From the Eyes of a Juror

by Frank Terranova

  Chapter 31 – An Unexpected Visitor (Janis Barry’s Story)

  Saturday evening June 7, 2008 – 9:00 PM

  Frank Newlan was having a bad weekend.

  After leaving the Middlesex Superior Courthouse early Friday afternoon, Newlan drove in aimless circles around the greater Boston area and sang along to a Bob Dylan CD with a joint hanging from his lips, while futilely trying not to think about his disconcerting predicament.

  “Maybe someday I should write a novel based on this experience,” eventually reflected a resigned and languid Newlan as he hummed along to Dylan’s ode to fame-and-fortune, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”.

  After cruising all the way into downtown Boston, Newlan took a detour towards the coastal city of Revere and pulled over by the beach, where he took a stroll down the boardwalk before finally taking a seat on the dividing wall which separated the sidewalk from the ocean.

  The smell of the salty air brought Newlan back to the glorious nights of his youth, when he would be wired on speed, “black beauties” they called them in those days, and he’d walk the beach until sunrise, desperately trying to unravel the secrets of life.

  Newlan even wrote a song about the experience. And although his band-mates, Horn and Reardon, never totally grasped the desperation that he was attempting to portray in the lyrics, he always thought it was one of his better compositions. Naturally, he titled the song “Black Beauty” and as he relaxed on the beachfront breaker wall, he instantly recalled every word, and he sang the tune, as follows, to himself, with the hypnotic beat of the relentless surf serving as his rhythm section:

  BLACK BEAUTY (words and music by Frank Newlan)

  Black Beauty and me, we walk by the sea

  She keeps me up all of the night

  I trudge through the sand, just holding her hand

  And wait for the morning light

  I count all the waves as they crash to the shore

  Look to a sky I don’t know anymore

  Black Beauty has taken her toll on me

  She always will be such a mystery

  Black Beauty

  Move slowly

  And don’t ever let me down

  The ocean it seems can make a man dream

  And the tides can drag a man down

  I got nowhere to turn, no lessons to learn

  But somehow I hold my ground

  Because my heart’s pounding rhythm

  To the song in your soul

  And I worry about things

  That I cannot control

  Black Beauty

  Move slowly

  And don’t ever let me down

  So hold me at bay

  And I’ll hold you someday

  The water will come

  And wash us away

  Black Beauty

  Move slowly

  And don’t ever let me down

  It took countless renditions of “Black Beauty”, along with an extended session of contemplative meditation before Newlan felt decompressed enough to go home…and when he finally got there, he immediately collapsed onto his leather sofa. And now, more than 24 hours later, he had barely moved from his favorite resting spot; not even bothering to crawl into bed.

  Newlan was hung-over, exhausted, and emotionally drained, and yet, since the start of the trial, he had barely slept a wink. Over the course of the last two nights, he had more or less passed out for a couple of hours here or there, but that was about it. And once he awoke, he found himself stuck in steady holding pattern of tossing and turning, dozing off for few minutes, and then waking up in a sweat and a panic over some God awful nightmare.

  Despite his penchant for looking back, Newlan’s emotional filter was usually equipped with the uncanny ability to push his troubles into the far corner of his mind; and when he was able to block out his problems, he could function just fine. However, when his anxieties bubbled to the surface and ate away at him like a dog chomping on a bone, he would lapse into a mental funk until he was somehow able to suppress the offending circumstances from his memory banks. But alas, despite his best efforts, his defense mechanisms just weren’t working at the moment, and thus he was utterly unable to departmentalize the Breslin trial into the cluttered file cabinet of his subconscious.

  Other than getting up for a snack or going to the bathroom, Newlan’s world so far this weekend consisted of watching the Red Sox, and other moronic entertainment, on his HDTV. Between the pre-game shows, the post-game shows, ESPN Sports Center, old sitcom reruns, and his Rolling Stone magazines, he was, for the most part, able to keep himself entertained without becoming too bored.

  Newlan realized that he should be doing his errands (his regular Saturday routine consisted of supermarket food shopping, laundry, and cleaning his condo) but on this particular Saturday he just couldn’t muster up the strength to get up off the sofa.

  Of course, mindless diversions can only keep one occupied for just so long, and by the time Saturday night rolled around, Newlan was beginning to feel a bit stir-crazy. He didn’t know quite what to do with himself, and he was pondering whether or not to order a Playboy movie using his on-demand cable box when the phone rang…and as it turned out, his dilemma was about to be resolved in more ways than one.

  On the other end of the line was Newlan’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Janis Barry.

  “Hi Frankie, whatcha doing?” teasingly asked Barry.

  “Not much, just lying here passed out on the sofa,” replied a dazed Newlan.

  “Well can I come over?” wondered the flirtatious Barry.

  “Sure you can come over…you know you can come over anytime,” exclaimed the suddenly alert Newlan.

