CHAPTER 7

“Okay, okay, okay, so who’s the guy with all the arms and legs?” Zinnie groped her way down the coat-pocked hallway of the unfamiliar Panchyli house. Pairs of shoes lined the wall from the front door straight down the dimly lit hallway all the way to the back of the house, one of those mean, narrow buildings south of Jamaica Avenue. The homes to the left and right of this one had FOR SALE signs out front, symbolizing their occupants’ indignation toward their new neighbors—never mind that this house sported newly installed windows and aluminum siding while theirs had peeling paint and rotting window sashes.

“Shiva, Zinnie. That’s a statue representing Shiva.”

“Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, right?”

Narayan’s beautiful dark face lit up with delight. “You have been studying?”

“Hell, no. Their names are on the holy picture on the front door.”

“Of course. Give me your shoes, please.”

“What are you going to do with them?” She handed over her heels warily.

“I am going to eat them, what do you think? Here. I put them safely here behind the umbrella stand. You can remember?”

“Tch. I’ll do my level best. What’s that singing in there? They all sing? I thought this was a serious thing. Isn’t Shiva the god of destruction? Are we sure we want to be here?”

“Destruction of evil is necessary, is it not? Destruction of war, destruction of fear?”

“Makes sense. Say. You really believe all this stuff? This reincarnation stuff?”

“This ‘stuff’ is my religion. And yes, I do believe in reincarnation.”

“So what do you think you’ll come back as? I mean, next time?”

“Be quiet. Or part of me shall come back as an octopus. And strangle you.”

“Okay by me.” She winked and turned and tiptoed carefully over the floorboards toward the back of the house. Narayan stood with open mouth and watched her delicate frame sway determinedly away from him. He cradled her shoes, in a swoon, to his heart. What was happening? He, the most desired of all the young men from abroad, went panting, open-mouthed, behind a half-pint, tough-lady American constable. It was inconceivable. Ludicrous, really. Where was his mind? In his pants, where his pocket was, that was where.

Oh, Narayan knew he was shallow. He had grown up with those brassy words in his pretty ears. His sisters, social-function martyrs all, had taunted him with it, his father, the magnanimous Solomon of the community, had sighed resignedly about it. His mother, goodly, indomitable charity-ball matriarch that she was, had thrown up her portly arms and collapsed, out of breath, onto her buttress of Salome pillows. They were all in agreement about Narayan. When Swamiji had accepted him as a student and assistant, the family had practically hurled poor Narayan north towards Rishikesh. Good riddance and respectability all at once. What could be better? Who was to know he would wind up catapulting west to join the respectability-hungry, well-off Hindu families of Trinidad and Guyana in Queens? Ironically, it was Swamiji who had helped him come to terms with the inevitability of his shallowness, helped him recognize and acknowledge it until he was so comfortable that it no longer hurt him, cut him to the quick the way it once did.

So, he was shallow. He wasn’t a thief. He wasn’t a murderer. He simply liked shiny, pretty things. He indulged himself lavishly. So had Krishna. So had Buddha, for that matter, before his renouncement. Zinnie here was not simply shiny, she was gold, gold of the purest sort. He followed her down the hallway with foolish yearning. Foolish, because this attraction had the poignant impossibility they were both capable of acknowledging. Her family would see him as an interloper, an abomination, a black man. His family would see her only as a white woman. Where his family lived, the only white women they were unfortunate enough to have to tolerate were those repulsive blueish English women with red veiny noses and inclinations toward gin and tonic when it was still daylight. Or the other, still worse, sort, the missionary ilk, sprouting sturdy chin whiskers, their puny hair yanked back off their foreheads and their unadorned, unvarnished, uncared-for feet and toes—unconscious horrendous bulk kerplunked into delicate sandals as if to say, well, what of it? It was too monstrous. What, then, would his family think of Zinnie? A meat eater. Yes, she was delicately pink, they would reluctantly admit, but she would redden as she aged. And anyway—he could just see his sisters and his mother throw back their haughty heads and leave the room with a tinkle of their bells and bangles—it was unthinkable. They would never accept her. It didn’t matter that she had completed university despite limited funds. They would never find that admirable. All they would see were those limited funds, a girl with a night job; they would shudder.

Zinnie, at the end of the hall, turned her head around to look for him, to wait for him. She would not enter that room without a backup. He saw her adjust her shoulder holster under her silk man-tailored jacket and rushed up to her, horrified.

“What is that? A gun? Zinnie, how could you?”

“What are you talking about? I always carry. I’m not allowed not to. I’m a cop, remember? Why do you think I always wear two shirts? Otherwise I look like the friggin’ Frito Bandito. It’s bad enough when I go for my lipstick, I pull out my rounds.” She hoisted herself this way and that, adjusting her piece. “Most of the guys wear it on the waist with a pancake holster. I always take my off-duty. Personally, I like my service revolver ’cause it’s big, intimidating when you see it.” She stopped fiddling and looked up at him. “And it can’t jam.”

He watched her, stunned, his hands helpless at his sides. This whole thing was more absurd than even he had imagined. He would speak to Swamiji about cutting their visit still shorter. They must move along now and be on their way. Their business with herbs was only on the verge of an upswing as it was. If they waited too long to bypass the Tibetans from the monastery and do business with the laboratory in Berkeley, the lab might lose interest. Already timorous business people, they might decide to buy their herbs elsewhere. They might simply decide to produce their own. Contribute to the “made in America” movement. Oregon. He could just see it: They would pick his and Swamiji’s brains and go from there. “Grown without pesticides in our own clean and mighty Northwest.” Not a bad idea, he mulled. Perhaps he would one day integrate it into his own scheme. But for now, he and Swamiji had planned to head straightaway cross country and be home well before harvest. The postponement of that plan had never bothered him because he’d hoped for an opportunity to investigate his feelings for Zinnie. But really, he realized as she rearranged her weapon intimately near to her brassiere, there was no way these twain would ever meet. One hand upon his hip, one finger pressed between dry lips, he continued to watch her in the dim hallway there. Her eyes were bright with discomfort, her creamy throat blotchy with nerves. She took out a brush and brushed her hair. Such an impropriety. And on and on she brushed. She was used to men watching her, confined to close quarters with them for long periods of time on stakeouts, in and about locker rooms. He felt himself stiffen.

Zinnie yanked her hair up into a bun and twirled it around her head. She stuck a comb in to anchor it and turned to witness his approval. The curry from the kitchen and the incense from the ceremony mingled in her nostrils and for just a moment, pushed between him and the wall by two stout ladies in saris butting by, she thought she would pass out. The door at the end of the hall snapped back and forth and the chanting of the pandit carried loud and soft, loud and soft. Zinnie and Narayan felt each other’s breath on their soft cheeks. She looked into his eyes and he, into hers. For one long moment they just stood there. They didn’t kiss. They just stood against each other, holding up the green malfunctioning wall.

“Ah, there you are,” the lady of the house barged through. “At last! We are all waiting for you!” Her eyes searched the hallway behind them.

Narayan went immediately up to her. “Swamiji could not come,” was all he said, deciding correctly that the true whereabouts of Swamiji (babysitting three American children) might not go over well.

