CHAPTER 5

“Come on!” Zinnie hollered down the cellar stairs. “If we’re going to this dumb party, let’s go!”

“All right, all right,” Claire muttered to herself. “Be right there,” she yelled from the fuzzy red interior of the makeshift darkroom. “Just finishing!” She scanned the last sheet of black and white as it materialized. Oh boy. Beauties. Real beauties. She inspected them with her loop. The foliage of the woods blended with the Yiddish faces and then, pop! you saw them … camouflaged but distinct all over each picture: oval, ancient portraits like gnarls in the trees.

“Clay-er!! Come on!” Zinnie’s irritated voice bellowed. “It’s eight a’fucking clock! Are we going or not?!”

Claire hung the last sheet up on a wire over her head, rinsed her hands, and switched on the light. She’d go over the last ones later. With one last wistful look, she left the darkroom and climbed the stairs. Zinnie was sitting at the top, Carmela was slouched along the wall.

Zinnie pursed her lips. “I told her she couldn’t come.”

“Of course she can come,” Claire smiled, her heart sinking.

“I don’t care. I mean, if it’s a private party or something just say so and I’ll stay home.”

Claire looked at the two of them. Zinnie was thoroughly annoyed, the way she always was if Carmela was involved. Carmela’s cheeks were two bright patches of insulted apprehension. She was all decked out. The funny thing about Carmela was, as meticulous as she was in her dress, the room she left behind looked as though an army helicopter had flown through. It was always the same: the better she looked, the filthier her room. What state it was in now Claire could only imagine, because Carmela looked terrific.

“Oh, come on,” Claire laughed. “If he doesn’t want all three of us he can—”

“Ought to be glad to have three extra women,” Carmela pushed the screen door open with a burst.

“That’s right,” Claire didn’t hesitate. The minute you made Carmela feel you didn’t want her around, she’d stick like glue. It was some perverse insecurity that made her that way—who knew why? Claire had left Freud back in Germany where she hoped he’d do her Teutonic folk some good.

Zinnie, taking stock, decided to let it drop. “Lock the door,” she hissed. “Shall I take my car?”

“Oh, let’s walk,” Carmela said. “Then we can all drink.”

Claire stood still. The Mayor watched her with those heartbreaking liquid eyes. Her parents had taken Michaelaen to McDonald’s and then on to Crossbay Playland for a treat, so there was no one around to see.

“Oops,” Claire said. “He just slipped out.”

“Claire!” Carmela crowed. “He’ll get another ticket!”

“No, he won’t,” Zinnie said. “Who are they gonna give it to? Him?”

“And who’s going to pay if they follow him home?”

“Shut up. I’d like to see one of them follow him home. They’d be worn out.”

“Wait till Mom finds out—”

“Who’s gonna tell her, miss goody two tits, you?”

The three of them watched as the Mayor headed off in the direction of Lefferts Boulevard. He looked once over his shoulder, furtively, then skedaddled fast as he could away from them. There was no stopping him now.

They climbed the hill with the same suspicious optimism with which all women over twenty-five start out for parties. Zinnie was in a good mood. Carmela too, for once. She’d always wanted to get in with the diplomatic set. This was as good a chance as any, even if the opportunity had presented itself through Claire. As for Claire, she was thinking about those pictures she’d left down in the cellar. Something about them … like a word on the tip of your tongue …

It was pleasant along Park Lane South. The houses changed to villas and the sun was pink above the woods. That meant good weather for tomorrow as well.

“Why didn’t you wear my sundress, Claire?” Carmela asked, looking her up and down with disapproving eyes. “Aren’t you hot? You know you could have borrowed it.”

