The Juror Read Online Free PDF

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…

2

You must keep showing her you love her.
    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