Forever (53 page)

But no. Zarah chattered on, leading her
around a shagreen sofa table which held a pair of outrageously
large lamps. And there he was, in front of them. Boris Guberoff -
in the flesh!

I mustn't allow my shock to show! Stephanie
heard herself thinking, knowing full well that her face, with its
furrowed brow, bewildered expression of utter stupidity, eyes blank
with shock, surely had to betray her, must be a dead giveaway . .
.

Like an aged bloodhound sniffing, the old
man slowly raised his head, his hawklike nose twitching, until he
was staring directly up at Stephanie -

- and Zarah said in a voice so triumphant,
so dramatic, and so evil, that it was anticlimactic, 'Here's your
little surprise - an old friend of yours, I believe, Ms Williams
... Ms Williams?' Zarah let go of her arm and frowned slightly,
perplexed by the blankness in Stephanie's stare.

Stephanie felt the force of the old man's
gaze. Was that recognition glinting in the watery hooded eyes? she
wondered, the passing seconds expanding into an unbearable
eternity. She could already anticipate his words. The hair colour
and hairstyle . . . well, those are different, of course ... the
eye colour, also . . . but it is her... oh yes, she's the one who
tricked me!

Stephanie steeled herself, actually forgot
to breathe. And time continued to telescope, the seconds drawing
out longer, longer, the silence growing and making room for the
sounds beneath the sounds . . . the electricity humming, the hull
creaking, the circulating forced air whispering, whispering . .
.

'Yes?' Zarah snapped, her impatient voice
sharp, slicing through the sounds beneath the sounds, sending them
scattering.

The old man opened his mouth, then clicked
it shut again, his slack jaw working loosely, as though massaging
his dentures.

'Well?'Zarah prodded.

He sighed heavily, shook his head, and
looked helplessly at Zarah. 'I've never seen this woman before in
my life. I'm sorry, Lili -' He gasped, his face purpling at his
blunder.

Zarah exploded.
'Imbecille!
' she
hissed in Italian, her eyes catching the light of the lamp and
throwing off malevolent shards.
'Tacete!
' She shook a fist
in the air.

Stephanie couldn't believe her ears. Lili!
He had actually called Zarah "Lili"!

Zarah turned to Stephanie, barely able to
manage civility much longer. 'I'm sorry, Ms Williams. I was led to
believe you were a friend of his . . . an old man's mistake, surely
. . . perhaps senility ... at that age one never knows . . .'

And to Stephanie's astonishment, Zarah -
Lili! took her arm and hustled her swiftly away, whisking her out
of the old fool's presence before -

- yes! Before more damage could be done!

Stephanie joined Eduardo out on deck. 'That
was fast,' he said. 'What did Mother want?'

'Oh, she just asked if I knew a friend of
hers,' Stephanie said in a contrived, bored tone of voice, when in
truth she was still so high on relief, and so painfully stunned by
her reprieve, that she thought she knew how Jed Savitt must have
felt when the Supreme Court had stayed his execution. Because
Guberoff, she thought weakly, stayed mine. Thank God he didn 't
recognise me!

'And did you,' Eduardo asked, 'know her
friend?'

She shook her head and put her hands in her
pockets as they walked along the deck.

'Who was it?'

Stephanie looked at him. 'She really didn't
say,' she replied truthfully, yet at the same time knowing she was
telling yet another lie - for it was a lie, she thought, if only by
virtue of omission.

'The idiot! The idiot -

Zarah's savage pacing quickened, each layer
of her gown rustling angrily with her every feverish move. Abruptly
she spun at the wall and hammered her fists on the glossy panelling
until her knuckles stung, her rage mushrooming, threatening to
consume her and everything within sight like some giant exploding
bomb.

Bad enough that I brought the old fool here!
But did he have to call me by my real name? Did he . . . ?

Oh, but it was too much to bear! Too, too
much -

She pounded on the wall seven more times,
accompanying each bang with a strangled syllable: 'That. . . fee .
. . ble . . . old . . . id . . . i. . . OTTTTTT!'

Colonel Valerio, standing off to the side,
waited for her rage to subside. She was magnificent in her fury -
Medea come to glorious life.

