Festival of Deaths

by Jane Haddam

  “Because they know we want that forty share.”

  “Why do we want that forty share?”

  “Because my last bonus from Gradon Cable Systems was a million five and your residuals statements look like the miscellaneous expenses section of a Pentagon budget.”

  “Money should not be the point, DeAnna.”

  “But it is, Lotte. It is always the point.”

  “The point should have some sort of cosmic significance. I am not a theist, DeAnna, you know that. I do not want angels and fairies and a God on a cloud. But still.”

  “Still what?”

  “Still there should be some point to it all. There should be some reason why we do the things we do. There should be more to going on with life than listening to privileged women whine.”

  “Oh, dear,” DeAnna said.

  “I have been having a very bad day,” Lotte told her. “I have come to one of those points where I think it is time to terminate my contract and retire to Jerusalem.”

  “You can’t retire to Jerusalem. You hate Jerusalem. You hate the heat.”

  “No Jew hates Jerusalem, DeAnna. It is a matter of principle.”

  “It is a matter of mental disturbance. It is about time I took you out for a little kosher wine.”

  “Getting me drunk won’t solve my problems, DeAnna. It will just make one of our guests accuse me of having a secret addiction.”

  “None of your addictions are secret.” DeAnna’s cigarette was out. She pitched the butt where Lotte had pitched hers. Then she got out another cigarette and lit up. The heat of her Bic lighter shot up too far and licked the tip of her nose. The smoke she blew out after her first long drag made her eyes sting. She was going to have to quit smoking again as soon as she had a chance.

  “Listen. I know how you feel because I’ve been feeling that way too, but I’ve got a better idea than retiring to Jerusalem.”

  “What kind of better idea?”

  “‘I Can’t Help It, I’ve Got to Have Two Husbands—At the Same Time.’”

  “The polyandry show?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But we have discussed it,” Lotte said. “We have talked to those women. They have sex lives Hugh Hefner couldn’t have dreamed of in a vision. And they talk like—”

  “I know. They’ve always promised to bring videotapes. Of, you know, marital sessions.”

  “No videotapes.”

  “Maybe not,” DeAnna conceded.

  “Even without the videotapes,” Lotte said, “we would never get away with it. We would be replaced in every market from Wilmington to Las Vegas.”

  “Actually, I don’t think so,” DeAnna said. “That’s why I brought it up. I think I’ve found a way around that.”

  “Like what?”

  DeAnna waved her cigarette in the air, realized that wouldn’t do any good and stuck it in her mouth for safekeeping. The smoke got in her eyes, but she didn’t care. She rummaged around in her tote bag until she found a pen and a piece of paper. Then she laid the paper out on one of the sinks and bent over it.

  “This is what we’re going to do,” she said.

  DeAnna felt much better, and she could see Lotte did, too. That just went to prove something she’d always believed. There were no real cosmic questions. There was no honest impetus to discover the meaning of life. There was only boredom, and the answer to boredom was really kinky sex.

  Not, of course, sex in the flesh.

  Sex in the flesh was messy.

  What you really needed was sex in the abstract.

  Somebody else’s sex.

  Sex so weird it made you dizzy.

  To hell with Aristotle.

  2

  FOR CARMENCITA BOAZ, TIME was a river, just like Stephen King had said it was in the one long novel she had ever read in English, but for her it was a river of pain. The pain was almost a headache but wasn’t quite. It started in that flat place at the side of her eyes and traveled across her cheekbones to her jaw. They had given her Demerol half an hour ago. She knew the pain should be on one side of her face and not the other, but couldn’t make it feel that way. She was very tried but couldn’t sleep. Itzaak was half-sitting and half-not in a plain, armless plastic-covered chair at the side of her bed. Every once in a while, he would jump up and pace across the room. Carmencita wondered if someone had told him that it helped patients when you talked to them. If nobody had, this was a sign of nervousness beyond any she would have imagined him capable of. She wished she knew all those things Gregor Demarkian was hoping she knew: what her attacker looked like, who her attacker was, what had happened and when it had happened and why. All she remembered was standing there in that stairwell next to the elevators, waiting to buy the green card and thinking about Itzaak. After that she had nothing but the face of the doctor staring down at her and a voice saying: You have to hold very still. It was ridiculous. It was like telling a ship’s barnacle not to take a vacation to the North Pole.

