At least, Bernie was keeping their jury awake. Four of them were pensioners. Bernie, a self-proclaimed master of instant analysis, had lumped them together. They were knee-jerks: they would prejudge any wealthy surgeon in favor of a plaintiff. As for the rest, there was an ex-kindergarten teacher (their client having taught math), an Italian barber, an ancient Jewish gentleman kept by his family, a retired merchant-marine cook, a black janitor, and two housewives near their client’s age of thirty. The only juror in which Bernie had detected the slightest threat of intelligence was an unemployed young carpenter who was a graduate of S.F. State. He had an ex-hippie, Haight-Ashbury air about him and a flowing moustache. He showed the seed of charisma that you searched for in assessing any jury. He had been at S.F. State during the riots which had closed it. U.C. Hospital, the codefendant, was state-owned. The carpenter would influence the rest of the nebbishes all out of proportion to his vote, and might still harbor a grudge against the Establishment from the Reagan days.

Anyway, neither they nor the defendant had objected to him, and now Bernie was subtly addressing himself to him, skirting the line between offending him with schlock and keeping the rest of the jurors’ attention. Mitch felt a stab of pity for the white-faced, handsome surgeon, with his future in the hands of the cretins in the box and an insurance-company counsel who was all reputation and no brains.

Court adjourned late. Mitch had left his car in the office garage, and there were no taxis in the rush hour. He fought his way onto a Sutter Street bus. A beautiful Chinese baby regarded him delightedly from its mother’s shoulder. It squinted and sneezed full in his face. Someone broke wind silently and the captives glared at each other.

Three blocks in advance of his own stop, he began to inch his way to the door. A small man might have shoved through, but his height and strength prohibited violence. So he was two blocks past his office building by the time he was expelled to the sidewalk like a seed from a squeezed grapefruit.

It took him fifteen minutes to gentle his car up the ramps of the office garage, trailing the whole stenographic population of their building, only to join another crawl up Sutter Street.

If the City got any more crowded, traffic would someday freeze forever, glacierlike on the hills, and they would have to build a new city in Marin. Despite the fresh wind funneling through the Gate, they were even getting smog, like L.A.

He stopped at the St. Francis Yacht Club, to see if he could find, around the polished redwood bar, any old-timers who recalled the red ketch. Everyone remembered her fouling the starting line, but no one recalled her name or who owned her.