The lady tilted her head congenially, as if to say, who cares? What matter that I have organized my home for almost one hundred fifty souls of the community just so they might get a glimpse of him? To her credit, she never faltered, just threw her pink harney over one indignant, slightly elevated shoulder. “Oh,” she beamed, “I just see you’ve honored us with a visitor as well.” This was insult to injury, she thought. Inside waited no less than fourteen single Hindu girls, any one of them a respectable, prime candidate for Narayan, this enormous catch. All of them had taken off work for the occasion.

Mrs. Panchyli bustled them through. There was nothing to be done. Mrs. Panchyli had not come this far in the American community without accepting compromise. Going with the flow, as it were, as the security guard informed her often enough at the Key Food Store. And it wasn’t as if this white girl wore his ring. She moved with authority, though, the girl. Perhaps she was a journalist? Was that one of those spy cameras she had hidden? It all just might turn around to my advantage, Mrs. Panchyli calculated. She must remember to make sure the girl sampled her luscious rice pudding. Who knew? They might all turn up on the front page of the color section of the Sunday News. Successful immigrants celebrating the holidays. She touched her perfect imitation Movado museum-piece watch for good luck.

Zinnie followed Narayan into the crowded room of chanting people. Besides the mob on the floor, there were plenty of them propped upright, sardine style, against the wall. The pandit sat on a series of clean white sheets on the floor. The amply endowed Mrs. Panchyli pushed her way past this multitude and bullied a prime space up front for Narayan and Zinnie. Incense fumed and smoked. On the sheets before the pandit, the family of the house sat solemnly; before them were paper plates laden and leaking with any number of Eastern fruits and cuisine, all offerings to Brahma. It was beautiful and impressive. The women were dressed and perfumed and garlanded with flowers. There was no furniture at all. If there was any, it had been removed, who knew to where. The grand Sony television remained, though, witness to prosperity. On the wall, brass-framed identical Kodak posters of long-haired white show cats posed imperiously on their valentine Cadillacs.

Zinnie found herself thinking of sodalities and ceremonies of First Holy Communion. The Indian people do not consider long-stemmed flowers of value, but rather vulgar and superfluous. Only the blossom will do, and they laugh out loud at Westerners who pay good money for “long-stemmed” flowers. Zinnie watched, astonished, as one old woman, the designated stem-disposer, sat in the doorway accumulating a great pile of stems to be thrown away before she passed the blossoms into the ceremonial room. It was all so pretty. Children ran up and down the stairs. Zinnie felt as though she’d stepped out of this world and into another, via coach-class flying carpet. As if she were, at least, off on vacation in a foreign country. Something fell from the ceiling onto her opened lap. She thought, alarmed, that she had been blessed, and this token was something, some small miracle, from heaven. Then she realized it was some small roach and she jumped up, barely stifling a shriek, then politely crouched back down again, this time more gingerly. The wizened old man beside her leaned over. She thought he was going to smack the bugger dead, but instead he flicked its derriere gently with a finger and mentioned to her in a singsong, slightly offhand way to, “just let the little fellow be off and on his way.”

“Yeah, sure,” Zinnie agreed, more interested now in the slender young man in shirtsleeves striding up to the offering sheet with a sharpened machete.

She moved her gun where her free hand could reach it and felt her heart quicken. Visions of Jim Jones and Guyanan suicidal maniacs flew through her imagination and she looked for the nearest way out. The pandit gazed at her and smiled sweetly. He began speaking, politely taking the time to pay special attention to the visitor and explain to her what they were doing. He was talking about goodness, but Zinnie found it hard to concentrate. She felt herself break into a sweat. The young fellow laid the knife down on the sheet. She looked around for Narayan, who had been swept away to the kitchen and was being introduced around to what looked to Zinnie like a bevy of belly dancers. She found herself reassured by her own outrage. Narayan wouldn’t be in the kitchen chatting up the girls if there were some plot afoot to capture her and hack off her digits.

Uncomfortable, she shifted her weight. Terror gave way to boredom and she thought of other things. Her ex, Freddy, and what he would say if he could see her now. He would pretend to be unimpressed, of course, but in reality—she grinned her lopsided grin to herself—he would be in the kitchen putting the make on Narayan with the rest of them. Oh, she’d always known what would please Freddy, all right. Or at least almost always. It was such a relief not to be married to him anymore, such a relief not to worry that he would come on to her partner, to the pizza man, even the mailman. She’d never forget the time she came home and found him giving the handsome utility inspector stale Lorna Doones and China tea in the good cups. There was nothing wrong with Freddy’s libido.

Zinnie let the air out slowly, through her mouth. The pandit nodded approval. She at least knew rudimentary yoga, he conceded. Zinnie was just so glad not to have to worry about who she brought home for fear of Freddy embarrassing her. She loved him, her old pal Fred, father of her child, good sport and handsome devil, but it was only now that she was free enough of him to realize what terrible damage she’d let him do her. She’d always been so busy working around his preferences, that she hardly remembered what it was she herself liked.

Narayan came back into the room and slipped himself in next to her. He leaned over. “Zinnie,” he whispered, “I’ve changed my mind. I shall return as a bird. And I shall sing to you.”

“Okay. Only I hope next time you know enough to pick a better color.” She whirled around. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I meant—”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, patting her hand. “So I shall come back as a red bird. So you will know what it is that I feel for you.”

She smiled up at him. She felt her face turn noticeably scarlet and saw the shocked understanding of the perceptive pandit. Well, the hell with him, Zinnie snorted uncharacteristically. The hell with all of them. For once in her life she was going to let herself like what and whom she liked, consequences be damned. She had earned it. Around her, the ladies sang some Indian song so intense and catchingly rhythmic that she found herself swaying with them. This wasn’t bad at all. She threw back her head, abandoned at last, and breathed in the exotic pulsating atmosphere. The song came to an end. They sang another. Mrs. Panchyli’s thin voice stunned her in the sudden silence. The woman was talking—Zinnie’s eyes opened, surprised—to her. Politely—perhaps malevolently—she inquired if she, Zinnie, had any song she would like to sing. To share with them.

“Oh, okay.” Zinnie moved her shoulders irresistibly and went accommodatingly right into the first and only song she could think of. As she sang, the man of the house concluded the ceremony with a thwack of the machete on a brown coconut. White creamy milk splattered over the sheet and those nearest the pandit broke out in wide grins.

Out on the street an Italian mechanic, retired and under his Pontiac, bunked his head on the rusty end tailpipe when he heard, like a chorus of seraphim, the house full of Indians singing along to the second refrain of the song “Danny Boy.”

Claire stood at Anthony’s Fisher-Price easel and painted her photographs with soft watercolors. The children sat near her at the table, doing their homework. Anthony crayoned a Thanksgiving turkey orange and purple and black. Since Mrs. Dixon’s escape, she would not let them out of her sight. She’d pick them up from school and they would remain in her view until bedtime. During the night she would wake up and walk through the hallway to check on them three and four times. It was a nightmare, but even this nightmare, day after day, took on a grim pattern of nonchalant routine. Anthony’s birthday, usually a major event, was celebrated quietly within the family. After all, nobody knew where Mrs. Dixon had gone. Probably halfway to Peoria, the police concluded, after painstakingly searching the area. Still, they had plastered her face all over the news for three days. The publicity was sure to provide a lead somewhere.

