CHAPTER 9

Alone in the dawn among the withering lettuce, Narayan looked at the house. He could hear his bewildered incentive, Zinnie’s bewitching and vaporous song. Was it possible that no one else could hear her? Was he the only one up? The only one who lived at this moment? It was a nice old song Lenny Welch used to sing, “Since I Fell For You.” A sad song, but Zinnie sang it with such joy that it transcended its own meaning. “Hello,” he called. “Hello, Zinnie?” He cupped his mouth and called up to her window. A crow, black and enormous, sat between them up there on the sleek birch branches, listening too. Zinnie was drying her hair while she sang. She supposed she went on unobserved. Narayan hesitated. I would flee and I would stay, he thought, experiencing dread. In the end, he decided he’d better get going and buy the bread. Tonight would be the play and there was much to be done. Fetching the bread was his job. Every day he went. He’d walk down to the Jamaica Avenue bakery and buy a loaf from the back door just after it came from the oven. This was his offering to the family.

At first he’d thought that when he left for Berkeley, then they would miss him, not tasting that superb freshness every morning; they would be reminded that he was no longer there. Now, it had come to mean something else. Now it was he who would miss the hauling of the bread, the face of the baker, the kindly passage of the silvery change. The pale, even faces of this family who rose each day to muesli when they could have any sugared cereal from the shelves of any luxury supermarket. It was he who would miss them. Terribly.

The empty streets grew light and he walked, reconsidering. It wasn’t as though there were no Indian families here in Queens. Wasn’t it true that there were families moving in left and right of Lefferts Boulevard? All the grand old houses were going to Punjabis. He had never seen an Indian and American couple, though. Not with children. But surely there must be such a thing. He’d seen couples like that down in Calangute, in Goa. White and black, with some inevitably dwindling magnetism between them, people who’d run away from both societies, only that never seemed to be very successful together. Somehow, you always got the feeling they had no friends who weren’t there for the precise reason that the couple was interracial. They were sorry, gloomy misfits in their pretty, rented homes along the beach, with their canopy beds from the Portuguese settlers and dirt floors and rats in the kitchen.

This, however, was America. Who, as the albino Jews from Matancherie shrugged and said, knew?

The empty street began to fill with the darting forms of sleepy people, each attached to a dog by a chain. He smiled benignly at each one of them. They clutched their coats around themselves and hurried their dogs along. Narayan might see himself as a harmless, well-educated chap strolling down Venus’s own street, but they saw him as a big black man without a dog up here in their neighborhood, so what was he up to?

Narayan, without incident, obtained his bread and headed back to Claire’s house. He deliberated about his future. He told himself he was arguing the pros and cons of a relationship, but the truth was, Narayan was already hooked. The real question was where, then, would they live? This was charming enough, he mused as he looked around, but there was something shabby about it. He much preferred up east of the woods, the Kew Gardens part where Stefan and Carmela lived. It was more to his class. They could never live in India. Never. Zinnie would never put up with his sisters’ arrogant superiority. Let alone his mother, a woman not unlike the matriarchal Mrs. Panchyli. He broke into a sweat at the thought.

Just then, Narayan spotted billowing smoke from a basement window. Without hesitation, he raced to the corner and pulled down the fire alarm. He raced back to the house, a big gray one, and pounded on the door. It was treacherously silent.

“Hallo!” he shouted. “Fire! Make haste! Come out of the house! Fire!”

Somewhere a shutter flew open and he heard the sound of running feet up someone’s stairway. He banged on the door again. He looked frantically about. A boy, Michaelaen’s age, watched him, wide-eyed, from the corner. “Fire!” Narayan alerted him. The door before him opened. A portly woman, fiftyish, neatly set for the day in a dotted print house dress protected by an apron, stepped back with alarm. She held one arm across the door, barring him.

“Fire!” he gasped and pointed to the side of her house.

“What?” she squinted, no fool she. He probably wanted to get in so he could rob her. Well, she wasn’t born yesterday. She shut the door. “Malcolm!” she cried. Down the steps came Malcolm, shaving cream over half of his face, suspenders down around his pants. He grabbed hold of a golf club and threw open the door. “Fire!” Narayan blinked at both of them, stepping back and pointing to the side of their house. Something in his rebuking demeanor let them know he wasn’t there to do them harm, and they followed him out to the porch where they stood, the three of them, watching the innocent puffy blue air from the dryer escape in a billow of sachet from the vent.

“I’ve rung the alarm,” he assured them. “Is anyone left in the house? Any children or animals?” He was fully prepared for grand valiance.

“What are you, some kinda nut?” Malcolm kept a good grip on his club. “That’s just the dryer! The regular dryer!”

His wife stood, beginning to shiver with cold, right behind him.

Not only that, but the fire brigade would arrive at any moment. Narayan, sensing dilemma, ran charivari away up the block, leaving his bread and his lofty intentions behind.

Nervous excitement rattled the bristling cold branches around Mary’s house. This was the day her one daughter’s play was to open with the other daughter to sing the brilliant lead. A chill went right through her. There wasn’t a leaf left on any a tree. A sickle moon ventured out, loud as the day, and the sun stood one-eighty degrees there against it. Must mean something, Mary thought, she, a great one for symbolics but always too busy to bother. It wasn’t good to see the new moon through the glass, though, she knew well enough. It didn’t bode well. What rubbish, she scoffed at herself, but she lowered the heat on the iron. She was spray-starching and ironing her best green silk dress; she wouldn’t chance scorching it. Freddy was having them all back to his place right after the show. A little spray starch never hurt, she consoled herself, keeping it hidden just the same from the likes of ecologically conscientious Claire. Ridiculous notions! All these experts! They should have lived as she had, down south of Cork on the ledge of the land out of fair Skibbereen, yank your laundry through a wringer and blue-rinse it again and again. These young girls didn’t know what progress was. She held the can at an adequate angle and let go a frothy white mist. Like a shower of ease, this stuff was. Like a bloody fine advert they’d show on the telly. Oop. She heard someone coming. Mary put the can out of sight behind the cannisters and peered through the curtains. “Bugger,” she said.

It was Iris von Lillienfeld. She considered pretending not to be home, but that wouldn’t do any good; Iris’d only come back and she’d do it when the rest of them were about or Stan would be wanting his tea. She might as well face her. Mary patted her hair and flung open the door. “Sure, look who’s come to grace this house,” she beamed and held out her strong arms with a delighted, bright counterfeit welcome.

Over at Claire’s, mayhem reigned. For some reason, Carmela felt her home was off-limits to the cast and she’d directed them to Claire’s. When Claire got a good look at the dwarfs (in this case “dorks”), she understood why. They were a salty lot.

Johnny put every quart of classic Coke under the onions in the pantry. “The hell with them,” he said, “let them buy their own damn Coke.” Swamiji agreed. He’d got the sodas each for ninety-eight cents at the big coupon sale, and he and Mary had transported them home against a stiff, frosty wind. Swamiji, lips busily pursed, now trundled ginger ales, one by one, down to the cellar. These were Anthony’s, he sniffed. “Children thrive on effervescence.”

“Oh.” Claire, astonished, folded her arms across her chest. “And what am I supposed to serve them, water?”

“Yes. Or just plain tea is good enough. And, by the way, it’s not your job to serve them anything. That is what they have ‘take-out’ for. This is the twentieth century, New York, U.S.A.”

“Wait a minute.” She recognized Zinnie’s favorite argument. “Aren’t you the fellow who renounced the world?”

“That means,” Swamiji spoke with his head down at the bottom of the refrigerator, “that I own nothing and everything.” He emerged, agitated, with Michaelaen’s most-favorite chocolate puddings in miniature Rubbermaids. He and Mary had made them the night before with the extra half-gallon of milk. No way these ne’er-do-wells, these vultures, were going to make off with the children’s own yummies, as far as he was concerned. And where were Dharma’s lemon yogurts? He dove back in.

“I suppose you’re right,” Claire agreed distractedly and went into the dining room in search of Carmela. Freddy, on his knees, looked up with a mouthful of pins. He was hemming Portia’s costume. Portia stood on Claire’s newly upholstered hassock.

“Portia, would you mind taking off your shoes, please?” she asked her, more nicely than she felt.

“If she takes off her shoes,” Freddy protested without opening his teeth, “she won’t hem right.”

“Well, then put her on some telephone books.”

“All right, all right, you don’t have to be so testy,” he said, and he winked at Portia.

Claire was about to say she would let that one pass when she noticed Andrew sprawled comfortably across her love seat. Just his being here, languidly ogling Portia’s creamy big jugs—half in and half out of quivering blue crepe de chine—burned her up. He was supposed to be visiting with Dharma. That was the reason he’d come.

The telephone rang on the table beside her and she picked it up angrily. Through the living room flew the dorks. They were rehearsing the bit where they stood on the top of the couch and tipped it over slowly, nicely balanced, the way Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn would do.

“What!” sputtered Claire.

Carmela raced up and patted her hand. “Now, Claire,” she pacified her. “Don’t be cross. It works so much better on your couch than on the one we’ve got over on the stage. Daddy said he’d be very, very careful when they move it. You know how fastidious he is.”

“I never said—”

“Oh, I know you didn’t, darling, but just look how well it works. Just watch! All their hard work is finally paying off. They’re not real dancers, you know. They could use any break they can get.”

“What about using your couch, then, if it’s so important!”

“My couch?! Stefan’s Louis quinzième? You must be joking. He’d never let it out of the house.”

“Well, I’m not sure Johnny would want our”—They looked together at the clumsy, club-footed atrocity before them—“Our whatever-it-is, out of the house, either.”

“Oh, yes, he would. He said we could. He did. He said if it never came back it would be all too soon.”

Claire bit her lip. “Carmela, if anything happens to that couch, I’m holding you personally responsible. I don’t care what Johnny said, got it?”

Carmela arched one pencilled brow. “You’re starting to sound more and more like him every day, do you know it?”

“Carmela—”

“Is that for me?” Carmela looked at the receiver in Claire’s trembling hand.

“Hello?” said Claire.

“Claire? It’s Mommy. Got the whole shebang at your place, I hear. You all right?”

“Tch. Yeah. I guess so.”

“Claire, don’t worry, dear. Nothing lasts forever. Tomorrow this will all be over, won’t it?”

“I guess so.” She watched Carmela sashay off to go bully a dork.

“And Daddy’s there, isn’t he?”

“He’s here, all right, Mom. He’s carting off my couch for props.”

“Oh, well. He’ll bring it back. Mind he watches the legs. That was your Great-Aunt Greta from Pomerania’s good stuff.”

“There are moments I wonder why I just didn’t stay in South Ozone Park,” Claire heard herself whine.

