On the 24th floor of the Kings County federal court house, Julie walked to a wall of windows that looked over Central Brooklyn. Even though the windows were tinted gray, she could tell it was sunny. She believed it was the first stereotypical spring day of the season: warm sun, cool air. She imagined taking that first invigorating, deep breath of fresh air, the type of inhalation that enlivened her lungs after hours of canned, stale air, the type she took after opening the front door of a 747, the type she would take right now if she could.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Destine said.

Julie’s sails deflated and a searing flare burned the skin on the back of her neck. That woman, the talker, was talking directly to her. “It was,” Julie quipped and walked away toward the ladies’ room.

In an acceptably clean stall, Julie sat down with her head in her hands to give herself the semblance of privacy and comfort, and then she decided to text Roger. “OMG, this crazy, overly friendly woman is like stepping up to me.”
Roger was in a meeting at the office, but he still texted back immediately with unequivocal empathy, “Oh no! That sucks.”
“WTF do I do?!” she texted back.

Then she heard the bathroom door open and a woman settle into the stall next to hers.

“Excuse me. Would you be so kind as to pass me a bit of toilet paper? My stall seems to be out.”

Julie froze as though someone had just accidentally opened her stall door. She recognized the voice. But before she could choose an apt response, Destine continued. “Guess we don’t pay enough taxes to keep ample toilet paper in here. Or maybe it’s just a sign of the recession. Who knows?”

Destine’s loquaciousness gave Julie time to realize that while she knew it was Destine, Destine probably didn’t know it was her. So Julie wadded up a handful of paper and reached under the stall wall. A hand grabbed it. “Thank you so, so much,” she said. “It’s always a little awkward when that sort of thing happens, but it does remind us that we’re here for each other. Life isn’t a game of solitaire.”

“No problem,” Julie said concurrently flushing the toilet to cover any recognizable quality of her voice. Then she rushed to the sink to wash her hands. As she hit the lever for the soap, Destine’s toilet flushed. An almost-too-small glop of coral-colored soap dropped into her hand. It would have to be enough. Julie quickly tried to lather it between her dry hands. Then she waved them in front of the black eye of the automatic water faucet. It wouldn’t turn on. Julie noticed the sink was dry. She moved over to the other sink on her right.

Destine opened her stall door and walked up to the dry sink. Julie felt heavy in her ballet flats. It was as though she were stuck to the floor, weighted down by the pressure of the moment. Then her water turned on. She rapidly rubbed her frothy hands together in the stream. Julie felt Destine’s energy. But Destine’s automatic faucet did not. Less than a foot away, Destine was struggling to get the faucet on.

“What is going on here?” Destine said to Julie. Julie interpreted it as rhetorical. “No paper, no water. I do say so myself. Guess I’ll just use yours when you’re done.”

“Ok?” Julie said slowly with a tone that meant “I think you’re weird.”

Destine saw this as an invitation. “I do have two daughters. I know that tone. I know that tone very well. There’s no reason to use that tone with me. I’ve only been friendly to you.”

Julie put on the cold, authoritative and alert face she would use if a passenger had had one too many self-servings of liquor, and then she gave Destine a chance to dissolve the tension. “Excuse me?” she said.

“I’m just saying, I’ve been nothing but kind. This city is filled to the brim, to the brim with people. The common thread between them all?

Each and every one of them wants to feel good, wants to feel accepted. What makes someone feel good? Friendliness. What makes someone feel bad? Impatience. Rudeness. That is what I try to teach my girls. That is what Oprah’s success has taught the world. That is how I live,” Destine said.

Julie’s clean hands dripped into the sink. “Look, I don’t want to start with you. I don’t want to be friends with you. I don’t want to be enemies with you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you, and I don’t want you to force yourself on me. Pretend I’m not here, pretend I’m just a piece of the furniture, pretend I don’t exist, alright?”

Destine stood still startled and confused. Her daughters, her regular challengers, never presented her with a quandary like this.

“Are you telling me you want to die?” Destine asked.

“That’s precious,” Julie said.

No matter how angry they got, how much fire they spit at her, they wanted and needed their mommy. This woman is different. She doesn’t need me, Destine thought.

Julie continued, “Because I don’t want to deal with you, you think I don’t want to be alive? Are you really that narcissistic?”