Swamiji and Narayan had postponed their trip to Berkeley for a while. There seemed to be no great urgency for the moment, and their minds, Swamiji said, would anyway be back here in the province of Queens. Johnny had helped them lug the rest of their stuff up to Mrs. Kinkaid’s old sewing room, and there they remained, nestled near the still unpruned branches of the backyard trees. Sometimes, when he fancied he smelled danger, Swamiji would bring his mat and blanket back downstairs and sleep like a guard dog behind the front door. No one minded, but he was difficult to wake up. When Johnny came in at all hours, he had the devil of a time moving Swamiji’s body aside to peek in. Still, Johnny was grateful. His old local precinct, the 102, kept an eye on the place—but God knew they already had enough to do.

Breaking into Claire’s thoughts, the back door jiggled and opened and Swamiji came in with Mary. They had been to the Key Food store. Swamiji and Mary got along like a house afire and shared the shopping. Oh, they would sit up together late at night, page after colorful page of coupons spread out before them. Armed with their scissors, they would attack the week’s clipping. All well and good, but—Claire scratched her head when she opened the almost full fridge and freezer in the cellar—when would they eat all this stuff? Mary and Swamiji spent so much money saving money it was as if they were going for broke. What feverish dedication drove the two of them? And where would it end? Who was going to drink all those bottles of guava fruit drink? She supposed they could have a big party and certify it with rum. Or vodka. And what about those jars of apple sauce? Wouldn’t apple sauce go bad? Not at these cool temperatures down here in the cellar, her mother and Swamiji had rushed to assure her, pleased with themselves and urgent to be gone on the next expedition. Well, one thing was for sure: she wouldn’t have to buy any more Comet for the rest of her life. Or Scott toilet paper either.

Claire plodded through the harrowing towers of products in her mind as she watched them come in with their next contribution.

“Ma, what did you do?”

“Wait till you see.” Swamiji was a-dither with excitement. He rubbed his hands, a sorcerer above a big brown bag. Oh, dear, worried Claire. America had finally gotten to him. Beaming, he and Mary unloaded five-pound tins of coffee onto the table. “Coffee?!” pooh-poohed the children, appalled at the waste of a perfectly good trip to the supermarket. “Where are the Chips Ahoy?”

“They weren’t on sale,” Swamiji explained and Michaelaen and Anthony, annoyed, returned to their own lives. What good were adults, after all, when they had every chance to buy good stuff and then didn’t?

Dharma didn’t say anything, but she was disgusted as well. She was tired of doing homework. She wanted to go out. She wanted to go back in the garage with Michaelaen and hide out.

“Tell you what,” Mary said, taking in the whole scene, the fatigue on their faces, especially Claire’s. “You go off, Claire, and do things you haven’t had a chance to do, you know, dry cleaner’s, library, cup of coffee with a friend, and Swamiji and I will stay here and look after the children.”

Swamiji nodded amicably. They had the Sunday Times and the Newsday coupons they hadn’t even had a chance to look through yet. And the crosswords. He and Mary argued like children over who got which crossword first.

Anthony put down his black crayon. He’d been heftily darkening that turkey’s sky. He looked from Claire to the other children with long, weary lids. “Wanna watch Mr. Wodgers?” he asked them. He knew Mommy liked it when he watched Mr. Rogers. No guns, no perversions. It was his way of helping her out. He was uncanny, her son, bringing her back from the dead every time when she hadn’t even known she’d been there. Well, he knew. Such a little fellow and here he was condescending to watch his baby show for her sake, just to please her. Allay her fatigue. Oh, sure. Most of the time she wanted to kill him. He was that kind of kid. Drove you to the edge. But when she really took off and her face took on that zombie glow, he understood, always knew. And he saved her. Anthony’s compassion was a lot like someone who drove you off the edge of a cliff and then caught you with his handy net … but catch her he did. He did save her, every time.

Anyway, it wasn’t because of Anthony that Claire went mad. Not anymore. Just a year had promoted him from baby to kid. And it wasn’t Johnny either. It was herself. She was tired. And lately, the more she slept, the more she wanted to sleep. To escape the tedium of her own—what? What was it? Her faith? Yes, the truth was that she had finally got what she wanted, and she found herself clinging to it so hard that she couldn’t stand back from it and look at it and love it. She couldn’t detach, yes, that was the word, detach, because she was afraid nothing would come afterwards but death. The still everlasting embodied by the dead-as-a-doornail bird she and Anthony had seen that day last year in the yard, before any of this had begun. When they’d still been living over in South Ozone Park, where she’d hated every minute but had loved her dream of coming up here. Now here she was. She had everything she wanted, and now this monster had escaped.

It was as though her faith was only there when things were going her way, and now that they weren’t, she was desolate. Sorrowfully, she looked around at the faces of her family looking, puzzled, back at hers, and she doubted there was any life after death after all. If one had anything to do with the other. But it did. Because without the one there was no sense to the other. Mrs. Dixon escaping from Deauville had loosened the screw that held her security so tentatively tight. There was no sense to life. To death. Everything probably stopped, simply stopped. You would see your last sight and the glass of your eyes would break and then that would be all; the sparkle of pain and of hope would just stop and relax to opaqueness. Claire shuddered. Who had ever been so cruel as to perpetrate dreams of a brassy eternal? A billowy cloud to hang onto. It was too disheartening. She would take Anthony out of Holy Child. There was no sense to handing over her false hopes to him as well. Here they were paying good money just to make him mentally ill. Yes, she thought and held her elbows and sat down carefully, that was it, she was mentally ill. She had stood vigilant too long.

“Claire!”

“What? I’m sorry. What?”

Mary clicked her tongue. “I’m talking to you. For heaven’s sake!”

“Exactly,” said Claire and she laughed. A wacky, gaudy laugh that stopped everyone’s easy smiles and made them look at her, concerned.

Swamiji went over to Claire and stood behind her. He brushed the red-brown hair away from her face and stood with his cool palms pressed to her forehead. With his pinkies, one on top of the other, he made a firm impression where the third eye ought to be.

Frightened, Anthony ran to his mother. He crawled up onto her lap and sat there like a little baby. Claire came back. Mary put a cup of hot water in front of her and Dharma, a good girl really, bobbed a tea bag into it.

Claire laughed, self-deprecatingly this time, not crazily. They indeed talked her into going for a walk, as Mary had suggested, or at least leaving, getting out of the house for a while. When she eventually recognized that they meant it, she decided to take the opportunity to drop off the photo of the nursery school, the Italianate Victorian, with the owner. Anyone would be happy to have such a fine portrait of one’s place. And she had colored it, too. It was the first she had done, as an experiment, because she really hadn’t cared about how it would turn out. Yes, she would drop that off and have a walk besides. She wasn’t doing any good to anyone in the state she was in. The next thing, she’d be yelling at the lot of them. They would all be better off with her gone. Her father had mentioned that there was a Second Empire Victorian over on 111th Street. She might pass by there with her camera.

“All right,” she agreed and went to hunt for a new roll of black-and-white, 3200 ASA film. Mary had set the three kids to work at the stove, Claire noticed on her way out. They were making cherry Jell-O. The smell just filled the kitchen and delighted Swamiji, who’d never before had the pleasure. Claire approved the scene. There was nothing kids loved more than playing at the stove, the most forbidden of all places. They’d be safe under Mary’s hawkeye tutelage, and happy to boot.

