February 2026
Jury Duty
For once, Candace felt lucky to have a roommate. Jen didn’t do the dishes and had guests over too much, but she was fastidious about checking the mail. If she hadn’t left the summons letter perched precariously and passive-aggressively on Candace's bedroom door handle, Candance would have never seen the notice for jury duty.
She was grateful, also, for the reprieve from daily life. A “digital detox,” she had joked in the email she fired off to her boss while in the security line, right before she had to turn her phone off and hand it to a stout woman in uniform with crisp blonde bangs and a horse’s ponytail.
She’d brought a book she had intended to start reading on the train a few weeks ago but never got around to. It was marinating at the bottom of her tote bag with the crumbs and bobby pins and receipts. As Candace settled into her hard bench seat in the waiting hall for jury summons overflow, it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be starting the book today either. In her head, reading a good book was a curling up activity. On the odd occasion she got herself really hooked on a book, she could read it anywhere. She’d steal away from a social gathering to rush through the last few chapters on the commode. It felt much less pathetic to tear through a paperback on the toilet than scroll her phone to avoid small talk. But whenever she thought of cracking a new novel open, Candace imagined herself cuddled in a type of love seat she didn’t even own and the sheer disappointment of her inability to reach that level of enjoyment through the first few chapters routinely led her down a path of procrastination.
Without digital stimulation, Candace picked at her hangnails and wondered if this should feel more detoxified. She wasn’t used to being this bored this early in the day. The edges of her vision felt hazy with drowsiness. She tried to enjoy people watching as more and more jurors-in-waiting filed through the oak doors, but without a phone to document her new, alien surroundings, the world took on the dreamy quality; observations and thoughts would soon be forgotten.
It wasn’t like there was anyone in the juror overflow hall ridiculous enough to make Candace mad that she couldn’t capture them in a photograph. Everyone just sort of looked like you’d expect they would: an Hispanic woman in her early 20s wearing black leggings and a little leather purse; stringy white guy in his early 30s with a bike helmet he kept dropping loudly on the linoleum floor; fat woman with thin hair picked at a loose yarn on her cowlneck sweater.
Candace begrudgingly listened as the lady on the hallway speaker explained the logistical ins and outs of the day. She was obviously a veteran of the post and spoke with a flair that quickly converted Candace’s disinterest into rapt attention. She couldn’t see the woman, the auditorium seats were full already so Candace had been cast out onto a hallway bench, but she sounded most likely middle aged and Black and like she might have one of those stiff short haircuts with little hot combed spikes and curliques.
The way she talked was not dissimilar to the way firefighters and EMTs and cops talk. People in fields like that often adopt a stilted eloquence when blending shop talk into their regular lexicon, without ever really achieving emulsion. They insert overly formal, uncomfortably clunky technical synonyms at odd intervals. Cops off the job will, not always but often, call a guy an “individual” and a car a “vehicle” out of habit in casual conversation. It sometimes sounds like showy work in translation.
The way this woman spoke had a similar feeling, but the rhythm was all different. She bounced randomly between legal jargon and casual turns of phrase, but where 911 talk can be overly formal and reserved, her words sang with a lyricism that made up for her hyper-pronunciation of "affidavit" and “congregate.”
“My name is Melissa Davenport. I have been a Jury Manager in this courthouse for 14 years representing the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York,” she emphasised the word represent in a way that shouldn’t have sounded so natural, “and I welcome you today as prospective jurors.”
“I have been yelled at this morning already. I understand that you do not want to be here but, and I reiterate,” she paused for effect, “your name has been selected computer-randomly to appear today.” Her voice was clear and mechanically theatrical, a rehearsed rising and falling like a roller coaster or artificial wave pool. Between the thrill of a controlled brush with a dangerous wrongdoer and the inevitable long wait lines Candace knew she would be subjected to that day, the whole thing was evocative of a theme park experience.
Melissa Davenport knew how to get the crowd on her side, like a really good air stewardess who could trick you into paying attention to her safety spiel. She began taking pot shots at the State courthouse, constructing a phantom scapegoat for the palpable frustration in the hall.
“If you have served on a State jury in the past two years, you may present proof of your service today to be excused. If this is the case, I apologize for your being called. We are not computer-linked to the State directory. I wish we were, but that is not up to me.” Her frank asides were clearly building some rapport among the jurors; a few people on the benches across from Candace were nodding along as if they had personally been vexed by the State courthouse’s inept record keeping. “We do not like to waste your time. We treat you like a person.”
