by Celia Jerome
Susan laughed. “She’s working on her new book,” she explained to Van. “It’s going to be great. A big red creature lands in New York City. You must have got that idea from the red trolley, huh?”
Maybe I did, somehow. Maybe the troll was my unknown inspiration, not my creation. Before I could explain, or try to, someone else knocked on the door. I checked, and made sure the cop saw me do it, then opened it to Mrs. Abbottini. She took one look around, at the black man, the ice cream, the potato chip bags and cookies, the cozy scene on the couch with Susan’s pants unbuttoned, Van’s shoes off. She crossed her arms over her gravity-lowered bosoms, and snorted. She actually snorted like one of the carriage horses in the park, the ones my mother is always fighting to get retired. Then the old lady who’d known my family most of my life, snarled and said, “Your mother would be ashamed of you, Willow Tate.”
CHAPTER 7
IF MRS. ABBOTTINI’S EVIL EYE didn’t kill me, embarrassment would. About a million years of collective shame shot through me like when the toaster oven had a short. The bias, the prejudice, and the discrimination this brave, kind man must suffer! Here he was trying to keep the streets safe, for a bigot like this nasty old lady. How could I ever apologize? Worse, how could I ever hope he’d come back?
Van put his ice cream bowl down on the table and wiped chocolate syrup off his lips. “I guess I better be going.”
But Mrs. Abbottini wasn’t finished embarrassing me. “And your grandmother would be having heart spasms. How could you feed your poor sick cousin that junk food? No matter what your mother says, it is a good thing you don’t have children. You’d lose them in the parking lot, daydreaming the way you do.”
By now I was ready to throw the half-empty jar of maraschino cherries at her, doing my best Lady Mac-beth: “Out, out, damn liver-spotted snoop.”
Once again, Susan saved me. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. “But this is just what I wanted, Mrs. Abbottini, so don’t blame Willy. She bought fruit and vegetables, too. But I lost enough weight that I can splurge, and why shouldn’t I? I figure I deserve whatever I want.”
I almost applauded.
“Besides,” Susan went on, “Grandma Eve says I am going to be fine.”
Now Mrs. Abbottini made a gesture that was half a cross and half a high five. I took it to mean from Grandma’s mouth to God’s ear or vice versa. “That’s all right, then. I just came by to ask what I could make for dinner tomorrow. Rose”—that’s my mother—“says you are staying over for a couple of days.”
Of course no one had thought to tell me Susan was here until Wednesday, not until Susan herself arrived with a big suitcase.
“So do you want sausage and peppers or lasagna?”
That was healthy?
“I’ll make enough for your young man, too,” she said.
So maybe she wasn’t so bad, after all.
We left early for the hospital. Susan couldn’t eat breakfast so I didn’t either. I figured I could get a croissant and a fruit cup from the kiosk in the lobby while Susan had her tests. Except they didn’t call her for her nine o’clock appointment until after eleven. I was starving. The waiting room was mobbed, with people from lots of nationalities and languages and conditions. No one was real friendly, most were nervous. The acoustics were dreadful, with names being called and doctors being paged and people on their cell phones, despite the signs. There was no way I could concentrate on the new book.
Susan thought I had almost an hour to kill once they called her. She had to drink some crap, then sit by herself before they injected more radioactive stuff that could show contrast. According to my cousin, who ought to know, cancer cells appeared on the screens as a different color.
I got a buttered roll and an orange juice, and a bottle of water for later, then found a stone ledge outside the hospital where I could sit down to eat. Now I could breathe the exhaust from the street traffic and the smoke from the workers and patients—good grief, the cancer patients—who weren’t permitted to light up inside. The weather wasn’t as nice as yesterday, kind of overcast and dreary, but the atmosphere was better than the heavy miasma of the drab radiology waiting room with too many anxious bodies and sporadic air conditioning.