Outside, it was ugly weather, gray and blue, the slick streets mangled with drudgy bundles of wet yellow leaves. The tops of the trees were finally just about empty. Claire shivered cozily into her Lauren-Hutton-in-the-suburbs raincoat, yet another castoff, literally retrieved from the garbage behind Carmela’s house. “What are you doing?” Carmela had shouted at her.

“What do you think I’m doing?” she’d shouted back.

“It’s garbage,” raged Carmela.

“It’s Banana Republic.” Claire’d folded the coat cheerfully into her satchel. Anything from last year was garbage to Carmela. The only things she kept were from Bendel’s or Bergdorf’s. Carmela bought and discarded clothes by what seemed to Claire the bucketful. BORN TO SHOP read the framed bumper sticker hung in her Imelda Marcos-type closet. Stan had given the sticker to her for her car, but she wouldn’t kitsch up her fancy car. Still, there was enough of the girl from Richmond Hill in Carmela to appreciate her own decadence. All this consumeritis was all right with Claire as long as she got a chance to scrounge through it. Pride, Claire had long ago decided, had nothing to do with it. She petted the muted tan sleeve. It is worn and soft, she thought, like me, like me.

Above the woods, a white pearly streak came out over the bottom clouds. Swamiji, to her despair, would never join her in her jaunts through the forest. This was a terrible disappointment to Claire, who had always supposed they would picnic and stroll in and out of the woods together. It was, she tried to explain to him, her special place.

Yes, he’d agreed, it was a sacred place, but sacrilege had been done there and he wouldn’t set foot in such a place.

“It’s true that children were killed there,” Claire admitted, “but your presence alone would—”

He had gone, he was already walking away ahead of her. She’d caught up with him. “This is a terrible place,” he’d said, shivering, pulling his cashmere shawl about himself protectively. “Your Catholic priests should go there and remove the demons ceremoniously.” She could just see herself showing up at the rectory door with this request. Somehow, she imagined it wouldn’t go over big. Then again, it might. Now with Anthony connected to the school she didn’t like to come across as the new neighborhood nut-job. (“Here she comes,” the mothers on the corner waiting for their kids to come from the school would whisper, “Bats Benedetto.”) At any rate, she would go herself, with holy water. Mary had a vast stash imported from Lourdes, kept in plastic bottles with blue (for Our Lady) caps.

I shall go, she decided finally, to the five-and-ten. A place where decisions could be made, where dreams could meander and youth be recalled. She was just enjoying the satisfaction of devastating a neatly packed curb full of leaves, when Andrew Dover fell into step alongside her. It was uncanny how all this man had to do was show up and already she was feeling foolish and defensive. Determined not to let him get at her, she flashed him one of her reasonable smiles. He could not see the jumble and confusion in her mind, could he? She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t transparent. He had some shoes he wanted to drop off for Dharma, he explained, and didn’t like to come when it was inconvenient for her.

She whirled on him. She couldn’t help it. “Hey look, Andrew. I’ve been wanting to speak with you about Dharma for a while now. Let’s just get one thing straight, all right? As far as her life is concerned, don’t worry about propriety and whether or not you’re disturbing Johnny or me. If you want to see your daughter, even if it’s the middle of the night, don’t hesitate. I mean, the poor kid could use a little parental warmth right now. As much as we care about the kid, she’s still yours.”

A group of laughing teenagers from the high school ran by in a tight boisterous ball. Black kids in a relatively white neighborhood, small wonder they stuck together. Andrew waited for them to pass before he answered her. He blew on his hands and rubbed them, not unhappily, together. “Yes, well, that’s just it, you see.” They were drawing closer to the el and she had to lean toward him to catch his words. “She’s not my daughter, exactly.”

“You’re kidding! But I thought—”

“Look, when I married Theresa, she was already pregnant with Dharma. She just didn’t know it.”

“What?”

“Yes. It’s true. I don’t usually tell people this, but, well, in this case—I just didn’t want you to think I was neglecting my own child.”

“I see,” Claire stopped and hoisted her great sack more comfortably on her back. “So you neglected someone else’s.”

“Sorry?” he cupped his ear, old-man style.

“I said,” she shouted accusingly, “Dharma is still yours by marriage. By familiarity.”

The blast of the train clacketted off in the direction of Wood-haven. A sudden furry whip of wind around Claire’s legs gave her a fright. She was so startled, she grabbed Andrew’s hand to steady herself before she realized the wind was Floozie. She’d come all this way on her own. The little freshie had crossed three streets and run by who knew how many cars—maybe parked, maybe not. Floozie circled with admonishing yaps. She was right. Claire had had no reason to leave her behind. If anything, Floozie had proved time and time again that she was to be trusted, walking right beside her and a little bit behind with deferential devotion. Lying low in restaurants, unobtrusively still inside Claire’s ever-present camera bag so no overly conscientious waitress could come over to the table to snap “Outa-here.” Claire cocked her elbow and, true to form and not to disappoint Claire (who sort of got a kick out of Andrew’s astonishment—how many doggies had followed him through life?) Floozie helicoptered up and into her raincoat sleeve. Claire lowered Barnum eyes at Andrew. What a show-off she knew she was. Never mind.

Later, she would ask herself why she hadn’t asked Andrew whose child, then, Dharma was? She already knew why. Some people have magnetic power over you—and you can’t say just why. They have a way of never letting you get any further in processing your thoughts. They trick you, put you off, charm you with surprises. You can be standing there thinking, As soon as he finishes saying this, I’ll ask him. But then he says something else and that distracts you and before you know it, you’re walking off wondering what happened. Claire and Andrew walked together up Jamaica Avenue, a derelict place nowadays, but still blue and enclosed by the el tracks and memories of when it was all bustle. Shopkeepers lolled into work at eleven or noon these days, realistic, pessimistic. Only the bodegas left and right bustled with life.

They hurried by the hardware store. Stan, Claire’s father, came out from behind an enormous speaker, and both Claire and Andrew waved but Stan didn’t notice. He was utterly distracted. He laid the speaker in the gaping trunk of his car and went back in to get the other. A Korean boy stood guard so no one would walk off with the thing. All this was no surprise to Claire, who knew her father had found those speakers in a movie theater being demolished in Jamaica. He’d actually gone in and hauled them out while the demolition ball hovered (thanks to ten bucks in the operator’s pocket) in the air above him. He wasn’t going to let those Koreans keep those tweeters and woofers, by golly. No siree. No matter how much money was in that shopping bag of cash they’d paid for the hardware store with.

Inside, Mr. Lee was relieved. Was that guy kidding? Vivaldi at nine o’clock in the morning? Mr. Lee was too polite to correct his elders even if this was his store, but life would be an awful lot better with the portable Hitachi he’d replaced it with on the counter. If that one got too loud it went all tinny and they’d have to shut it off. Hee. Hee.

Neither Claire nor Andrew was anxious to talk to anyone else now. Andrew had committed a confidence to her and they couldn’t just leave off like that, so they stood, self-conscious but determined to communicate, alongside the five-and-ten, like any casual pedestrians who’d bumped into each other just like that.