“I’m fine,” Claire smiled, hot. She was glad she hadn’t worn the lavender sundress. She almost had. She’d stared at it on its hanger and held its skirt up to her cheek. It had had the same feel to it as a shawl she’d had once, and as she’d stood there in Carmela’s closet she’d remembered that shawl whipping around her in the breeze and how she’d walked happily, innocently through the forest outside Rishikesh and how it was so fine that she’d kept right on walking, past the sunlit temple and the perfect mossy fields. She’d relived the shock of seeing the back of her lover’s neck as she’d turned from the shelter of the trees, recognizing that neck first, his back to her, his face to the lovely young Indian girl. He’d put out his arm to capture a strand of the girl’s windy hair that covered her eyes and he’d anchored it kindly to her small, seashell ear. Claire had walked up to them, smiling brightly, consciously oblivious to their sudden discomfort, pretending (for whom?) that nothing had happened.

And she’d walked away from the lavender dress. She believed in the vibrations of clothes. She had things, beautiful things that suited her, that she would never wear because of something that had happened to her while she’d had it on. Such as a woman in the store not approving of her while she’d tried something on and she, thinking nothing, buying the item anyway. Those feelings were recorded forever in the fiber of the fabric, and Claire would relive that dislike every time she put it on. No. She was glad she hadn’t worn that beautiful dress.

They walked and walked.

“Where is this place?” Carmela demanded finally. “My feet are killing me.”

“Serves you right for wearing my shoes,” said Zinnie.

“Your feet were always bigger than mine! When did your feet get smaller?”

“Probably when you put on all that weight.”

“What weight?”

“Let’s not talk about weight tonight,” pleaded Claire, who had camouflaged her figure very nicely beneath a powder blue Afghani sheath. “Let’s have a good time, all right? This is it.”

“This?!” Carmela dropped her purse.

“Who is this guy, Claire?” Zinnie gave a low whistle, “—a king?”

“Don’t be silly. He’s a diplomat. It’s not his.”

“It wasn’t Marcos’s either,” Carmela checked her nose inside her compact. “What’s the matter, Zin? You’d rather have the acreage in the back of the house? You don’t like money? You think if money could buy happiness Franco Bolla would have his teeth fixed?”

“I wish I’d worn something else.”

“You just miss your gun.”

“I’ve got my gun.”

“You look adorable,” Claire said.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

They tripped up the cobblestone path that led to the side of the villa. There were yellow-and-white-striped tents set up along the yard, well hidden from the street by tall privet hedging. Lanterns twinkled, as early as it was, and groups of people stood chatting here and there, sipping what appeared to be champagne.

“I thought Poland was communist,” said Zinnie.

“Don’t we pay for diplomatic housing?” Carmela ruminated on a thoroughly new sort of column. A political column.

“I think so,” said Claire.

“If I drink too much,” Carmela said, “don’t bother to carry me home.”

“No, we won’t, dear. You stay right here and check out our good tax dollars. Da?”

“They’re so damn operatic looking,” Zinnie complained. “Oh, hell, Carmela, what are you doing putting on gloves?”

At that moment, Stefan spotted Claire. Silkily, he glided across the tilted lawn. “Don’t tell me!” he stretched out his dinner-jacketted arm, “—not one policelady, but two!”

“Wadja, tell ’im I’m a cop?” Zinnie glared at Claire.

“No, this one is a writer. This is Carmela and this is Zinnie. I hope you don’t mind my bringing the whole family.”

“Mind?” Of course Stefan didn’t mind. Three beautiful sisters were an asset to any party, weren’t they? They all agreed they were. Stefan guided them over to the canopy and settled them each with a glass of champagne.

“He looks like a sun-bleached Count Dracula,” Zinnie whispered in her ear.

Carmela fluttered her eyelashes at Stefan. “One thing that women forget nowadays to do,” Claire remembered reading in one of Carmela’s articles, “is flutter their lashes.”

“I’ve always been dying to see the inside of this house,” Carmela was telling Stefan. “Can you believe that I’ve lived practically around the corner most of my life and I’ve never been inside! Do you collect anyone in particular?” She steered him away.

Claire felt the wine whiz right to her head. “Count Dracula seems to have found his bat.”