  “Good, then I’ll see you in about a half hour,” confirmed Barry in a rosy tone.

  “I’ll be here waiting for you Queen Bee,” assured Newlan.

  “Queen Bee” was a nickname that Newlan had anointed Barry with, more than 20 years ago, and for some reason it stuck; it was also the title of an old blues song, and so the moniker was almost fated, given his penchant for all things music-related.

  “Shit, the place is a mess,” groused Newlan as he scurried around his apartment, tidying up as best he could before jumping in the shower. And although he was moving about at a frenetic pace, the truth of the matter was that he had no real reason to be in too much of a rush since by now, he had known Janis Barry for over 30 years, and he learned long ago that in her version of time, a half hour actually meant an hour. In fact, Newlan made it a rule to double any and all time estimates that Barry ever presented him with, and the calculated fudge factor would almost always turn out to be her accurate time of arrival.

  To say that Janis Barry was Newlan’s on-again, off-again girlfriend was probably a shade of an exaggeration, but it wasn’t too far removed from the truth.

  As a case in point, whenever anyone asked Barry what was going on between her and Newlan, she would typically turn a bashful shade of red and shyly reply; “He’s a special friend.” Whereas if anyone hit Newlan up with the same question, he would mischievously respond; “We’re friends with benefits.” And in reality they were both saying the same thing.

  In their younger days, Janis Barry hung out with the same crowd as Newlan, but he never gave her so much as second thought, until one night after his breakup with Marianne Plante, she offered him a ride home after a drunken night of partying, and as they say, “the rest was history.” And even though their romance started out as that of casual lovers, over time they developed quite a fondness for each other.

  And yet, in spite of this unspoken relationship, out of the blue, one night in the early 90’s, Barry called Newlan up on the phone to announce that she had just gotten married to a naval officer from St. Louis who she had met when his ship was docked in Boston Harbor. She had only known the guy for two weeks when they got hitched, and then he immediately had to skip out of town when his armada shipped back out to sea.

  “What
the hell did you do that for?” probed Newlan.

  “I don’t really know, I guess it just felt right,” replied Barry in a cheerful but clueless tone.

  Janis Barry didn’t always think before she acted, but she knew well enough not to wait around for Frank Newlan to make a commitment to her, and so she went ahead and got married, regardless of what his negative reaction might be.

  However, due to his chosen profession, Barry’s newlywed husband was forced to leave her unattended for months at time in the two room apartment that he had set up for them, and she eventually became restless and invited Newlan over for a friendly visit…which turned into an encounter of another kind.

  And so began Newlan’s first of many trysts with a married woman, which was perhaps one of the reasons why the Breslin trial was hitting a tad too close to home.

  Not surprisingly, Janis Barry divorced her sailor husband in short order, complaining that he didn’t satisfy her, only to re-marry again a few years later. But in between marriages, she resumed her relationship with Frank Newlan, although you could make a case that they never really stopped in the first place.

  After three children, Janis Barry ultimately discovered that husband number two was a philandering, drunken bastard, and she wound up divorcing him as well. And no sooner had the ink dried on the divorce papers that she was on the phone to Frank Newlan.

  “See, I told you I’d haunt you forever,” guaranteed Barry on that day all those years ago, and here she was almost 15 years later still making good on her pledge.

  Whenever Barry was in a frisky mood, she would repeat her bedeviling declaration, and in response, Newlan would routinely return the banter with his own pronouncement; “well you always come back to your one true love.”

  Whether Newlan was really Barry’s true love was debatable, but the truth of the matter was that they did remain close friends, even while she was married to her second husband; although they did discontinue their intimate rendezvous’ during that period. In fact, at the time, Newlan would occasionally hang out with Barry and her man, and Newlan considered him to be a good Joe.

  As far as Newlan could tell, Barry’s marriage appeared to be on solid footing, and he was sincerely happy for her. And in all honestly, he was as shocked as anyone when he found out that their wedded bliss had disintegrated, practically overnight, and that poor Janis Barry’s life was left in shambles.

  Nowadays with three growing teenagers to feed, and an ex-husband who never seemed to have any money for child support, Barry took on as many jobs as she could, and so at any given moment you might find her driving a school bus, or delivering pizzas, or waiting on tables, just to name a few of the many occupations she had attempted over the years in an effort to make ends meet.

  Barry was a dedicated mother; you had to give her credit for that. But alas, between her many livelihoods, and raising three rebellious adolescents, she had very little time to socialize, so it wasn’t unusual for a few months to go by between visits to Newlan’s condo.

  “You just come over when you’re desperate for a little something, something,” Newlan would joke on those rare occasions when the stars were aligned just right and they ended up asleep in each other’s arms. And although Barry would laugh off Newlan’s claim, they both were well aware of the fact that there was a strand of truth to his statement as well.

