Seth wasn’t there. She put her laptop bag on the chair next to her, saving it for him. But when the lights dimmed for the video, he hadn’t shown up.
This was what happened after one-night stands, wasn’t it? The guy made all kind of promises and then didn’t show up the next day. Of course she had leverage that most women didn’t. If Seth didn’t appear, the court could issue a summons and throw him in jail. Too bad women everywhere didn’t have that option.
The video was exactly the same as it had been on Monday. There was still a “the” in front of “Magna Carta,” and the Clerk of the Court repeated the same parts of it that he had repeated on Monday.
At 8:26 Seth strolled in. “Hey,” he said.
MeeMaw was correct, at least about Seth. Caitlin supposed she was also correct about PopPop, but Caitlin did not want to think about that.
Seth was indeed a very good-looking young man. He still had the puckish air he had had as a kid. He was clean shaven today, but in most of his pictures his chin and jaw were slightly scruffy, giving him the air of an engaging rascal. Despite his WASPy name, he had a lot of Scandinavian blood. His hair bleached quickly in the sun. His eyes were light, green with a touch of blue. His cheekbones were open, and his skull long. She had used the shape of his head in a lot of the games she animated, varying his features so that it never looked like him.
But it was a little hard to get overly giddy about seeing him when she had just wasted half an hour, and he hadn’t. “How did you know to come in late?” she whispered.
“My mom told me.”
He could have shared that information, couldn’t he? She watched as he plugged his extension cord into the wall socket.
In terms of technical activity, last night had pretty much been parking-lot sex, not that Caitlin had much experience with that given the hourly rates at garages in San Francisco. But there had been something so—could she use the word “sweet” to describe a professional snowboarder?—about him remembering their past.
He sat down and then leaned close to her, his forearm brushing hers. “I hope you need a ride when we’re done here. I threw some skateboards in the car. We could go to the park like we used to.”
“That sounds like fun.” It really did. “I’ll have to go home and change.” It was one thing to climb a tree in skirt, but skateboard in a park where the thirteen-year-old boys hung out? Ah, no. “But only if this doesn’t last all day. We’re going to have dinner at my grandmother’s.”
“It better not last all day. I will hang myself. I Googled you last night. There’s nothing about your work.”
“No.”
“Why not? You do work, don’t you?”
Did she work? She did nothing but work. “Of course I do.”
She must have snapped because he immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. Was I wrong to look you up?”
“No, it was fine. Really.” Didn’t she do online searches on people she met? She hadn’t searched on him last night because she did it a couple of times a year. “I have two sets of clients, and they don’t need to know about each other. So I use pseudonyms for both.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“It’s not.” But she explained. There was enough resentment and distrust of women in the video-game community that she identified herself to clients as “Tlin” and never spoke to them on the phone or met them in person.
The games she worked on were violent and aggressive. It was draining. So she went to the other extreme and designed covers for romance novels. It required less sophisticated computer skills and didn’t pay as well, but the covers were luxuriantly rich. Lovers embraced on green paths in front of covered footbridges. Silken dresses slid off ivory shoulders; cravats were unloosened; kilts were unbuckled. To those clients she was “Aurora.”
“Aurora?” Seth asked. “That’s so...so—”
“So lovely? Yes, it’s supposed to be. I can be lovely when I try.”
“I’m eager to see that...but aren’t you concerned that by using a male pseudonym for the video games, you aren’t doing anything to help other women get into the field?”
Was she having her feminist creds questioned by a snowboarder? Seriously? “I wanted a way out of a corporate job.” She forced herself to speak mildly. “This didn’t seem like a huge compromise.”
The Clerk of the Court was speaking again. Today there was only one criminal trial, and he said that it could be lengthy. People could be excused, the Clerk continued, if they had long-scheduled vacations or medical procedures.
“What do you think ‘lengthy’ means?” someone else at the table whispered.
Caitlin shook her head, and Seth shrugged. They didn’t know. But it didn’t sound good.
The Court would need documentation for excuses, the Clerk said. And being busy at work was not an excuse. And no, a letter from one’s boss would make no difference.
“I’m supposed to go to New Zealand on Monday.” Seth leaned toward her. “It’s work, but shall I lie and say I am going on vacation?”
“That’s on your conscience.”
“I don’t have one of those. My moral code is based on what is good for Street Boards. If it won’t hurt the company, I do it.”
Within minutes people were at front table showing the jury coordinator images from their phone and tablet screens. They were pleading, trying to be excused. About a third were allowed to pack up and leave. The rest had to sit back down.
Forty-five minutes later all the remaining people who were holdovers from Monday were called to line up. They followed a deputy to the courtroom, stopping to hand over their phones and computers.
Caitlin only knew about courtrooms from TV, but the layout was what she expected. The judge’s bench and the witness stand faced the lawyers’ tables, behind which, separated by a railing, were the benches for the observers. The jury box was perpendicular to everything else. It had two rows of chairs, and the second row was elevated. Caitlin noticed that there were eight chairs in each row, sixteen in all. They must be planning on picking four alternates.
The potential jurors filed in to sit on the observers’ bench. The judge repeated some of what had been in the video, making it now the fifth time Caitlin had heard it, although he solved the whole Magna Carta issue by not mentioning it. He then explained the procedure for the day. Sixteen people would be selected at random and questioned. Some would be accepted, some excused. This would continue until twelve jurors and four alternates had been selected.
Names were being called. “Darrell Truckee, Nancy Kingsley, Susanne Nugent, Cameron Edwards, Caitlin McGraw, Richard...”
Oh, that was her. Caitlin stood up. Apparently she had been the tenth juror called. Her seat was in the back row second closest to the front wall. From his place on the observers’ bench, Seth gave her a fake Cheshire-cat grin.
That keeps you in the parking lot, boy-o. Bedroom sex requires more.
One of the lawyers stood up and introduced himself as the prosecutor and explained what a prosecutor and a defense lawyer did. None of it was new information to anyone who had ever watched one minute of television.
They were first asked if they knew personally the defendants or the lawyers. Could they disregard any media accounts that they had read? That was easy for Caitlin. She had no idea what the case was about. Did they know anyone in law enforcement? Caitlin raised her hand and said that her father was a retired navy judge. Would that influence her decision? No, she answered honestly.
The lawyers gathered to talk among themselves.