Mary laughed. “You wanted a houseful of people.”

“I did.”

“Next time, careful what you wish for. You’ll get it.”

“I know.”

“And dear, it means so much to Carmela.” She said this with the same worried, tragic tone in which she’d taken to referring to Carmela all the time lately. Poor Carmela. On the verge of her very own play being produced and she didn’t even get her house messed up.

“Oh. Claire. The reason I called. Remember what you told me that time, about Mrs. Dixon coming into the house back then and yanking the hall wire of the radio so it would fall into your tub and electrocute you?”

“Of course I remember.” Claire was losing patience. Someone had ordered pizza and the delivery boy was here and now everyone was waiting for everyone else to go pay. Well, she wasn’t going to.

“That was the day I got my hair cut, remember? You told me that was the same day. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t quite know what to make of it and I couldn’t for the life of me remember back that far. You know how I forget. And it was so long ago. Anyway, Iris von Lillienfeld was here a little while ago and we had a nice cup of rosy together and we got to talking, Claire and … Claire? It couldn’t have been Mrs. Dixon tried to do that to you, because Mrs. Dixon was with me. All day. See, that was the day she drove me to the cemetery to go visit Michael’s grave. We never did mention that to you because, well, no one wanted to upset you, like. Are you listening, Claire?”

“Yes,” Claire whispered.

“Because, first we went to the cemetery and then she took me to her salon where she always went, on Myrtle Avenue, there, in Glendale, oh, what’s it called? Laraine’s. Or Elaine’s or something. But the point is, she and I were together all the live-long day. See, after I had my braids cut off, I was feeling a mite low and she took me to Jahn’s for a double-fudge marshmallow ice cream sundae. Isn’t it odd? I remember every detail just as though it were yesterday. And all because Iris remembered that Mrs. Dixon and I went to the cemetery. Iris had given me such a nice potted plant for the grave. A pale peach rose.” She waited, shyly. “It’s still there. It took. Anyway, that was the same day I had my hair cut. She says she remembered thinking it was symbolic, that I’d made the decision to move on, like. To come back to the living. And I was annoyed—I hate that psychoanalysis stuff—because I’d come back to the living way long before that, see, and I told her so, good. So Iris and I were talking over old times, the good things about Mrs. Dixon, you know, the way you will be wanting to speak well of the dead and all, she was a good neighbor after all, and I was telling Iris how kind she’d been to me that day, she’d even paid for those sundaes, you know, and all of a sudden I remembered how you said how she’d tried to do that to you on the day I’d got my hair cut and so help me, Claire, it all came back to me in a rush. And I remembered the whole episode, like. So you see, Claire, it couldn’t have been Mrs. Dixon who tried to do that to you. Because, see, she was with me.”

At the Harvard Club, where Jupiter Dodd used to like to take Claire to lunch, in the room set aside for ladies with their well-behaved children, or simply guests unwilling to wait with the rest, there is a painting on the wall by John Singer Sargent. It’s called Chess Game and in it, on the edge of a shimmering lily pond, in oasis-dappled light, recline two players, a pantalooned young man and a veiled and slender woman. They are engrossed. He knows what he’s about. She is dark, self-possessed, and serious. The chess board, however, is suspended above ground. Such a mystic thing for such solid sport. He might not really be there, one considers, and neither, perhaps, is she, just an inspiration to his imagination. But then again, they’re always there, those two, up on the dark red, time-honored wall, playing.

Claire often thought about that painting. And talked about it. Such an ideal spot to be. “You can’t live in a painting,” Zinnie would remind her. “No,” she would say. She was thinking of that painting now in her own house, and not mentioning it to Zinnie, who sat with her on the stairs, because she knew what she would say. And Zinnie, who had enjoyed psychology in college, always insisted that the painting reminded Claire of Michael. There was truth in everything, Claire supposed, but she knew Zinnie worried about her. Zinnie looked so happy lately. She glowed with an inner light. Everyone dismissed it as a by-product of show biz, but Claire knew there was something going on with Narayan. She could hear them whispering downstairs late into the night. The two of them were so dazed, they were banging into walls. Also, she had watched from her bedroom window as Narayan pulled Zinnie into the garage and kissed her. Not only had Zinnie let him, Claire remembered, she had watched Zinnie’s black-stockinged leg travel up and around Narayan’s waist like a lasso.

She and Zinnie played Go Fish. The cast had all gone home, or, as Carmela said, to their respective hovels. They had started off playing cards with the kids, Claire and Zinnie, but the kids had gotten bored and petered off, Anthony first, who now played distractedly with the Jacob’s Ladder Narayan had made him from ribbons and glue and old cardboard. Johnny lay, half dozing, on the loveseat. Anthony caught Claire’s eye and led her gaze to the spot under Johnny’s arm, where his robe was washed thin. Anthony was always full of tricks and games and festivities lately. Conspiratorially, mother and son locked eyes. He pussyfooted silently across the room, grazed a finger along Johnny’s breast till he reached the pit of his arm and then wiggled the digit. Johnny’s arm flew down protectively and he lurched. Anthony howled with laughter. “Let’s do it again!” he cried and so they did. Johnny closed his eyes and Anthony went back to where he’d been originally sitting and they repeated the entire charade. Anthony enjoyed himself just as much each time as the first and he laughed with abandon.

Swamiji, sewing up the wash-worn seams of Claire’s embroidered Chinese pillowcases, smiled dotingly.

It was very still outside the house.

Dharma pulled Claire’s great lot of hair behind her head and wound it into a French braid. Michaelaen and Narayan were captivated with their game of Nintendo. Stan had insisted upon his radio station and no one had bothered to change it. Even though their own lives tended them towards more current music, the Breslinsky girls all felt most at home and contented within the strains of the classical music on which Stan had raised them. These pieces were so lovely; Barber’s adagio for strings and then Haydn’s concerto for flute and oboe. No one wanted to move. It was like being under a spell. The weather wasn’t sunny, but quick, silver clouds were gathering and a woolpack of pearly light shone through Swamiji’s now spotless windows, lifting everyone’s spirits up and keeping them aloft.

The dog slept in a rectangle of light on Freddy’s old Dhera Gaz in the middle of the room. Floozie had always liked that rug. It might have gotten her into trouble back when she lived with Fred, but it had, in the end, led her here, hadn’t it? There would be hamburgers and macaroni and cheese for supper. She sighed happily, yawned, stretched, turned over, and went back to sleep.

“The thing is,” Claire said suddenly, “if Mrs. Dixon wasn’t the one who pulled the wire on the radio—and it wasn’t, it’s perfectly clear now that it wasn’t—then who did do it?”

Everyone groaned. “Go fish,” said Zinnie.

“I mean,” she continued nonetheless, “that changes everything, doesn’t it?” She looked from one face to another. No one would meet her eyes. They knew what she was getting at. She had this tic in her head that Andrew Dover had killed his wife and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, shake it.

As far as Johnny was concerned, the case was closed. He had never wanted to hear Mrs. Dixon’s name again; that case was long closed. And Andrew Dover had been with Portia McTavish the day Theresa Dover had died. They’d been seen by sources left and right. Christ, they’d even stopped at Freddy’s. So the guy was guilty of adultery, so what? So was half the world. What were you gonna do, hang him for cheating? Anyway, the coroner had said it was open and shut; she’d died of a stroke, brought on by drugs and alcohol. Both her parents had died that way, hadn’t they? Far as he could tell, Theresa Dover was just one more slut junkie out of the way. You couldn’t say that to Claire, though. His wife was a slight bit pixillated in her brain. He looked at her over there across the room, with the little girl brushing her hair and putting it back in a fancy rope like that, all reddish and fluffy and dark. That same old ache he always got from the sudden sight of her came back with impatience. He rolled the toothpick around in his mouth. You get a house, you pay a mortgage, and you can’t even screw your wife, he grumbled to himself, standing up to get rid of the hardness.

Claire felt his itchy look, mistook it for annoyance and she figured she’d better change the subject. This was turning into a sore topic. If only she could get Johnny alone for a couple of minutes, she knew she could blow in his ear and loosen him up enough to hear her out. He stood up and started for the door. Now where was he off to? “Now where are you off to?” She tried not to wear her interrogator’s face.

“The barn,” he said.

“Aw, Johnny, today? You promised you’d be here all day. The minute you have any time off lately, you’re off to the track.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Anthony piped up, backing her up.

“I’m just going over to the barn,” Johnny stretched, filling the room with his big hulking self. “We’re getting the horse a goat, while she heals.”

“A goat?” they all cried.

“Yeah, why? Keep her company. They like goats.” He looked at all of them looking at him with open mouths. “Whatsa matter? You got something against goats?”

“I wanna go!” Anthony cried.

“Me too,” Michaelaen pleaded.

“All right, all right,” Claire gave in, watching, spellbound, as Johnny loaded the bullets into his Colt Detective Special. Usually, she looked away, pretending to herself that life would never be that bad again. Still, she was glad he wore it. He was alive. And protected. She might feel safe enough inside her white light, but she liked her husband in a gun. “Just be back way before supper,” she warned. “I want you all in and out of here and the place cleaned up before I have to get dressed for the play.”

“We’ll be back, don’t you worry,” they all promised. Sure. They all promised the moon when it took them to the track. She would not be annoyed, she vowed. She couldn’t stand women who were always annoyed. She would relax, smile, and enjoy their happiness. There was anyway no sense to being upset when it would get her nowhere. Somehow, the bills would get paid and the mortgage dealt with. And if they didn’t, she would deal with that, too. Isn’t that what mommies and housewives the world over did? Well, she would do it, too.

“Dharma?” she turned around and looked into the uncanny, curious eyes, so like those of her schoolmate. “Did you want to go with them?”

“Good Lord, no,” Dharma assured her. She wasn’t one for horses. They were so big. They smelled of, well, horse.

Johnny came back in. He whacked the chair beside Swamiji’s head with a bing.

“Didn’t you tell me you had a number you wanted me to play for you?”

“I have a number I appreciate that you might use, if you like.”

Johnny rocked back and forth expectantly.

“One sixty-five,” said Swamiji. “Leviticus.”

“Whatever,” Johnny grinned at Claire.

She shook her head. “You’re too much. Now, where’s Anthony?”

“He’s with Michaelaen.”

They both peered suspiciously out the window, the most precious thing in their lives out there walking around in a pair of rickety sneakers.

“You’ll be careful.” She tried not to sound worried.

Anthony, out on the lawn, sneezed twice. Johnny and Claire glanced, concerned, at each other.

“I didn’t hear any ‘God bless you’s’ in there,” his grown-up, curmudgeony voice came reprimandingly through the shut window.

“Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

“Remind me to call Red when I get back,” he said. “He’s not feelin’ too hot.”

Johnny went out the door and whisked Anthony into the air, depositing him beside Michaelaen in the back seat of the car.

“Move over, fart breath,” Anthony said.

“Get a grip, rhinoceros nostrils,” Michaelaen said.

Claire watched Johnny strap him in. She whispered, “God bless you,” and she went back to her place. She was nervous. There was so much still to do.

“You are veddy, veddy wise,” Swamiji bobbed his head whimsically at Claire. Floozie got up, looked around for a cozier spot, jumped up and squished herself in the space between him and the side of his chair.

“Got no choice.” Claire shrugged, anyway pleased that he’d noticed.

“Yes, but you’re letting him follow his bliss.”

“He’d do it anyway,” she snorted, “whether I let him or not.”

“Ah, people always do what they want to do,” he agreed, “but if you don’t permit him with grace, it would not be his bliss.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“There is so much power in one’s attitude,” Swamiji squinted one eye and threaded the needle he held in the air. “If only people knew.”

“Knew what?” Dharma stopped pulling the hairs from the brush and looked up.

“How much power they have.”

“Oh,” they both said.

In the garlicky, Jell-O-boxed pantry, where the mirror hung amid the cans of bright yellow creamed corn and wheat-germ jars filled with pasta and grains, Mary stood before her in her shimmering green dress. The dress was all right, Claire supposed, but the hat had to go. It had a veil, a sort of stiff go-to-meeting netting thing that stuck up into the air.

“Something wrong?” Mary painted green eyeshadow across her crepey lids with a shaky, unpracticed hand.

“No, nothing.” She didn’t like to tell her she looked like she was off to a wedding in Woodhaven. It didn’t matter. Mary would take it as a compliment anyhow. “You look terrific, Ma.” Now where was Johnny? He’d just come in and he’d gone off again. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was O.T.B. before they were closed.

“I’m as nervous as a girl. My own daughter singing lead in an off-Broadway play. And another one wrote the whole thing … it’s too brilliant.”

“Off-Broadway?”

“All right, Off-off-Broadway.”

“How about, ‘Only forty-five minutes from Broadway’?” Claire suggested.

“Oh, you’re just jealous,” Mary threw her gloves at her. “I can’t get this bloody hat on!”

“You might take that as a sign, Mother. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”

“Oh, you and your signs!”

“Come on, let me help. Hmm. Hold still, will you? No, you’re right. It needs a bobby pin.”

“Bobby pin, my foot! You’ll ruin my hat.”

“Don’t you have a hat pin?”

“Bugger. Why would I carry about a loose hat pin?”

“Better than a loose hat. Oh, stop! Ma! What, are you going to cry over a silly old hat? Mom! Tch. Here, take this Kleenex. Now stop it or you’ll ruin your pretty eye makeup.”

“Serve me right.” Mary sniffed, “trussied up like a bleedin’ harlot.”

“Oh, you’re not. You look beautiful. Just beautiful.”

“D’you think so?” She turned to face her and the hat slipped down to the bridge of her nose. They both laughed long and hard. Nerves. They were both nerved up with excitement.

“Hang on.” Claire dried her own eyes. “I know where I saw some hat pins.” She grabbed her keys and threw on her coat.

“Ah, now, don’t be goin’ out for it,” Mary moaned.

“Be still. I’ll be right back. I have to run over Dharma’s anyway, to get her winter boots. Suppose it snows?”

“Oh, now, don’t go there, using her things. I don’t want any dead woman’s things.”

“You make it sound so sinister.” She pushed her out of the way with her shoulder and regarded herself in the mirror. She didn’t look so bad. “It won’t snow. It’s too early for snow.”

“By the way,” Mary tried to sound casual, “what’s Swamiji goin’ to wear?”

“Same old Swami winter wear. You know him.” Mary didn’t say anything. “What? What’s the matter? You’re worried what someone will say about Swamiji, aren’t you? Mom,” her voice rose shrilly, “how can you go to church every day and be a Christian when you read the papers, clicking your tongue at the devil on the very streets of Queens county, and then you turn around and question what the other parishioners will think of someone … someone …” she sputtered, “… better than all of them, just because if he’s black you think he ought to wear a suit and tie like a Pakistani urologist and not the homespun of the holy man he is.”

“What do you think of this polish?” Mary extended her nails for inspection. Claire’s righteous heart melted. Plenty of Clorox and Spic and Span and ammonia had gone into those knuckly mitts. “Boy. Gorgeous. Where’d you find that one?”

“Right down here in Woolworth’s. Would you believe it? Oop! Who’s that?” She flipped her eye shadow case into the air in an acrobatic frenzy. It landed somewhere in the colander full of bleeding eggplant for tomorrow’s parmigian.

“I’ll never find it now,” she cried.

“It’s in the pot of water pressing the eggplant down,” Claire reassured her. “I’ll get the door while you fish it out. It’s Zinnie. She just had to go to the bank.”

“What’s this?” Zinnie stood there accusingly, having let herself in the back door, a Parcel Post package in her hand. “And there’s a letter for Swamiji.”

“You look beautiful, dear!” Mary whispered.

“Well, who’s it addressed to?” Claire grabbed the package from her. “Dharma? She’ll like that. I wonder who’s sending her something? It isn’t her birthday, is it? Christ, I don’t even know when her birthday is, do you believe it?”

“Can you do up my buttons?” Zinnie turned and led them out of the pantry. She was corseted up in a black, low-cut dress. All the ladies in the cast were dressed low-cut. Carmela thought they might as well keep the men in their seats once the parish wives had gotten them there. Otherwise it would look so bad, she said, all the fellows out in the lunch room smoking and guffawing. Carmela didn’t much like men, anymore, or give them much credit, Claire noticed, for all her manufactured girlie magnets to attract their attention.

Zinnie wriggled happily across the kitchen. She loved playing the bitchy witch, she said. She’d always felt sorry for her, could never relate to those good fairy people, with their namby-pamby pinks and blues and their magic wands and their powdered wigs. “These here,” she hoisted her chest up with no-nonsense fingers, unringed and untaloned, “are the goods.” Later they would paint her face downward to age her, but for now she looked the dandy enchantress she was.

“Holy Jesus,” Stan exclaimed as he came up from the cellar. “Look at you!”

“If I don’t eat something now,” Zinnie beseeched Claire, “I won’t have anything till after the play. I can’t wait.”

“I’ll run in and get that hatpin later, Mom,” Claire said. “Don’t worry.”

“Tea and toast,” suggested Mary. She screwed in her best Cladagh earrings.

“Anything! English muffins!” Zinnie drew Anthony’s Peter Pan sword from its sheath and broke lance around the kitchen. “Food!” she cried out. “My bounty, me pretty, my just deserts before the party begins! This will be my wish! Hand over, or next you’ll walk the plank!”

“Ow. Watch it, will you? That hurts. And get off the table before Anthony sees you and thinks that’s a great idea,” said Claire.

“I won’t!”

“You jolly well will.” Mary smacked her on the feet.

“Where are the children?” Claire asked.

“I can see them from here,” Zinnie said, “they’re all three of them out in the yard.”

“What are they up to?”

“Doing the pony, from the look of it. Wait. Oh. They’re playing potsy.”

“Quiet, everyone!” Stanley held up his hand. “It’s Debussy!”

“Give me the butter, Mom,” Claire instructed.

“It’s ‘Reflections in the Water,’” Stan insisted, not believing, still, after all these years of his inspired instruction, they wouldn’t be more delighted.

Swamiji cleared his throat from the doorway. Only the rippling sound of music was between them but Claire knew, right then, that that was it, he’d be gone from them soon. There was an open space, like weight, in a circle between them.

“What’s up?” Zinnie slid from the table.

“It’s this letter that’s come for me finally,” Swamiji said, “from the people at Berkeley.” So the five of them sat down to listen and completely forgot Dharma’s package sitting there in full view on the cool pantry shelf.

Mrs. Fatima put down her spoon, snapped her purse shut, and pushed the table away from her great lap with a scrape. She looked herself over in the silver papered wall. This dress was clean enough. Her daughters had already left for the play. She herself had never been to an American play. She wondered if she should wear something else. No, she would have her coat on the whole time anyway. It was cold in those auditoriums and she was sure it would snow. She’d been watching channel seven. She would wear the Totes her oldest daughter had given her for her birthday. She opened her purse up again and looked inside. Her pudgy face lit up with greedy delight. Andrew Dover paid her handsomely. And all she had to do was put off any dark-skinned people from buying north of Jamaica Avenue. So many came in for a reading when they wanted to buy a new house, white and black. They were all superstitious. Such an enormous purchase required much deliberation and why not a consultation with an astrologer as well as a real estate agent? Who better than the local fortuneteller? It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a real astrologer. They thought she was. And Andrew Dover had always just finished dropping some amazing story of how he had gone to her for a reading, just on a lark, and had gotten such great advice about not buying that old building on Eighty-sixth Street that nobody could move and which was now condemned. Crazy, he would shake his head, wonderingly, but true!

Mrs. Fatima knew enough of the lingo to give them a good scare. Ill winds to the north. Sunlight and much happiness to the south. And all the while acting as though she didn’t know what it was they were asking about. It was so simple it was absurd. All she had to do was keep her eyes open and see who went in and out of Dover Estates. Didn’t hurt anybody. She was a woman who wouldn’t hurt a soul. But this was America. Gotta make a buck, right? She tottered across the dirty floor with her tub of rum raisin ice cream and closed it safely away in her portable freezer. She shut it tight and let loose a satisfied and well-fed belch, then went to pull down the gate and lock up. You had to lock up. This neighborhood was going to the dogs.

Dharma took hold of her package and climbed the stairs. She went into the closet and unwrapped the paper and the string and pushed them under Michaelaen’s Ninja Turtles toy sewers. Carefully, she opened the glossy white box. There was pretty tissue paper. She plucked it off, and underneath found a pair of earrings on black velvet, glittering tourmaline. “Unlucky,” she could just hear her mother say. Still, they were hers. She held them up to her ears, got up and ran with them like that to the mirror. She stood up on the neatly filled suitcase. In the last slanting rays of afternoon light they were shimmering and irresistible. She smiled unhappily into the blazing yellow mirror.

Claire went through Tree’s front hallway with the same trepidation she always felt in there. Only this time she was all alone. Well—she looked at loyal Floozie at her feet—not all alone. She’d just get what she needed and be out before she went and got spooked. She was always much more of a coward at night and soon it would be dark. One of the cats from down the block was outside in the yard yowling unpleasantly. Was that Lü? Miss von Lillienfeld’s cat? She peeked out the window at the scattered yard. What was he doing over here? Oh. The moon.