  There was only one light on now in this room she was in. It was a light on a metal arm like a drafting board light, that could be moved back and forth depending on where you wanted it. Itzaak had pushed it down low to the floor and turned it so the bright bulb faced away from them. It caused shadows and movements on all the available walls. On the table next to the bed was a vase with a dozen red roses in it. As soon as Itzaak had heard she was all right, he had ordered them for her.

  He took her left hand into both of his and held it tightly. He got up and sat down and got up and sat down again, probably unaware that he was moving at all. Carmencita wished she wasn’t so very tired. She wished she could do something to soothe his soul and put an end to his misery.

  “It will be all right,” he said to her now. “I have thought the whole thing through. I have told you Mr. Demarkian has promised to talk to the people at the Immigration and Naturalization Service?”

  Carmencita tried to nod, but it made her head hurt. She lifted up her hand and let it drop instead.

  “Mr. Demarkian is a very powerful man,” Itzaak said, “and it is likely he can do what he has said he can do. But it is not a hundred percent certain. Nothing is a hundred percent certain. I do not like to take too many chances.”

  Carmencita raised her hand and dropped it again.

  “If Mr. Demarkian cannot do what he says he can do, then we have a number of possible courses of actions. In the first place, we should get married. In my opinion, we should get married even if Mr. Demarkian can do what he says he can do, because I love you. But I will understand, Carmencita, if you do not wish to marry me.”

  This required more than a hand raised and dropped. What was she supposed to do? Her jaw was wired shut. Moving her head in any direction at all made her feel ready to explode. She raised her hand and dropped it again, raised her hand and dropped it again, raised her hand and dropped it again, over and over, as quickly as she could. At least it got his attention.

  “You mustn’t do that,” he said, frowning. “You will hurt yourself. The doctor has said it. For the next two weeks or so, you will be very fragile.”

  Fragile, Carmencita thought. If she was going to be here for two weeks like this with Itzaak babbling nonsense about how he’d understand it if she did not want to marry him, she was going to be a raving lunatic before they ever took the wires out of her jaw. She raised her hand in the air and made writing motions. She did her best to compose her face into a mask of sternness and resolve. She didn’t think she succeeded. Demerol made everything so—squishy. Squooshy squashy. Squirt.

  Itzaak was still frowning at her. “Something to write with,” he said. “You want something to write with. But you cannot write, Carmencita. You do not have the strength.”

  Carmencita made writing motions in the air again. Itzaak got up and started to look around the room.

  “I have talked to Lotte,” he said, “and we have talked to the doctors, and we have talked to Rabbi Goldman and his wife. That is where we will take you, when you are
released from there. That will be the week after next. I will not go on with the show, Carmencita, I will stay here and take my vacation time. I have much vacation time due to me because I have never taken any. So, you will be released just in time for the first night of Hanukkah. You will like it, Carmencita. Especially at Rabbi Goldman’s house. The rebbitzin is a wonderful woman.”

  Carmencita was sure that Rebekkah Goldman was a wonderful woman. She was also sure there was a pen stuck into the medical chart hanging at the foot of her bed. She had seen a doctor put it there. She tried to think of a way to tell Itzaak and just couldn’t.

  Itzaak was looking through a tray of gauze and bandage tape. Why did he think he was going to find a pen there?

  “It is a beautiful ceremony,” he said. “There is the menorah with the shammes in the middle, to light all the other candles. And there are blessings. One is in praise of God who commanded us to light the Hanukkah lights, and one is in praise of God who did the miracle that we want to commemorate. And on the first night of Hanukkah there is a third one, in praise of God who has kept us—has kept the Jews—a people from that time to this, still alive and together. Which, considering some of the things that have happened to us, may be more of a miracle than a day’s oil that lasts for eight. I just realized, Carmencita, there is a lot of praising God with us. Maybe there is also a lot of praising God with you. I do not know much about Catholicism.”

