The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  He just couldn’t shake the feeling though.

  * * *

  Louis Grecko entered Heinrich Schultz’s office and was immediately greeted with a firm handshake and a glass of chocolate milk from the large man. Louis liked chocolate milk, and as Schultz had learned from years of experience with the man, it was best to keep Louis happy.

  He was motioned toward the sofa, and the two were joined by Mendel Fujikawa who had entered just after Louis. The three conspirators sat staring at each other in silence until Henry broke the lull with, “So Louis, how is your mother?”

  “Why, what have you heard?” Louis asked defensively.

  “Nothing at all, I was just …”

  “Because she is fine, there is nothing to tell you otherwise.”

  “Of course, I’m sure she is.”

  “You don’t come around anymore. You don’t make her happy,” Louis said calmly.

  “Yes, well, I have been very busy with business.”

  “I know you’re business, Henry,” Louis said with a cold voice. “I tried your drug a month ago, and it made me feel like a nigger.”

  The words were a bit harsh, and that alarmed Heinrich a little. The last thing he wanted was to make Louis feel uncomfortable or agitated.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It was not supposed to have that effect.”

  “Well, it did. It made me feel like one of those animals, and I didn’t like it.” He turned his gaze to Fujikawa and asked, “Who is the sissy?”

  Fujikawa swallowed hard at the word and looked at Heinrich for support. The big man just nodded his head to him and winked as if to say, Let him talk; it’s better that way.

  “He is a business partner of mine who wanted to meet you.”

  “Do you do things to children also?”

  Fujikawa appeared thoroughly uncomfortable at the question and looked to Heinrich for help. He did not know much about this Louis Grecko person other than that he had heard of him and his odd mother through Heinrich and had seen pictures of some of his handiwork. The man who was now staring at him, as if he were looking directly through him, made him extremely nervous, and for the first time since he had known Heinrich, he was not confident that his large friend could protect him the way that he had always done in the past.

  “Mendel has never hurt a child, Louis, and neither have I.”

  “You took my turtle away.”

  “Your turtle was dead, and I bought you a new turtle; remember?”

  “I liked my old one.”

  Herman came out from under Heinrich’s desk and jumped onto Louis’s lap, causing the large man to scream in horror like a frightened woman and to curl up in the fetal position on the sofa. He held his hands tightly over his ears and looked straight down at his feet and kept repeating, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry, Mommy!”

  Mendel looked at Heinrich, very concerned about the mental health of this dangerous man whom they were about to put so much faith in, and Heinrich quickly rose and placed two reassuring hands on Louis’s shoulders, telling him that there was nothing to worry about, his mommy was not there to yell at him, and that Herman was just trying to be friends.

  Louis slowly looked up at Heinrich with tear-filled eyes and asked, “He just wanted to be my friend?”

  “That’s all, my dear boy.”

  “Can I play with him?”

  “In a little while, we have to discuss business.” Schultz knew that he was calming Louis down, but needed to have him completely relaxed before they could discuss anything of any importance, so he looked into his eyes, hugged him gently, and asked, “Do you think that you could sing “Ave Maria” for me?”

  Louis Grecko smiled at Heinrich and answered between sniffles, “For you.” He looked over at Fujikawa and pointed, “But not for the sissy.”

  * * *

  Jeffrey had been having problems sleeping over the last few days, so he had decided that on this night he would take a sleeping pill and wash it down with some warm milk. It was a little Rockwellesque for his liking, but it had to be better than tossing and turning all night without a thought running through his mind other than how badly Heinrich Schultz had ruined his life.

  Thanks to the medication and the drink, he quickly fell asleep for the first time since he could remember.

  He dreamt that he was in a giant ballroom, and all around him were large women of various ethnicities and nationalities. All of them were larger than the next, and each one of them sported more facial hair than he had, and they were dancing cabaret style. They kept winking at him, trying to entice him to do something that he could not decipher, and each one of them was carrying a script for a different one of his plays in their hands.

  The room had the feel that it was spinning, and in the background was the faint sound of music. It was a low, raspy melody that seemed to ring of familiarity, and it haunted him, beckoned him. He suddenly left the ballroom and was now in a large cathedral-ceiling room with red carpets and velvet purple rope barriers, which led all in attendance through a maze of twists and turns until they came to a desk where large stacks of money were being handed out to each of the patrons. Upon further examination, he realized that the patrons were the same performers from the ballroom, except for the fact that they were all dressed like men now, and each one of them carried a copy of Variety under his arm.

  When he reached the end of the line, the teller gave him an incredulous look and said in a very deep voice, “No freebies,” and slammed the window shut in his face. The sound reverberated through the halls of the building that he now knew was a bank, and shook his body to the bones.

  Jeffrey woke up with a start and looked around to try to catch his bearings and gain a footing of where he was. He had had odd dreams before, but not in a long time and certainly nothing as vivid as this. He eyed his surroundings and recognized that he was back in his bedroom at the cabin that he had just purchased, and slowly let out a breath to calm down.