“Oh, he’ll be back,” Zinnie poked her between the shoulder blades. “Men like that want a little hard to get. You don’t think he doesn’t have women throwing themselves at him all day long? Anyway, who cares? He’s no big deal. Debonair. Tall. Witty. Rich. I’m so glad Freddy’s not here. He’d fall in love with him.”

“Stop worrying about Freddy. He’d want you to have some fun.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“All the more reason, then.”

“Jesus. Catch that old broad. Are those chandeliers or earrings? Everybody’s so rich!”

“And boring, I bet.”

“Yeah, well. You can’t have everything.” Zinnie looked about her apprehensively … eagerly. As though she’d found herself out on the tip of the high board and wasn’t so sure which course to take. She is so pure, thought Claire. No longer innocent, but pure.

There was a band of musicians in tuxedos circuiting the lawn. Claire finished her drink and when the waiter passed she took another.

“Look at this,” Zinnie sniggered in her ear, “a croquet mallet.”

Sure enough, there were half hoops and mallets sprawled across the lawn on the other side of the house.

“What bliss,” said Claire. “Bygone fragments of a more gentle era.”

Zinnie pirouetted across the grass and picked up a mallet. She swung it crazily around her head. “Game?”

“C’mon, Zinnie,” Claire looked around uncomfortably. “Cut it out.”

“Why? Don’t you want to play? You’ve been talking about getting some exercise. Let’s see a little action here.” She kicked off her shoes and held the splintered mallet in a batter’s stance. “Look. There’s a ball.”

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Claire griped jokingly. But she meant it. You never knew what Zinnie would do. She got so desperate and arbitrary sometimes. “I forget how to play,” she grinned unhappily.

Zinnie proceeded to line up the hoops. “This can be home base,” she dropped her curly blond head and nudged it at the first stepping stone. It was bordered in chamomile.

“You can’t use a slate for base,” said Claire. “And croquet has no base. I think.”

“What happened to the little champagne man? There he is. Yoo-hoo!”

“Zinnie! Stop it!”

“Why?”

“Everybody’s looking.”

“So? Let them see someone having a laugh, for once.” She swung her mallet. The ball traveled through several hoops and landed, perfectly round, at Claire’s long toes.

“Nice shot. Only aren’t we supposed to each have our own balls?” There was no sense in arguing. It would just make Zinnie worse.

“That’s the spirit!”

“Mademoiselle!” A Nigerian fellow in tails who’d been watching, ambled over with another ball. He presented it to Zinnie as one would a precious gift.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “Want to play?”

“Volontiers.”

“What’s he say?” Zinnie frowned.

“He’d love to. What’s your name?”

“René.”

“Okay, René, you’ve got second base.” She dragged him over to a far-off hoop.

“You’re a sick girl, Zinnie. This is croquet.”

“Queens rules. You can’t beat baseball. Or do you think you can?” Chips of green in her blue-flecked eyes lit up with challenge.

“No, Zinnie. I do not, for the last time, think you can. Now can we stop this?”

But several more officious types, curious and bored, had wandered over. They let themselves be bullied into position. This was all to the stern disapproval of the servants, but by now what could they do? The Tunesian vice-consul was having a smashing time in charge of third and one wouldn’t want to upset him. Nor any of them. What a muddle.

Zinnie had one team arranged on one side and Claire, absorbed now, the other. She continually checked over her shoulder to see what Zinnie was doing. Zinnie was, Claire realized, as natural a leader as she had ever met. If she’d have been a man … Claire thought before she caught herself. Why, nowadays, a woman could do anything a man could do. Why was it that even she, who believed this, still had trouble incorporating it into everyday thought? Because it had always been she, in each of her relationships, who’d done the dishes. That’s why. No matter how much money she’d made or hefty chores she’d shared. Christ, it was exhausting. The whole man-woman thing could make you ill. And so resentful. She didn’t want to be resentful. She took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to return to her previous bemused state. There, that was better.

“This,” Zinnie was informing the vice-consul, “is American culture. Just make sure that no one steals your base. See, any player from the other team can come and steal it while you’re not looking.”

