“I hope,” she leaned back on her haunches and pulled her hair into a knot, “that you mean the life after death and not the ‘life’ of walking death.”
Iris took one step backward. Always pale and powdered as good Queen Elizabeth in her final days, Iris went one notch paler still. “Dat’s enough!” she whooshed her hand back and forth at Claire. “Dat’s goot! You did a fine chob. Dat’s enough.” She yanked the trowel from Claire and gave her a push on the shoulder. Not a love tap, either. The Mayor, lounging imperiously in the portaluca, sprang to life. His four dainty feet churned with rapid ignition before he could right his portly girth. Once up, he gallivanted across the lawn to his Claire’s side. He didn’t go so far as to bare his teeth, but his gaze was steadfast animosity. No matter that Lü the cat prowled just underneath the porch. Or that Natasha watched him, not so haughtily now, from the ivy. When push came to shove one stood fast in the face of all terrorism. “It’s all right, boy,” Claire bent down and unruffled him with soothing strokes. “It’s all right.” She wasn’t the least intimidated, he noted. Let the old biddy do her own gardening, by jingle. Or hire a man, the way everyone else did. When they reached the end of the shrub, Iris did a most surprising thing. She tottered after them in her chorus girl slippers and shouted, out of breath from the strain of the run, “Come back tomorrow around four und I’ll giff you a nice fenugreek tea. Yes?”
“Ja wohl,” Claire grinned without turning. The long crooked shadow of Iris reached out like a club-footed path in the street.
CHAPTER 8
Johnny stood bewildered in the camera shop. The salesman laid a seventh possibility into his hands.
“Now this little model has automatic everything. Right down to your lens opening.”
Johnny didn’t know what a lens opening was but by now he was afraid to ask. “Okay. Now let’s see that first one again.”
“Which one, sir?”
“The first one you showed me. With the gizmo that made everything look close up.”
“That’s a lens, sir.”
“Yeah, that one.”
The salesman went back under the counter. “Here we are, sir.”
Johnny studied the unfamiliar apparatus. “Now would you say a professional would use this lens?”
The salesman dabbed his upper lip with a hanky. “With which camera, sir?”
“Oh. With this good one here.”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, which one would he use it with?”
“A professional would never use that camera.”
“I get it. So show me again which camera a professional would use.”
“The Nikon, sir.”
“The one that means I gotta go for my lungs.”
“That’s the idea, sir.”
“Hmm. And professionals wouldn’t use any other camera, huh? Never?”
The salesman flung his left arm into the air and discovered his watch. “Well. Some do use the Canon. Or the Olympus.”
“Yeah? So how much is that … the Olympus.”
The salesman wrote the new price on a piece of paper already cluttered with outlandish numbers.
Johnny shook his head and muttered. “And the Canon?”
“Together with which lens? With that model you looked at three.”
“Okay. Go back to the Olympus.”
“That’s the one on special.”
“Yeah, but it’s still good, right?”
“Sir?”
“I mean it’s not some fegazey outfit?”
“Fegazey?”
“Yeah.” Johnny took a deep breath. “Like fake.”
“Certainly not.”
“And that comes with the flash and all?”
“I did tell you that, yes.”
“Oh. You did?”
“Several times, sir.”
Johnny clicked his gum and looked at the guy. “Wrap up the whole thing.”
“The OM-2S with accessories, sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Will that be gift wrapped, sir?”
“Sure. Go ahead. Wrap it up nice.”
The salesman, in his element now, went about the elaborate job of dressing up each package in its own bold yellow paper, precisely slicing off any excess with a ruler and then zooming one blade savagely along the blue string ribbon and voilà! one curly decoration just as saucy as you please. He presented the attractive tower of boxes to Johnny. He stood before the counter patiently; what’s more, he was all smiles.
“Will that be all, sir?”