She scanned the room quickly. Andrew shouldn’t leave his valuables out like that, on his desk. His passport, his money, and checks and things. Although, she realized, the only snoop here was she.

In Dharma’s room, she found the rest of the things she needed quickly. She was a little taken aback at the disarray. Probably Andrew had been in there looking for another school uniform to give her. She went back inside to inspect the hats along the wall. Those hats were valuable, she realized. They ought to be wrapped up and put into boxes for Dharma one day when she could appreciate them. Tonight, she would discuss it with Andrew, after the play. Or before. Andrew, elusive as silk when there was anything time-consuming to be dealt with, had to be tackled and tied down in front of Johnny. He didn’t brush Johnny off lightly, she noticed. He was even, if she wasn’t mistaken, a little bit afraid of him. No one would mind, surely, if she just borrowed the one hatpin for her mom. She slid the most beautiful one, a cluster of dangling pink foxglove petals, from a crispy red straw bonnet. “My God,” she said to Floozie. It was a good ten inches long. “I don’t think we need anything that, um, phallic.” She stuck it back in and went for another, a glass-blown daisy poking modestly out of a white linen cloche.

Gorgeous stuff, she thought, wrapping the shorter, more suitable pin in a hanky and putting it carefully into her pocket. There was one really stunning, glass-blown one, she noticed, depicting the borage flower. It was stuck into a brown sunbonnet. There must be a set. Yes, it was borage, all right. You couldn’t mistake that flower, the color too blue, the five-petal star unique. That was the flower of happiness, she remembered, having photographed all Swamiji’s herbs and labelled them to boot. Borago officinalis: The Latin name clicked into her consciousness. She cheerfully congratulated herself for a memory, which, though reduced in efficiency from years of abuse, still, apparently, occasionally functioned. The hell, she said, and she switched the pins. Her mother deserved all the happiness she could get.

She looked thoughtfully around the hallway of hats and drifted, no longer intimidated by the emptiness of the house, into Tree’s kitchen. Here, then, was where the two of them would have sat chatting over steaming cups of coffee, or tea, from the look of Tree’s exotic row of cannisters. There were brightly colored Chinese tins: rectangles, exquisite oblongs, and unusual hexagons. All of them were from the notorious Kennedy Town in Hong Kong. They were just too delightfully beautiful, she marveled, sitting down to look more closely, and open, and sniff. The Great Wall of China was pictured wrapped in pale greens and blues around a six-sided Woo Long tea tin. There was a clove spice tea in a black cannister oblong dotted with gold, pinks, reds, and greens. She pulled off the lid, all red and yellow circles, and swooned. Such a sweet, far-off fragrance! It transported her to the high hills of clean, melting snow.

Floozie, set to get going since a while, nipped at her feet. Claire ignored her. There was nothing in fact she enjoyed more than this sort of reverie. But the prettiest picture, on the jasmine tea tin, and certainly the gaudiest, was a six-sided scene on green grass and blue sky of a throng of twenty-four brightly clothed children carrying a phoenix lantern and playing cymbals and drums and bright golden horns.

Claire slid out of her coat. The lid, as she held it, popped off, and as she wedged it back on carefully she noticed, stuck behind the others, Tree’s mother’s paisley tin from years ago.

“The treasure tin!” she cried out loud. She almost could not believe her eyes. Then she realized. But of course, where else would you keep your tin but with the others? You see, she congratulated her adult self, you lose your fear, you’ll be rewarded! The jasmine tea lid popped off again and fell, clattering, to the floor. She almost jumped through the roof. Floozie sprang onto her lap, soothing them both. Claire jimmied open the lid of the old paisley tin with a dime from her pocket.

It was like looking into a fairy box. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t what she saw, for there, in front of her, were enough emeralds and opals and rubies and heaven-knew-what other glittering gems to finance a first-class overland expedition for eleven to North Dharam Sala and back to Graubunden.

She hadn’t a clue what to think. She didn’t know—should she take this home and hand it over to Johnny? But then, why? Who, in this business, was he? She could just hear the disgust in his voice when she tried to talk to him about it. Oh, she should have taken that other stone she’d found straight to Iris when things had calmed down. She shouldn’t have hid it in her underwear drawer. She would bring it tonight and show Iris. Should she take all this and hide it for Dharma? Because certainly Andrew had no idea of the worth in this tin on his high kitchen shelf.

Or did he? Was that why he suddenly seemed to have money? No more cares in the world? A cold chill went through her. Suppose he came home as she was leaving the house with this hoard? He’d have her arrested. Or, worse, he’d accuse her and then let it go, making it look like he’d dropped charges out of the goodness of his heart. In Richmond Hill, there weren’t many who would give her the benefit of the doubt. The half of them looked at her as though she were loony as it was, what with the Buddha in the backyard and the swami in the hammock in the upstairs window and she herself, lurching deliberately about with her long-lens Olympus and her ugly, runt-legged dog.

She put the lid back on. “Come on, Floozie,” she said, suddenly not feeling so well. She’d better get back, before they all started accusing her of making them miss the first act and plotting to bamboozle Carmela’s play. They would say she was jealous of Carmela. They might be, she conceded at this point, quite right.

The whole house was lit up as they crossed the street. Stefan was sitting out on the front steps. He was wearing a tux and he’d taken the doormat to sit on. “You’d better hurry,” he glowered, accusingly. “They’re all waiting for you. Where, in the name of God, have you been?”

“Stefan!” she gasped. “In Tree’s house. In Dharma’s house, you won’t believe what I found!”

Michaelaen flung open the door. “Here she is!” he cried out. Anthony flew from inside. “Mommy!” he shouted, and threw himself into her arms.

“Don’t you know what’s happened?” Stefan yelled at her.

“Claire!” Mary came out the door.

“What’s wrong?”

Freddy came out, too. He didn’t look happy. “You won’t believe it,” he said, “they’ve forecast a storm.”

“Tonight,” Mary sobbed, peering furiously up to the sky.

“Don’t you see?” Freddy took hold of her elbows. “Now, none of the good ones will come.”

“Good ones?”

“Critics! Newspaper people! You think it’s easy to get them out here?”

Claire shook her head at the sky. “That can’t be.” But it could.

“Come inside,” Mary said. They were standing out there on the porch in a huddle. Mary shepherded them in. Stan stood there holding Mary’s coat. He was dressed in his well-brushed, if shiny, nice navy-blue suit and the cranberry tie Carmela had given him last Christmas. He looked tired, Stan did, but still handsome. He held Dharma’s hand. She’d been ready to go since this morning, their Dharma, only now she was complete with her muff.

“You’d better get dressed,” Mary told Claire.

“Oh, I can go as I am,” she said.

They all looked, she was almost amused to note, aghast. “All right, all right. Maybe I’ll just run up and jump into the tub. I can be ready in ten minutes. Where’s Zinnie?” she asked.

“She’s already there, Aunt Claire. We didn’t know where you was!”

“Where you were,” Mary corrected automatically. “Claire,” she called as Claire went flying up the stairs, “put on that nice beige sheath. We’ll wait for you.”

“Beige sheath?” she wrapped her hair in a towel and jumped into the tub. Was her mother finally losing her marbles? She hadn’t had a beige sheath since high school. Quickly she slathered her body top to toe in Mysore government sandalwood soap and rinsed off with the handy hose she’d insisted Johnny put in for shampooing the kids. You see, she told him silently, now, doesn’t that save time? She was getting a little bit giddy with excitement for her sisters. And wait till she told them about the treasure!

There was not, as she’d hoped, some magically installed appropriate outfit hanging in the closet. There was some sort of commotion going on downstairs. Her mother would take care of it. Johnny was dressed and gone, she saw. How could she miss it, his old clothes strewn dramatically across the room. Those socks, she sighed, would never get clean.

Let me see. She stood back. Come on, come on. What would look great? All right then, what was clean and pressed? Why on Earth had she waited this long to get dressed? She would simply wear black. There was one lot of clothes Claire would keep for her more bloated intervals throughout the year. Now if she could come up with an opaque pair of tights with no run. But where were they? There you go! She went down on her knees and shimmied through to the back of the closet floor and came up with a still-good pair of sort-of riding boots. They were a little bit scuffed. She dumped open her purse and blackened the toes and heels with her mascara, then rubbed them briskly with a tissue and threw the mascara into the bin. She needed a new mascara, anyhow. She peered into the mirror. There were eyebrows there she hadn’t seen since she was a girl, and then for only as short a time as it took her to run for a tweezer and pluck them out. Claire didn’t know what sensual female warrior instinct drove her to proclaim herself entitled to her own antennae, despite the perpetual signals of self-loathing from all the major networks, but there it was.

She flew down the stairway, still brushing her hair, and knew by the relieved looks on her family’s worried faces that she hadn’t made a mistake. She would do for her sisters, her family. She wouldn’t embarrass them with her eccentric foreign clothing. This, after all, was their night.

Swamiji stood at the front door, swaddled in cashmere, all set to go. He had bought a corsage for Mary and she wore it, reverently, upon a rubber band atop her gloves. Freddy, very dapper, swept them into the double-parked little parade of cars. Johnny had gone on ahead and had been instructed to stay put at the door. Guard the take. Just in case. You never knew what might happen. This wasn’t the old days, Mary’s eyes shone feverishly as she told Swamiji, when you could walk the streets without the slightest regard.

Yes, yes, they all agreed and slammed the door as Mary pulled her phosphorescent skirts in and out of the way. Anthony sat on Claire’s lap. For one night, just this special occasion, they would drive the few blocks without seat belts. She nuzzled his hair, just like his father’s own, with her nose. This, then, was a moment to cherish. Here they were on their way to what would always be looked back upon as a milestone in every one of their lives. They would not all be here together next year, she knew, counting heads in the old car as it went bumping along the great potholes. Swamiji was in the lead car with her parents but in hers, commandeered by Fred, were an astonishingly dressed Iris von Lillienfeld (Iris had really dug out the glad rags for this one) and Mr. Kinkaid, who was pressed in there beside her. He’d done them all the honor of reviving his retired brown suit. Narayan had the other two kids riding with him in Stefan’s fancy car.

“Get a load of this,” Claire opened her hand underneath Iris’s aristocratic, freely running nose. Iris couldn’t see what it was at first, and Claire had to be patient while she took aim and focused her eyes. The stinging smell of mothballs and the green-olive tilt of martinis lit up the rear of the car. It would take more than that under Iris’s belt to slow her down, though. She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll give you five thousand for it,” she said, gazing back out the window. “Tonight.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s not mine to sell, but thanks anyway. I should have shown you this when I found it.” She would have gone on but they were already there. Andrew Dover stood behind a poster-festooned card table at the front door. He wore, if Claire wasn’t mistaken, a paisley ascot. Johnny stood self-consciously beside him.

