Park Lane South, Queens (23 page)

And there was another thing. Claire had lived overseas long enough to know that an American passport was still a desirable commodity. Even for a wealthy Pole with diplomatic immunity. Stefan was attracted to her, she knew that. Even now his hot little breaths were fogging up her sense of well-being.

She knew exactly what sex would be like with Stefan. It'd be slick, expert sex … like between the lines of the glossy magazine advice columns. The music would be suitable. Most likely black and newly released. He would moan. His body would be scented with the most expensive men's cologne from Bloomingdales. He would labor away at satisfying her first, tackling her body with all the cultivated calisthenics picked up at the health club. Yes, he would do his level best. When it was over, he'd sink down onto his elbows and gaze at her with triumphant eyes. Maybe even hold up his Waterford champagne glass for a replenishing toast. And she knew that the smell, the essence he would emote then, what with the talcum and the perfume rubbed away, would be thoroughly repugnant to her. She knew it. Just as surely as she knew that she had no idea what it would be like with Johnny. With Johnny all she knew was that she was compelled to him, thirsted for him with an almost infantile yearning, and had lost her mind when he'd held her. From that moment on she had only one insistent memory whenever she got close enough to herself to turn out the world, when she was drying her face with a towel or when her cheek touched the pillow … a dark and fragrant mental picture of a still-unopened blood red rose.

“I'd like to go straight home, Stefan.”

“I know. We'll just stop off at my place for a quick drink. Help you sleep.”

“That's very kind of you, but no thank you.”

“Come on, Claire. Don't play coy with me.” He was driving faster now, deliberately intimidating her.

She gripped the upholstery with ice-cold hands. The bottom fell out of her stomach as he cut through traffic like a shot from a gun.

“Come on, Stefan,” she heard herself say in what seemed an only slightly elevated tone.

“Excited?” He looked like a beautiful little boy having fun. He went still faster.

She burst out laughing. She didn't know what else to do. It worked. Stefan slowed down, took the turn, and pulled up in front of her house. Even his sudden anger seemed to mellow. “All right,” he said as they pulled up in front of her house. “Tonight you're off the hook. But tomorrow night”—he gave her an almost malevolent look—“we'll take a drive. Do you like Montauk?”

“Ooo! So far? Exciting!” She smiled at him, her goodbye full of promise, and hopped out of the car.

He grinned at their secret joke and roared away.

She kept that smile on her face until he turned the corner. She walked up to the stoop and sat down. Something was missing. There he was, staring at her through the screen. She let him out and sat down next to him on the top step, as was their custom, put her arm over him and felt his doggy breath on her hand. “That is one guy,” she said, “with whom I will never again get in a car. Something strange there. Boy. Never again. Do you know I was actually frightened for a moment? Always laugh in the face of fear, your honor. It's the only way out.”

The Mayor put his chin down on her knees. He was awfully glad she was home, safe and sound. Astonishing how much she meant to him after such a short time. She made him feel somewhat vital. Lord knew she needed looking after. They sat there listening to the crickets. A pack of kids were down the road under the trestle. They heard a bottle break and the muffled laughter, then the giddy shuffle as they ran off. The midnight local lumbered in and out, groaning and wheezing and farting. A cop car passed in front of the house, then parked in its everynight spot up on Bessemer for coffee regular and half a dozen Dunkin Donuts.

Iris's kitchen light was still on. Claire was tempted to go over and take a peek through the window until she remembered how late it was. If anybody saw her they'd think she was breaking in. The hell, she decided. “C'mon,” she said. “We're going to do a little spying. You do have a girlfriend over there, don't you?”

They strolled with pointed nonchalance across the street. “Go on,” Claire egged him through the bushes. “Pretend I'm not here, would you? Gee. Now that you've got the green light, you act like Mr. Prim and do it off the curb.”

It wasn't that. The Mayor cocked his head and his ears went up with a quizzical hoist. It was this baffling sense that something was amiss.

