaffiyeh scarf whorled rakishly at her neck. They go out for coffee, and are always the last to come skidding down the hall when we are asked to assemble in the court. I overhear Paige trying to explain to the bailiff that she has some kind of class on Thursday afternoons.
    She
can
miss it, but . . .
    Paige is the interior decorator; her temperament is cool, a touch disinterested, slightly impatient. Leah’s software company designs multi-player games, but she talks about the job like it’s a lark, something she is just trying out for fun. She has traveled a good deal (South America, East Asia) and had some adventures. There is a bounce in her step, and her lively green eyes narrow slyly when she smiles, which she does often, brightly, with a hint of mischief.
    For my part, I dress way down, since the court building is so dusty and rank—parachute pants, hiking boots, a fleece. The rough index for my first book has come back from the press, so I fill the time in the hallway by poring over the loose galley pages, making index annotations. I am blandly friendly, but sit alone.
    It is late Wednesday afternoon when we get under way, filing into the open court down the main aisle, preceded by the bailiff, who announces our entry by barking, “The jury is in the