“Just as I predicted,” Fred complained. “Nowhere to park.”

“We should have walked.” Iris rapped her ring against the window pane.

Mr. Kinkaid, genuinely concerned for the hammertoes squashed inside his brand-new shoes, resolved to take himself home early. Victory at Sea would be on at eleven.

Claire watched Johnny as they drove past. He wore his beloved black silk shirt, black jeans, and a black gangster jacket. He smoothed his lapels and rocked back and forth, always comfortable in his chase-the-perp Reeboks. His Felony Flyers, he called them. She knew he was self-conscious. He chewed his gum quickly, that determined upper-lip never moving. A no-frills kind of guy. You’d never catch him with a beeper, he would be too worried about what his friends would think. But he had one tonight, just in case. She knew just in case what. Just in case the horse took a turn for the worse. Oh, well, at least they fit together, she and him, dressed in black, the uniform of Bay Ridge. When she looked at him like that, she couldn’t help remembering Anthony’s christening.

Johnny had insisted upon having the party at one of those enormous, gaudy halls where even the restrooms are Capodimonte ornate but the food is the essence of good taste, so she’d agreed. Actually, she hadn’t agreed, but she’d been so happy, she’d said yes. It had cost a fortune. That didn’t matter, Johnny said, this was his son. At the very beginning, when everyone was finally seated and Claire appropriately throned in a white wicker giant’s chair, they’d lowered the lights and Johnny carried the four-month-old Anthony in above his head and across the entire football field of a floor under a spotlight while the band thundered out the theme from Rocky.

Claire had thought she would die. But she hadn’t died. The funny thing was, there was so much raw pride and joy on Johnny’s face that she’d found herself tearing up with the same heartfelt sentiment as the rest of those cops’ wives. They all knew that this was what made life worth living. Not the stars all lit up in the last Broadway show, or the paintings, magnificent paintings that hung on a gallery wall. These were the moments. They downed their diluted screwdrivers with gusto. Lord knew, come tomorrow, they’d be back folding laundry at the dryer.

Jupiter Dodd, in a floor-length ranch mink, gingerly stepped from a yellow city cab. It was like, “Yuch. Queens sidewalk.” He kept hold of the side of his hem and looked helplessly about.

Freddy leapt from the car.

“Now look vot he’s doing!” Iris screeched. That wasn’t all. The hubbub of horns from behind them got louder and meaner. Freddy could have cared less. He shook Jupiter’s hand pleasantly and invited him to come along with them. Delighted, Jupiter joined them in the back seat.

Finally, they were in the auditorium. The lights dimmed once, sending the last of them, hushed and hurried, to their seats. Carmela peeked out at them, scrutinizing the faces of these, her unworthy judges. She watched through a slit in the heavy purple curtains. Terror was what she felt. All the smugness disappeared. This had been a terrible mistake. If she could call it off, she would. There were so many things she should have rewritten. What was the matter with her?

She watched her parents take their seats in the third row, center. They were too dressed, too working class. What was her mother wearing? Was that a cape? How could these bumpkins be her parents? Then she saw her father take her mother’s lopsided hand and kiss it tenderly. Their eyes met for a moment, Stan’s and Mary’s, and she saw something there that she had missed, that she hadn’t thought to write about and that she knew, right then, was what was failing: very simply, faith.

She prayed frantically, suddenly, for that gallivanting predicted snowstorm that would send them all straightaway home. Once, as a child, unprepared for a math test, this had worked. Of course, she’d failed the make-up test as well, but by then the great terror had passed.

The audience fidgeted excitedly, noisily. They stretched and craned their necks, took off their coats, folded them into their laps, stood up and sat on top of them instead. Some jerk was selling candy before the intermission. What a moron. Where was Claire? She was supposed to be photographing everyone. She should be shooting the group of Manhattanites who’d just clattered disdainfully, rambunctiously in. She lit a cigarette. Where was Freddy? He was supposed to make sure the right people got the good seats. And where was Stefan?

“No smoking back here, Mrs. Stefanovitch,” the elderly custodian reminded her.

“Drop dead,” she said.

Backstage, in the star-determined cubby set aside for her, Narayan was filling Zinnie up with Prana.

“Prana,” he explained, “is the vital force of the body and the universe, which makes everything move.”

“Big boy,” she wiggled her eyebrows at him, “you can fill me up with anything you like.”

“Oh, Zinnie,” he said, crooking his head, “you are so very beautiful. If you go out on the stage and sing, the world will take you away from me.”

“No, it won’t.” She went and stood next to him. “It never could. Or did you forget last night already?”

“Forget?” He rushed to take her in his arms.

Whatever had they done to deserve such happiness? They stood and held each other, frightened by good fortune.

Claire was in the men’s room, photographing dorks. They lined themselves up against the white tile wall good-naturedly. They were enjoying themselves. They loved this sort of thing. Born cavorters. You had to give them credit, they did look their parts: all jazzed up and rock-and-rolly.

Over the loudspeaker crackled the last of the seventy-eights, the program’s preliminary diversion. Billie Holiday warbled “Blue Moon.”

Freddy and Jupiter Dodd were in the school kitchen, clandestinely having a solitary coffee klatch. What was astonishing was that they had always seen each other from afar and never gotten the chance to really talk.

“I mean,” Fred pulled a linen napkin accommodatingly across Jupiter’s gabardined knees. “… Of course I always knew who you were. I could hardly help that. I mean, who doesn’t know who you are? Last time I was on Mykonos—”

“You don’t go to Mykonos? Oh, not really. So do I.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying. Last time I was there, eating fish with my feet in the water at Spiro’s, I heard you’d just left the island. I have to tell you, I was, well, upset that I’d missed you.”

Jupiter Dodd grabbed his bottom lip softly with his magnificent row of revitalized top caps.

Freddy watched him from between the blunt white cup at his lips and his heavy, lashy lids.

They were neither of them fools. Or naive. This, they both knew right away, could be it.

The lights went off and on for the last time and there was the commotion of coughing and laughs that are a prelude to any show. An extra flutter of noisy excitement rose as the news spread that it was indeed snowing outside. The late stragglers wore the proof on the shoulders of their topcoats. There were the expected groans and a smattering of enthusiastic hands rubbing together in anticipation of an early ski season, for once. Men and women cleared their throats.

A piano played from offstage and the curtain pitched, then glided open on a woman standing by a window overlooking darkest night above a lake. The lake shimmered with myriad reflections. A sickle moon and stars glittered.

Really, a mirror had been placed low on a black velvet drop cloth with appropriate holes and attached to a spotlight, but the scene looked, for all the world, like a Renaissance princess beholding her doubts in an August Lake Como.

She began to sing, very slowly, “Autumn Leaves.” A hush of unfolding magic suspended the audience. Then a man, off to the side, began to weep inconsolably.

It had an odd and disconcerting effect, and it seemed to be part of the scene, but it was only Stan.

Zinnie, singing louder and louder, appeared to grow stronger and stronger.

Carmela, sick in the ladies’ room, missed the entire opening number and only made it back for the laughs in Scene Two, where by now Portia, as Lola Schneewittchen, the Queen’s young fan, had snuck in with the professional backup singers to try out for the remainder of the Central States Tour. One singer was missing, eloped with a yogurt bacteria inspector from Madison, Wisconsin.

Because the dorks were so crude to the young girl, really coming on strong and giving her “what she was looking for, after all,” the rock star, named Alte Königen, took pity on her. Well, she liked her. She was flattered. The kid knew all her songs by heart. She decided to stick it to her band and make them eat their filthy words. She would champion the girl. She made a bet with Doc, the lead guitar player, best-looking and smart aleck of the group, that she could have this, this Lola Schneewittchen, Pygmalionized in no time at all. She would have her singing as well as any one of the other pros.

That it would backfire against her was clear to everyone but Alte Königen, but the audience loved it, especially loved Alte Königen, who they believed to be doing a great job being furious at the dorks but who, in truth, was no great actress but very angry with her father for his sobs.

Claire, back from her shoot in the men’s room, slipped into a spot in the rear. There were no more seats. She smiled with relief more than with laughter. Carmela needed success more than anyone she knew. The wish to light a cigarette materialized, then evaporated, and Claire watched, fascinated, as Oral Gratifier Number One became the conquerer. The conquerette.

Swamiji was up in front beside her parents. Look at this, she told herself, this was wonderful. Only … only what? For the first time now, she should be able to relax. Mrs. Dixon was dead. Dead, she told herself again. And the kids were safe. Did Dharma know that she was an heiress? Would the jewels go to her or would Andrew get to keep the lot? At any rate, that was a pleasant problem. At least old Dixon was dead.

Yes, a nagging voice agreed, but if it hadn’t been Dixon, that day in her home trying to kill her, who had? The fact that no one else believed her was not exactly a consolation, but perhaps they were right, no one had. Yes, that must be it. The radio had fallen of its own accord into the tub. She’d probably knocked it in herself as she’d bolted to get the ringing phone. Yes, that was it.

Claire sat and laughed with the rest of the audience as the dorks sang and danced to “Let Yourself Go.” Claire gasped along with the rest as the dorks achieved a splendid, flawless couch catapult on Great Aunt Greta’s couch. She remembered very well that the radio had been tucked safely away on the back of the shelf, though. Her own father had secured it there. There was no way out for it but with a good strong yank.

Well, so then, she must have yanked it with her body. No. No, that didn’t gel. She couldn’t push away the persistent feeling of something else, something palpable in the house that she’d recognized only after it had almost taken her with it. Still, tonight was tonight and the children were safe. That was the main thing. She looked for Narayan’s tall frame, for they would be sitting with him. No, there were Anthony and Michaelaen up front with her parents. Narayan must have generously given them his seat. And where was Dharma? Claire looked around. She was startled to see her in the last row, beside Andrew Dover in the aisle seat.

“Claire,” Johnny whispered urgently in her ear, “I gotta go!”

“Oh, Johnny, no, not now! You can’t!”

“It’s Red. Red Torneo. He had a heart attack. Claire, I gotta go.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry! Go. Go ahead. Don’t worry. Wait! I’ll come.”

“No, stay. Bad enough, I have to leave. He’s at the vet’s hospital down in Brooklyn there, on the Belt Parkway. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. I’ll call you at Freddy’s, all right?”

“All right.” She turned around and he was gone.