I looked at the blank pad I carried, but had no new inspirations to write down or enthusiasm for reworking the outline. The hospital depressed me, I guess. And I had to get back upstairs to be cheerful for Susan, so checking my watch broke whatever concentration I might have managed.
When the hour was almost up, I left time to find a ladies’ room. The one near the nuclear medicine waiting room wasn’t real clean, and I had second thoughts about all that radioactivity that had to go somewhere. I went up a floor and followed the signs. This bathroom was less crowded, with two women talking at the sinks, two of the five stalls occupied.
I put enough toilet paper on the seat to make my mother happy. I still couldn’t wait to wash my hands. The problem was, a troll was bent over the sink before me.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
First, this was the ladies’ room.
Second, a woman nearest the door was nonchalantly drying her hands on paper towels as if pink soap wasn’t spurting across the room.
Third, there were no such things as trolls.
I flattened myself back against the stall door. “You do not belong here!”
The woman gave me a dirty look. “What, you own the john?”
“Not you. Him.” I pointed. She looked right at Fafhrd and shook her head, muttering something about a psychiatric ward and slobs. She went out.
“Go away!” I tried to whisper, so the women in the last two occupied stalls wouldn’t hear.
Fafhrd obviously wanted to get the water to keep flowing, but the sinks had that industrial device that only kept the water on for enough time to wash maybe one hand. He kept pounding the spigot part, which only broke the metal piping.
Before he destroyed anything else, I edged toward the sink farthest from him and turned the faucet handles. Maybe he only wanted to wash the pink soap off his hands. And his chest, his neck, his hairless skull.
Fafhrd smiled at me and splashed the water at his smooth, stony abdomen. Then someone flushed a toilet.
Uh-oh. The sound got his attention. He stood up, bashing a hole in the ceiling, and cocked his head in the direction of the stalls.
“No!”
A middle-aged woman with a name badge came out, gathering her purse and her jacket. “Are you all right, miss?”
No!
The troll walked right past her and knocked the door off the stall. I could hear splashing, then thumping, then the water flushing again. He must have figured it out, except the toilet wouldn’t refill fast enough.
I heard an explosion that turned out to be the porcelain toilet being wrenched off its foundation. Now the water kept running.
The woman in the other stall cursed, then ran out, the hems of her slacks wet. I’d throw them out, myself.
The first woman started to open the door to the hall, shouting for a maintenance man, just as the partitions between the stalls began to go down like dominoes. The second woman pushed past the first one, yelling that the building was collapsing. She held her hand over her head, as if that could protect her from the walls and ceilings caving in, which they did not, because Fafhrd hadn’t finished his washup.
Now staff workers and patients started to peer in the open bathroom door, in time to see Fafhrd, big red Fafhrd, pick up another toilet bowl and toss it across the room into the sink. Water gushed everywhere, to his grinning delight. He pulled out the soap dispensers, making himself a bubble bath. The water ran off, though, when he tried to lay down in it, no matter how his huge hands tried to gather it back.
With every fixture in the ladies’ room spouting torrents, Fafhrd’s bath puddle turned into a stream, then a river, flowing out the door, to the corridor and down the hall, where people were screaming.
I was too stunned to move, even when the rushing water
—from who knew where—covered my sneakers.
Porcelain kept smashing, the water level kept rising, and the people were yelling about the torrent, not the troll.
“Get out!” I shouted, kicking up a tidal wave myself.
“What, is someone trapped in there?” A janitor type person rushed past me—with a mop. Now there was an optimist.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . ”
“Another bowl shattering. Must be shock waves from that new atomic disintegrator they’re testing downstairs to fragment tumors.”
To disintegrate tumors? This kind of force could disassemble an automobile. Heaven knew what it could do to a person.
Then I saw that Fafhrd was trying to float the toilets like rubber duckies. “Stop that!”
“Yeah, lady, I would if I could.” The janitor dragged me out into the corridor.
Alarms were going off, and other men in the same uniform were on walkie-talkies, shouting at once so I doubt anyone could hear what they were saying over the sound of the water and the screams from the people running toward the exits.
