Hit List

Coke. If you want me to get the hell out, just say so.”
    “Why would I want that?”
    “We’re not supposed to spend time together, remember? Because we might discuss the case.”
    Her face was flushed, and she’d freshened her makeup. And had she done something different with her hair?
    “You look different,” he said.
    “Oh,” she said. “Well, I had a quick shower. So I thought I’d try my hair like this.”
    “It’s very becoming.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I had a shower myself.”
    “Well, after spending a whole day in court—“
    “A person needs a shower.”
    “Definitely,” she said. She looked at him. “Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to discuss the case?”
    “No.”
    “Neither do I. And that’s good, because they told us not to. This is crazy, isn’t it? I don’t know what I thought I was doing, coming here.”
    “Don’t you?”
    “I mean this is so not me. After my shower I was staring at myself in the mirror. Like, you slut, what do you think you’re doing? I was standing there naked, if you can imagine.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “I was thinking about this when I was in the shower. Were you? Did you have any idea?”
    “I had an idea.”
    “Were you thinking about me in the shower?”
    “Yes.”
    “When you lathered up—“
    “Yes.”
    “We both took showers,” she said. “Isn’t that great? We’re both clean.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get dirty,” she said.
    “God,” she said. “All the fantasies I had, and here we are, and it’s better than the fantasies. Last night, when I packed my little suitcase? I was planning this.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh, absolutely. When we were first sitting around the table I thought, well, we are not reaching a verdict by five o’clock. If I’m the only holdout and everybody thinks I’m an idiot and stubborn as a mule, I don’t care. We’re getting sequestered.”
    “I have to admit I was trying to drag it out myself.”
    “I thought you were. Your face is very hard to read, but I had a feeling we were both on the same page.” She rolled onto her side, laid a hand on his chest. “You know what else I thought? I thought, if we do reach a verdict, if there’s no way to stall without looking too ridiculous, then we’ll walk out together—“
    “The way we always do.”
    “The way we always did from the first day,” she said, “and I had this script written. Like I go, I thought we were going to get to spend a night in a hotel. And you go, yeah, so did I. And I go, well, we still can, you know. We’ve even got luggage.”
    “I do that sometimes,” he said. “Make up scenes in my head.”
    “Did you make any up about us?”
    “A few.”
    “I don’t know if I’d have had the nerve,” she said. “To actually say let’s go to a hotel. I barely had the nerve to come to your room.”
    “But you did.”
    “But I did. What if I hadn’t? Would you have come looking for me?”
    “I probably would have phoned.”
    “Would they have given you my room number?”
    “Three-fourteen,” he said. “I paid attention when you checked in.”
    “That’s how I got yours! And you got mine the same way. So it wasn’t just my idea.”
    “No, we were definitely on the same page.”
    “That makes me feel better. I never did anything like this before. God, I can’t believe I said that! But it happens to be the truth. I’m a nice Italian girl, I went to parochial school, I don’t do this sort of thing. I never once cheated, and believe me, I’ve had opportunities.”
    “I believe you.”
    “I picked you out the first day, but just because I had the feeling you’d be interesting to talk to. Then at lunch I was like, he’s a nice man. And in a day or two it got to be, he’s a very attractive man. By the time the trial started I was having fantasies.”
    “Fantasies?”
    “Sitting across the table and thinking of all the things I wanted to do to you.”
    “Well,” he said, “now you’ve done them.”
    “Hmmm.”
    “What?”
    “Well,” she said, “not quite all of them.”
    “Oh?”
    “I have quite an imagination. Who the hell am I to even think of some of these things? I mean, I’m from Staten Island.”
    “I thought Inwood.”
    “I moved to Inwood when I got married. But where I consider myself from is Staten Island.”
    “I’m from Missouri,” Keller said.
    “You are? I thought . . . oh, it’s an expression, isn’t it?”
    “Right,” he said. “Show me.”
    “I guess