She’d cleaned it up and fed it for a week, but the sickly thing would not get well. It lay at the top of the stairs and wouldn’t move, wouldn’t eat. It just stank. And Claire had picked it up and run around trying to get help for it. Everyone had laughed. Nobody cared about a damn cat. She’d carried the stinking animal into the traffic of Himalayan hubbub and she was going to find him a vet. Of course there was no vet, not even in the Hindu village down below, so she carried it to the healing lama. When she’d finally made it to the lama’s cabin he wasn’t there, he was up in the mountain searching for herbs to roll into pills. The narrow-eyed assistant, thinking himself helpful, had brought out a club, and he was baffled when Claire, in tears, had jogged away down the path with the now-moaning cat. In a panic, Claire had realized that she had to get the poor thing home to the Tea Shop of the Tibetan Moon. Along the way, in the middle of the village, with the prayer wheel going round and round and a session of young monks playing potsy in the road, the cat had thrown back its orange head, stretched its arms and legs in rigid agony, and died.
When things were set to die, Claire knew, one might well provide them with peaceful surroundings in which to do it and not go carting them about like a lunatic, as though it would do any good. She bit into her bologna sandwich. The bread was so fresh that it stuck to the roof of her mouth like a host at communion. And you couldn’t beat sharp mustard. You really couldn’t. Murmuring confusion seeped from the separate television camps the family was divided into around the house. She had the feeling, almost hope and almost fear, that nothing would ever happen again. The milk was ice cold and she drank it greedily. A burst of laughter from inside lit up her face and she smiled with them at some new antic of Michaelaen’s. Or someone’s. It didn’t matter. She was with them, apart but close.
The car that had just passed turned around, hesitated, then stopped right in front of the house. Some sporty little car. A light went on in Iris von Lillienfeld’s back porch and the Mayor crossed over the street. A big man climbed out of the car, studied something in his hand and proceeded up the front walk. Claire leaned forward. It was that—that drug dealer from this afternoon! A thrill of something went right through her.
“This 113-04?” He shielded his eyes from the lantern, then saw her shocked face. Jesus! It was that very same cuckoo from the pizza place!
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she reprimanded him, her tone dating back to a decade of tight-assed, condescending grammar school nuns.
“Look, lady. Before you get all bent out of shape, I didn’t come here to see you!”
Claire dropped the whole box of slides. Lady? How old did he think she was? Had he followed her home?
“Does a Mr. Stanley Breslinsky live here?” he continued, politely bending down to help her pick up the cascade of slides.
“No!” she snatched one right out of his hand. He had wrists thick with enemy black hairs. “You’ve put your fingerprints all over the slide.” She pulled her hair out of her eyes. “Yes, he does live here,” she said, annoyed, in fact, that he hadn’t followed her home.
Married, concluded Johnny, hating her.
“Dad!” called Claire. Now he hated her more.
No one came and the two of them glared at each other. “Dad!” she called again, louder, refusing to get up and give those scornful eyes a good shot at her short shorts.
Stan looked through the front screen. “Oh,” he said, peering out at Johnny. “I didn’t hear the dog.”
“He took off,” Claire complained. “This man would like to speak with you.”
This man, Johnny mimicked her inside his head. Like, “this creep.” “Detective Benedetto,” he said. “I’m with the 102nd. You stopped off there this morning?”
“Yes?” Stan looked around guiltily, then remembered Mary was off to church.
“I wonder if I could have a word with you?”
“Sure!” Stan opened the door and ushered Johnny in. What a hulk of a guy! He slapped him on the back and directed him into his “study,” a room dedicated to one cannon after the next. Wherever you looked there were cannons, homemade crossbows, hunks of wood in various stages of finish. Johnny gave a low whistle. “You make this stuff?” he eyed Stan, impressed.
“What? This?” Stan waved aside the room as though he’d never seen it. “Just a hobby. Old man like me. Got to have something to do now, don’t I?”
Johnny picked up a rosewood and brass miniature of exquisite proportion.
“This is beautiful.”
“That’s the Gustavus Adolphus,” Stan glowed. “Swedish.” If Michael had lived … Stan started to think, till he caught himself.
“God. I’ve never seen work like this. Look at the wheels!”
“You have a good eye. Most people don’t notice detail like that. The wheels happen to have been the most difficult of all. I had to study to be a wheelwright in order to make them. Lots of time, they took, lots of time. We fired one last weekend. That’s why there’s still a little powder burn near the wick.”
“You’re kidding! You mean these things really work?”
“Indeed they do. The cannonballs are in the limber, there.”
Johnny flipped open the miniature lock and opened it. It eased open like a well-oiled treasure box. Not only were there twenty little cannonballs lined up neatly on a polished shelf, but a proper bucket, a mallet, and a pickax as well, all gleaming in rosewood and brass. A delicate white cord with gold-nuggeted ends was waxed, braided, and coiled.
“But you’re an armorer!” Johnny exploded.
Stan was wiping his hands on an old piece of shammy. He looked up through his bushy eyebrows and studied Johnny. “Not many people know what a small-arms expert is, either.”