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Millard Kaufman's final novel has arrived!
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JUROR #2. Malfunctioning elevator. We're late coming back from lunch, and the judge is going to be furious. The phone is dead and our shouts go unanswered. You're upset, so I calm you the only way I know how. Other than a desperate minute where I try to cough up the inhaled button from your shirt, it is a raw and sweet kind of lovemaking never before seen in the L.A. Criminal Courts Building. When they get the power back on, we're jolted back to our senses. We dress without a word and you disappear into the crowd. I watch the back of your head for the rest of the trial until we are dismissed with the thanks of the court. Thank you, I say aloud, but you don't turn around. JUROR #4. Right there in the courtroom. The judge stops his instructions and calls attention to us, pointing out that there is a kind of feral chemistry between us, and does anyone else notice it? The bailiff confirms with a smile that heat radiates from the bench where we're sitting. The judge asks for a show of hands of people who object to postponing the work at hand to watch us get it on. There are no objections so, by order of the court, we embark on a rigorous and unselfconscious sexual workout that is one part ballet, one part Greco-Roman wrestling, one part Heimlich maneuver. The stenographer's record of the event is widely circulated. JUROR #5. It has been eleven years of isolation after a desperate bailout over the Sahara desert. I have found shelter in a cave where I am haunted by recurring erotic dreams that last for hours but for some reason never result in a nocturnal emission. My hands were severed in the crash and it is impossible for me to masturbate. When the torment becomes too much for me to bear, I stagger out into the desert where I am sure I will die but instead I am found by your caravan where you feed and bathe me and tend to my wounds. You take me to your tent and onto your feather bed where, after lathering us both with scented lubricating oils, you invite me to take you. Still, I hesitate. JUROR #6. You notice me. JUROR #8. In the six days we've been here, a friendship was forged, right? We took lunches and played Hearts together, shared USA Today, People, and The Reader's Digest. I even loaned you my "Old Fart" hat because it was raining. But you and Juror Number 12 have started up a little thing, haven't you? Don't think I haven't noticed. You already had lunch and I should just go on ahead, right? — that's what you said. But then you and Number 12 went and had gyros. I saw you. Well, now Number 12 and the Alternate are playing charades in the stairwell and you're here in my room holding the pieces of your broken heart. Hush, now. I've got the glue, baby. I got the glue. JUROR #9. This juror is me. It's after lunch and I have a few minutes to kill and the eye contact with the cafeteria money-taker has me all fired up. Or, I get stuck trying to make a left at that really long light on Sixth Avenue and the rhythmic thumping of the turn signal gets me hot. Or, it's been so long since I've done laundry that I have to choose between the leather thong underwear given to me as a joke from my secret Santa last year and wearing nothing at all under my conservative juror attire. (Come to think of it, it would be faster to list the circumstances under which I would not have sex with Juror Number 9: none.) JUROR #11. We're on a hunting trip together and even though I have no earthly interest at all in the following things: guns, woods, animals, you, I agree to go because I'm proving to a former lover that I don't always reject things without trying them. On the third day, after doing what I can to ignore and deflect your ever-bolder sexual advances, I awaken to find you standing naked over me, deer rifle in hand, telling me there's an easy way and there's a hard way that this can go. And you voted to acquit! As is my custom in just about every situation that arises, I opt for the easy way. You're nervous and clumsy and I'd laugh if not for the presence of firearms. When it's finally over, we have trouble making conversation. I welcome the bear attack.
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