“Andrew,” she began kindly. (The man had lost his wife, and whether Tree had cuckolded and trapped him once, they’d still stayed together for what, seven or eight years, right? That counted for something.) “What I don’t understand is how you can stay away from Dharma now? I mean, excuse me for being so personal, but I don’t know how to talk to you except directly.”

“I’m so relieved.” He shook his head. “I feel like I’ve been—hell, I have been avoiding you because I just didn’t want you to know how I feel. I don’t know why you should affect me in any way at all but, geez, this is so hard to say—”

Claire leaned toward him.

“The truth is, Claire, I feel no remorse. No remorse at all for Theresa’s death. I don’t know if she told you any of this before she died, I guess she did—” He searched her face.

“No, nothing. We never got to speak, never had the chance.”

Claire saw something in those eyes. Was it relief? He tilted his head back and opened his mouth to the filthy, sorry sky between the track and the building. What now? Was he trying to control himself? He didn’t seem to trust himself to speak. She looked politely away, into the window of the old yarn store, now an intergalactic tabernacle for the clairvoyant Mrs. Fatima. Been in the area fifteen years, the circular boasted. The storefront was all astrological murals, dream interpretations, and pink speckled light bulbs. She had it nice and comfy, did Mrs. Fatima, with sofas and bolster pillows and a fat recliner, everything done up in Gulden’s yellow and indigo. And she had one of those little dogs, a chihuahua—a male, from the attentive, mysterious disposition Floozie automatically assumed when she spied the dog in the window.

“I might as well tell you the truth,” Andrew said. “Not because I particularly want you to know, but because you’ll eventually find out anyhow. I drove her crazy. I wasn’t very nice to her,” he admitted. “Like she would get all dolled up and I would tell her she looked like she was ready to turn a trick. I did. She was so slutty. I used to insult her so she would leave me alone. I’d get her good and mad and then when I’d walk out she was glad to see me go. She would get all involved with that I Ching shit. You know—that book of changes where you throw down those Chinese coins and all. And all that Indian crap. Oh, she went for that big time. Her tastes were so bohemian. And the drugs that went with it. You know all about that.”

She did? Claire almost laughed. It was so long since she’d herself done drugs that it felt like another lifetime.

Andrew went on, unencumbered by facts or acquiescence from her. She could see how he had charmed the neighborhood with his disarming frankness. He was getting into his theme now. And then, confession was so warming. He was a Catholic, after all. So was she, for that matter. They were all Catholics here. She felt a headache coming on. She wished he would stop talking about Tree this way, stop talking altogether. This was her walk, her little breakdown.

“I have to tell you, Andrew,” she finally interrupted, “I can’t stand hearing this. I don’t want to hear the details of your life with my friend Tree. Really. I only am listening to you so you’ll maybe, just maybe, give me a clue as to why you’ve abandoned your daughter. And please,” she covered one eye with one hand, “I don’t care that it wasn’t your sperm from your loins that gave rise to her reality because, Buster, it was you there on Christmas, and birthdays, and through all the childhood diseases and that’s what makes a father. So you still haven’t told me why you’ve abandoned your daughter to a neighbor you hardly—you don’t even know.”

He changed his tack. He dropped his head. “Dharma,” he said, “never, ever liked me.”

“Oh boo hoo.”

“She didn’t.” He looked at Claire wildly. “Even when she was a baby she would push me away. Push me away!” he cried, tears, small and hot came out of his dignified man’s eyes.

Claire looked around uncomfortably. The ladies from the Church Mini Second Hand House were passing by. It was sale day at the five-and-ten. To their credit, they never seemed to look at Andrew, just trotted by. They knew he’d lost a wife. Everyone knew. They wouldn’t embarrass him for all the tea in China. A good man. Took all those kids last year on that trip to Valley Forge.

“All right,” Andrew said. “I know you and John have been wonderful. Wonderful. I can’t keep imposing upon your hospitality.” He went to bite a cuticle in a nervous gesture. “Our problems are our problems.” He bobbed up and down. “I only wish I knew someone who could stay with us, someone reliable. A woman. You know, who Dharma could relate to—like—”

“Portia McTavish?”

“Say! No. No, she’s already done so much.”

“I’ll bet. Of course you know Dharma can’t stomach Portia McTavish.”

“Oh, right. But then, she doesn’t like anyone. She hates my mother.” He sighed. “Anyway, my mother is … sickly. She wouldn’t be up to helping out much …”

“She likes me. Sort of. I think. She certainly likes Zinnie.”

Andrew looked up at the Schenkers, a gray-haired couple walking arm in arm from the bakery. They’d had their colonial up for sale with Century 21 since Claire had moved in. The sign was still up and they were still here. Both they and Andrew knew they were ready to sign with another realtor and it might as well be him. He pulled himself together quickly enough, nodding at them handsomely. This was one slick canary. For a moment there she’d almost forgotten. She was tempted to ask him why a smooth operator like himself was content to live and work in Queens, but she could pretty much imagine what his reply would be. Better a big fish in a little pond, he would say. And of course he was right. With everybody moving away, someone had to stay around to make the money on the ones just moving in. Someone had to close those deals, and it might as well be him. She could certainly see why people trusted him, what with his breezy, take-charge way about him, his light brown hair and oxblood shoes. And now he was a widower. What could be better? She bet he had healthy green plants in his office, plants that flourished and grew burgeoning shoots under his sensual magnetism and charm. She could just see it. And old-fashioned oak swivel chairs behind good, timeworn desks. Not too hard to find around here, if you waited till some three-generations-old business finally collapsed—and made sure you were the first fellow standing there nice enough to pick through the remains and offer handy, heartfelt green cash. Andrew had, she noticed, beneath the camouflage of his expensive tailoring, a fat rear end. She had to snap out of this. What was he saying?

“… so I was looking through these advertisements for boarding schools someone gave me from the back of the New York Times color section. Good schools,” he frowned, “not just farms for bad kids or anything like that. Let’s face it, Dharma could use some discipline. It could be the best thing for her after all these years of Theresa’s dumping her off with whoever would watch her after school so she could get dolled up and … well …” (He was going to be a gentleman here.) “… and go have fun.” His tightened lips let loose and he looked, for once without his guard, betrayed.

Claire imagined the pretty room across from Anthony’s suddenly free. No more depressed morbid presence, heavy with grief to occupy her sunny house. It would be such a relief. Her own family without intrusion, complication. If that room were empty, you never knew, maybe Carmela would move in. What, and leave her husband, her fancy life? It was just a thought, she defended herself to herself. Just because Carmela looked drawn and, well, haggard, didn’t mean things were so bad for her. Still, she knew Carmela would never move back in with their parents again. Never. They’d all done that once already and Carmela would rather wallow in her misery than have to live with her parents’ kind pity again. One divorce was bad enough. Two divorces? They’d never be able to keep that look of martyred, baffled disenchantment from their eyes.

Of course, she could move to the city. SoHo. Yes, that was where Carmela probably would move if she ever left Stefan, though why she imagined Carmela leaving him was beyond her. Wishful thinking, probably. She wanted Carmela all to herself, the way it was when they were kids. Carmela might be a bitch, but she kept you guessing. She wasn’t fun, though. Zinnie was fun, but Carmela was ambiguous, bitchy, affected, unrelenting, exhausting, theatrical, costly, ornamental, artsy, and tarty—and in Richmond Hill, there weren’t that many around who were.

