“Shouldn’t they deliberate?” O’Donnell asked. But Weinstein did not answer. Stacey sat on his lap with her tongue in his mouth.
The foreman stood and tapped the jury rail with a conducting wand. The rest of the jurors began to chant: “O’Donnell, O’Donnell, O’Donnell…”
“We the members of the jury,” said the foreman, “being duly constituted in the State of Grace, and otherwise perfectly fit to determine the issues presented here, find the defendant guilty of playing with nature and otherwise trying to make the world a better place.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” The judge looked at his watch. “Might as well sentence now. Has the jury a recommendation?”
“Sentence?” cried O’Donnell. “This isn’t a criminal trial. You can’t send me to jail. I’m a scientist. I’ve committed no crimes.”
But everyone ignored him. The jury, whose chanting had reached a crescendo, suddenly lowered its collective voice to a whisper. Slowly a new chant rose in volume: “OD, OD, OD…”
“What a clever idea,” said the judge. “Saves the state a ton of cash.”
A black suitcase appeared at O’Donnell’s feet. It began to shake, as if something insider were trying to escape, then burst open. A storm of white powder filled the courtroom, swirling, drifting, chasing people out the door. All except for O’Donnell and the disembodied chanting of the jury. He couldn’t move. The powder rose to his waist, his chest, his neck. And then it plugged his nose.
Hugh O’Donnell bolted upright. His heart thumped wildly and his hands shook. He unwound himself from the bed sheets. Gray light leaked around the edges of the thick dusty drapes. The wind was still howling outside; it felt as if the motel walls were shaking. He reached up to flick on the bed lamp. Nothing happened. He looked over at the radio/alarm clock on the nightstand. That was out, too.
Stumbling into the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face. Another wanger of a dream. No two were alike, yet all were strangely the same: sanity and reason turned on their heads, enemies cloaked in righteousness, friends selling out to friends, and the misinformed sitting in judgment. Just like real life. He pinched water into his nostrils and shot several staccato breaths out his nose. His sinuses were clear.
O’Donnell passed a wet comb through his hair. It was quickly turning from the sandy color of his misspent youth to a scattered and premature gray. Life begins at forty, he told himself. I sure hope so. He fit his wire-rimmed glasses on his face and looped two wings of slicked hair behind his ears. He stepped into a pair of gym shorts and went out to the balcony.
The wind was gusting so hard he had to lean against it, but it was warm, like the hand driers in cheap restrooms. Clouds boiled across a gunmetal sky. The palm trees were white, their fronds turned inside out by the buffeting gale. On the parking lot below he saw a newspaper plastered against the side of a car. The full-color picture of the space shuttle Constellation bled into the pavement.
“Yo, O’Donnell.”
Freddy Aviles, dressed in an abbreviated jumpsuit, hand-walked down the balcony rail. For an absurd instant O’Donnell thought he was still dreaming. Then Aviles stopped in front of him and deftly sat on the rail; one of his pinned-up jumpsuit legs showed only a stump inside it, the other not even that. He had mocha-colored skin and a tuft of wispy black hair on his jawline that he was trying to cultivate into a beard. His muscular arms and chest bulged the metallic suit fabric as he smiled lazily at O’Donnell. A gold canine flashed briefly.
“Tree knocked down a power line,” he said. “Me and Lance, we’re gonna take a walk to find someplace that can cook us some food. Wanna come?”
“In this?”
“We dodge the branches. Be fun, eh?”
O’Donnell looked at the sky and scowled.
“C’mon, man.” Freddy flipped up into a handstand and began a set of vertical push-ups. A huge gold crucifix fell from the collar of his jumpsuit. It dangled from his neck and clicked against the rail with each repetition. “What you gonna do, sit in your room all day and count the walls, eh? They is only four.”