“Shut the frigging water off at the main.”
“Evacuate the building?”
“Assess damage to the floors below.”
“Break a hole in the outer wall to let the water out onto the street instead of letting it seep through to the basement levels.”
“And for Chrissake, don’t let anyone use a toilet!”
I wouldn’t say there was panic in the hospital. After all, these people were used to disaster, and this was only water. But the corridors were full. Someone had sense enough to shut down the elevators before the electric lines got wet, so people were bunched up at the stairs and emergency exits. They were all wet, all angry, all bitching about the budget cuts that left the building in disrepair. No one mentioned the monster that pushed through the wall to leave the rest room.
People ducked.
“Get down. It’s another bursting bowl!”
Fafhrd blew me a soapy kiss and disappeared.
I had to wait, my feet getting waterlogged in my sneakers, because the stairwells were jammed.
Announcements came over the PA system that all nonessential personnel from the upper floors were to assist people below out of the building. Emergency exits were flooded but passable. All maintenance men report to the water main. Operations were canceled. Hand washing was canceled. Appointments were canceled.
What if they had to cancel treatments that might save someone’s life? Or a respirator’s plug got wet? Fuck!
No new admissions. No usable bathrooms. No lights in the wing below except for the emergency overheads.
Wheelchairs were directed to the other side of the building where the elevators and lights were still operating. I thought I got a glimpse of a familiar face helping a man with an IV pole, but the crowd was pushing me toward the stairs. I didn’t think there was a danger of being trampled, but the climb down wasn’t comfortable, not with water cascading at our feet, and too many bodies. At least if anyone slipped, they’d be cushioned by the crowds.
“Proceed slowly,” a voice called out. “There is no emergency. Repeat: the building is not in danger of collapse. There has not been a terrorist attack or a bomb or a mishap in the laboratories. Repeat, this is merely a water pipe malfunction. There is no emergency.” Unfortunately, the last message was “Repeat: all staff evacuate.”
What, they were abandoning ship?
Most people on the stairs kept going down, to the street. I pushed my way into the nearly deserted nuclear waiting room where I was supposed to meet Susan. It had windows, so it wasn’t as dark as the halls.
Susan was looking dazed, uncertain what she should do, fumbling with her cell phone. Thank goodness she was done with her tests before they shut down the electricity to that side of the building.
“What happened?” she wanted to know.
“A transported bowl,” a nurse shouted, rushing past. Susan had more questions, I knew, but I pulled her down more stairs and out of the building, into a gypsy cab just as fire engines turned the corner.
I avoided answering Susan by listening to the driver, who was on hand because his wife’s mother’s boyfriend worked in the cafeteria there and called to say there’d be a lot of business. The streets were already clogged; midtown would be impassable in ten minutes. We were lucky to be out of the mess.
My pants were wet up to the knees. My shoes were destroyed. I told Susan to make the salad, with chicken and cheese for protein, while I showered and changed and bundled my clothes into a plastic bag for the garbage. Then I found the card Van had left with me.
I left messages at the precinct, his private number, and his cell.
He got back to me in minutes. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with the floods at Sloan this morning,” came before hello.
I couldn’t say that, so I kept quiet.
“Shit.”
That, too, by now, with the sewage lines busted.
“But I might have seen Lou helping someone.”
“He volunteers there once a week. Listen, we’re going crazy here. Is the invitation still open for Mrs. Abbottini’s lasagna tonight?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll bring dessert. And wine. I think we all need it.”
He brought a friend, too.
CHAPTER 8
VAN WAS HOT, BUT HOLY HORMONES, Bat-girl, this guy sizzled. He was about forty, I’d guess, with dark hair just long enough to fall into his eyes, with a touch of silver at the sides. And what eyes! They were a clear, startling blue with a black rim. Nothing baby blue about these, not with a gaze that felt as if he was checking the lace on my scanties. He wasn’t as tall as Van, nor as broad, but you could tell he was fit by the way he stood, confident and relaxed. He was wearing a gray mock turtleneck, a loose black jacket that had to be Armani, and black trousers. Oh, my.
