Lotty couldn’t give me as much comfort as I wanted. Over a bowl of lentil soup, I recounted the details of my last several days, trying to puzzle out the complicated relations of New Solway.
When I finished, she asked, “Where does that Egyptian boy fit in?” “He doesn’t. Except I think he could tell me how Whitby got into the pond.” I described the layout of the Larchmont attic to her and my imagined picture of Benjamin Sadawi standing on a chair, watching for Catherine.
Lotty pushed her reading glasses up into her hair. “So you do know where he is, Victoria.”
I flushed, but nodded.
“And is that why you’re concealing his whereabouts? Because you want to get information out of him? If he’s a terrorist, you should turn him over to the authorities.”
“If I knew he was a terrorist, I’d turn him over in a heartbeat.” “And you’re the best judge of whether he is?”
I got up from the couch and walked over to the window, where I could see the lake glistening when car lights hit it. “It’s the trouble with these times, Lotty. We don’t know who to trust. But an attorney general who
thinks that calico cats are a sign of the devil doesn’t inspire me with greater confidence than I have in my own judgment.”
“Your judgment on this isn’t backed up by any experience or expertise. You’ve never worked with Arab militants, so you don’t know how or what to look for to say whether he is one or not. You certainly don’t speak Arabic, so you can’t even talk to him.”
I turned to look at her. “Lotty, do you think every Arab in this country should be interned?”
“Of course not. You know I loathe stereotyping of any kind. But this morning’s paper ran a story about the mosque this youth attends. The antiJewish rhetoric there runs high.” She sighed and looked down at her hands. “It seems to run high these days in London and Paris as well. Nothing has changed since my childhood. All over Europe and the Middle East, instead of blaming terrorists for our current woes, people are blaming the Jews. Even some poet in New Jersey is chanting that tired old litany. So I’d like to make sure this particular Arab boy doesn’t want to see me dead before I applaud you for hiding him.”
I pulled savagely on the cord for her blinds. “I understand: it’s what makes everything so difficult these days. What if I cut Benjamin loose and he kills someone like you-someone beloved, who’s saving lives, not a party to his quarrel with the universe? What if I turn him over to the authorities and they send him to a prison, remote from anyone he knows, where he can be gang-raped by the adult male population? If he’s not already a terrorist, that seems guaranteed to turn him into one.”
She nodded, her face pinched with worry. “So what are you doing to resolve this dilemma?”
“I’ve left him with Father Lou. He’s sorted out a lot of gangbangers in his day, maybe he can sort this kid out, too.”
“I hope for everyone’s sake you’re right about this, Victoria. I’m worried about, oh, everything, but also your own safety. You could get badly hurt yourself, you know. Not even necessarily by this boy, but by some gunhappy policeman like the ones who shot the Bayard child. Is this Egyptian boy’s health and safety really worth the risk to your own life?” Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “Why am I even asking that question?
You’re like your own dogs-once you have a bone in your teeth, you won’t let it go.”
We talked of easier matters for a time, but at ten she told me she was due in the OR at six, and that I should go home. And try to be careful. She smiled at me, but her eyes were sad.
Lotty’s somber words haunted my sleep, filling it with dreams where I caused disasters in which she died and Morrell stood in the entrance to a cave, shaking his head at me before turning his back and disappearing from sight. A little after four-thirty, I picked myself out of bed. It was better to stumble gritty-eyed through the day than get another hour of such tormented sleep.
I drove over to St. Remigio’s for early Mass, taking a roundabout route through the early morning streets until I was sure that no one was on my tail. I slipped into the Lady Chapel about halfway through the lessons, read in Spanish by a stocky woman who was the school nurse. A handful of neighborhood women were there, and a sleepy boy, a student at the school, was serving.