By the time Melissa opened the floor for questions, she was pausing occasionally for laughs from the audience of jurors in the auditorium and halls alike. An older woman asked where her husband could wait for her downstairs and Candace felt jealous of both their romance and abundance of free time.
“I’ll let you all in on a little tip,” – god she was good at this – “the court cannot release to your employer the time that you leave here. They can only ask which days you were in attendance. So, if you are released, say, before noon, do with that information what you may. Now, I will begin calling names selected for the first case of the day. When I call your name, please come pick up your number, then join the line over with the clerks.”
Melissa’s voice droned methodically as she listed name after name. Selected jurors rose from their seats and marched on order around the corner into the auditorium just out of Candace’s sight to receive their number sheets and stickers.
Something about the names – maybe the titles themselves or maybe the cadence of their procession through the air waves in the hall – moved Candace in an almost religious way. Fearing she would otherwise forget the good ones, she wrenched a notebook from her bag and began to write down the names as they were called.
13 Greggory Kim, 14 Johan Garcia, 15 Euphemia Duncan Gayle, 16 Kandi Cole, 17 Loni Anderson…
She wondered if she got “Oh, like the actress?” all the time, or if people didn’t think about WKRP Cincinnati or Burt Reynolds enough anymore to annoy this juror about her name. Candace’s great aunt had been a Loni Anderson impersonator in Chicago, for corporate parties and birthdays. People were always telling her she looked just like the blonde on TV and once a man even called out “Loni!” to her on Michigan Ave; eventually she figured she could try to make some money off of the resemblance.
Candace used to give a fake name at Taco Bell because she ordered so much disgusting food every single time. Once, she was greeted by her fake name at a bus stop. It took her a moment to realize that the other girl waiting for the bus was the Taco Bell cashier.
24 Mike Goldfinger, 25 Wang Dang, 26 Eunice Horton, 27 Stacey Anne Pepper, 28 Joe Harris, 29 Mishka Charushin…
A man next to Candace stood from his seat and she wondered if he was Joe or Mishka. He looked a bit more like a Joe, but it could be a toss up, really.
Candace’d met a girl at a party last winter, some VC mixer thing her ex-fiance had dragged her to, who thought she could guess people’s names. She was a horoscope writer for an app that told you when to short-sell based on your star sign and, in her free time, was developing a theory of normative determinism for the type-set age. When typing a name on a Sholes and Glidden style Latin script keyboard, she had explained to Candace over cocktails, each name starts with a particular finger and each finger represents something about a person’s character. Right pointer names, like Jacob and Nancy, are sturdy and true, while left pointer names, like Francisco and Veronica are a little looser and sexier. Right middle finger names, like Kyle and Isadora, are usually given to people with harsh or divisive personalities. On the other hand, left middle finger named people are more typically emotionally dysregulated: hyper sensitive and quick to anger.
It was more of a pseudo-art, like tarot, than a pseudoscience, like astrology. For example, an A is typically typed with the left pinky finger, denoting weak will. Yet, if one uses the Shift key to capitalize the A, they'll type that letter with their left ring finger. The left ring finger, obviously, symbolizes steadfast love and devotion. Andrews and Alexes and Annies make the best spouses. This girl told Candace that she hated people with “tricky nicknames,” as she put it, who pretended their first letter was something it wasn’t. “I can tell a real Mia from an Amelia putting on airs from a mile away,” she had said. “I can smell it on them.”
Jack had swooped in then, seemingly unapologetic for leaving Candace to chit chat with strangers all evening while he talked about IPOs and angel investors and whatever he did with potential clients or employers, Candace couldn’t bother to keep track. “You ladies having a good time?” he had asked with a truly winning smile.
“Ooh, let me guess,” the girl had gushed. “Right pointer, maybe even first and last right pointer.”
“I’m sorry?” Even outright confusion couldn’t wipe the charming expression off his face. He just threw his hand out for a firm shake. “Jack Baker, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Exactly!”
Just as Candace seemed to hit a trance-like flow-state, jotting down real names just as quickly as her sloppy longhand allowed, 32 Rose Imbargo, 33 Micheal Wong, 34 Joseph Candida, 35 LaToya Smith, 36 Gabriella Barbieri, the speakers spit out a name that caused her to short circuit. Her brain froze but her pen continued on, as if automatically: 37 Candace Baker.
Candace almost stood before she remembered that her name was not Baker. While she had never been fully sold on taking Jack’s surname, the idea of another woman possessing that exact name suddenly irked her. She wondered with mild fear if she and her doppelgänger would be assigned the same case. Maybe this Bizarro Candace could brush past her at any moment. Maybe a Road Not Taken version of herself was sitting in this very hallway on a bench just as cold and tough on the ass as this one. These were not precise enough words, not cop words. Maybe Candace would imminently make contact with an individual who appellatively, or perhaps even outwardly, resembled herself. Maybe the suspect in question would smile at her like they shared a secret.