“Just mind you don't tear that big web there,” she hissed and followed him through down on all fours. Right above her head was Iris's tentative silhouette. And then she was gone. She left the light on though. She'd be back. Claire pitched herself against the Japanese maple to wait for her return. The living room, aside from the monstrous television set, looked like something from a long-gone era. Through the parted velvet drapes she could just make out the unusual antique furniture, Chinese and Louis XV mostly … oriental screens and bookcases and figures … little figures … what in blazes? It looked like a couch full of children. A hot wind blew and the curtain fluttered shut. The Mayor drew close to her feet. It was so damned quiet. He would have preferred to go but wasn't about to leave her flat. She was glad he was there but dared not speak. She had to get a closer look. If she could just get up to that branch, she could look in the breezeway window. The Mayor looked on skeptically. Clumsy Claire. She'd never make it. White lightning lit up the sky. Of course. Where else would she want to be but up a tree in a lightning storm? Easy does it … easy does it … she was up with a round roll of thunder.

“Na? So you've come for dat tea after all!”

Iris's voice, and the sudden sight of her eerie, pale-moon face behind and underneath her, jolted Claire right out of the tree.

She wasn't hurt, but rain was pelting down on top of them now in a resolute gully-washer. There was nothing to do but follow Iris into the house. The Mayor stuck like glue. Iris, trailing an invisible chiffon scarf with one hand up in the air, ushered them in through the hall to the parlor. The smell of cat was very thick.

“Sit down, sit down,” Iris gushed. “Take off dose sopping shoes.” She was all keyed up.

“I shouldn't have come over like this … in the middle of the night. I ought to go, really. I—”

But Iris wouldn't hear of it. She was delighted.

“Ve older people don't sleep a lot, you know. Und I don't too much like da television. So violent. No, no, no, you couldn't have come at a better time, to tell you da trute.”

“Fine.” Claire took one careful step backward and sneezed.

“Und dis is my family,” Iris presented the back of the couch.

I can always beat her up, Claire told herself. She's just a frail old woman. Then she saw who was sitting on the couch. It was a family of dolls. Big dolls, little dolls. There was one enormous one that looked like Shirley Temple. Her wig was golden ringlets of real hair. Most of the dolls were obviously valuable German and French bisque, as old, perhaps, as Iris herself. They were all done up in hand-crocheted, vibrant colors, opulently turned out but now softly muted with time and a gray film of dust. They were everywhere: staring out from glass-doored cabinets and countless musty shelves.

“Dese are my dollies.” Iris sat down on the hassock and crossed her legs, revealing just a touch of lace-trimmed slip. Black.

“How nice,” Claire smiled hard. She edged over toward the window. It was open and she could always jump out. Across the street a car pulled up. Claire's heart thumped. It was a man, rushing around the car with an umbrella. She didn't know him, wait, she did. It was that doctor from Stefan's party and he was opening the passenger door for Zinnie. “Hi!” she waved, pretending they could see her. “My sister and her new boyfriend,” she said. She could hear them laughing as they scooted through the rain. They were kissing now, thick as thieves in each other's arms on the porch.

Iris was talking about how beneficial a thunderstorm was, shooting lovely bolts of ozone into the earth … like a tonic for the plants.

“I've never seen so many dolls,” Claire crept closer. She hated dolls. Always had. She didn't care how rare they were. Dolls had always filled her with anxiety, even as a child. She couldn't see them face down on the floor … they had to be upright (imagine being face down like that every day). No, and they had to be adequately covered, too, not naked in a cold garage the way some thoughtless little girls left them. The worst part about dolls was that once you got them dressed and sitting comfortably, they scared the living daylights out of you … looking at you the way they did with icy, unblinking eyes. They were diabolical once they got you alone in the dark.

Iris went away to boil water or something, and Claire had time to investigate the shabby finery of the room. It was sad if you looked at it one way, almost Havishamesque. On the other hand, it was the place of a person who'd chosen her poison at one point and stuck to it, dammit. Each nook and doily held some memory, Claire supposed. There was a series of cat portraits, from aging sepiatone to a brilliant, though blurred, color polaroid of Lü. She guessed she'd rather live like this one day should she become old, independently eccentric, instead of tediously predictable like the other old women around the neighborhood, fastidiously correct with their starched curtains and whitewashed stoops. Dry and forgettable. Interchangeable. You wouldn't find any of them inviting anyone in to tea at midnight, would you? No matter how the visitor had arrived.