“No, um. That didn’t come out right,” Destine said. “I just can’t imagine, I just wanted to help, that’s all. You seem unhappy and I just wanted to help. But you don’t want to let me help, you don’t want my help, you don’t want to be happy, that’s fine I guess.”

“Now because I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to be happy?” After these words hissed from Julie’s mouth, she realized Destine wasn’t capable of seeing things from her perspective. “Look, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you think. All I care is that you leave me alone. Go away from me.”

“Well,” Destine said noncommittally.

“Now!” Julie commanded.

“Ok then,” she said, and left the bathroom.

Julie walked back into her original stall, closed the door and sat back down. She lifted her shirt and wrapped her arms around herself beneath the warmth of her breasts. Surprise, frustration, powerlessness, humiliation, anger, dejection and relief simmered through her and nearly spilled out as tears. She checked her phone. Roger had texted back, “I wish I could help you but I can’t. Try telling a bailiff??”

“Why doesn’t everyone just leave me alone? I just want to be alone,” she murmured. But even she didn’t fully believe it.

To play him in a movie, all Philip Seymour Hoffman would have needed to do was replace his black suit from the movie Doubt with a faded grey one and a pea green tie. The clerk had pale, soft cheeks like the underbelly of a pregnant pig. Light orange hair like a watermark receded from his crown. He shuffled papers behind the judge’s desk in the front of the airplane hanger of a waiting room filled with a few hundred Brooklynites.

Tomato juice, no ice, Julie a flight attendant judged. He looked like the type that drank salt and retained a river under his plushy skin, she decided. She sat 8 rows away studying his every move, as though he were an actor in a mystery providing the audience with a subtle but important clue. Sitting in her pleather chair for nearly three hours, she was desperate for a sign about what was going on, what would happen next.

The clerk sat at the desk and moved the long, thin microphone down to his ruddy, rubber-band lips. “If I call your name, please collect your belongings and walk through this door to my right, your left. There’ll be someone there to tell you what to do next.” He picked up a two-inch-tall stack of note cards.

Julie thought she recognized the paperwork. The stack looked like the perforated portion of the jurors’ summons that each person had ripped off and handed to a clerk at the start of the day. Hers could be included in the pile. This could directly affect her. She held on to her Blackberry just a little bit tighter preparing to text Roger about the news.

“Christine Khang,” he read. A thick-bodied Korean woman raised her hand. “Collect your belongings and go through the door,” he said pointing to his right.

She stood up and left a light-weight jacket and tote bag behind her in a pile on her chair, as she shimmed past the few people in her row. “I told you to take your belongings,” the clerk said still using the microphone.

No privacy in here, Julie thought.

The tidy Asian man finished a cold sip of his grande Americano and began to rush toward Christine. “Mu-ŏ-sŭl do-wa-dŭ-ril-kka-yo?” he shouted out.

She instinctually paused and turned toward him.

“I don’t think she speaks English!” Destine called out to the clerk from her seat.

“Thank you. I can see that,” the clerk said. “You two,” he said to Christine and her new translator. “Go stand over here. Sir, even if I call
your name just wait right there.” He pointed to his left and the momentary lapse of entertainment passed.

“John Mulberry. Vincenzo Valentino. Leonard George. Shelby Granowksi. Destine Copland.”

“That’s me. Off I go!” Destine announced to the room. Someone in the background applauded. “What a poor, miserable soul,” she thought. But she chose to say, “Watch’em call your name next!” The comeback wasn’t good enough on Brooklyn standards to elicit even a grunt of approval from the crowd.

“Kathryn Bould. Antonio Ricci. Muhammad Akram Khosa. Jennifer Bland. Marilyne Walker. Julie Smith.”

Julie’s blood which had long been pumping to the steady, slow, natural beat of her heart jumped to attention and hurried to her face, knees and hands. She trembled as she zipped her Blackberry into her purse, smoothed her hair, draped her trench coat over her arm, walked to the front of the room, and hoped no one could see the line of her underwear through the back of her slacks.

When she opened the door, a bailiff and another clerk directed her into a smaller waiting room. This one had about 50 seats and resembled an overcrowded classroom. Destine was already there chatting away with her new neighbors, two women. Julie watched her bend her head down and dig into her scalp to show the women the seams of her weave. Julie sat as far as away as possible from her on an aisle seat.

People continued to file into the room. The bailiff took a seat at the front facing the crowd.

“Is it good or bad that we’re in this room?” Destine hollered at him from the third row back.