Another thing. If Dharma left, Anthony would have Michaelaen back. Claire had thought Zinnie and his staying would give the two boys a chance to grow as cousins, thought it would be magical for Anthony, but what had happened was that Dharma and Michaelaen had fallen into collusion. Of course—they were about the same age, whispering and secretive and closing Michaelaen’s door against “babies,” meaning Anthony. Her heart broke for her son, little waif alone again. At least Swamiji was there to insist the children be the best they could be. They would spend the rest of their lives benefitting from his holy influence. She stopped the ranting of her mind. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t let Dharma be conveniently shipped off to some fancy, cold-hearted boarding school. Just the thought of Swamiji had reminded her of what she had to do.

“So how’s this idea,” she looked up at him with what she hoped were her still relatively persuasive Siberian-husky blue eyes. “You give me enough money to pay for Dharma’s food and rent, a little extra for entertainment and clothes, and I’ll take her in. Like a foster mother.”

Mrs. Fatima, in her storefront, screwed up her eyes and her nostrils opened wide. She couldn’t stop looking out at Claire. She tapped the end tip of her finger with a rat-tat-tat-tat on the shiny Formica tabletop. She just couldn’t place her.

Andrew looked shocked. “I could never do that!”

“Why not? You’re ready to ship her off to total strangers for what would surely be twenty times what I would ask you. At least with me she’d have a chance—” She revised her wording. “At least if you knew she was with me, you could relax enough about her to go about your job, get the things done that a man has to do. I mean, I’m home anyway. I could help out and—” Here she remembered Johnny’s new hobby, of which she would also remind him, in case he defied her idea. “—make a little extra money. Besides, I like Dharma.”

Not love. Don’t say love. Remember that little boy in the orphanage over in Brooklyn. Remember promises that left kids trying to understand. Standing hotly by while other kids went off to movies and libraries and they got to stay home, dribbling no-bounce basketballs around broken bottles by themselves because one thoughtless pretty white girl had promised she would be there. That they could count on her, not to worry. So, one thing at a time here.

She looked up and could see the wheels turning in Andrew’s busy mind. No one in the parish could accuse him of neglect if he had his daughter with that nice policeman’s family across the street. The wife a faint bit screwy, but probably harmless. Couldn’t be too far off the mark if it was Mary Breslinsky’s daughter. Of course, he would let it slip that he was paying her. Wouldn’t want anyone to think he was using them. Not that Johnny would let him get away with that for much longer anyway.

“You are a saint,” he bowed to Claire. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Don’t thank me. Just let me figure out how much she costs me by the month and we can decide how much to add to it.” He waited long enough for her to think he was turning it over in his reluctant, bereaved mind. “Done!” He looked at his watch. “Oh boy! Gotta run. I’m showing a house up on Park Lane South fifteen minutes ago.”

Fleetingly, Claire thought to show him his wife’s letter, in this new air of agreement between them, but she didn’t. She put her left hand around its crumpled, folded form inside her pocket and she held it there. He shook her other hand and turned to go—then turned back. “Oh,” he said, “let me give you the key and you can run over there and go through her clothes, get what she’ll need.”

“Okay.” She pocketed the key.

“And then if you would just drop off the dry cleaning I left on the dining room table? I know it’s a lot to ask but you can imagine what a madhouse it’s been.”

“Accommodating I am. Subservient I’m not.”

Andrew blinked. His closed mouth drew back its corners. “Of course you’re not. How stupid of me to have thought you might be.”

“An oversight.”

“Not to be forgotten.”

“You bet.” They eyed each other.

“Your appointment.”

“Yuh. Till soon, then.” He made his pointed finger and his thumb into a gun and shot her … a friendly gesture.

“Oh,” she remembered. “You might also add on some money to supply her with paints. She really likes to paint.”

He rushed away, eyebrows up, to indicate he’d heard.

“Now that, Floozie,” she smiled after him and nuzzled the dog, “is what you call a real piece of scheisse.” The kind, noted Floozie, that doesn’t stink. Claire went into the five-and-ten and gazed distracted at the never-changing shelves of loose dusting face powder and My Pinky lipstick and Cutex nail polish. She congratulated herself. She had accomplished what she’d set out to do, what was the “right” thing to do. She shivered in the sudden overheated gloom. She couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that that was exactly the way Andrew Dover had intended her to feel.

Mrs. Fatima put on her wrap, turned the key in her store’s lock, and went in one of the five-and-ten’s doors just as Claire walked out the other.

Zinnie sat at the wheel of her battered silver Datsun on a side street of Forest Hills Gardens. This was not the first time she’d done this. Years ago, before she’d been on the job, when she’d been in college and night jobbing up on Austin Street, she used to come through here with Freddy and they’d dream about their future. Pretend that one day they’d be able to afford one of these places. Fairy tale castles. That’s what they looked like. Come to think of it, she had the same car then that she had now.

Forest Hills Gardens is a neighborhood within all the other neighborhoods. It’s set off limits on smooth, broad lawns, under old-fashioned street lamps that work. The cobblestoned roads have wrought-iron gates, big gates, the kind the artist uses to depict heaven’s entrance, at each periphery. There’s an abundance of red crawling ivy and lead-paned windows. Many of the houses have towers and turrets and it’s all benignly nestled under eminent, lofty trees. Regular police don’t have to bother in there, they’ve got their own intrepid security service. There are no cars. There is a reason for this. If you park in there, they boot your wheel and plaster your windows with some mucky glue that you can’t get off for thirty-seven years. So nobody parks in Forest Hills Gardens without a permit. Even for twenty minutes. Already, Zinnie had had to lower her shield through the window at the diligent if mothballed guard weaving conspicuously in and out the silent streets. She watched his bumper round the bend and went back to her reverie. A last yellow leaf went floating to the just-blown curb. So this was bliss, eh? This was the spot she found herself thinking about when she was on a stakeout over in East New York, holed up in a truck with one eye on a door and one on the clock and neither of them going anywhere. There was a box bay bow window in a mansion across the road. She sipped her Styrofoam cup of black coffee. There were stuffed animals packed into that window. Some real child lived there, she realized, amazed it wasn’t just a castle in Spain, the way it looked. She wondered what a kid from a place like that would be like. Like her own son who hung out in closets? All right, used to. Used to hang out in closets. She had to admit that this Swamiji had accomplished what four years of therapy had not for Michaelaen. Unbelievable. In three weeks he’d gained his trust and even introduced him to yoga. True, Michaelaen’s interest there stemmed from some televised inclination toward the more glamorous and hostile ninja kung fu. But Swamiji had used that enthusiasm to goad Michaelaen into opening the door on his own darkness. This morning Michaelaen had confided to her that Swamiji said he had “met his dragon head on.” “Yeah?” Zinnie had not turned, for fear of spooking him. The psychiatrist had told her she was stopping him from reaching deeper every time her eyes filled up with tears. Michaelaen didn’t want to upset her and so he stopped his own self-investigations.

