I think of my parents. How my mom was quick to move on and my dad seemed to always be counting the hours until his next flight to somewhere that wasn’t with me. How hard I’ve worked to be a daughter they could be proud of, to seemingly no avail. But Damon’s tragedy runs so much deeper and wider than my repetitive fractures. I realize trauma is not a competition, but his—his is as agonizing as they come.
“Seeing you again, this trial, it brings it all up again. Maybe it’s the constant talk of the end of someone’s life. I think about Kara a lot, about all the ways she could have been saved had we all been paying more attention...” I expect him to hang his head, but instead he looks at me square on. “How we’re all just one decision away from a completely different life. How quickly it can all just... end.”
We stare at each other, and I can’t help the heat on my skin, the thump of my heart. I’ve gotten the slightest bits of him in these past few days, most of which have come in this suite, and I have the overwhelming desire to crack what’s left of his eggshell against the pan, letting his remaining gooey parts ooze out. I’m anxious, knowing that his shell will likely regenerate again, quickly.
One decision.
It’s impossible to hold the line with him.
I look down at my hand, still wrapped around his, and I squeeze. Our eyes lock, and his are both a mirror and a window, where I see so much—toomuch—all flashing through him like the still frames of his heart. Anger. Sadness. Regret. Something else, too. Something like... hope.
Heat surges between us, a scalding current through our sorrowed but powerful touch.
One decision.
The light ting of the elevator comes from the other end of the hallway, and we both sharpen, the intrusion of sound breaking the connection between us. We listen as a barreling noise begins and grows louder.
It sounds like the maid’s cart. And it sounds like it’s heading straight for us.
14.
Juror Attendant (n., phrase)
a person who assists in supporting the sequestration of a jury but doesn’t work directly for the court; may include transportation, accommodations, meals, and other necessary support services during the trial period
our potential downfall
Damon grabs the two beer cans from the table, shuts off the light, and ushers me into the bedroom. I push in our chairs and follow, a can of my own in each hand.
As we hear the door to the suite—this suite—open, he pulls the closet handle and presses me in with his side, then shuts the door with his foot. My thighs push into the safe on the back wall, and Damon slides two robes to the far end of the hanging bar so we are smushed side by side in the dark, with only scant slats of barely remaining daylight finding their way in through the louvered doors. Pressure gathers in my chest, and I find it hard to breathe. He sips his beer, standing casually as though he’s taking in a baseball game on a Saturday afternoon.
“How are you so chill?” I whisper as he swallows.
He shrugs. I expect him to be on edge, but the heightened stakes seem to have calmed him. “I can literally hear your heart pounding,” he whispers back. We both look down at the visible heave of my chest.
There is shuffling around the suite, footsteps and the occasional bump or swoosh. I shrink back as far as I can when, through the slats, I see a fair-haired maid step into the bedroom, flip on the light switch, and stand directly in front of the closet doors.
If she grips one of the handles, I may pass out.
She stands there a moment, inches from us, evaluating the bedroom. I glance at Damon, though I don’t move my head for fear of her sensing the movement. He is perfectly still, his posture rivaling that of Margot. The cans virtually disappear beneath his grip, and his fists’ size makes me think ofWreck-It Ralph. He looks over at me, and that intense blue-green stare in the dark closet makes me feel something akin to attraction. Staring at someone in the dark, arm pressed against arm at the height of an adrenaline rush, will do that to you.
Heat threatening to overtake me, I focus forward to watch through the slats as the maid tidies the bed. She bends down, tugs sharply at one corner of the bedspread, then smooths the top with open palms. She places her hands on her hips, evaluating. Satisfied, she reaches into her light brown uniform pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. She taps one from the carton, lights the cigarette, steps to the balcony door across the room and opens it. She shrinks into one of the Adirondack chairs and disappears completely behind the wall, except for the toe of her stark white sneaker pressed against the rail. Shortly after, the smoke from her cigarette billows across the sliding glass.
Damon and I turn our heads to face each other.
“Looks like we found her break spot,” Damon muses, his whisper heavy against my ear. He takes another sip of his beer.
“What if she stays for hours?”
Damon looks down at me. “Then I guess we’ll be here for hours, too.” Even in the dark, his gaze pierces right through me.
Ironically, it’s not the first time Damon and I have been in a closet together. Damon learned quickly when we were young about my father’s continual cheating, his lazy effort to hide it. He’d know I had a particularly bad day when I’d go quiet, not asking him to watch movies or ride bikes down to the gas station for gum or twenty-five-cent Atomic Fireballs. He came to know where to find me.
He’d join me on my closet floor, wrap his arm around my shoulders, and press the side of his face into the top of my head. He used to be so tender, so... worried about me. Always worried about me. Like a toddler given an egg with a firm instinct to protect it.
He silently taps the tip of his can to the one in my hand closest to him. I watch as he takes a sip and then looks at me expectantly. I exhale. Might as well lean in at this point. I take a long swig that finishes my first can and raise an eyebrow at him. He nods at me in approval. I nudge him with an elbow to the side, and he exhales a breathy but otherwise silent huff that carries some semblance of amusement. After what he just shared about Kara, it’s incredibly satisfying to see something besides sadness from him, however brief.
We stand pressed into each other for what feels like an eternity. His arm pushes against mine, gliding gently up and down with his breath. My heartbeats come in rapid-fire as his weight and warmth dominate the small space. Dominate me. It’s claustrophobic in a rousing way, as though this closed, dark space holds no rules or boundaries. The air grows thick and warm, wet against my skin, as we watch through the slats as the maid eventually stands from the chair, flicks her cigarette butt over the railing, and slides the door open again. Once inside, she observes her reflection in the mirror opposite the bed, smoothing her hair at the part and then squirting two pumps of breath spray onto her outstretched tongue.
