The street was crowded up on Metropolitan; they pushed along past the piles of Korean vegetables, neat and brilliant in their tropical rows, then past the antique shops, up Lefferts, by the Jewish temple, and past the cluster of apartment houses until finally they came to the village, old-fashioned and European in style with Tudor walls and crockety red tile roofs. The Homestead Deli, with its good-looking wursts necklacing the lead-paned windows, might just as well have been a village shop in Munich or Zurich. And Regents Row resembled any pub in England. It was a potpourri and charming layout, Claire decided, delighted with the mixture of old world and new, the modern supermarket and the oriental music leaking from the Pakistani Spice Shop. One really could settle down here, so near and yet so far from anything-can-happen Manhattan. Why couldn’t the murder have happened there, where it would seem to belong, instead of here, so close to her family? Hadn’t they been through enough as it was? The dry dead face of Michael in his coffin came back to her in a rush and her mood was ruined. It was too hot after all, she’d just run into the camera shop and hurry back home. Now where on earth was the Mayor?
A clattering of voices and the beginnings of shouts near the corner jolted her out of her reverie.
It was … good God, it was the Mayor tug-of-warring a kosher chicken from a scull-capped, aproned shopkeeper! The Italian louts who held court in front of the pizzeria were howling with laughter and—what else?—rooting for the dog.
Claire, fleet-footed and all business, flew down to the hubbub and yanked the tooth-dented chicken from the fangs of the Mayor.
“Bravo!” the Italians whistled and applauded, “Bravo, bella signorina!”
The shopkeeper, highly offended, flailed his arms and whined and yelled a Yiddish tirade.
Truly sorry, embarrassed, and angry at the Mayor to boot, Claire reached into her purse and hauled out ten dollars.
“So eine scheisse!” the shopkeeper droned on and on, “Schauen Sie mal was der verdammte Hund mit meinem Laden gemacht hat!”
A small crowd had gathered. Claire peered into the cool darkness of the shop and saw, indeed, that the sawdust had been strewn with torn gizzards and three or four other hens, good as new.
She reached back into her purse and pulled out the last of what she had on her, a twenty dollar bill. The shopkeeper, sweat and dandruff glistening from his voluminous neck folds, yammered on in his guttural tongue. “Tya!” he wailed. “What good is that little bit of geld when my entire store was kaputt?” He went on to inform his audience that Claire was a “Schikse pipi m?dchen” with a “shit dog.”
That was it for Claire, who’d understood each nasty word. “Is that right?!” she threw the chicken into the street and the contents of her purse right after it.
“This is what I think of your store that has been so totally disheveled! You’re not only an exaggerator, you’re … you’re without resiliency! My dog is not a ‘shit’ as you so loudly proclaim, he happens to be the mayor of this town. And I am no Schiksa floozie but an American who finds you extremely constipated!”
Well, this was all too much for the crew of Italians. Claire’s rage was just too magnificent. They collapsed into peals of laughter and a barrage of lewd Sicilian expletives.
Infuriated, Claire whirled around and yelled, “Stati zita, imbecile!” right in Johnny Benedetto’s minding-his-own-business face.
“Listen, honey—” Johnny protested.
“Don’t call me ‘honey’!” hollered Claire and she snapped away, tripped, and flew over the chicken, marched past the astonished shopkeeper, and hurried down the hill, her knees still trembling with indignation and the face of that … that thoroughly obnoxious Italian. Mollified by all of this off-with-their-heads, the Mayor followed at a respectful distance, his tail muscled down between his legs in solemn retribution, his snout a neat mask of the called-for chagrin. But, by jove, he was pleased.
CHAPTER 2
Zinnie roared into the driveway. Wherever Zinnie went she was off to a fire. She screeched to a halt, bounded from the car, and stopped dead in her tracks. If there was one thing Zinnie couldn’t take, it was crawly things, and silver-dollar-sized, dark red spiders had been spinning webs from Park Lane South to Myrtle. “Oh, Christ,” she said out loud and ran into the house.
All through the woods and two blocks overflowing on the Richmond Hill side were these doilies five feet and more in diameter. It didn’t help to tear them down. The spiders had their web sites obstinately chosen and, tzaktzak, they’d only build them up again, good as new, right where you’d torn them down. No one had seen the likes of it since the caterpillar blitzkrieg back in 1957. And Zinnie, who wouldn’t bat an eye over a gun-drawn gallop through a subway station at midnight after some fleeing Rastafarians, and that without a backup anywhere in sight, would whimper at the very idea of a bug near her. Once inside, she slammed the kitchen screen door and shivered, safe.
Carmela was setting the table. She was doing it pink and green, in all seriousness, to set off the fillet of sole. Michaelaen, who’d been doing his best to irritate her by driving a matchbox truck in furrows along the tablecloth, stood up on his chair and threw his arms open in mute welcome when he saw Zinnie. She scooped him up and threw him over her head. “Rrrowwll,” she bit the tummied gap between shorts and T-shirt. “Where’s the salt and pepper? This is my dinner right here!” Michaelaen squirmed with delighted horror and rolled his truck into her mouth.
“We’re invaded,” Zinnie announced. “They’re taking over!”
Carmela made “Twilight Zone” noises and Michaelaen watched her with big eyes.
“The spider webs?” Mary didn’t look up from her mushrooms. Peeling mushrooms was one of her peculiarities. Nobody else peeled mushroom tops, but she did.
“They’re something, all right,” agreed Carmela. “Revolting.”
“Your father likes the spiders,” Mary defended them.