“I think you’ll want to talk to Grant,” Van was saying. “He’s Federal now, working with us on the Manhattan incidents.”
“Federal?”
The stud spoke: “My department is actually attached to Scotland Yard, of course, but we are working with your CIA and the Office of Homeland Security.”
James Bond on my doorstep? Was there anything sexier than an English accent? I looked to see if Susan was as impressed as I was, but she was busy taking the wine from Van to chill. This Grant guy must look too old to interest Susan. He looked better than Mrs. Abbottini’s lasagna to me. In fact I could use a little cooling myself right now.
“I did not mean to intrude on your dinner, Miss Tate,” he said. “I’ll come back later, shall I?”
“No, that is, please stay. We have enough food for ten people, and if you can answer my questions, I’d be thrilled.” Well, I was thrilled already, thinking what a great addition he’d be to my life. That is, to my story. Here was Fafhrd’s partner, the Gray Mouser of Fritz Leiber’s books, a lean, lithe swordsman extraordinaire, clever and charming. That worked for me. “Please, come in, Mr. Grant.”
Van made formal introductions as we sat down. Mr. Grant was actually Agent Thaddeus Grant, but he preferred Grant, nothing else. As in my wish was granted? I wondered. I said I preferred Willy to Willow or Miss Tate, especially since we were already on a first name basis with Officer Gregory.
Grant asked that we not discuss the recent events until after the meal, with a significant nod to Susan and the policeman. That was fine with me, too.
I’d cleared the table of my computer and supplies, bills, lists, magazines, phone books, et cetera, stashing everything under my bed. I wanted to throw a real dinner party, with a tablecloth and candles and everything, in case Mrs. Abbottini peeked in to take notes for my mother. Thank goodness for the occasional Martha impulse, and the dread of another nagging phone call. Now I almost wished my neighbor would knock on the door, so she could report about the two handsome, intelligent, important men I was entertaining.
Well, Susan was doing most of the entertaining, t
elling the guests about Paumanok Harbor.
Neither of the men had ever been out that far on the Island, although Grant had visited East Hampton once on unspecified official business. My curiosity was running rampant, but I did have a modicum of manners, so I let my cousin talk.
The Harbor sounded a lot better than it was, the way Susan told it, all beautiful scenery, quiet off seasons, and friendly small-town neighbors, half of them related. She didn’t mention the eccentric characters who knew every detail of everyone’s life, the isolation in the winter, the never-ending wind, the traffic, or the prices raised for tourists’ pocketbooks. Then there was the near impossibility of making a decent living there unless you served the wealthy summer people.
I was dying to ask about Grant’s work, if he carried a gun, what the investigation had uncovered, and if he was married. Instead I had to listen to Susan recite the chamber of commerce brochure.
She explained that she’d been cooking at one of her uncles’ restaurants after culinary school, but she had to take a leave of absence for treatments. It was unpaid leave, but Uncle Bernie kept up the medical insurance—under threat from the whole clan. That led to a conversation about medical care here and in Britain, and the comparative costs of everything.
We had wine and salad and crusty garlic bread to go with the lasagna, and an apple pie Susan baked this afternoon while I was cleaning the living room. The men said everything was delicious, and proved it by asking for seconds. I could have been eating half-defrosted frozen peas—yeah, I’ve done that in an emergency when I was out of ice cream—for all I tasted, waiting for my chance to find out what was going on.
While Susan and I cleared the table, Grant handed Van a credit card and asked him to take Susan to buy flowers for the cooks, Mrs. Abbottini and Susan, and for the hostess, me. Thoughtful, tactful, generous—the guy was near perfect so far.
Susan reached for a scarf to tie around her head, but Van wouldn’t let her. “Come on, Curly, you’re a survivor. Be proud. And you look as good as that apple pie tasted.”