She hated that, when he would take off without that special look between them. It was her own fault. She should have been more sensitive to Johnny’s old friend. She should have found the time, made the time to have him over, fuss over him a little bit. God. She’d never forgive herself if he didn’t make it. He was all her husband had on his own side, and she’d neglected him. She’d even suspected Johnny of having the beeper because of the horse. He’d known something was up. He’d told her he was worried about Red, and she hadn’t listened.

A cold misery crept through her. She felt the green stone in her pocket. She walked hurriedly out to the vestibule to see if she might catch Johnny. He was gone. She pushed the heavy school door open and beheld the swirling and profound silence of nighttime snow. Narayan stood on the corner. He looked left and right.

“Narayan!” she called.

“Ho! Claire!” He put his arms up in the air and twirled around in a circle.

She laughed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to find Zinnie tea. She wants tea. Hot tea.”

“What about the lunch room?”

“They have only coffee. And no lemon.”

“There’s nothing open, now.”

“I daresay there is. This is America.”

“Try the bodega,” she called and pointed towards Jamaica Avenue. “That way.”

“I am gone,” he whooped, and ran and slid down past the convent towards the el train.

Claire watched him go with fond reluctance. Something in her wanted to chase after him and rev up a snowball fight.

“Narayan!” she called out.

He turned and jogged in place. “What is it, Maharani Claire?”

He got a snowball right between the eyes.

She got another back. But his heart wasn’t in it. He laughed and waved and turned and zigzagged away.

Claire turned back smiling and spotted Andrew, headed home with Dharma by the hand. She called out but they didn’t turn; they kept on walking. Andrew carried a small suitcase.

For a moment, Claire didn’t know what to think. She felt betrayed. She remembered a story her mother had told her to keep her from getting her hopes up about keeping Dharma. It was about Mrs. Cashin, years ago, who’d taken a newborn from the Foundling Home. Then, when the child was two, they’d taken it back. They took it away. Every time Claire’s mother told the story, her eyes would fill up, remembering Mrs. Cashin and her empty house, her empty baby buggy and the pain, conveyed over years and years and mother to mother. Claire stood there watching the two of them walk away into the teeming snow, and she felt so sorry for Mrs. Cashin. She raised her face and opened her mouth to the snow. Then she went back inside. Knowing they wouldn’t return, she sat down in Andrew’s seat. Portia was singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” rather nasally, she thought. She’d never found it a silly song until she heard her sing it. Still. Perhaps that was the point. She couldn’t see Andrew leaving just now. It was, for one thing, very rude. She wondered, guiltily, if Dharma had needed her and they hadn’t been able to find her.

“You’re Claire Breslinsky, aren’t you?” the woman beside her leaned over.

“Benedetto, yes. Née Breslinsky. I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“I’m Dharma’s teacher,” she whispered.

“Ah. Hello.” She pointed to her chair. “She was just here.”

“Yes. What a shame she had to leave just now.”

“She wasn’t sick?”

“Sick? No, I don’t think so. Her father told her it was time to go. She seemed excited.”

“Sshhhhh!” The man in front of them turned and hissed.

They sat behaved and quiet, the two women. Then the teacher said, “I was so glad when Dharma moved in with you.”

“You were?”

“Phh. Suddenly she was coming to school in neat clothes. What a difference. Homework done.”

“She didn’t used to?”

“Lord, no.”

“Sshhh!” someone else hushed them.

Claire and the teacher half-stood simultaneously and headed, crouched, for the back where no one was. They went into the vestibule.

“I left my cigarettes inside,” the teacher said.

“Don’t smoke,” Claire said, meaning she herself didn’t and so couldn’t offer her one, then realized the woman took it as advice. What difference did it make?

The teacher hugged herself for warmth. “I hate to sound like I know what I’m talking about here,” she said, “but some kids have an orderly home life and some come from chaos. Dharma was one of those poor, unattended kids who kind of fended for herself. No parental supervision on projects, no one who took an interest in what was going on.”

She would have, though, Claire thought. Tree would have, had she lived. After she and I hung out together for a while, I would have influenced her to take more of an interest. It would have rubbed off. No one could tell her that that child was better off without her mother.

“Why, the very day that child’s mother died, there was a problem.” The teacher’s eyes glowed, warming to her gripe. Claire wondered if she’d made a mistake coming out here. “That was the first day Dharma was supposed to go home for lunch. I’d had a letter the day before, giving permission to have her released. But no one had come.” She squinched up her face. “It was one of those rare days when our school crossing guard was sick, or she would have noticed something was wrong. I didn’t even have lunch duty that day, but I just happened to look out from the teacher’s room and saw the kid standing on the corner by the school, floating up and down on her own, not knowing if she was coming or going.” She shook her head.

Claire shook hers, too. Then she said, “Miss … uh—”

“Wingertner. Mrs. Meta Wingertner. Please call me Meta.”

“Meta, that was that day? That day Theresa Dover died?”

“That very day. To tell you the truth, I felt awful. Here’s the mother at home dead. No wonder she didn’t pick Dharma up! And here I was thinking, you know, what an inconsiderate parent she was. I was burned up at her and she was dead. Tch.”

“But didn’t Dharma walk home on her own, usually?”

“Well, I guess she did. But this was lunch. I guess her mother told her to wait. And no one ever came. Isn’t it sad?”

“I have to go back in,” Claire said, suddenly cold. Then, “How do you like the play?”

“Isn’t it grand? Don’t know how we’ll get home in all this snow, though.” She gave an excited, girlish shrug. “Nice to have met you.”

“For me too,” Claire said. “Oh. Mrs. uh … Meta? Would you remember … When you saw Dharma outside school, was it just as all the other children were let out?”

“Well, that was just it. She’d been waiting there for fifteen minutes, easily. I know, because I’d gone to the ladies’ for a smoke before I headed up to the teachers’ room and that’s when I spotted her. Boy. Poor kid.”

“Yes.”

They went back to their seats.

Alte Königen, the rock star, was beginning to feel jarred by her new backup singer’s successful solos. Doc the dork was shaking his head and telling her again and again how right she had been to insist upon keeping her. He strode back and forth, raving, marvelling, admitting how wrong he’d been. This new gal was just what they’d needed: new blood!

Alte Königen laughed, delightedly, and kissed both his rosy cheeks as he marched out the papier-mâché hotel-room door. His midterm break would be over and he would soon be heading back to school himself. Alte Königen stood center stage and the light changed suddenly and she looked, heartbroken, towards the empty doorway and she sang, very softly, “For Your Love.”

Claire sat, transfixed. Before the song had come to an end, Claire stood up and was out the door. She looked at her watch. She made it to her house, walking normally, in a minute and a half. She trod the easy snow across the street and banged on Andrew Dover’s door.

On Jamaica Avenue, Narayan found the bodega easily enough. He stood, shivering but happy, by the door while the chap packed him up three cups of Tetley tea. He’d found her a ripe avocado as well. A young fellow came in, oh my, he looked ill, poor fellow. And cold. Narayan was just about to ask him had he heard the latest weather report when the boy, for he wasn’t more than a boy, pulled out a .380 semiautomatic and told the man beside the cash register, “Put it in the bag. Put the cash in the bag. All of it.”

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” the frightened little man called out.

“Put the fuckin’ money in the bag,” the boy insisted. He kept moving towards the door and then back. He knocked the metal tower of potato chips on clips onto the floor.

The man behind the counter put the money in the first bag at hand. The one with Narayan’s tea. He put all the money in and then he picked up the change tray and put the money from underneath in as well. It all happened so fast. The boy grabbed the bag, ran into Narayan, ran out the door. A shot rang out. The man behind the counter was on the floor, crouched down. His brother stood in the cereal aisle. He held his Smith and Wesson .38 in front of his heaving chest. “I got him,” he said.

“Not him!” the man behind the counter raised his head and wailed. “The white boy!”

Narayan stood, still holding his ripe avocado. He staggered out the door. The old van skidded in a circle and drove away. The snow twirled round and round. It all looked clean. There was no sound now. He fell to his knees. “What?” Narayan whispered and dropped into the splendid white. His shimmering eyes became opaque and saw nothing else. A river of red trickled out of his mouth, burned a hole in the snow, and then stopped.

Claire pounded on the door. Still no one came. “Andrew!” she called. “Open the door! I know what you’re up to,” she shouted, not caring who heard. Let them come. Let them call the cops. “Andrew!” she pounded harder. Then she remembered. She walked swiftly down the driveway and climbed up on the garbage pail to the bathroom window. She pushed it up but it wouldn’t budge. She leaned against the window and thought for a moment, regrouping her strength, then pushed again. This time it came unstuck and went right up. She projected herself in, landing with her arms, thwack, onto the tub. Her elbows ached immediately. She pulled her legs down under herself in the tub and straightened up. “Andrew!” she yelled. She’d find him, by God. “Andrew! Give it up!” She threw on the light.

The house was in darkness; she didn’t know which way to go. She decided, as she always did when given the choice, to go left. As she went, she groped the walls for light switches. Her rage and fear for Dharma kept any fear she might have for herself at bay, but as she went along, finding no one, fear grew inside her like a nightmare. Suppose he was crouched somewhere, hiding, waiting for her? She moved, rigid with tension, toward the front door. In the overhead light, the hats cast eerie shadows down the hall. The house was utterly still. As fast as her legs would carry her, she ran for the door. Instead of its giving way when she got there, it stayed shut, waiting for her to unlatch chains and unbolt locks while she watched, terrified, behind her. When the door opened, her anxiety landed her headlong onto the porch and into the snow. She ran, tripping, across the street. Her key, oh, blessed key, was in the geranium pot right where she’d left it. She got herself in the door. She shut it, heard it lock, and shivered with relief. She snapped the hall light on. Safe. But something was wrong. Where was Floozie? Then she realized, in all the excitement, she’d forgotten to lock shut the doggy door. Floozie was probably skulking around the school, where she’d followed her scent. Omigosh! She remembered her folder of photographs for Jupiter Dodd. She’d left them on her chair, back in the auditorium. Anyway, that didn’t matter. The first thing she would do was call the precinct. Wait a minute. She would call from upstairs so she could watch Andrew’s house in case he tried to leave. She took the stairs two at a time. Her bedroom felt different with only her inside the house. So cool and big. She cracked the window, tilted the wooden blinds enough to look out, and picked up the phone, kneeling on her overstuffed blue chair. Only what, exactly, would she tell them? That a father was kidnapping his daughter? No, wait. She put the phone back down. She had to think this out. The doorbell rang. She hadn’t seen anyone come up the walk. She ran downstairs. “Who is it?” she called.

“Claire? Claire, are you all right?” It was Stefan.