“But this is not a just system!” he cried.

“Yeah, but you get to voice that opinion and live.”

“Carry on,” the Turkish ambassador poised his mallet.

Claire noticed that Stefan and Carmela were nowhere to be found. Zinnie distributed her evening bag’s supply of sugar-free chewing gum. It was, she assured them, prerequisite. All sorts of fancy shoes were off, tossed into one raucus and plebian heap. By now there was nobody left on the other side of the house. The game simmered into a businesslike seriousness and time flew by like magic. Suddenly it was the fourth inning, and what a job it had become to see that devious ball coming. One by one the lanterns all around the property went on and Carmela and Stefan emerged from the glamorous front door. Stefan’s face fell. Not Carmela’s. She arranged her expression immediately into the appropriate butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth. Claire’s team was up. The Lebanese official’s wife was at bat. Her teammates cheered her on with slurred directions—they were all experts now. The lady swung and missed. A titter went up from Zinnie’s team. She swung again, this time connecting. The ball raced through several hoops and cracked into the Nigerian fellow’s ankle.

“Yow, yow, yow, yow, yow, yow!” He limped hurriedly in a circle.

Everyone trooped over with inebriated concern.

“Hello, stand back, I’m a doctor,” said a handsome young blond man and they all moved aside. Zinnie lowered the wounded player onto the ground and she and the doctor took control. Claire backed off. Zinnie liked that young doctor, she could tell. She grinned to herself. Now let’s just watch and see if he’s married, she warned Zinnie silently. She found her shoes and walked across the lawn. There was a bench behind the tent where she could sit down and study the house. You seldom saw lead-paned windows like that anymore, or mossy stucco with ivy shooting up each corner. Nowadays the locals aluminum-sided any natural surface they could get their hands on. This was really the sort of place you could get used to. Quickly.

The others were wandering back. The wounded man was not badly hurt; Zinnie and the doc had him propped on a chaise lounge and were administering advice. Claire saw Zinnie throw back her head and laugh. Boy, to laugh like that again! Stefan came over and sat down next to her.

“Hello, troublemaker. I take it it was you who got the servants so upset.”

Claire gave a noncommittal frown. She wasn’t sure whether or not it was going to be advantageous to take the credit. “I hope that man isn’t hurt. He was such an excellent shortstop.”

“I suppose you see yourself as having saved the party,” he remarked, amused.

She felt herself redden.

“You have an interesting family. Your sister Carmela. She’s very knowledgeable about art, isn’t she?”

“Is she?”

“Yes, indeed.” He leaned over and removed a baby grasshopper that’d landed on her arm. She liked the way he did that, with fine feeling, not injuring the little fellow’s legs. They watched him spring away. Stefan, charmed at his own kindness, exhaled a wacky, megalomanic chuckle.

Claire wafted in the hurricane of his cologne. Is there no one right for me? she thought. “You have a beautiful place here,” she said.

“I’m so glad you like it,” he said.

“Pretty hard not to like.”

“I suppose not … so close to Manhattan,” he paused. “And such polite neighbors. So very polite.” He gazed into her eyes. Claire turned and watched the other guests. She liked cultivated, hard-drinking people. They were so active. Not like the drug enthusiasts she’d known in New York. Carmela, the prom queen, was hoofing across the dais with an Arabian. They were doing the fox trot. The Nigerian was hobbling now among the other guests. He was very proud of his wound, exhibiting it to anyone who would admire it. Claire looked around for Zinnie. There she was, still down at the chaise lounge, balancing a sandal from one naked toe, listening intently to something the young doctor was saying. Claire’s heart went out to her and she felt something catch in her throat. If anybody hurt Zinnie she’d come after him herself—with an ax, if need be.

“Tell me something, Claire?”

“What?”

“Anything. I do so like to hear the sound of your voice.”

“I was just thinking how easy it would be to murder someone … under the right circumstances.”

