5

She was given one week’s peace.

Near the end of it, exhilarated from the belief that she would never again hear the silence, and that she had indeed had a psychic experience (which was harmless) Susan threw a dinner party. Lou (she had decided he was wonderful again) helped with the cooking (Paella Valenciana, their specialty). Andrea was allowed to show off for a limited time, then trotted off to bed, and Susan settled down in the warmth of the company of friends.

Dillon Roberts, fiftyish, white-­haired, British actor and raconteur, was holding forth, to the delight of everyone except his wife, Berte, on the subject of poltergeists, brought on by Susan’s retelling, for the umpteenth time that week of her experience.

“. . . It was in a small hotel in Cheswick, pronounced without the ‘w’ for those interested in things Anglophile . . .”

“God, Dillon, get on with it,” Berte said almost good-­naturedly.

“. . . A cousin of mine, whom I hardly speak to, though that has nothing whatever to do with the story either, was staying overnight with her new boyfriend, a very cut-­and-dried kind of chap, not one given to fancies— What was his name, dear?”

“Alfred Lord Tennyson,” Berte, a German, answered, looking first to heaven and then to Susan. “If anyone has to go to work in the morning, we’ll forgive you if you don’t stay around for the rest of Dillon’s story,” and everyone chuckled.

“That’s enough out of you,” Dillon said. “You lost the war, now you’ll have to endure my stories.”

“Reparations,” Berte quipped.

“At any rate, it was in the middle of the night when things started popping. The drawers in a large Queen Anne highboy slammed open and shut, open and shut, for several minutes, leaving my cousin and her beau, Richard Woodburn, that was his name, his family was in prosthetic appendages, I thought he quite suited my cousin actually, at any rate, it left them quite shattered, literally. . . .”

“How do you like that for a sentence?” Berte asked Tara, who applauded.

“And in the morning, when they told the concierge about it, she said matter-­of-­factly, ‘Didn’t anyone tell you about it before you took the room?’ It seems it happened every night, the same highboy, the same drawers. No one took much notice of it, though there had been a small mention in the local newspaper and someone had come round to examine it—I suppose for poltergeist holes. Like boring worms, I expect.”

“Or boring people,” Berte, never one to miss an opportunity, said.

“I may be many things, my dear, but I am never boring.”

“And I am Marie of Romania.”

Susan laughed and it occurred to her that their friends were probably among the most delightful people to be found—another reason for exhilaration. She went into the kitchen, followed by Paul Rausch, to put up coffee.

“They’re such characters,” Paul said, coming up behind her.

Susan moved aside swiftly, knowing full well that Paul was about to make one of his minipasses at her. “Annie looks great,” she said, bringing his wife, at least verbally, into the room with them.

“So do you.”

“Thank you, sir.” And Susan walked a wide circle around him to the coffee canister.

“Do I still make you nervous?”

“Uh-­huh.” And she widened the circle back to the stove.

“I’m never going to stop trying, you know.”

“I was beginning to suspect that.”

“At least I flatter you, don’t I?”

“Yup.”

“And who knows, someday your resistance may let down.”

“Stranger things have happened; we’re trading with Red China.”

Annie Rausch, never a fool, at last arrived, and in a moment Susan found herself alone, counting out the spoonfuls of coffee.

The phone rang.

She picked it up without hesitation and only after a few minutes of speaking with her mother (who was, predictably, lonely and blue) did Susan realize it hadn’t occurred to her that the silence might be on the other end of the line. She was finally rid of it. She plugged in the percolator and rejoined her friends, settling down next to Tara, who was arguing with Berte over Woody Allen’s new movie.

And on Washington Square, in Yuri Gross’s darkened laboratory, a sheet of paper on which he had made notes on Susan’s experience blackened beyond reading.