Claire decided she liked Iris after all. There was a cut glass bowl filled with colorful marbles on the coffee table. They refracted the light from the art deco lamp beside it in a mottle of pastel along the walls. And who but Iris would think to upholster the Biedermeier hassock like that, in indigo with tapioca constellations? One whole side of the room consisted of shelf upon shelf of books. Metaphysics in six different languages. Leather-bound volumes of the philosophers: Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, and quite a few by that old chauvinist Nietzsche. Freud and Jung had their own rows. This all spoke in favor of Iris's innocence, as far as Claire was concerned. Nobody with that much psychological knowledge of self would go around killing children. They just wouldn't. Would they? They would not.

Claire took a quick peek out the window just in case. Zinnie and Emil were still there. Sure. Snug as bugs in her hammock. You could look right into the house from here. She could see her father leaning over some weapon or other in his den, even hear his music, Puccini's something or other. Her mother was up in bed doing her crossword puzzle, her bent, fissured form happily oblivious to all but obscure word origins.

Iris came back in carrying a tray overloaded with pastry and cups and saucers.

Claire smiled. “What's this? The Viennese hour?”

“If you like.” Iris rotated her shoulders with a mambo back and forth, getting into the swing of her tea party. Iris apparently didn't go in for supermarket goodies. She baked herself. There was a slice of rum-wafting fruitcake. With a thrill of horror Claire spotted the powder-sugared
rugelach
. She resigned herself to tomorrow's fast and helped herself.

“Dat's vot I like to see,” Iris sat down happily, “a goot healthy appetite.”

“These are hard not to like,” Claire took another.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“No, nothing. Just the way it is, thanks.”

“A little schnapps? Because you're vet?”

“Schnapps? What about a cordial?”

Iris threw open a cabinet no farther away than her fingertips. It sparkled with imported bottles. “Pear, plum, orange, peach, hazelnut, or apricot.”

“Um … pear.”

“Pear.” With an admirably steady hand she opened the bottle and plunked a good slosh into Claire's teacup and then one in her own. Her fingers were gnarled with arthritis but her nails were perfectly manicured. With what painstaking diligence Iris had achieved that was anybody's guess. Her hands alone would make an interesting portrait. She was going to have to come to a decision soon about using the camera. Why did everything have to be so difficult? You never seemed to be able to do the things you really knew you should be doing without compromising. Nothing was for nothing. “Relationships are so complicated,” she said out loud, but Iris wasn't interested in pursuing the mundane.

“Vy,” she said, “don't you get yourself knocked up?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, pregnant. You've got the age. Und nothing else to do. It vood be a fine ting to see some new life around dat house.”

Claire lowered her eyes and swallowed her mouthful. “What does that mean, I haven't anything else to do?”

“Vell, I mean, I see you over dere. Vandering around all night long. Dat's nice to come home und readjust but now you ought to have someone else besides yourself to take care of. Pretty soon it vill be too late. Trees only ripen in season, you know.”

“I can't believe this. I can't believe I'm sitting here with you and you're telling me my biological clock is running out. And just with whom should I have this baby? Have you got that figured out, too?”

“Pfuff! Plenty of men around your house. Dat one always vatching in da vindows at night.”

“Johnny?”

“I don't know. Dat one alvays hanging around. You two vould make beautiful children.”

Claire nibbled on her cookie. “He's a cop.”

“So? Dat's a goot chob.”

“Is it? Always walking a tightrope between crack smokers with knives and cocaine pushers with guns?”

Iris pursed her lips. “Day got a goot pension if dey get kilt. Und da way I look at it is dis. Like da Arab says”—here she raised her pointer finger into the air—“‘It is written by da prophet ven you shall die. From da day to da hour, yea to da very moment.' All dat udder stuff about chance is poppycock.”