“The mutts … perps. The inmates from our very own concentration camp: Ye Olde Ghetto.” She stood up and retrieved her gun from the fridge, slipped it into her arm holster, and covered it with her very best seersucker jacket.
The Mayor was rummaging through his toy box. He had a worn out grocery carton that housed his decade of a lifetime’s accumulation of bones and doggy toys, silly things that people give to animals to chew on: plastic frogs and purple * cats and, in the Mayor’s case, a fine figure of a gnawed up Barbie doll. The Mayor never gave up on a toy. He might stick it away in the box and forget about it for a year or two, but he was a sentimental old sod, and out he’d haul the smelly thing, sooner or later, give it a friendly chomp, and rest his snout on it for old times’ sake. Then he’d fall asleep, its reminiscent odors transcending him to dreams of long ago and far away. This morning it was a little french fries container, shredded and almost colorless, but a favorite just the same at times like these, when no one paid him any mind.
Claire leaned back in her chair and watched him. How easy it was, she thought, to love someone or something that could never hurt you. How wonderful it would be not to know that—to be innocent and still think that the world offered nothing more than what you wanted to take. She longed, for a moment, for the innocence she’d lost. Growing up hadn’t solved all of the mysteries. It just pushed them to the back shelf.
Out the window and across the street, an elderly figure in red tottered across her backyard lawn. Even at that distance, her gash of lipstick was visible.
Claire sat up straight. “Is that Iris von Lillienfeld?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, that’s her. Who else wears Japanese kimonos and emeralds at seven o’clock in the morning?”
“I can’t believe she’s still alive!”
“Oh, she’s alive all right. To the great dissatisfaction of every real estate agent in town.”
“I’ll bet. That house looks like Rhett Butler will be home any minute. I wonder if she’d let me photograph her?”
“Not likely. That old broad is a recluse from the get go. She thinks she’s Garbo. Ooo, this was funny. Her dog—she’s got this really themey poodle—well, this dog was in heat and you know how uh … virile the Mayor here is—”
“Ha.”
“Yeah, he practically lived over there. Wild. She won’t be bothered with people, but the dog didn’t seem to put her back up too much. At least she didn’t complain. Although how is she gonna complain, when all she bothers to speak in is German? Hey! You speak Kraut. Naw, she’d never let you in. She wouldn’t even let the city tree pruners in—”
“Do you remember, Zinnie,” Claire interrupted, “how Michael used to love that woman? He used to tell me she could read the future. Remember how he was the only one not afraid to go into her backyard? We all used to call her the old witch and throw stones and run away, and Michael used to crawl through the hedge and visit her? Remember?”
“I don’t know,” Zinnie turned her head away moodily. “I was too young, I guess. No, wait. I do remember him going over there. There was a nest of baby robins knocked out of the maple in a storm and everyone said that the cats were sure to get them and that it was too bad because you couldn’t put them in a cage or they would die in captivity. Michael went over there—I remember he did, because I was scared to death she’d put a spell on him. Yeah, and then he came back … went into the garage, put the ladder smack in the middle of the backyard, in the shade but not too close to the trees, made a nest at the top, and popped them in, and he covered, I mean completely covered, the ladder steps with thorny rose branches so the cats couldn’t climb up.”
“And Mom was furious that half of her rose bushes were destroyed.”
“Right. But those robins, they lived. Remember they lived? He left his little nest open at the top so the parent robins could go on feeding them from above, and they all lived. Every one of them. And Iris von Lillienfeld gave Michael that idea.”
They shook their heads fondly at the memory. Claire bubbled with laughter. “I can still see Pop putting bacon bits on a pole with scotch tape and hoisting it up to them.”
“They ate it, too, the carnivorous little devils. I wonder where Mom and Michaelaen went,” Zinnie bolted back to the present. “Probably up to the woods to see what all the sirens were about.” She put the ceiling fan on low. They could hear the strains of Pagliacci from upstairs.
“Zinnie, I wanted to speak to you about Carmela.”
“Oh, yeah? How come?”
“I don’t know. Is she all right?”
“Whadda ya mean? Carmela hasn’t been all right since I’ve known her.”
“Yes, but besides that. She seems so sour.”
“Yeah, well, her divorce was pretty bloody. And he took the house ’cause he supported her while she was getting her masters.”
“But why did they break up?”
“They fought all the time.”
“So does everyone.”