“What? Still up? Come give your old grandma a kiss.”
Michaelaen slid out the door and sidled up to his grandma. His mouth was full of cherry cough drops. Michaelaen loved those cherry cough drops.
“Who are you?” he said to Johnny.
“Just a cop,” Johnny looked into Claire’s blue eyes.
That did it. She got up and went inside.
The Siamese named Lü who owned Miss von Lillienfeld crept under cover of night to the spot in the pine where the murder had happened. He didn’t walk right on the spot but circled, eyes capable and cunning in the dark. Nothing moved. He went with a sorcerer’s stealth, watching this way and that, but the spirit was gone. Lü the cat beat a swift retreat. It was not the dead one must fear but the living.
The Mayor stood beneath the lantern on White Hill. He watched Lü leave the woods and safely cross old Park Lane South. Lü still moved well for his age. He didn’t have the Mayor’s paunch or grizzled knees. Lü didn’t bother to glance over. He didn’t have the Mayor’s breeding, either, for all his certificates of parentage, and took all displays of concern as signs of weakness. A regular Frankie bachelor. On separate sides of the street, they both tobogganed home.
CHAPTER 3
Abroad expanse of yellowish white spread out about her. It was some sort of desert, only vaporous. The sky was knotted into a diamond blue fist faraway. Claire turned her back on it easily, so easily, sinking to the earth in a spot that was rich and turned, like after a flood rain. She wore her aviator sunglasses. I’m tough, they told the world. But I am innocent. Notice my very best white shoes. Her feet sunk in quickly, surprised by the sudden weight of her, muck oozing up through her toes in a fertile and cool eerie depth. There were worms, dozens of worms taking off in a frantic decampment, une échapper belle, till the whole mudsill broke and she stood, sliding upright down the fudgy ravine, an escalator passenger in any subterranean department store. It came to a halt beside a cascade of uncovered hair, Michael’s hair, from Michael’s gaping grave.
“Michael,” she whispered and reached out her hand, but he stayed where he was, face down in rude oblivion, preoccupied with his eternal sleep. Only his hair grew on, unstoppable, magnificent, alive with greedy, crawling maggots.
She woke up still calling his name. Her face, wet with tears, was jammed against the slanted attic wall. Claire looked at the peeling white paint for what seemed like a long time. Then, cautiously, she flipped her body over. Not too bad. On the table stood a bottle of bourbon with its own hefty dent in it. Ah, well. She got out of bed, reeled a bit, felt all right somehow, and careened down the stairs. It was barely light, but there would be no more sleeping for her. She brushed her teeth soundly, engrossed in this static melancholy, a little bit surprised and guiltily pleased to find herself alive. God, I’m famished, she said to herself. Obediently, her legs carried her straight to the kitchen.
There were four almost blue red tomatoes in the colander. She took the white bread down from the shelf. You could say what you wanted about how unhealthy it was, but when it was fresh from the grocer’s like this, light as a feather, and you slathered a couple of slices with mayonnaise, carved yourself some thick slabs of those wine red tomatoes, and jiggled some black pepper onto it—it was a deeply moving thing. She poured a glass of icy milk and ate off a sheet of paper towel, still drunk. This would be the time to photograph something, feeling like this, gently woozy and still half in touch with her nightmare.
She left before the rest of the house was up, heading south toward Jamaica Avenue, excited and nervous in the already gray dawn. The veins in her ankles and hands stood out disturbingly in the heat. What could you do? If age and the humidity didn’t get you, the alcohol would.
She remembered Johnny Benedetto with a sinking heart. How many attractive young women must he run into every day? On the job, at night, even in the supermarket. There was no end to the horror of possibilities.
The thing was—she strode purposefully along with her camera banging against her hip—that even if you did fall in love, you wound up eventually envying that person you were in love with. It was true. You envied him for the same silly reasons you fell in love with him.