Still breathing rapidly, she seemed to
become aware of her raised crablike hands, looked at them in
surprise and forced them down to her sides.

She turned to Colonel Valerio. 'Get that
sorry excuse of a man off this yacht at once!' she snapped. 'Do you
hear me? At once!'

'Ma'am! Anything specific you want done with
him?'

' Yes/' Rage swarmed around her like a dense
cloud of killer bees. 'Kill him! Mutilate him! Chop him into little
pieces!' she screamed. Then she regained a measure of control.
'No.' She sighed so heavily her entire body shook. 'Perhaps this
Virginia Wesson will try to contact him again. Have your Italian
operatives watch him around the clock. Perhaps one or two of them
can get a job in that . . . that geriatric hellhole, where I hope
to God he soon dies!'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Now get him off this boat before I kill him
with my own two hands!' she screamed. 'Get him off now!'

'Ma'am!'

Only once Stephanie was alone in her suite,
and the sound of the departing helicopter faded, did the
accumulation of fear, tension and, ultimately, relief, make her
shudder uncontrollably. It was a full five minutes before she got a
grip on herself, and only then did the irony of it all hit her.

She couldn't help but smile, and the smile
became a giggle, and the giggle soon turned into such hysterical
laughter that she dived into her bed and buried her head under the
pillows to mask the sound.

Her laughter grew louder and wilder, and was
soon accompanied by tears and kicking feet.

It really was too, too absurdly delicious,
too funny for words! Zarah brought Guberoff back from Milan
expressly to identify me as Virginia Wesson! But instead, she
thought, gleefully, he confirmed my own suspicions about Zarah
being Lili! Poetic justice, that, she gloated with the perverse
pleasure of someone who has escaped doom by a mere hair's breadth.
Highly, highly poetic . . .

New York City

'St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital,' sing-songed
the operator.

'Connect me with Patient Information?'

'Surely.'

Click, pause, ring. Then: 'Patient
Information.' A woman's voice, heavy on the Brooklynese.

'Need to know the condition of a patient by
the name of Aaron Kleinfelder.'

A longer pause. Then, 'The patient has
improved. He is in a stable condition.'

There was a sharp intake of breath. 'You
sure?'

'That's what it says right here.'

'Yeah, well, thanks.'

'Have a nice -'

In the phone booth of the twenty-four-hour
Market Diner, The Ghost hung up. Thought: Time to get to work. Time
to say,
'vaya con Dios
, motherfucker!'

Sammy was up bright and early. He couldn't
wait to go back to St. Luke's-Roosevelt and visit Aaron
Kleinfelder. There were lots of questions he wanted to ask him.

Won't Stephanie get a surprise when she
calls! he thought, smiling with pleasure.

He waited until eight A.M. before
telephoning the hospital.

'I'm sorry,' a nurse told him, 'the patient
is no longer here in ICU. He was moved to Room 432.'

Sammy sweet-talked her into transferring him
to the fourth-floor nurses' station.

'How did you get this extension?' demanded a
battleaxe of a nurse. 'Visiting hours are from four till six!'

'But surely in extenua -'

'No exceptions!'

The line went dead.

Sighing, Sammy looked at the receiver, hung
up, and checked his watch.

Eight long hours to go . . .

It was exactly four P.M. when the doctor in
the white lab coat with the stethoscope dangling out of a pocket
joined the crowd of visitors milling in the lobby. When an elevator
pinged, everyone surged towards it.

'You first, Doctor,' a man said, politely,
stepping aside.

'Thank you.'

Inside the young doctor turned around and
faced the front, all the while smiling that professional doctor
smile - just what you'd expect of someone who cared for the
diseased and the infirm.

When the elevator stopped on the fourth
floor, the doctor said, 'Excuse me,' and got off.

The first elevator being too crowded, Sammy
had to wait a few minutes for the next.

He was dandified to the nines. Wore a
double-breasted silver- grey linen suit with a pink carnation stuck
in his lapel. His white shirt was starched and his jaunty bow tie
was yellow silk printed with little pink elephants, and there was a
matching silk handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket of his
jacket. He was carrying a big bunch of carnations in florists' wrap
in one hand and a bag of Mrs Field's macadamia chocolate chip
cookies in the other.

