New York City . Four months later.

ALL ANDIE DEGRASSE KNEW was that the large, wood-paneled room was crowded as shit-with lawyers, marshals, reporters-and that she'd never been anywhere she wanted to get the hell out of more.

But it was the same for the other fifty-odd people in the jury pool, Andie was quite sure.

Jury duty -those words were like influenza to her. Cold sore. She had been told to report at 9:00 a.m. to the federal courthouse in Foley Square. There she filled out the forms, polished her excuses, and killed an hour leafing throughParenting magazine.

Then, at about eleven thirty, her name was called by a bailiff, and she was herded into a line of other unfortunate people with unsure, disappointed faces and up to the large courtroom on the seventh floor.

She looked around, trying to size up the rest of the fidgeting, kibitzing group squeezed into the bull pen. This was definitely not where she wanted to be.

The scene was like a snapshot taken on the number 4 Lexington Avenue train. People in work uniforms-electricians, mechanics-blacks, Hispanics, a Hasid in a skullcap, each trying to convince the person on either side that he or she didn't belong there. A couple of well-to-do types in business suits were punching their BlackBerries, demonstrating in the clearest possible way that they had something far more important to do with their time.