“Yes, indeed. It’s life that’s difficult. What about suicide? Do you ever think about that?” He liked the direction of this conversation. He was enjoying it. He reminded Claire of a fox, the way his little white teeth glittered and poised in the air. She wondered what he’d been up to with Carmela. They’d certainly had time to go the full nine rounds. “No, I’ve given up suicide as a preoccupation. Haven’t thought much about it since I was a teenager infatuated with self-pity. Suicide is always fun to think about until someone you love actually up and dies. You realize abruptly how inevitable your own end is. Shall we dance?”

Claire, Zinnie, and Carmela, arms linked, made their way down the hill. They were singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” Carmela had lost one of Zinnie’s shoes but Zinnie didn’t mind. She was filled to the brim with glorious awe for a charming young unmarried doctor who hadn’t left her side even after he’d secured her telephone number … and that after she’d told him she had a son. Carmela, resigned as she’d been to Stefan’s unswerving interest in Claire, had somehow managed to secure more than five separate invitations to God-knows-who-all’s near future parties. She was also very drunk. Zinnie had a firecracker voice. “Tonight you’re mine, completely. You give your love, so sweetly. So tell me now … and I won’t ask again. Will you still love me tomorrow?” Zinnie walloped out her solo and then they jaunted through the last chorus. No kidding, they congratulated themselves as they turned the last corner, they really did sound just like the Shirelles. They stopped short. Parked right in front of their door were three blinking police cars.

“Michaelaen!” Zinnie screamed and the three of them flew down the hill. “Michaelaen!” Zinnie fell on the sidewalk and got up before Claire even saw her go down. She was up on the porch and into the house before any of the cops could stop her. When Claire got there she saw Zinnie, her arms around Michaelaen, choking out loud, violent sobs. Her knee and elbow were trailing blood, but she didn’t seem to notice that.

Several uniformed policemen were standing in the hallway and there were plainclothesmen all over the place.

“What’s going on?” Claire’s heart beat wildly, taking rapid account of both parents seemingly safe and sound on the steps. Her father had his arm around her mother. They both looked strange. Was her father’s hair that white? They looked like old people.

“We were robbed, Claire.”

“What?”

“Yes, robbed.”

“We don’t know what they got yet.”

“Oh my God … and I let the Mayor out.”

“Oh, I knew that was bright,” Carmela slurred from right behind her.

“It might have been,” Stan’s tone was dead-weight lead. “Whoever wanted in that much might have killed him.”

The Mayor heartened at his words. So Stan knew without measure the distance of his loyalty. To go down with the ship …

“I just wish we knew what they took!” Mary held her elbows and looked around creepily. “That’s the thing.” She wasn’t going to go checking around until those fine officers got through going through every room, including the closets. She was past the point of caring what they thought when they found somebody’s galoshes on a dust mop on somebody’s folded shirt. I’ve no reason not to be a nervous wreck she told herself, her face pink as roses.

Claire looked around her at all of the cops. If this had happened to anyone else on the block they never would have sent more than one car. The place was all lit up. Spaces in the house were lit that never had been lit all at one time before. She looked around for the Mayor. There he was, sitting squarely on the porch watching the great to-do with big brown eyes and a broken heart. He’d missed the whole thing. Claire shot bolt upright. “My cameras!” she whispered and ran.

A few moments later she reappeared at the top of the stairs. “They’re gone. All my lenses. Everything. They took my cameras.” She sat down quickly before she fell down.

Now that they knew that something had been stolen, everyone else felt better. Something substantial had happened, a crime of reason, and they could handle that better than an eerie break-in where a small child lived. Detective Ryan came up to her, his little pad and pencil in hand, his blue seersucker puckered, his shoulder holster wetting the line of his white shirt with perspiration. Claire, in her mind’s eye, was following the thief—which was what these cops were supposed to be doing, correct? Out looking for him instead of in here politely taking cider from her accommodating mother, who was, without a shadow of a doubt, enjoying this. She was lit up like a firefly. And the thief most likely comfy in some car on the Van Wyck, heading for the city with a Nikon, a Hasselblat, four lenses, and the rest of the loot.