The doctor in the white lab coat walked
briskly, like someone in charge with an official destination in
mind. On both sides of the two-toned, green-floored corridor, the
doors to the sickroom were open, and friends and relatives of
patients were arriving and filling vases with water and arranging
bouquets and talking in hushed voices, while TV sets tuned to
various afternoon talk shows spewed chatter and laughter and
applause and commercials. From one of them came the
ding-ding-ding
of a game show win, and from behind closed
doors somewhere came the moans of a man in agony. At the nurses'
station, a minor crisis preoccupied a huddle of staff: a female
voice insisting. 'But he isn't due another painkiller until six
o'clock!'.

From Room 432, a perky voice issued forth
from a TV set. '. . . Did you ever want to give the gift of love?
Hello. I'm Shanna Parker...'

Before going in The Ghost took a quick look
around. Stopped and waited maybe six or seven seconds to check the
corridor both ways before slipping in through the open door and
then closing it partway to shield what was going on.

On the TV, Shanna Parker was saying: '. . .
As a CRY godparent, I get regular reports, photographs, and letters
which keep me up to date . . .', while The Ghost, looking around,
was pleased to see it was a semi-private room. Only one of the two
beds was occupied, the patient looking like a fat pasty cherub with
grey frizzy hair. Despite the TV, he was sound asleep.

Not wanting to snuff the wrong patient, The
Ghost approached the foot of the bed and checked the chart.
Kleinfelder, Aaron.

'Say your prayers, motherfucker,' The Ghost
whispered, hanging the chart back on the bed. 'You 'bout to depart
this world.'

The Ghost picked up a pillow from the empty
bed, soundlessly drew the privacy curtain and, shielded from view,
brought the pillow swiftly down over Aaron's face, holding it there
with both hands.

Aaron Kleinfelder woke up in choking terror.
He tried to scream, but the pillow swallowed all sound - just as it
swallowed all light and all hearing and all oxygen. He thrashed
about, his movements becoming weaker and weaker as his life ebbed
until, after a short while, he gave one final twitch and lay
still.

The Ghost removed the pillow and felt
Aaron's neck for a pulse. Stood there looking down at the dead man
and drew a deep breath, letting it out slowly and giving the corpse
the kind of look one gives a piece of work well done.

On the TV, Shanna continued her tear-jerking
pitch:

'. . . It's such a wonderful reward to watch
hunger turn into nutrition, despair into hope, and sickness into
health! You'll be amazed by the changes you'll see. Just think! So
little money . . . just pennies a day. . . can make such a world of
difference . . .'

Still looking at Aaron Kleinfelder, The
Ghost gave the TV an ironic kind of salute, and fluffed out the
pillow, putting it back on the other bed. Taking a rose out of the
lab coat's pocket and laying it on the pillow next to Aaron's head.
Calling card in place,

The Ghost strolled casually out,
satisfaction showing through the professional smile now.

With a flourish Sammy fished a carnation out
of the bouquet. 'Here's one for you . . .'he said, gallantly
handing it to one of the nurses he passed. '. . . And one for you .
. .' He fished out another one, and gave it to an old lady using a
walker.

They both looked surprised, but accepted the
offering in the spirit in which it was intended.

Sammy walked jauntily on, glancing at the
room numbers as he passed them. Seeing a doctor coming his way, he
fished out another carnation and said, 'Have a nice day.' The
doctor took it and nodded and went on. Which was how Sammy Kafka
unknowingly gave The Ghost a flower.

At Sea

The revolving sky lounge of the
Chrysalis
.

Like a flying saucer which had put down on
the yacht, it curved out over the sea both to port and to
starboard, its roof the yacht's helipad on which the Bell Jet
Ranger perched like a giant mechanical insect. From inside the
lounge, the 360-degree, unobstructed view was a breathtaking,
every-changing cyclorama.

Zarah was there, in air-conditioned luxury
behind walls of specially tinted glass, safe from the ultra-violet
rays of the sun, seated in a throne of a chair, her legs tucked
under her.