The bailiff, a slight man with 5 o’clock shadow at only 11 am, chuckled. “That depends on you.”

“I see. I gotcha,” Destine said.

But Julie didn’t understand what Destine thought she understood. It was a totally cryptic, meaningless answer, thought Julie—and she knew meaningless answers. Whenever someone asked her why they had to turn off their electronics for take-off and landing, she would say, “For the safety of everyone on board.” Then she’d walk away before the agitator could ask for a real answer.

By the time this secondary waiting room was full, Julie had had to shift in her seat 6 times to let people into her row. One man had body odor, an uneven shave and hair so greasy and speckled with dandruff, he appeared almost homeless.
Julie did not consider herself squeamish of the public. Every day on her flights, she would touch the sticky rims of hundreds of dirty plastic glasses and damp napkins. She would look for seatbelts between the creases of clothing and the gross overflow of American bellies. But her passengers were never this type of public. This jury duty level of public didn’t fly on airplanes. They took the Greyhound, she figured.

The bailiff stood up once everyone was in. “Ok, now. We’re going up to the 24th floor. We all won’t fit in one elevator so we’ll have to go up in groups. And there’s only one of me. This means that I can’t lead every single one of you up there. I’ll make sure you get into the right elevator. When you get up to the 24th floor walk out and wait in the hall. Don’t go anywhere.”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?” Destine asked.

“You’ll have the opportunity to go up on 24. They’ve got all the amenities you need.”

“Do they have coffee?” she asked.

“Ha ha, you got me there,” he said showing his good nature, patience and charm. “No, but there is a drinking fountain.”

“Oh well then why didn’t you say so?” Destine joked.

Julie rolled her eyes and sighed, “Oh for Christ’s sake,” just like one of Destine’s teenage daughters would have done. Destine heard her and yelled out, “Kill ‘em with kindness,” as she gave Julie a broad, gummy grin.

Noah Wailen was looking at her. Her? “Me?” she thought. “Out of everybody in the chic, dark basement bar, including skinny girls with big boobs and thousand-dollar handbags, he’s looking at me?”

Noah dipped his chin in a slight nod. The move was as subtle as a cat that only twitches an ear to react to a sound. He was coolly, coyly acknowledging her.

“Me!” she cheered in her mind. “Meeeeee! Eeeee! OMG I have to tell Vicky.”

Vicky was smiling, showing off her straight, bleached teeth to no one in particular, as she listened to the chatter at the table. She was always smiling but to those who didn’t know her well, it usually seemed sincere. Acquaintances often reacted by smiling back receptively, expectantly, as though Vicky was a ray of sunshine they wanted to get warmed by.

Audrey knew that Vicky really wasn’t that happy. They had shared many late nights drinking alone together venting about their insecurities and sharing the horror stories of their high school years. Vicky, a size 4, worried her thighs had too much giggle, that the German structure of her face made her appear manly, and that people thought she was vapid. Vicky’s deepest scar from high school came after she lost her virginity to a basketball player. After their break-up, he had Sharpied her cell-phone number “for a good time” in the boys’ locker room. Vicky was not a happy camper even though she appeared that way to most people. To Audrey, this made her utterly alluring, like someone who could get beat up and yet keep on fighting. She imagined that was what Hollywood actresses were like: human and miserable but blessed like by a fairy godmother that made their pain fade behind a royal glow of beauty and happiness. It was like Vicky’s make-up, Audrey thought. Vicky would wear thick, syrupy lip gloss all day, everyday, and Audrey had never seen her long hair get stuck in it. Vicky wore colorful eye shadow, and she never looked like a clown or like she was trying too hard.

Vicky would know what to do. Audrey yelled in a whisper at her ear. “Oh my god. You won’t believe this. Look over my shoulder to like 11 o’clock. Wait, don’t be obvious.”

“Ok, ok, I’m going slow.”

“Dude, he’s looking at me. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Oh my god. Noah Wailen?” Vicky gushed.

Audrey squeaked.

“How do you know?” Vicky said. Audrey felt spanked by Vicky’s doubt, but tried to ignore it.

“Cause I’ve just been sitting here, chilling out and looking around and we caught eyes. I looked away but each time

I glance back, he’s staring at me. And then, he gave me a nod. Like a slight, hot-as-hell nod.”

“Oh my god! I’m so happy for you. So cool.”