  Then he faintly heard singing.

  At first, he thought he was still dreaming, but after a moment he was certain that he was indeed hearing song. He rubbed his eyes, walked to the master bath, and poured himself a drink of water. He was immediately aware of the humidity in the room and quickly noticed that the shower was running. This was odd, since Jeffrey was certain that he had gone to bed without showering. And he still heard the singing.

  He turned off the water and explored the second floor for the source of the mysterious singing. It neither grew louder or softer as he went from room to room; it maintained its very low, very raspy hum that seemed to be taunting him to find its location.

  Jeffrey listened intently while stopping at the top of the stairs to try and hear the lyrics, and was certain that he was hearing “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. He was positive of it. He had seen that musical many times and loved it. He owned the original cast recordings and owned the movie. It was a Broadway classic and one that Jeffrey had always aspired to match in his own work.

  But where was it coming from?

  He looked down the steps and saw that the light was on in the kitchen. He was sure he had turned off all of the lights; this disturbed him. He went back to his bedroom and grabbed a baseball bat that he had brought with him. He was not one for guns, but loved baseball and had bought this bat when he had gone to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame a few years back.

  Slowly, he descended the stairs, holding the bat as firmly as he could; the singing persisted, yet stayed at the same level. He walked across the living area and snuck up to the kitchen door, hoping that whoever was in there would not hear him and allow for the element of surprise.

  He placed his hand on the swinging door, took a deep breath, and pushed his way in.

  * * *

  “That was beautiful, Louis. I have never heard anything quite like it.” Heinrich praised the large, dangerous man after hearing his a cappella rendition of the time-honored classic. Heinrich called for Mendel to rejoin them, and the l
ittle man looked thoroughly disappointed that he had not heard this oddity of a human being astound them with his grasp of the masterpiece sung in a perfect soprano.

  “You couldn’t hear me,” Louis said to Fujikawa teasingly. “Only my friends can hear me.”

  “And I’m your friend, Louis,” Heinrich reassured. He poured Louis another glass of milk and sat beside him on the sofa.

  Herman came back out, and Louis was delighted to see the cat again. He quickly dropped to all fours and crawled over to the now cautious cat. Louis laughed with delight as Herman hissed at him in warning, and he turned over on his back to show Herman his belly.

  “Good boy, Louis,” Heinrich said as he gently rubbed the other’s midsection. He turned to Mendel and whispered, “He’s ours. Another few minutes, and he’ll do anything I ask.”

  Louis now had Herman in his arms and was purring at the cat, trying to coax it to return the favor, when Heinrich asked, “How would you like to find someone for me, Louis?”

  “Can I hurt him?”

  “Yes, you can, but you mustn’t kill him.”

  “I love you, Mr. Herman.” Louis was in.

  * * *

  This made no sense at all to Jeffrey. Who would break into his house, turn on the shower, make a roast beef sandwich in the middle of the night, and then leave without even touching the damned thing?

  The only calming point was that the singing had stopped. This was peculiar beyond belief, and Jeffrey found himself thinking back to the conversation that he had had with the sheriffnot ten hours earlier.

  Was there someone stalking him? Did he have to be a bit more suspicious of his surroundings? Were there really reasons for him to be concerned about his new home?

  He threw out the sandwich and quickly checked all of the locks and windows. Nothing was disturbed, nothing was out of place.

  For a brief moment he thought of calling the police, but thought better of it. The last thing that he wanted was to give the sheriffa reason to spend any more time out here than he had to, and Jeffrey was certain that whoever had been in his home obviously had not realized the place was under new ownership. Jeffrey must have scared him off.

  He poured himself a Scotch and drank it quickly to calm his nerves. He checked his locks and windows one more time and quietly returned to bed.

  Meanwhile, the ghost watched his every move and was a little hurt that he did not eat the sandwich.

  Chapter Nineteen: Pish-Posh, Tisch-Tosh

  The next few nights were more of the same, unusual and very vivid dreams followed by his awakening in the middle of the night to that same raspy singing. He searched the house from top to bottom and could find no signs of forced entry, no items missing, and the only disturbances he was ever made aware of was that the shower was continuously left on and there always seemed to be food missing from the refrigerator.

  He tried staying up and keeping an eye on things, but the singing always returned at about the same time, and he was never able to locate its source. He would leave the room for five minutes and come back to find the lights on in the kitchen and another sandwich or a drink sitting on the counter waiting for him. The really odd thing was that the items that were left out were exactly what Jeffrey was in the mood for and prepared precisely as he would have done it. It was as if his subconscious was preparing the treats for him and his mind was blocking it out.

  He searched the Internet for anything that resembled the strange phenomenon he was experiencing and found nothing. He looked up “Haunting” and came up empty, although he did read some very interesting things about music in the night.

  After determining that he had used the Internet to the best of his research capabilities, he decided to try another route and headed into town to check out the used bookstore that he had seen; perhaps this was the outlet he needed to find some of the answers he was so desperate for.