“Thank God.” She opened the door.

He hurried in and grabbed hold of her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m worried about Dharma. It’s Andrew. He’s taking her away.”

“But what’s the matter?”

“Oh, Stefan, I should have known what he was up to when I saw the passport on the front desk. I should have known. I know, it sounds confusing, but you see, Andrew is … he’s demented.” She sat down, exhausted. She got up and raced back up the stairs. “I have to watch his house,” she gasped. He followed her up the stairs. She went back to her place by the window and looked out. “I know he’s taking her away,” she murmured, “because I saw her suitcase open over there before, but I didn’t put it together.”

Stefan turned and walked around the room.

“He killed her, Stefan. I know he did. I always suspected him but now I’m sure.”

“Sure?” He lowered his eyes and gazed at her. “But how? How, Claire? You have no proof.”

“I know I don’t. But I’m sure.” She looked up at him pacing. “What are you doing here?”

He laughed. “I was worried. You left so … suddenly.”

“Is the play all right?”

“Yes, yes. The play is barrelling along. Which is, actually, why I’m here now. You see, I’m leaving Carmela.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am. There’s no reason to stay anymore. I’ve got her on her way.”

Claire couldn’t help thinking he’d done nothing but hold her back, for all the fancy show of it. If anything, Carmela had been an asset to him.

“She’ll do all right,” he was saying. “She always has done.” He looked at Claire, sitting there prettily on her silly chair. He was doing what he thought was a considerate job of explaining why he could not love her sister, how he had, all this time, loved her instead, and as he went on, he just happened to look in her eyes at the same moment something happened, something clicked, and she remembered something that now fit. Her look passed, in that split second, as her eyeballs moved sideways across the parquet floor, from one of puzzlement to decisiveness to denial to fear.

“Oh, what a shame,” he said. “Now, you will tell me exactly what it is you are thinking and I will spare you my romantic tale of how you are the one I love. Okay?”

“I was, oh Stefan, I was thinking what a beautiful cologne you use,” for she had just remembered where she’d smelled it so intensely once before. The night she had gone to Iris von Lillienfeld’s house and had discovered Mrs. Dixon. Only now she knew it wasn’t only the elusive odor of patchouli she’d recognized, but the smell of patchouli mingled with fear. Or death.

“Where have Dharma and Andrew gone, I wonder?” she asked, too casually.

“Why would I know that?” He looked at her blankly.

“Gee. I don’t know.” She looked to her feet. None of them would be back for hours. All the adults would go to Freddy’s, and the children would go with Stan to her mother’s house. The only hope she had would be if Johnny were to come back. But he wouldn’t. He would stay all night at the hospital. The only thing she could do would be to keep Stefan talking. Now she knew. It wasn’t Andrew who had killed Theresa Dover. It was Stefan.

Stefan grinned from ear to ear. “Tell me how you knew,” he said, as though they’d been playing some board game and she’d caught him out.

She stared at him, frozen, and she saw his expression change and become completely cold and separate. She prayed with all her heart that Swamiji would not decide to return here with Anthony. The only thing she could not bear was something happening to Anthony.

“Stefan!” she jumped up. “We have to go alert the others. He’ll be getting away!”

He stayed where he was and pushed her back with splayed fingers on her chest. “Come-come-come-come-come-come-come-come-come.” He shook his head pleasantly. “Let’s not patronize each other, shall we?”

“All right.” She smiled and held his gaze. She would fight him for her son. She straightened her spine and tried crazily to think of something, any tale that would captivate him, a thousand and one Arabian nights, anything, the truth, even, anything at all that would keep him away from her. “It all began,” she said, “with a little girl’s dream that would not go away.” She kept her voice husky and low, in a singsong. “Dharma is so terrified of the beautiful flowers, the foxglove, that used to grow out in my garden, out her bedroom window in fact, all summer long. But I never knew why. And now I do. I think I do. I just figured it out.” She took a step backwards. If she jumped out the window, she might break an arm but she probably wouldn’t break her neck. The porch was underneath them. She watched his eyes open with interest.

“Sit down,” he smiled. He was too close. She sat back down.

“It was a day in early September,” she carried on in the tone she used to tell the children stories. She felt him relax, ease up. “The children had just started school. Theresa Dover had planned to take her daughter somewhere in the afternoon. I was sure it was Andrew, or had to do with Andrew, but I see now, it was you. She was going to bring her to you. Or meet you. Across the street, at her house. You went there. You walked. You went in.”

“I always went to see her in my man Piece’s clothes,” Stefan continued for her in some new voice she had never heard. It was the voice of a little boy. It sent a chill right down her spine. “He has this English working-class cap. Nobody dreamed it was me. Never. They would look right through me and they wouldn’t know.” He laughed. “This time, Theresa was drunk.” His tone was easy, confidential. “She was always drunk or stoned. At first it was funny, you know, she was a blast, always ‘on’.” He shrugged. “But she started to get so sloppy. Really. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t she I wanted anyhow. It was the girl. The little girl.” He looked at Claire. “Do you know that she is mine? I mean really, actually mine?”

“You mean—”

“She is my daughter, yes.”

“That’s why you sent her gifts. Stones.”

“Oh, she loved stones. I used to leave them for her, signed, ‘your true father,’ and ‘your mystery father.’ Tonight she knows for sure that I am he. She always wondered, I know. She yearned for me. Her mother told her, confidentially, her father was someone special, a sort of prince. So she always waited. She knew, one day, her prince would come.” Stefan beamed with the telling. Then his face dropped and his voice changed again. “But then her mother found them. Found the stones. And that I could not have. Uh. All sorts of complications. She said she wouldn’t let me see the little girl.” Stefan began to roll up his sleeves. “Up until then, I used to sleep with the mother. On and off. That’s a beautiful thing, to sleep with the mother while you’re thinking of the daughter. Just after you’ve played a little bit with the daughter.” He nodded his head and rubbed his eyes. “She told me she was pregnant. It was mine, she said. Well. Who knew? The woman would sleep with anyone. Can you imagine? She wanted money for an abortion.” Stefan cleared the loose phlegm from his throat. “She wanted to keep the stones and she wanted cash as well!” He sighed. “I’m taking Dharma with me to Zurich. Tonight.”

Claire didn’t know what she was going to do. Her mind raced frantically. “I thought it must have been Andrew,” she said again. “I was sure it was Andrew.”

Stefan made a disgusted, belittling sound. “Him,” he said. “He would do anything for money. So you know what he is. Do you know how I got him here? I told him if he delivered Dharma here to me, with her passport, I would give him twenty thousand dollars. Ffff. And he did.” Stefan looked worriedly out the door. Claire wondered if he had killed Andrew. His face looked so dissipated, so haggard. She wondered how she hadn’t known before. His exhaustion was so evident, if she could keep him off guard, throw him off balance and take a chance for the stairs … She started to talk again about the day of the murder; she knew it interested him, she’d seen him come alive when he talked about it. It soothed him, threw him off the track. She watched him visibly relax. “So Dharma,” she said, “was afraid of her nightmare of the foxglove. Horrified. But why, I kept asking myself, why? Digitalis purpurea, the foxglove, kills all right, but it’s immediately recognizable in the simple autopsy lab test they do. And so I knew she hadn’t died that way. I tried to remember the mythological legends, how the bad fairies gave the blossoms to the fox so he could soften his tread by wearing them on his toes when he prowled the roosts. But I knew it wasn’t a legend. I knew something very real had happened. And despite all logic, I kept coming back to the poisonous foxglove, over and over, and knew, just knew from Dharma’s horror, that it was all somehow connected. And it is connected, Stefan, isn’t it? She saw something, didn’t she?” As she talked and as she kept on going, she did see. It all fit together, nicely, deadly.

“You waited until she passed out, didn’t you?” Claire said, the venom in her loathing this time there for him to hear. Oh, and he heard her. He took his chin in one hand, his elbow in the other. He watched her, fascinated.

It was strangely like the old days, Claire and Stefan, talking, talking. She would jump out the frigging window. She didn’t care anymore. She was even looking forward to it.

“You took one of Tree’s hat pins down from the wall and you stuck it, firmly, into her brain. Didn’t you?”

He had his tongue out of his mouth a bit and he was biting it. He was all excited.

“Only then, you heard someone. It was Dharma, home from school. She’d managed it that Dharma would come home for lunch that day because she thought she would confront you, she would put it to you that they needed money, right in front of Dharma, whom she knew you loved. Only Tree got drunk. Real drunk. And you helped her along until she finally passed out. It all was so easy. Only Dharma didn’t get picked up, as her mother surely said she would. But she was a resilient kid. She’d been stranded before. She came home on her own. And when she didn’t get an answer at the door, instead of ringing and ringing, she just came around to the side of the house and climbed in the bathroom window the way she always had done when her mother was passed out, drunk or stoned. And she saw her mother on the floor again, didn’t she? Only this time, she was dead. It was the hatpin Tree had of a flower. It was foxglove, wasn’t it? Foxglove, blown from glass. The morbid, lovely digitalis.”

Stefan sat up. “Yes,” his voice squeaked with delight.

Claire unclenched her fists with conscious determination. “I remember your story of the bowman who would boast that he could kill an elephant. You were telling me then, weren’t you? I remember wondering, even then, why you were telling that story.”

Stefan opened his hands and looked into them. She could hear the quick, excited intake of his breath. She kept on talking. “After Dharma left, you took the hatpin and returned it to the hat. You knew Dharma hadn’t seen you. She couldn’t have seen you or she would have told someone. She ran back to school. She pretended she had never left. It was easy, in the crowded confusion of lunchtime comings and goings. She knew she was in trouble for accepting the stones. She knew this all had something to do with the stones. For hiding them. She thought it was somehow her fault.”

“It was her fault.” Stefan stopped laughing. “Oh, it was.”

Claire hated him, then. That innocent little girl had been guilty of nothing. She hated him almost as much as she was frightened.

“You got away with it, too, didn’t you?” She pretended to admire him with her tone.

He rubbed his forehead wearily. “It was not so easy. She moved. And she opened her eyes and saw me coming. But she misunderstood. She thought I was going to kiss her. She closed up her eyes to be kissed and moved the hair away from behind her ear so I would kiss her where she liked it. Even as I did it, as I rammed it in, I heard the bell. I jumped behind the chifforobe. I thought Theresa would get up. I took a big vase down in my hands to hit her with. Fortunately, she stayed where she was. And when I thought to come out, I heard the window open in the bathroom. I froze. But no one came. Only now you say she had come in, then run away. Funny, that she would see her mother there like that with the beautiful flower growing out of her ear. It is poetic, somehow, don’t you think?”