“So, what do I do?”

“This is something between you and him. You should do what’s in your heart.”

“Vicky, what does that mean? Ugh, do I go over there? Should I wait for him to come here? Should I smile at him?” C’mon, help me, she thought.

“You haven’t smiled at him?!” Vicky gasped in disapproval.

“No. Oh my god, I hope I have ruined this. I’ve just been so stunned.”

“Well smile at him, give him an unconfusable sign. Guys are dense, even Noah Wailen, I’m sure.”

“Ok, ok.”

Jackhammers would have been better—loud noises, he could sleep through. For several mornings now, jackhammers had assaulted his eardrums beginning at six a.m., and he was almost used to them. But the persistent buzz of his cell phone at eleven thirty p.m. on a Friday night successfully penetrated his haze of near sleep. The vibration of plastic against night stand was not loud enough to ignore.

He wasn’t sure the call was from Janine, but he knew it probably was. He reasoned as clearly as he could, his mind clouded by the five milligrams of Vicodin he’d swallowed an hour ago. Five milligrams wasn’t much, not by any addict’s standards, but then, he wasn’t an addict. Just a man who was done feeling for the day and whose friend had undergone dental surgery and didn’t like painkillers. At most he took one pill a week on Friday nights when he was alone, or wanted to be.

Last Friday night Janine had come over unexpectedly. Not exactly uninvited, but the idea hadn’t been his either. So he hadn’t felt too bad about surreptitiously ingesting a pill while she’d been in the bathroom. She’d stayed over that night too, which had been okay. He liked a warm body next to him in bed; it could even be soothing if it was the right person keeping him company. Janine probably wasn’t right, but she wasn’t necessarily wrong, and so it had been okay for her to sleep over.

Jessica, 23, was asleep on her 6-year-old futon bed that was pushed tightly into a corner of her one-room kitchen, living room and bedroom. Now there’s not much you can learn about someone from watching them sleep. But since you’ve never met Jessica, I’ll try to use this idle—albeit important—moment to introduce her. She had turned off the lights and gotten into bed around 11:30, and she had fallen asleep by midnight. Her first episode of REM had already concluded, and she had shifted positions once to avoid sleeping on a cold spot of drool. Her alarm would ring at 7:16. Her choice of the seemingly random time helped her sleep. The unrounded number stopped her from nourishing insomnia by calculating exactly how much sleep she’d get before work the next day. Mental math was discouragingly harder to do without round numbers. Work was advertising sales for Cosmopolitan magazine—not usually a hard sell, but getting more difficult given the new media revolution and the recession.

The wall behind Jessica’s crown of tousled auburn hair was shared with a woman she’d never met face-to-face: Stephanie, a 24-year-old bartender who worked at the known-rowdy Coyote Ugly bar. But Stephanie wasn’t a real rowdy one. Yes, she could hold her own in a New York-style yelling match, and she could produce flirtatious smiles that appeared realistic even to the most homely, disgruntled men. But she was actually quite tame and bright, and stereotypically beautiful enough (stick straight blonde hair, acne-free skin and a 32D frame) that she never needed to partake in any more questionable activities to make rent. The most questionable activity in recent memory took place tonight with the delivery from Indian restaurant Taj Mahal Delight.

Bustling home from work, her high heels pounded the pavement like quick, single blows of a jackhammer. “I can hold it. I can hold it,” she chanted to herself as her stomach cramped and gurgled. The barback, who she had a major crush on, had suggested getting Indian as a late-night snack. Stephanie had never tried Indian and lived on a bland diet of ramen noodles, sushi, salads and the occasional pizza slice. But the self-consciousness resurrected by a cute boy, resembling that which plagues most junior high school girls trying to mold themselves into the most popular girl, inspired her to say, “I’ve been dying to try Indian!”

Before she got to her front door, she had her key in hand ready to go. Then with a twist of the wrist and a fast tromp up three flights of stairs, she made it home. Her purple leather purse dropped from her hand onto her bed as she rushed to undo the button of her jeans and get to the toilet. And then she let herself release and push. Just like a woman in labor, she thought, as she let one rip.

The sleeping Jessica sprung up to a sitting position as though the fire alarm had gone off. But before jumping out of bed and worriedly, frustratingly evaluating the public wear-ability of her pajamas (flannel pants and a worn out T-shirt), she paused to make sense of the situation. Then she heard the toilet flush.