“What did he look like?” Zinnie had asked. He’d continued to cut out the cardboard figure of Uncle Scrooge from the back of the Corn Pops box with a scissors. “Like Mrs. Dixon,” he’d said. Her heart had almost stopped beating and she had all she could do to not whirl around and take him in her arms. She had said nothing, hoping he would go further, and she was rewarded. “I mean like me watching Mrs. Dixon watching the children,” he’d corrected his picture of his dragon.

“Okay,” she’d said softly, biting her lip, and she didn’t say any more, just looked at him and took a big breath. So he had done the same. That had been the end of it. And, she’d hoped somehow, the beginning.

Zinnie turned on the car radio. The Schubert serenade was playing. Right away she thought of Narayan. Those heartbreaking liquid eyes. She didn’t know if this feeling was love or lust, because it sure as hell felt like both. She could kick herself. There was nothing possible about the situation, no way this could work out. And she couldn’t let Michaelaen see her with this guy, let him see them in a romantic situation that would lead nowhere. The poor kid was confused enough by having a gay, if honorable, father. Although, Zinnie continued to believe, it was other people who were confused and not them. She, Freddy, and Michaelaen all seemed to deal perfectly well with Freddy’s gayness. The only fly in the ointment was their mutually over-protective attitude towards each other when anyone would “put it to them.”

She looked back at that lucky kid’s dolls in that fairy tale house, and she thought of Michaelaen’s quickly, politely put-away toys in Claire’s own great, colorful house. Who was she kidding? She’d never even get to see the inside of a house like that, let alone live in one, own one. She would never have that life of handsome reserve. She would always live along somebody else’s edge. Yes, she was proud and no one gave her what she wasn’t already entitled to, but did it have to be so hard? Did it? These people. They had maids and roses and they didn’t even look at them.

Zinnie appraised the villas left and right. She wondered what these people thought when they woke up under down comforters and the first thing they saw were lead-paned prisms of sunlight, like shimmering jewels on a Persian carpet. Narayan had grown up rich like that. Claire had told her. He was the first grandson of some maharaja, or something. And he’d gone to live with the ascetic Swamiji freely. No one had forced him. No wonder Carmela was always trying to get him to come to one of her shindigs. She was such a snob. Zinnie supposed if Narayan had had money once, he could probably get it again. If it was, after all, his inheritance, Zinnie wondered if this meant inheritance in India or an inheritance you could take out and buy a home with in a place like, say, this?

A yellow cab pulled up. A woman got out. You could tell she was rich. Not just had money. Rich. The color and cut of her short thick hair. Highlights you couldn’t see. The drab subtlety of her loden coat. The woman lifted a garbage can and carried it into the driveway. Her driveway. There was something in that movement, in that simple act, that made it all seem suddenly achievable to Zinnie. She crossed the imaginary bridge. Rich, untouchable lady. Garbage can. Never the twain shall meet. But they did. It had, magically. Easy. And so, who knew, might she. That woman in this notoriously Irish Catholic paradise appeared to be some sort of Iranian. Or Western-educated Syrian. Something definitely not white bread. And here she was. At home, picking up her own garbage can and walking into her own palace backyard. True, it was one of the smaller palaces. Not even as grand as Carmela’s. But it was stupendous nonetheless.

The whole neighborhood was a parody of English country estates set conveniently nose to nose so they could fit in one privileged area cut off from the poor people’s world. Instead of forests stuffed with game for the hunt, they had their canyons of Wall Street and Madison Avenue to sport in. Zinnie wondered if that woman’s husband was lighter or darker than she. Just a thought. So what, she wasn’t allowed to think? She put her foot down on the gas and hightailed it out of there.

Claire knocked one more time on her mother’s kitchen door, but she knew she wasn’t there. The light would be on. The puppies snipped and whined. Stan had foresightedly boarded up the dog door for the time being, and they couldn’t get out to do the world or themselves any harm.

Floozie watched them disdainfully from her perch on Claire’s bag. These were the brothers and sisters who’d turned their backs on her when she’d been apprehended for the reprehensible behavior that had led her to death row. Never mind that they’d had nothing to do with her arrest. Had any of them come forward? Even to the door? Shed a tear? No. She sniffed and looked rather across the street at Iris von Lillienfeld’s old pooch out on the porch. This then, she had heard, was her grandmother, and that then was where she’d look. The love of her grandfather’s, the Mayor’s life, or at least, she readjusted her reverie realistically, the last bitch with whom he’d shacked up.

Claire murmured and sputtered, linked up her hand luggage (where she went, she went loaded down as a pack mule on Ios) and smacked her boot soles against the flat, painted porch floor. It was cold. Claire followed Floozie’s gaze across the street. Lord knew she didn’t get over to see old Iris von Lillienfeld enough these days. They crossed the street. Floozie looked back to see if the other dogs were watching. They were. She sucked in her cheeks and lowered her eyes. Let them have a good look.

Here lived (some said still lived) Iris von Lillienfeld, brilliant if eccentric old foreign woman in a magnificent Queen Anne Victorian, a house young girls meandered by on their way home from school, their books clutched to their fanciful breasts; a house about which they would dream through high school, even on through college, marriages, and then walk past with their own children, still dreaming, a house that set you off, a boy-oh-boy-if-you-could-only-get-your-hands-on-it house. If that old woman would only die. But she wouldn’t, would she?

And the house was filled with dolls, old dolls, bisque antique dolls that she had clothed in excellent, hand-pressed and mended antique togs, for whom she cleaned and which she petted and kept as in some silent orphanage of dreams. Here in her own world, Iris rose and dressed herself in champagne togs to do the job: fragile slips and dresses adorned with cameos on eighteen-carat chains and braids of emeralds woven through her vague coiffure. Iris came and went and walked about in a red silk coat with a gold embroidered dragon on its back.

Today Iris, ironing doily collars on a pint-sized ironing board set on top of a regular one, threw her hands up into the air when her wobbly squinting produced the face of Claire at her door.

“Ja, vot a surprise!” She flung the kitchen door open and took Claire into her bony embrace. Then she spied Floozie. “And who is this? My Natasha’s enkel?! My Natasha’s grandson?!”

“Granddaughter,” Claire corrected, smiling, loosening Floozie’s suddenly timid frame out onto the porcelain-topped table. Floozie looked skeptically about, slipped this way and that and looked pleadingly to Claire. Claire put her bag underneath the dog so she would be on more familiar ground, and the two women stood there inspecting the furry little gal.

“She favors my Natasha, I think,” Iris appraised her critically.

“Yes, she’s more poodle than, er, whatever it was that the Mayor was.”

“Poodle? Natasha is not a poodle! Vot are you thinking? Natasha is a bichon frise.”

“A what?”

“A bichon frise. I voodn’t have a poodle.”

“Oh.”

“Vot’s her name?”

“Floozie.”

“Floozie? Vot kind of a name is dot? Why not just call her trollop? Or hussy?”

“Aw, no. Gee. It’s an affectionate term. Endearing.”

“What’s endearing about an insult?” Iris put the kettle on. She might be old but she kept her kitchen fragrant and clean as a German bakery. Everything was white. The counter gleamed and the ceiling had one of those big ice-cube trays of fluorescent lights. This was all in direct contrast to the rest of the house, which was sort of dusty and dim with extravagance.