  He remarked to himself how into the Jewish lifestyle the townsfolk were when he returned to Zion, and had to laugh when he saw little black kids walking around with payots and yarmulkes. This was like a bad episode of Candid Camera, only he could not find where the crew was hiding.

  Pulling into the parking spot directly in front of the store, he noticed immediately that the sign about Hamas had been replaced with one that announced the coming of a seminar on the threat of paranormal activity in Zion. It looked like he had made the right decision in coming.

  He could not shake the feeling that he was being watched from various wandering eyes throughout the town, and decided that it was probably his nerves from lack of sleep and the odd encounter that he had had with the sheriffa few days earlier.

  A young couple across the street waved at him and said “Shalom.” He waved back, offered a shalom of his own, and quickly made for the front door of the bookstore.

  The first thing he noticed when he entered was the smell of incense. It was very strong and not unlike the aroma that he had smelled when he first arrived at the cabin. The store itself was a bit dark, cryptic, and reeked of that kind of nostalgia that is so often written about when referring to an old bookstore, even down to the dusty light wafting in through the windows.

  He walked from aisle to aisle and saw nobody else, not a clerk, a person who resembled an owner, or even another customer. He had the very odd feeling that the store had been left alone and was now his for the discovery of imminent doom, but he brushed that thought away as being nothing more than simple paranoia.

  It was a remarkable store and one he would have never expected to find in a town like Zion. It was like someone had ripped the building out of Greenwich Village and deposited it here in the lonely confines of the Finger Lakes as some kind of hoax for the amusement of an intelligent, if not warped, mind.

  Books and manuscripts of what seemed to be of every era were here for the taking, and the sheer volume of old first editions and relics of days gone by were something to behold. As an author and a lover of reading, he quickly forgot himself and his purpose for being in the store, because he was mesmerized by the collection that was presented in front of him. The value of this collection alone was enough to probably buy the entire town three times over.

  He picked up a copy of Plutarch’s Lives and did a double take when he carefully opened the cover. It appeared from what he was looking at that this was a first edition, but how could that be? The book was originally published in the fifteen hundreds; that would make this copy over five hundred years old and priceless beyond any account.

  “It’s yours for twenty bucks,” a voice from behind him said, a sharp, feminine voice that rang of cynicism and contempt.

  Jeffrey turned and saw a small woman of about five feet tall, wearing an afghan and fingerless gloves, with hair that looked like a collection of spiders’ nests, and carrying a tome in her hand that looked as if it weighed more than she did, was staring at him.

  “Do you know how old this book is?” he asked.

  “Of course I do, that’s why I’ll sell it for twenty bucks.”

  “But this book is a masterpiece and …”

  “And it doesn’t have any young love, vampires, or neurotic werewolves in it, so nobody wants to read it anymore,” she spat.

  He watched as she slowly walked past him. She was an odd-appearing woman, to say the least, and was different from anyone else he had seen or met in the town up to this point because she was not decorated in the traditional clothing of an orthodox Jewish woman. She had a more eclectic style about her, and the way she carried herself made Jeffrey think that she could quite possibly be a very interesting person to get to know.

  He followed her through the store to a small desk that held a vintage typewriter and a stack of books, small volumes that looked to deal with matters regarding spirits and ghouls. This must be where she catalogues her collection, he thought and watched as she took a seat.

  She asked, “So, how about it?”

  He was taken aback by the harshness of her tone and asked, “How about what?”
/>   “Do you want the book or not?”

  He looked down and saw that he was still carrying the ancient relic and replied, “Are you sure that you only want twenty bucks for it?”

  “If you don’t open that book, and it hasn’t magically transformed into a book about young love in the Dark Ages, then yes, I want to sell it for twenty bucks.”

  Jeffrey opened the book slowly and answered, “Well, would you look at that, a teenage vixen waiting for her Prince Charming; that’s remarkable.”

  She gave him a wry smile and said, “Cash only.”

  He reached into his pocket and fished out a twenty and continued, “My name is—”

  “Jeffrey David Rothstein,” she interrupted. “I know who you are; I’ve been expecting you.”

  This was a bit troubling for him to hear, but it might lead to more answers to some of the questions that he had been asking himself for the last couple of days.

  “How did you know that I am who you think I am?”

  “Google.”

  He smiled at the directness of the answer and the evasiveness that it implied and asked, “What I meant was, how did you know I am who you say I am? How did you know I was coming to the town?”

  She lit a cigarette and smiled at him, sizing him up from where she sat and answered, “You really have no idea what is going on, do you?”

  Jeffrey had to admit that he did not, but he was not about to reveal too much to this strange woman. “Just that the town seems to have a fixation on Jewish customs and on me.”

  “And there it is,” she pointed. “You are the whole reason for all of this. Ever since they found out that you were coming, the entire town has lost its entire identity and has made it the town goal to ingratiate itself into your life so that you will never want to leave.”

  He thought about the weight of those words and wondered how true any of it was. Her cryptic clues and evasive way of speaking were leaving him with more questions than he had come in with, and he was losing sight of the main purpose for his visit.