Jeanette must have sensed my uneasiness, because she squeezed my hand and nodded towards another door that opened to admit Doctor Halberstadt. He smil...d, but found a seat in the gallery, not near us at all.When I glanced at Jeanette she smiled, and softly whispered directly into my ear, so I could hear, “He is being called as a medical witness, so he can’t sit with us. Neither can Sondra. They have to stay apart until after they testify and the Judge says they are finished. Sondra is waiting in. I occasionally exchange pleasantries with them when I see them, and one of them has a hot girlfriend Neha who comes over sometimes during weekends. The story is of a Friday night when I came back from work tired and wanted to sleep.There was loud music blaring from the guys' door. I waited as patiently as I could and then went and rang their doorbell. No one answered. I rang again. Akhil, one of the guys, opened the door a little, shirtless and in his shorts. I asked him to turn down the. She looked back at Janet. “What’s going on?” she complained.Janet was staring at the paper. She knew this man. She knew his mother, actually. His mother was a war baby mother. Janet had sat with them at town celebrations before. As a divorced woman, she was welcome in that group. She could think of several of his sisters, but had only a vague impression of his looks. She thought of him as being very young, though.“Janet?” complained Rhonda. “What about the man?”“This is the man,” said Janet,. Marilyn fell into the trap, though, and started hooting and hollering! “There’s not going to be any girlfriends! You’ll be coming home!” She kept going like this for another minute, and even the Lefleurs were laughing at her. She then did the usual finger wag and said, “You think you’re so smart! See if I ever vote for you again.”“You told me you were voting Democrat, that way we’d cancel each other out.”“Smartass!”“Better than being a dumbass,” I responded.“With you, they’re the same.