  I don’t know much about Catholicism, either, Carmencita thought, not in the way he means it. Itzaak had moved away from the medical tray and gone to search through the small bureau. Carmencita would be very surprised if there was actually anything in it. She hadn’t had any clothes brought to the hospital from her hotel room yet. The hospital didn’t supply courtesy stationary and a room service menu.

  “Later on, after the candles are lit, there is a song,” Itzaak said. “It’s called ‘Ma’oz Tzur.’ It is a song about all the times God has saved us. It has six verses, but it could have a hundred and six. Or a thousand and six. And it stops with Frederick Barbarossa, who was emperor of Germany in the twelfth century. Maybe no one has had the heart to do an update since then. It is a melody you may know, Carmencita, it was not written just for this song. I have heard several Protestant Christian hymns with the same music.”

  The only Protestant Christian hymn Carmencita could think of at the moment was “Oh, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Itzaak was now searching the little night table next to her bed. That at least had a few things in the drawer. A tongue depressor. A laminated 1987 pocket calendar from Hazelbury’s Body Shop. A small pad of plain white paper with a cardboard back. Itzaak snatched the pad from the drawer and held it up in triumph.

  “Here,” he said. “Here is the paper. Now we have only to find you a pen. Should I go to ask the nurse for a pen, Carmencita? You don’t seem to have one here.”

  I’ll give it one last try, Carmencita thought. She concentrated very hard. She willed her left foot upward. To her surprise, it went. It fell back to the bed again almost as soon as she’d got it up, but it went.

  “What?” Itzaak said.

  Carmencita did it again. It hurt.

  “I don’t understand,” Itzaak said. He went down to the foot of the bed and looked at the lumps under the blankets where her feet were. She did it one more time and startled him so much he jumped back.

  “I don’t understand,” he said again, and then stopped. “Oh,” he said. “Carmencita. You are very intelligent. I always knew you were very intelligent. Here is a pencil.”

  Good, Carmencita thought.

  Itzaak extracted the pencil from under the clip and brought it up to the head of the bed.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Carmencita? It will be much too much of a strain, I think. You are supposed to be getting your rest.”

  Carmencita raised her left hand and let it drop again. Itzaak gave her the pencil and brought over the pad. Carmencita was right-handed, but that was much too complicated a problem to go into at this point. She couldn’t sit up to see what she was writing, either. It hurt too much to move her head in any direction at all. She felt the pencil in her fingers and brushed against the paper on the pad with the side of her hand. Then she gave it a try.

  Si, she wrote. She couldn’t remember the English word for it. It was a perfectly simple word. She’d known it since she was two. She just couldn’t remember it.

  Itzaak picked up the pad and looked at it.

  “S. I.” He shook his head. “This is the beginning of a word, Carmencita? Do you want me to try to figure out what it is?”

  She gestured and he gave the pad back to her. He held it down under her hand to help. She wrote, si, again, and then, in a burst of brilliance and energy she wouldn’t be able to match for several days, she followed with NOT NO.

  Itzaak took the pad. “S. I. Not no. Oh. Oh. I see. Si. Not no. Yes.”

  Carmencita got the pad back and wrote, SI in the biggest letters she could make. She wondered what they looked like.

  “Yes,” Itzaak said happily. “You mean yes. But yes what? That you will like Hanukkah?”

  If the human race had to rely on the perceptive intelligence of men, Carmencita thought, it would have been extinct a couple of million years ago. She gestured for the return of the pad and got it. She got a grip on the pencil and tried one more time. She was really very tired. Exhausted. It was difficult to keep this up. She got out some semblance of MAR—she really wished she could see what she was doing—but that was as far as she could go. Her hand felt numb.

  Itzaak looked worried. He took the pad away from her but didn’t look at it. Instead, he stared into her face.

  “You should not put yourself to so much effort. You will make yourself more sick than you already have to be. It is not something I would like to happen.”