Claire stayed still.

“When I was sure I could,” he went on casually, “I came out and bent over her body. She was quite dead. I pulled the hatpin from her ear. It was so minute a hole. Exquisite. I had to look again to be sure. I knew right then, no one would ever notice it. I would be safe. She had such beautiful ears. One little drop of blood,” he marveled, “lost in the ear canal.” He shivered. “Oh, yes, I knew they’d think she died from a stroke. The brain just stopped functioning, stopped sending messages. The heart just stopped.” He laughed. “Not to mention that she was so coked up. She had coke all over her fingertips, under her fingernails, from smearing it onto her gums. She liked to have it on her senses, for sex. And, what was it? Oh, yuh, gin. She loved her gin. She reeked of it. I can’t imagine what her liver looked like. Really. She would have died soon anyway, no doubt. What I really did was save little Dharma the agony of watching her mother suffer. Quite true. She was a mess. They would have seen that as soon as they opened her up.” He swept his pale aristocratic fingers through his white-blond hair. “Poor Dharma, having to live with such a common slob … Dharma.” He looked back at Claire, remembering her suddenly. “Is like a delicate jewel herself.” He made a soft, angelic face.

“Did you touch her, Stefan?”

“Dharma?” he whirled around. “No!” He trembled, thinking of it. “It’s all too much. I must tell you, I am so very tired. I wish we didn’t have to fly tonight. What time is it? I can’t seem to—Sometimes, I wish it would be over. I just wish—”

“What happened to Mrs. Dixon, Stefan?” Claire tried to prop herself casually on one elbow so when she straightened up, she would be that much farther away from him.

“Oh, that was strange. She wasn’t supposed to die, you know. Not at first. It wasn’t as though she’d ever hurt anyone. I thought I would just take her away from von Lillienfield’s house and … All I did was suggest … Well, no, that’s not true. I tied her hands in a silk kerchief. But she didn’t even fight. I just slipped the noose around her neck. She made it so absurdly easy. I told her what to do and she just did it. It was wild. Really. It was almost comical.” He stroked his left breast thoughtfully. “Shame, really. She had been so useful. Setting herself up. She used to have access to so many little children.” When he said, “little children,” his lips pursed into a tight, happy bow. He snorted. “Or she used to. Do you know, she really thought she deserved to die. So what can you do? She kept saying it was all for the best.”

In a moment, he would be distracted enough so that she could make it out the window. He stood up and walked behind her. She was frightened he would grab her hands. She leaned on one arm and asked him, “How did you set her up?” She smiled. “You set her up, right?”

“Oh. Her. I’ll tell you how. Some years ago, I caught her out. I saw her at a chicken-meat film. You know, kiddies. I couldn’t believe it. I knew I could use it against her. I knew it even then. It was so easy. I only had to watch her. Follow her lead. It was so easy when I pursued you. Always being right next door. I knew she would take the children’s pictures. I used to watch her watching them. Then, when you fell in love with your detective,” his expression changed, “I was very angry at you, Claire.”

She remembered the searing landing of the radio behind her in the bathtub. Yes, she knew now that he had been angry. “But,” his voice went back to its nonchalant meander, “I only had to choose another sister.”

He put the tips of his fingers in his mouth and touched them with his tongue. “It had to be Carmela, though. Zinnie—” He rubbed his fingertips back and forth across his fleshy bottom lip. “—never wanted me. Zinnie knew something was wrong.”

“She didn’t,” Claire shook her head.

“Oh, she did. She told me once to stay away from Michaelaen. Did you know that?”

“No.”

Stefan wrinkled up his nose. “I don’t know why. It wasn’t as though I’d come on to him.”

“But Mrs. Dixon—”

“Then she started this bloody book with Mary,” he interrupted. He looked at Claire with endearing eyes. “I mean, I couldn’t have that.” He yawned.

“But how did you find her?” Claire wondered out loud. “When even the police couldn’t?”

“Find her?” he laughed. “What do you think—she just walked off the grounds and grabbed a bus? Uh!” He tut-tutted her naiveté. “That was all arranged. I was waiting with a car.” He banged his chest. “Me! I drove her back and put her in her own house before they knew she was missing!” His voice changed again. “She was very good, staying put in the attic. But then she got frightened. She went to see her friend. I had to kill her. It was all becoming,” he shrugged, “so tiresome.”

There was a noise from down the block. Claire’s heart stopped and listened. Could it be them, coming home first? She strained to hear. Stefan threw his head back. She watched his upraised chin. She watched his eyes watch, sideways, listening, too, and then come back to her. They locked eyes. She felt herself shrink. She was the hunted bird, locked safe inside his paws. “You hear?” The corners of his mouth turned up. “They’ve gone.”

She bolted. She was going to throw herself through the window but he threw himself in front of her, they fell to the floor, and he covered her completely with his body. He drew her hair back into a bundle with his delicate hands. “If it could only always be like this.” He quivered, catching her face in his hands.

Her arms were pinned behind her. He lifted her onto the bed. His breath was sour on her face. A smart pain ripped her left side. She was dazed for a moment by the stinging of it, the tangible feeling in the midst of her fear and then she realized what it was. It was the hatpin she’d wrapped in her hanky and taken for her mother. She had forgotten. It was on the floor. If only she could get her hands on it.…

Stefan’s hands ran down her shoulders. He cupped her breasts and reached behind her, grabbing hold of her wrists. He was excited, breathing heavily. What was he going to do? What did he want? Oh, please, she prayed, let him try to rape me before he kills me, just give me time to stab him, please.

A noise at the front door shocked them both momentarily. They were like lovers, caught at love. Claire started to scream but Stefan was faster. He covered her mouth with his hands and shoved the end of a knitted blanket into it. He bound her wrists with the measuring tape from her sewing box. She flung herself, a netted mackerel, around the bed. She would fall off and someone would hear her. Stefan fell on top of her and pinned her down. Her tongue was pressed down with the fuzzy pressure of the blanket. It was terrible. Terrible. Surely they would hear her moans. Then she saw what Stefan had in his hand. He was going to hit her with the iron fruitman’s hammer she kept by the bed to be safe from prowlers. She froze. He tied her knees with something. She did not want to die like this. Stefan smiled without teeth; a patronizing, malevolent smile. Tears of despair welled up and out of her and streamed down her face. She did not want to die.

At the front door down the stairs, Freddy turned and faced Jupiter Dodd. “If I let you in for a cup of coffee,” he said flirtatiously, “it really only means a cup of coffee.”

“Heh, heh, heh,” said Jupiter.

Upstairs, Stefan removed Claire’s boots and bound her feet carefully, lovingly, with the venetian blind cord. His hands were mottled black from the mascara she’d rubbed on the boots. He pulled the cord tight and knotted it good.

“Porco!” Freddy said. “She took the key out! I swear, it’s always here.”

“Come on,” Jupiter said, “I’m freezing. Let’s just go to the restaurant.”

“It must be here someplace,” Fred insisted, grappling through the snow. “What I didn’t understand,” he muttered, “was why Lola Schneewittchen refused to marry Doc? I mean after she knew he was going back to medical school.”

“Yes. One can’t help thinking staying on in Wisconsin with the bashful one was a dumb move.”

“To open a nail salon,” Freddy shuddered.

“My shoes are ruined,” Jupiter remarked.

Sirens wailed again on Jamaica Avenue. “Something must be going on,” Fred said.

Claire and Stefan lay together upstairs on the bed. They strained their ears, marking off the two men’s progress. They listened as the two of them trod off, happy, involved. They heard two car doors slam. The car drove away up the block.

Stefan rolled her over. His eyes met hers again. She thought, I won’t even know now if I’m pregnant. I’ll never even know. The tears ran from her eyes and she could hear herself, far far away, whimpering. I wanted to tell Anthony he would have a new brother or sister, she thought. I wanted to hold him once more and just smell his sweet skin.

Stefan devoured her face with his eyes. He hugged her to him with an intimate, cherishing embrace. They understood each other now. She had often wondered how those poor children had felt before he killed them. Now she knew.

Stefan was dreaming: something long ago, it was back in Poland. They were on holiday. They were running in a field of tall grain. She wanted something. His mother caught him and they laughed, rolling, over and over and over.…

“Claire?” a small voice came from the doorway. They looked together at Dharma standing there in silhouette. “Claire?” she said again.

“No!” Stefan sat up and swiped his hair back guiltily. “No, Dharma, go back downstairs. Go wait for me where I told you.”

“My father,” Dharma said, “I mean Andrew …” She stopped, confused.

“What about Andrew?” Stefan said, alert, sitting straight up in the half light, the room as though moonlit from all the snow.

“He’s groaning. I think he’s hurt. I think we have to call Doctor Finneran.”

“Be a good girl, now, Dharma,” Stefan said with no edge to his voice. “Go stay with him while I help Claire. And then I’ll come and help Andrew.”

Dharma wasn’t sure what to do. This was her father. Her real father. But Claire—what was going on? Maybe they were having sex. That was it. She turned and went back down the stairs. Claire saw, as Dharma passed under the hall light, that the child was wearing lipstick. With all the terrible force of her life, with no arms to project herself and no voice with which to scream, Claire shoved Stefan off of her. She saw him in passing as if in slow motion, rocking on one leg, as the other leg whipped into the air ungracefully, off balance, while she ploughed into the window. The window broke, but Claire remained on the one side of it, hampered by the sill and the odd, bent broken pieces of the blinds. A siren screamed nearby, came nearer still, then passed them, going somewhere else. Surprised—they both had thought it was for them—they turned and faced each other. Only Dharma stood once more now at the door, summoned by the bright commotion. The hat pin glittered, broken in the other glass, the flower, coddled in the dusky splinters, this blue ember in its ashes. “My mother,” Dharma said. She took one look at Claire. She picked up the hat pin. Stefan held out his hand. He knew that she would give it to him. Dharma stuck it, without hesitation, through his open palm.

Stunned, thrust forward by the pain, he staggered past them. Then, ridiculously, like some lofty, mythological white horse, he rose up solemnly and passed, affronted, from their sight.

Dharma ran to Claire. She tried to free her hands but her own now trembled so, she couldn’t. She pulled the blanket tenderly from Claire’s mouth and they heard him going down the stairs and outside into the cold. They heard him running, fast and coatless, up Richmond Hill towards his darker sacrilegious grounds, the woods. His shortcut home.

Mr. Kinkaid, out on the sidewalk, the only one of them not to go with Narayan’s dead body to the hospital, watched Stefan Stefanovitch run up into the woods. His body looked all red against the whiteness, and there were dogs, a lot of dogs he had, running nipping at him in the quiet snow.