The Mayor sensed Claire’s misery right away. He came up and stepped on her foot as if to say, Here I am. Don’t you worry, here I am. Your fella.

Carmela was tickled because her jewels were all there: she carried her velvet box down the stairs as though in a procession. This worried the detectives. They wondered why the hell the thief would make off with some “lousy cameras” when there were jewels plain as day on the bureau?

Lousy cameras? Claire staggered back out to the porch. Most of the cops were gone now (“Long as no one was hoit”). The porch boards creaked beneath her. The air stank of urine. Life was an irrevocable mess. On top of it, what if that Johnny Benedetto showed up? Claire rummaged through her purse and came up with her lip gloss, then angrily put it back without using it. Upstairs she could hear Zinnie tucking Michaelaen into bed. Her father had the detectives in his study. Gee, they couldn’t get over those cannons! Mary came up from the cellar brushing her hands on her bowling tournament skirt. The silver was all there, mind you, and the cash, still buried deep in the Brillo box, but … I don’t know … it’s always a mess anyway down there, but … something’s not right …

Claire stood up hastily and went back down the stairs. It couldn’t be. She snapped on the light and a hole dropped from her stomach. The line full of black and whites—the whole lot of them—were gone. Claire blinked. There were color slides scattered all over the floor. Claire turned gray. Detective Ryan, right behind her, put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t touch nuthin’,” he said. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Somebody hadda been watching the house,” the cop was saying. “How else would he know they were all gone? Somebody … who knew all about her.”

“Oh, come on,” Claire said.

Detective Ryan bit his lip. This was a riot. Somebody was actually after this girl and she was telling him to “come on.” He felt like slapping her in the face to wake her up.

“Listen,” Zinnie told him, “Those were the pictures she was taking up in the woods. Somebody didn’t want their picture around, savvy? This was the thing. Whose ever picture that was … was the murderer.”

Ryan winced. No point in scaring the shit out of her.

“I can’t believe it!” Claire was saying. “My best shots. Gone. I think I must have been a thief in another life for this to happen to me again.”

“So this happened before?”

“Mmm. In India.”

“Oh. That lets that out.”

Zinnie stared at her. “God, Claire, at least you’re all right. Anybody crazy enough to come into the house has got to be desperate. We could have walked in at any moment. As it was, Daddy just missed whoever it was. He said he heard the back door slam and thought it was one of us.”

“Miss Breslinsky, think real hard. I want you to try and remember who was in those shots.”

“How am I supposed to know which shots are missing if you won’t let me go through the darkroom? Oh, Lord. I feel as though I’ve been raped.”

“Just let the print guys in there and then you can have your turn.”

“My turn.” Claire nodded her head and sat down. It was going to be a long night.

Next door, Mrs. Dixon peeked out through her clean vinyl blinds.

Captain Furgueson knocked on the screen and walked on in.

“Holy Christmas,” Stan marveled. “If it isn’t the brass.”

Johnny Benedetto, down the block in Pokey Ryan’s car, fought off the urge to go into the house. He knew Pokey would take care of everything and wanted to see what was moving around outside. You never knew. So far nothing but neighbors huddling under the street lamp. The usual. And the old lady in the wild makeup. She scurried back and forth across her lawn like a berserk bumper car.

Johnny was spent. He was yawning five times a minute. He pinched himself hard. He took deep breaths. A whole family of coons came down single file from the woods and gingerly picked their nocturnal route past the mailbox. When they saw all the commotion at the Breslinsky house they stopped, turned around, and marched, just as cool as you please, through the backyard next door. He watched them dine on the contents of three garbage cans, get up one by one onto the birdbath, and wash their hands as though they were human. You had to admit that animals were sometimes more understandable. There was nothing more treacherous than a human out for blood. He fell asleep with his mouth wide open and a deaf ear to the rhododendron bushes rustling.