The line of jurors with numbered slips in their hands, which began near Candace at the big double doors, already extended beyond her vantage point around the corner into the carpeted auditorium where the lady calling names presumably sat. As they were guided out of the room, Candace craned her neck to follow their procession, trying to work out who in the line could be the other Candace. She couldn’t tell. Looked like a lot of Left Pointer Finger People to her.
It was an hour or so before her own name was called and she lined up to be ferried out the double doors like the other Candace had. She had stuck the number sticker over a stain on her sweatshirt, concealing most of the berry colored blotch. Her chosen juror pool was led through the linoleum tiled hallway and chopped into three snaking segments to take the elevator up to the seventh floor. Candace felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter. It was weird to imagine all those lambs taking an elevator, but that is probably what they did at slaughter houses these days. Candace had watched most of the Temple Grandin biopic in little chopped up 10 second segments on Instagram Reels. The imagery of the idiom blurred in her mind’s eye.
The interior of the courtroom was slightly more majestic than the very municipal hallways. The golden brown paneling on every wall evoked memories of attending a mid-century built Lutheran church in Minnesota for an uncle’s funeral. She found herself scanning the judge’s bench for a tastefully minimalist crucifix. The dual line of leather upholstered swivel chairs in the jury box were bolted to the ground, which made getting up and out of the jury box a hassle if you weren’t seated in the side edge seats. The color of each was a subtle bridesmaid eucalyptus green and the even rows hammered the comparison home.
Her sister had chosen that specific, and in Candace’s opinion completely obvious, green in a slimy satin for her bridesmaids last month. The wedding had been one of those tragically involved five day affairs at a stuffy Mayflower Hotel. The groom was from Connecticut and his side kept making all these snide remarks about how much nicer The Mansion at Glen Cove was and why didn’t they just get married up there. But the couple insisted on making everyone travel because they couldn’t pry themselves away from their oh so important jobs for more than the absolutely necessary PTO. Washington DC, a place no normal person has been to since 8th grade, wasn’t Candace’s idea of a spring break romp either, but her parents and siblings would have resented her absence and the Acela down was easy enough compared to her family’s flight from Indianapolis with a layover in Atlanta.
The wedding parties stretched in long SoHo-tourist-esque lines around the bride and groom like open, spindly arms. Her sister’s bridesmaids in their leather juror seat green looked so cohesive. Despite having been picked up at different stages through Jane’s life—five from school, three from camp, one from that job at the jewelry store, four from U Mich, three from law school and two from the church they joined after they moved for Ben’s job with the senator—they all had shockingly similar hair. Jane didn’t worry about rain. Her life had a steady cohesion. Friends accumulated like a snowbank or compound interest, not that snow or sleet or hail was on anyone’s mind on an unseasonably warm early spring afternoon like the day of her wedding. Candace was more like a windshield wiper, frantically brushing off anything that clung. Every time she logged into her bank account, Candace would type in her answer to the security question: “Who was your childhood best friend?”the name of a woman she had loved more than anyone or anything when they were little, but hadn’t spoken to in years because they fought really badly in high school.
“Do you ever think you might be someone's bank password recovery answer?” Candace had asked their brother to pull into a church parking lot on the way back from picking up more limes, an errand Jane sent them on during the welcome luncheon, because Ben’s family was obsessed with gin and tonics in a way that Jane literally could not have predicted. It wasn’t even 1pm and Candace was already crying in the passenger seat of the car her mom dropped her off to college in.
“I don’t think I’m anyone’s answer to anything.” Liam wasn’t having a great time at the wedding either. Like Candace, he had also recently called things off with a serious partner. Their aunts and uncles, all a little on edge in the face of Ben’s family’s obvious generations of success, were prying and needling like never before. These people were all so WASPy and genteel, it was impossible to tell which cousins were in MBA programs and which were trying to kick a drug habit and which were doing both until someone drunkenly whispered that tidbit into your ear. Unlike Candace, however, Liam had been the one dumped.
Candace and Jack’s short engagement made up almost the entirety of the 7 months they were together. They’d met on an app and, when a glass of cheap brut with a ring in it was accidentally sent to their table on their third date, both took it as a sign to start acting insane. Jack was purposely enigmatic, but she could tell her opinions had an effect on him, that he sought her approval and respected her taste though he never admitted it. Whenever he made a joke she cracked up over, he’d always tweet it, almost verbatim, later that day.