  It wasn’t something Carmencita wanted to happen, either. She raised her left hand and lowered it again, doing her best to point to the pad.

  Itzaak got the message. He looked down at the pad and read. “M. A. R.” He looked thoroughly bewildered.

  “Yes, not no. And mar. Carmencita—”

  Carmencita Boaz had heard often enough about light bulbs going on over people’s heads. She had seen enough animated movies and read enough comic books to know it was a popular culture cliché. She had never seen anything in real life that might equate to it. Itzaak’s face at this moment did. His eyes were brighter. His smile was wider. His face glowed as if he’d been hit by a hot pink spot. He was ecstatic.

  “Carmencita,” he said. “Carmencita, this is wonderful. You will marry me. You will marry me.”

  Carmencita raised her hand and lowered it again.

  “Of course,” Itzaak told her, “this is no place for a woman like you to receive a proposal of marriage. We will go out as soon as you are better and do it all properly, in a restaurant, with candlelight. I will start at the beginning and tell you I love you and go right on to the end. And in a year, Carmencita, I will be an American citizen. Do you understand?”

  Carmencita raised her hand, wobbled it back and forth, and lowered it again. She didn’t understand much of anything at the moment.

  “The wife of an American citizen can also become an American citizen,” Itzaak said, “it is more complicated than that but less more complicated than you think. It will be fine, Carmencita, you will see. It will all be just the way you want it to be.”

  I wish I could tell him that I’m willing to convert, Carmencita thought, feeling herself drifting away. I wish I could tell him I am at least willing to keep a kosher home. I wish I could tell him anything.

  The floating feeling was really awful now. The bed felt like water. Carmencita’s eyelids felt like stones.

  Itzaak was fussing around at the side of the bed again, holding onto her hand, stroking her fingers. The skin of his hand was rough and yet soft at the same time. That didn’t make sense but she knew what she meant by it. If he would just go on doing that for another sixty second
s, she would be asleep.

  Asleep.

  Darkness and peace. Silence and the light of dreams.

  Way on the other side of the room there were three sharp raps, and Carmencita thought: Death always knocks three times.

  “Just a minute,” Itzaak told her, letting go of her hand. “There is someone at the door, Carmencita. Perhaps it is the nurse and it is time again for your medication.”

  But it wasn’t the nurse and it wasn’t time for her medication. Carmencita knew that. She knew it as certainly as if she could see who was standing outside that door.

  It was just that she was much too weak to get a warning to Itzaak before it was too late.

  3

  FOR SARAH MEYER, SHELLEY Feldstein’s theft of her diary would have been enough on its own to provide cause for launching thermonuclear war. The state her hotel room was in was—well, she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know what to think of it. She didn’t know what to do about it. She was going to have to do all the usual things, like get in touch with the hotel staff and swear out a complaint of some kind. Whether anybody would believe her if she said Shelley had done this, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure that was the way she wanted to go about it in any case. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, except sit down and think. Sarah had come back from the hospital dead tired and in a foul mood. Shelley had made such a point of reading that diary whenever Sarah could see her, it was a form of abuse. That diary was damned dangerous, and Sarah knew it. It was the only place on earth she ever allowed herself to be herself. Making that sort of thing public would be a disaster. At least, it would be a disaster for Sarah. Sarah suspected that Shelley would think the consequences were just fine. Sarah knew what that was about. Shelley hated the idea that she had ever been one-upped by a fat person.

  Sarah locked the door to the room, considered opening it again to put out a “do not disturb” sign, and decided against that. She wanted it to look as if she’d come right into the room, seen the mess and called the desk, right away. She also wanted to give herself enough time to take her revenge. She went over to the desk and opened the drawer. This was how she could be sure the mess was Shelley’s doing, if she hadn’t been sure already. Her own clothes and perfume and papers were all over the floor, destroyed forever, but the red leather address book, which was the property of The Lotte Goldman Show, was still in the desk intact. Which was good. Sarah took it out and flipped through it until she found Feldstein, Shelley. Then she sat down to puzzle this out.