  And not so coincidently, as of this early June evening, Newlan hadn’t hooked up with Janis Barry in quite some time, and he was very much looking forward to this unexpected visit. He was hoping that, among other things, she would brighten his spirits, and take his mind off the trial, if only for a few hours.

  Barry arrived after an hour, like clockwork, just as Newlan expected, and he eyed her admiringly as she gingerly cross the threshold of his front door.

  In spite of their rapidly advancing age, Barry still maintained a frizzled head of curly, shoulder length, bleached blond hair, and a petite little body to boot, which Newlan preferred over the tall, leggy, statuesque type of physique that you’d find in your average supermodel. And even after pumping out three babies, she still looked pretty good to him, despite the wrinkles that were beginning to form around the outer edges of her face.

  The old acquaintances hugged warmly in the hallway of Newlan’s condo before adjourning to his black leather sofa.

  Newlan had a beer for himself and a soft drink for Barry, who was a non-drinker, waiting for them on the coffee table, and as soon as they sat down, he took a prolonged chug of the sudsy brew, practically finishing off the bottle in the process.

  “I brought a movie for us to watch, Triple X,” merrily announced Barry as she handed Newlan a DVD.

  “Triple X…I didn’t know you liked that kind of stuff,” replied Newlan with a devilish grin and a questioning look on his face.

  Barry slapped Newlan’s wrist lightly and playfully scolded him; “it’s not that kind of movie…it’s a Vin Diesel action movie.”

  Newlan didn’t particularly care for the action movie genre, and he could never understand what sweet little Janis Barry saw in these types of flicks, but he enjoyed her company, so her choice of movies didn’t much matter to him.

  “Alright then, let’s put it in,” exclaimed Newlan. But then he immediately realized that his reply could have two meanings…and Barry smiled knowingly as well.

  Newlan got a chuckle out her response, and he coyly added “You know what I mean, Queen Bee...get your mind out of the gutter.”

  And so after their minor faux pas of a misunderstanding had been clarified, Newlan and Barry stretched out on the sofa, and settled in for a relaxing movie night.

  “Feel free to get comfortable Queen Bee,” whispered Newlan as he put his arm around Barry. And she responded to his touch by curling her dainty little body up into a ball and resting her head in his lap. He then began to caress her shoulders, and as he worked his warm hands across the nape of her back, his massaging strokes triggered an involuntary quiver in her loins.

  Regardless of the time of year, Barry just about always felt that the weather outside was too chilly, and as such, she relished in the unusual warmth of Newlan’s probing fingers. And whenever he would make a jesting comment about how cold her hands were, which was often, she would reply on cue; “Cold hands, warm heart.”

  As such, with the nighttime air having cooled the temperature down by a few degrees, Newlan gallantly provided the body heat for his date while they watched “the silly Vin Diesel movie” (as Newlan put it). And all the while, Janis Barry was putting forth a slew of uninterrupted small talk, as well as contributing her scene-by-scene commentary regarding the movie, just as any good film critic would do. But Newlan, who was once again preoccupied with the Breslin trial, wasn’t paying much attention to either the movie or Barry’s non-stop conversation.

  “I’m sorry what did you say?” asked Newlan in an oblivious tone, after the movie was almost three quarters of the way through. And in turn, the perceptive Barry’s response came back in the form of another question.

  “What’s wrong Frankie? Is something bothering you?”

  “Oh it’s nothing,” insisted Newlan as he internally debated with himself over whether or not to inform Barry about the trial. But after mulling it over for a minute or two, he broke down and spilled his guts out.

  “…and so in conclusion, I hope that your ex-husband doesn’t decide to send someone out looking to murder me someday…the same way that Breslin supposedly sent someone after Miller,” quipped Newlan, which triggered a silent, squinted stare from Barry.

  It was close to midnight by the time the movie had ended, and the bosom buddies were beginning to doze off on the sofa when Newlan decided it was time to cut to the chase before it got too late.

  “Hey Queen Bee wake up. We might as well go into my bedroom and take a nap since we’re falling asleep anyway,” hinted Newlan as he presented Barry with a peck of a smooch to the top of her head.

  “
Sounds good,” purred Barry who was fully aware that sleep was the farthest thing from Newlan’s mind at the moment. And as he took her by the hand and led her into his dimly lit bedroom, they could barely contain the pent-up sexual tension that had been gradually building up inside of them since their last session together, which was well over three months ago.

  “Women, I’ll never understand them…if I had asked her if she wanted to have sex, she probably would have slapped me in the face and stormed out of my condo,” mused Newlan as they came to a stop at the foot of his bed. But he had no worries of being rejected tonight. On the contrary, Barry had already signaled her submission just by the way she obediently complied as Newlan roughly position her into place with her bottom rubbed up against his crotch.