Candace had liked how little she knew him. It also meant there was no expectation for Candace to bare her soul. She didn’t like anyone seeing her like this, a stupid faced crier. She pulled herself together before she and her brother had to go back to the party, but everyone would notice her puffy raw eyes. Ben’s family would all be gin-sauced, at least.
On Jane’s bachelorette trip in Cabo, Candace had been almost that drunk when she received a stern text from Jack. For the second month in a row of their new cohabitation, she had forgotten to Venmo her rent portion. Her phone screen was impossible to navigate in the beach sun and her roaming data was super shitty, so Candace just called Jack and asked him to log into her laptop in the living room and handle it for her.
The bridesmaids at the table (Candace was still unsure whether her sister’s kind gesture was inviting her on the trip when she hadn’t made the bridal party cut or if it was letting Candace out of the responsibility of being a bridesmaid) were all silently sipping their margs, eavesdropping on her and this Jack no one had met yet.
“Who was your childhood best friend?” Jack asked through her hot, greasy cellphone.
“Molly O’Donnell. It’s D O double N E double L. Not Donald.”
“You still talk to Molly? What’s she up to these days?” asked one of the bridesmaids perked up at recognizing the name from their shared high school.
“Not really.” Candace’s face sunscreen was sweating into her eyes and the phone was going to give her cheek pimples.
“I think I typed it in wrong. Sorry, it’s asking me another. Where were you born?”
“Indianapolis. You know that.”
The margs were melting fast but the bridesmaids weren’t even slurping at the dregs so they could hear Candace’s embarrassment in crystal clarity.
Candace wasn’t sure if the accused would actually be present at the jury selection stage, so it was a pleasant surprise when the judge introduced the defendant as Martin Ianelli, a double right middle finger name. They learned the trial would be a murder and the juror woman next to Candace whispered fuck yeah and Candace was hit with a sudden rush of the fondness you feel for someone you’re privately making fun of, almost like the two of you have an inside joke.
She was intrigued; the thought of missing a murder trial made her almost regret her plan to get out of her civic duty, but Candace knew that the juice of telling her roommate that she had almost been on a murder trial was much more fun than what the trial would have been, when it inevitably got too real and real sad. When the judge asked if anyone present had any reasonable claim of undue hardship or extreme inconvenience, speak now and beg for excuse or forever hold your peace, Candace raised her number and explained that she had a fake surgery coming up. She’d worn her roommate’s old boot brace that day, so no one even asked to see the doctor’s note she’d faked just in case.
Upon exiting the courthouse, with Melissa the Jury Manager’s voice in her head encouraging her to play hooky, Candice slipped her phone, still off, into her jacket pocket. Now, with the sun poking through the midday clouds, she felt overly warm and sleepy. The stairs on Borough Hall, at the south end of the greenspace, looked stately and she liked the idea of sitting with them in view to start her book. She passed by sculptures of Christopher Columbus, Robert F Kennedy, and Rappin’ Max Robot, the world’s first hip-hop comic-book character, on her way to a park bench in the sort of ideal dappled partial shade that makes going outside on a nice spring day feel worth the effort. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she spotted Jack, or maybe just a man wearing Jack’s jacket.
The thought that had burst into Candace's head at the sound of Candace Baker’s name and that she had immediately discarded to the realm of absurd womanly paranoia—that Jack had already married another woman named Candace—suddenly felt plausible. It was as plausible as Jack coincidentally getting called into jury duty on the same day as both Candaces. Or maybe Jack witnessed some heinous crime and had just provided his testimony. Maybe Jack had just been acquitted of a crime himself, a newly free man on the town.
It probably wasn’t even Jack, Candace told herself, she’d really only caught a glimpse of that red coat he always wore. It occurred to her then that in all the time she knew him, those short 7 months, it had always been cold enough for outerwear. In just a week or two, maybe less, the warmth of springtime would banish Jack’s red coat to the back of his closet and then maybe Candace could pass him on the street without ever even noticing.
Curiosity got the best of her and, as she approached the park bench, she turned her phone on. Just as she suspected, Jack had, seemingly by accident, never turned off his location sharing with her. There he was, a little blue dot meandering around Cadman Plaza Park, just a few hundred feet away.
Ella Gray Hickman grew up in a haunted house in Ohio and lives in Brooklyn. She has written non-fiction work for Cleveland Review of Books, Mayday Mag, and the Eidolon Journal as well as fiction for Burial Mag and Expat Press. She edits the STAR⟡MAIL newsletter for Haloscope Magazine.