When I called to tell her that I was home, Mrs. Lorenzo came up to the fourth floor with what she said was a “special secret dessert” on a covered plate. Earlier, she’d left a pan of saltimbocca in our refrigerator, prepared but uncooked, as well as the fixings for two side dishes.
As she made potato croquettes and peas with walnuts, I set the table and told her about my day. There wasn’t much to tell, because I left out Fiona Cassidy, aka Eve Adams, and Mr. Yoshioka. I was leading a life more secret than the dessert on the covered plate.
As she cooked, she gave me other small tasks, and I assisted as best I could while she told me all about what the three kids in her little day-care business did and said. “I’m afraid I can’t keep up with them quite like before I got so fat.”
Mr. Lorenzo had been dead only a couple of months, but already Mrs. Lorenzo was gaining weight. She wasn’t yet fat, however, only a little plump, and I didn’t like to hear her dissing herself.
“Mrs. Lorenzo, has anybody ever told you how you look like Anna Maria Alberghetti?”
“You’re sweet, Jonah, but that’s all behind me now.” With one hand, she patted her backside and laughed softly. “All behind me.”
Somehow I knew she didn’t mean the new pounds, which were distributed evenly over her, and so I said, “Behind you? What is?”
“Caring about how I look. Men. Marriage. Tony was the best of men. Trying to have all that again will only lead to disappointment … or worse.”
Her resignation made me sad. I couldn’t think of any words that might change her mind about the future. The longer I was silent, the more awkward I felt, until I had to escape the kitchen for a few minutes. Maybe when I came back, we’d be able to talk about a new subject as if what had just been said had never been said.
I lied: “I’m going to turn down my bed so I won’t have to do it later, open a window and get some fresh air in there.”
When I went to my bedroom, the window was up, as I had left it, and the bed was turned down, also as I had left it, but on the smooth cotton blanket, as if keeping watch on the doorway, lay the fabric eyeball with its blue-plastic iris.
In memory, I saw the purple stare and heard the dangerous woman say: Juju eye? You’re a real little freak in the making, aren’t you?
I went to the window. Closed it. Locked it.
When I tore open my closet door, she wasn’t hiding in there. She wasn’t in my mother’s bedroom or closet, either. Or the hall closet. Or the bathroom.
In the living room, I found the front door locked, as I’d left it after Mrs. Lorenzo arrived.
I returned to my bedroom and met the Cyclopean gaze. I plucked the eye off the bed. I retrieved the La Florentine candy tin from my nightstand, opened it, and confirmed that nothing else had been taken from—or added to—my collection. I put the eye in the tin and the tin in the nightstand drawer.
The eye hadn’t been there when I came home and turned down the bedclothes. While Mrs. Lorenzo and I were busy in the kitchen, Eve Adams—Fiona Cassidy, whoever, whatever—had come here to get the creepy thing and position it to gaze at the door.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I had no difficulty translating the message. The woman must have known that Mr. Yoshioka had come to tell me about the stink like dry-cleaning fluid and about the cut-up Polaroid of the tiger screen. She was warning me not to conspire against her, to stay away from Mr. Yoshioka, to remember that she liked to cut. She was saying, You think the fabric eye is juju, boy, but the only thing that’s juju around here is me.
When my tremors subsided, I returned to the kitchen, where Mrs. Lorenzo had finished preparing the side dishes. She was frying the tightly rolled saltimbocca in a mixture of butter and olive oil, and the air was fragrant with the aromas of prosciutto, veal, sage, and pepper.
She wanted water to drink with dinner. For myself, I poured cherry Kool-Aid from a pitcherful that Mom had mixed that morning.
When I sat at the table, I had no appetite. I started picking at the food, certain that my suddenly sour stomach would throw it right back at me if I dared to eat. But it was a testimony to Mrs. Lorenzo’s cooking that before long I’d finished what she served to me and was asking for seconds.
The special secret dessert proved to be ricotta cream cake sprinkled with icing sugar and shaved chocolate. It wasn’t just special; it was a piece of Heaven.