  Now that the ball was rolling, Newlan wasted no time with subtleties; he went right to work ravishing his long-time lover like there was no tomorrow. As he stood behind Barry, tauntingly teasing her with his throbbing manhood, he put his arms around the front of her waist, while at the same time the back of her head rested against his chest.

  Newlan then slowly ran his hands up Barry’s arms, and as he reached her shoulder blades, he firmly twisted her around so that they were facing each other. This maneuver allowed him to brush her hair back with his fingers, and expose her pale neck, which he nibbled with an almost vampirish glee.

  Somewhere in the heat of the moment, the friends with benefits caught each other’s gaze, and upon observing the faraway look of surrender in Janis Barry’s eyes, Newlan passionately embraced her and planted her with a deep, steamy kiss as they instinctively fell onto his bed.

  After a lengthy period of intense, but fully dressed, foreplay, which found Barry breathing heavily and moaning uncontrollably, Newlan lifted her back up into a sitting position and frantically began removing her clothing while she fervently unzipped his pants…and once again…the special friends…had ended as lovers.

  About a half hour later, as Newlan and Barry lay naked, snuggling in his bed, lost in their thoughts, he wondered whether he could ever truly love her. Maybe buy a house for the two of them and grow old together.

  “Sure I get laid once in a while, but I got nothing serious going on. I should just say the hell with it and see what she thinks. What have I got to lose, and maybe then I can finally put the specter of Marianne Plante to rest for good,” surmised Newlan. But in the end, his nagging doubts and fears that something better stood waiting just around the bend, as always, taunted him like a schoolyard bully.

  Not knowing what else to say, Newlan subsequently muttered, “not bad for a couple of 49 year olds.”

  However, based on Barry’s giggled reply, she apparently wasn’t quite as impressed with the performance as Newlan was.

  “Oh I’d rate it at about 5 out of 10…you seemed distracted. Are you sure nothing else is bothering you?”

  “I know it’s not like when we were younger,” admitted Newlan, and then almost instantly, he came to the realization that the Breslin trial may have been popping into his head while he was making love to Janis Barry; almost immediately, he realized that maybe he wasn’t giving her his undivided attention; all of a sudden, he realized that, despite their insatiable urges, maybe he was being inattentive to her many needs.

  “I’m sorry Janis, like I told you, this damned trial has got me all messed up…but I’ll be better next time,” predicted Newlan as he rolled back on top of Barry and nuzzled his face between her breasts.

  “Don’t worry…I’m perfectly happy with everything you do,” breathlessly whispered Barry as she massaged Newlan’s shoulders while he slowly worked his way down her smooth, slender body.

  “Judging by the heavy breathing I must be doing something right…or maybe she’s faking it,” conjectured Newlan who was now concerned that he might soon be hearing a tap on the wall, courtesy of his neighbor, Saeed Kahn.

  Unfortunately for Janis Barry however, just as she was about to reach the ecstatic ending which Newlan had already achieved in the first round of their lovemaking session, her cell phone went off.

  “I gotta get that…it’s probably one of my kids,” lamented Barry as the two lovers disentangled…and her mother’s intuition proved to be accurate.

  “I gotta go…my daughter Alexia needs a ride…she got stranded at a party.”

  “You were right as usual…then again it’s always one of your kids. Oh well, I’ll walk you down to your car,” volunteered a disappointed Newlan.

  “Who else would be calling me at this hour?” griped a frustrated Janis Barry.

  “I’ll call you soon,” promised Barry as she climbed into her car. But as was typical of their relationship, Newlan wouldn’t hear from her again until the next time she had a rare night off from work, or until her needs became irrepressible, whichever came first

  As a dejected Newlan rode the elevator back up to his condo, he had a sudden bout of post intimacy depression…and he came to a foregone conclusion.

  “Tonight was pleasant, but there’s gotta be more to life than this. I need more….more excitement…more adventure…more sex…more drugs…more rock & roll…more of everything.”

  However, as the old saying goes; “be careful what you wish for,” because even though at this point in his life the “sex and drugs and rock & roll” moniker was more or less a figure of speech, little did Frank Newlan know that he would soon have more than he ever bargained for, and, if the truth be told, more than he could handle.

  But regardless of what the future held in store for him, for the time being Newlan was decidedly underwhelmed with his existence…and as he hopped off the elevator he had a sudden revelation. He was determined to make some changes in his life.

  “Who knows maybe I’ll even ask Janis to marry me,” imagined Newlan as he turned the door handle and sashayed back into his condo. And as he plopped back down onto the sofa, he found himself happily humming the overindulgent chorus of the Grateful Dead song “I Need a Miracle” to the blank four walls of his living room, in an absentminded, yet ominously prescient, manner; for surely he was going to need a miracle if had any hopes of surviving the “I want it all” sentiments conjured up by the captivating tune…sentiments which foreshadowed the wallowing excess…of his ill-considered desires.