“Vot about calling her ‘Duchess’?” Iris offered.

Claire looked at her dog. “She’s got her name. Have you heard who’s staying at my house?”

“Your mother told me. How’s the little dollink doing?”

“Oh, Dharma, yes. All right, I guess. Do you know who else?”

Iris’s eyebrows went up. “Kinkaid told me that. Got you coming and going.” She rubbed her hands as though she were applying lotion.

Claire noticed an iron pan cooling on the sill. “Leeks?” she sniffed.

“Mmm,” Iris looked away.

“What? What’s the matter?”

Iris looked back shrewdly. Claire assessed vibrations well. She shrugged. “So? I cook a little something for an old man nobody cooks for anymore. So sue me.”

“Who?” Her first thought, because of the guilty look she’d seen pass over Iris’s face, was her own father, Stan. But of course that wasn’t it—Mary cooked for Stan three times a day. She couldn’t imagine. Then—“Not Mr. Kinkaid?”

“Come on,” Iris swatted the dog off the table. “Keine Tiere auf dem Tisch. Pfoof! Weg!”

“Well, well, well.” Claire grinned, then saw by Iris’s tightening upper lip she’d been too familiar. There was something rigidly aristocratic about Iris, and it didn’t take much to put her off, close her up to idle scrutiny. She decided to let it alone. “Heard any new poop on Mrs. Dixon?”

Iris snorted. “If anybody knows anything dot’s your mother.” Tit for tat was Iris.

“Yes. Well, my mother’s feeling pretty bad about everything just about now.”

“Pfoof. Wasn’t her fault. Wrong place at the wrong time. Simple.”

Claire and Iris looked doubtfully at each other. Everyone knew by now that Mrs. Dixon had escaped by bopping Mary Breslinsky on the head with a typewriter and climbing through an air-conditioning vent from a room she and Mary would sit in to discuss Mrs. Dixon’s forthcoming book. A room not particularly heavily guarded owing to Mrs. Dixon’s deteriorating health. Supposedly deteriorating health. Now, they figured, those arthritic hands and crippled back had all been an act. A trick. Mrs. Dixon was in the pink of health and had had no use for the wheelchair she’d been driven back and forth in, and which she had so slickly left behind.

“I’ll bet she’s in Boston,” Iris said. “Didn’t she have a sister-in-law?”

“Better tell the cops if you know anything about a relative.”

Iris looked stricken. “I heard dot on the news.”

“Oh. Just so long as she doesn’t come crawling around here anymore, that’s all I worry about. It gets pretty tiresome doing graveyard shifts over at my house. I’ve got the three kids with me, you know. And it’s not like you can let them out alone for a minute.” She overheard the unpleasant whine in her own voice. She cleared her throat and lowered her pitch. “I just wish they’d catch her. Wherever she was headed—she’s there by now. They should have thrown away the key when they had the chance.”

Iris shook her head sadly. “Hard to believe anyone could molest and kill children like that. Let alone someone you know.”

Claire couldn’t bear the thought of Michaelaen watching Mrs. Dixon photographing one of those same children she later molested and killed.

Iris said, “Claire. Dear. I know it’s very hard for you to understand. We can be very sophisticated in the ways of the world and still know nothing of evil. Real evil. It’s not enough to say, vell, she was abused as a child as well. I mean, she was. Mrs. Dixon was. I know. So, see, evil doesn’t start from thin air. But there are others who were abused and turned out to be normal, if sadder, adults. Where the evil takes over is the frightening element, nicht Wahr? Nobody knows about dot.

“Now, how about dot for a nice doggy?” Iris cooed, changing the subject. Her old Natasha had hobbled in to inspect Floozie and the two of them were making nicey-nice underneath the stepladder there.

“How does Anthony like having a dog?” Iris asked.

“Oh, just fine. She fits right in, this one.”

At the sound of Anthony’s name, Floozie bolted to the door and had a look out. Was he coming? Was he coming?

Claire moved uncomfortably in her chair. Usually, Iris couldn’t do enough for her, pulling out cakes and rugalah. Perhaps she’d come at a bad time. Maybe Mr. Kinkaid was on his way? Kinkaid might be an obnoxious, belligerent, racist pain to her, but to Iris, who had spent so many years feeling, what? useless and alone, Kinkaid might have the quality of being, well, alive.

“So,” Claire said and stretched, “just thought we’d stop over. See how you are. We’ll be off, then.”

Like that of so many flamboyant dressers, Iris’s mind was comparatively no-nonsense. And she noticed that under Claire’s blue eyes were circles she had never seen before. She tipped her chin. “Got troubles, girlie? What’s dat Johnny up to?”

“Troubles with Johnny?” Claire smiled wryly. “Not really. I mean, he bought a horse without telling me, a racehorse. But no.” She shook her head. “Not really troubles. Not when you have somebody like Dharma living with you. Now, she’s got troubles.”

Iris walked beside her to the door. “Her troubles are finally over, from wot I heard.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you hear?”

“Pfff. Lots. Mrs. Dover was carrying on all over the place, from vot I understand. Small wonder she was pregnant when she died.”

“She was? Who told you that?”

“Why, Jerry Mahegganey. From the funeral parlor. You didn’t know?”

“No! How pregnant was she?”

Iris shrugged. “Not so much that it showed. But enough that she was.”

“Yeah? No kidding?” She stopped short.

“What?”

“No nothing. I just wonder if she’d told Dharma. Confided in her.”

“Huh. Vot I vonder is if she told the husband.”

“Mm. Come on, Floozie. We’ll come back soon. Okay?” She looked for a shot of warm confirmation from somewhere beneath Iris’s pale blue cataracts, but Iris looked away. The cat, Lü, the Siamese, had come in, as old as anybody’s hills and with eyes as blue as any of theirs. Claire remembered Lü. His name meant “the wanderer” in the I Ching. You never knew where he was till he was right there beside you, he was that quiet. She had the uncanny feeling he was there to see them out. Claire carried Floozie out with a make-believe good-bye grin on her face. Lü stood there intense as an Egyptian statue, watching them watching her, and something told her something was not right. She cast her eyes down on the wooden painted stoop cracks as she went carefully down the steps, looking up quickly at her loose and shimmering reflection in the window and was reminded of a feeling, not tingling, but some strange sensation on her right side. Some sensitivity, like numbness, or stinging or more like both, all along her cheek and right shoulder and down her arm, until she suddenly remembered when she’d had that feeling before. Years ago, four or five years ago (a long time, but that was how peculiar and distinct the feeling was). And not just a feeling: she could almost see the effect on her skin, stung red on that side of her body, like a niacin flush and a bitterness in her mouth like some drug one would take in the old days. But she remembered the feeling and the moment as though it were yesterday. It was when she’d first come home from Europe and was living at her parents’ house across the street. She had helped Iris move her giant foxglove from the shady side of the house to the sunnier side. Not having thought to protect herself, she’d wound up with this stinging numbness all over her hands, on her ear, the ear upon which the foxglove had leaned, her right ear, as though whispering its premonition, not itching exactly but irritating to the point of wonder. She realized what a strong and violent plant that flower was, for all its beauty, and marveled once again, standing there looking, looking at her own reverberating ear in peril’s mirror.