AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Aoi saw that the mustering was being managed by a man who was not tall but thick in his limbs and who looked strong rather than quick. Ah, she thought, here is the quiet warrior. The steward she knew brought him to the back curtain, which Aoi moved aside just enough to see his face and to let him see her eyes over an opened fan. She gazed at him, the look of a woman who was used to reading the faces of palace people who did not like to be read. His eyes met the search with steady regard. She could find no deception in them, but there was pain and tension there. So he knew. Facing her with set features, he said merely, “All present."

  "You are sure that none are missing?"

  "Yes."

  "You understand what we are to do?” she said in a low voice, so that the steward of the Other Minister could not hear. She handed him the ginkgo leaf, seeing him hold it with one hand and feel the edge with the other. This was to make sure of his innocence, and she told him enough about the death that he would know her purpose. His seriousness deepened, his eyes searched for and found honest sympathy.

  "Have them draw their swords,” she said.

  "Lady, all our swords have been cleaned, though we fight every day. We will not find blood on them. Or if we do..."

  "I see. Nevertheless...” She told him what to look for, and he began inspection of his men.

  Arranged in lines, they stood with expressionless faces, each one holding a sword against his shoulder. Aoi watched. So many bare weapons made her shudder. She thought of the Young Nun, killed by one of these swords but without blood, as if a sword could be subtle in killing, disdainful of the red that might mark its user. Concentrating, she reminded herself that they were not looking for blood, but a stain much harder to wash away.

  The men were armored and rank with smells of horse and effort, their faces now not quite blank but tinged with disrespect. The steward of the Other Minister suddenly struck one of them across the cheek. He was not sure what his counterpart meant to do, and it made him angry. The soldier dropped his challenging eyes. To each man was offered the ginkgo leaf, a pure golden yellow fan, a little limp but still standing erect on its stem. Each man took it in his left hand as the soldiers’ captain said, “Have you seen this leaf?” Each made a show of examining it.

  They were puzzled, they shook their heads. The captain proceeded from man to man, conscious that the question was inane, but so clear in his authority that they could not challenge him.

  When they reached the man who had not been able to scrub all the ink from his left hand, the captain threw him to the ground and called for others to bind him. But their swords were ready and he was dead before anyone could stop them. For the men knew their captain, his worth, and his unfortunate passion for a girl in a decaying house. With this second death, they were choosing.

  * * * *

  When the Great Minister of the Right returned with a large army of men from his own estates in the east and from those of his friends, the monks were quickly subdued, driven back to their half-burned quarters on the mountain. He promised them justice, both for their complaints and for their crimes, and then it was over and he went to his house. He came to Aoi late in the day. He was loud and cheerful, dirty, exhausted, still pacing with high energy, hot in the house, dropping clothes as he went, shouting for the bath, which was already heated, and finally able to sit, sad but content that she was there.

  "I have heard,” he said, “what happened. It is a shameful thing, but the Other Minister claims to have had no knowledge of what one of his soldiers did. Everyone knows, he says, that they can't be controlled. And he pretends to be bitter that I have taken his captain and that now he does not trust his men, so they may as well come to us too. He has achieved his aim, the man is gone, and I have acquired an honest overseer and a new troop of soldiers to help him."

  Pausing, he examined Aoi's calm. “Have you suffered from all this?” he asked. “You see that you did very well without me."

  "No,” she said, “I am not ever very well without you. But I seem to be able to find some abilities of my own. And you have a very good steward."

  "Hmm."

  "But she said a strange thing that I cannot forget. She said that was a house to be dead in."

  "Ah."

  "She spoke truly. No one had been kind to her. Until he came."

  "Don't be sad,” he said. “You have served her well."

  "But,” Aoi said, “what I did was only a bit of trickery. I should have saved her."

  "You do so much, and yet ... This dilemma is not new to anyone human."

  "No. But you are falling asleep. Let me call the maid to lay out the beds."

  Copyright (c) 2007 Ann Woodward

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  Fiction: GOLDEN YEARS by Janice Law

  Carol and I were sitting around the condo pool with sunscreen on our noses and glasses of iced tea in our hands when we saw the Hirsch woman going out to her car. Her full name was Vi Hirsch, but because of an incident in our fifth floor laundry room, Carol always referred to her as the Hirsch woman.

  "She's got him with her again,” Carol said.

  I craned my neck to see over the decorative iron fence and the hibiscus hedge with the big orange blossoms that looked fake but weren't. Vi, smart in a saffron pantsuit, was helping an old gent ease into her new white BMW.

  "The bad thing about this place is there're no suitable men.” Carol, like me, is a widow of long standing.

  "I don't know about that.” The professional football player who lived on the tenth floor had just stepped out in all his mahogany magnificence.

  "Be real,” said Carol. “He needs a couple centuries of seasoning."

  "At least! Still—” The sad truth was that around the condo, men came in their twenties and thirties, or else with oxygen tanks. It frightened me sometimes that I was beginning to warm up to tubing and walkers.

  "And then you see the Hirsch woman. She's been driving old geezers around ever since she moved in here. With two, she could at least share the wealth."

  "Two? Was there another man in the car?"

  "Not now,” said Carol. “We met him in the lobby, remember? Must have been six months ago. More, maybe."

  I had a hazy memory of returning from the beach—sandals, damp cover-up, baseball cap, your basic geezer glamour attire, and seeing a strange man sitting in the lobby. The strange man was in the desirable age range but did not look too chipper. He looked so pale, in fact, that Carol stopped to ask if he needed anything.

  The old fellow had a gallant manner, topped off with the faintest of accents, but I couldn't help noticing a pervasive smell of alcohol.

  He explained that he was waiting for Mrs. Hirsch and had come in because of the heat. He was wearing a dark and heavy-looking suit.

  "Lobby's free,” said Carol.

  We talked to Hubert Reinschler for a few minutes and discovered that Mrs. Hirsch had been very kind to him in his recent illness. He went on about this until the elevator door opened and herself swept out to pounce on the poor man. I should say Vi was older than we were but expensively preserved and extremely careful with herself. I don't think Vi Hirsch saw more sun than a mole, and she always went out with straw hats and long sleeves and tinted glasses big as headlights.

  She plumped down on the lobby sofa without giving us a glance and began serious fussing: the heat, Hubert's trip to the condo—which might have been from Istanbul the way she went on—her concerns about whatever business they had together.

  We'd had to admit that Vi Hirsch seemed genuinely concerned. Remembering the scene now, I said, “I suppose there's some good in everyone."

  Carol snorted. “People who hog the laundry room and take your clothes out before they're finished will do worse."

  There was something to that. Besides, the aqua condo pool with its chlorine perfume and view of the waterway is the perfect place to dissect one's neighbors, and we amused ourselves hashing over Vi Hirsch and her friend. But our interest in the pair remained just som
ething to pass the time between a swim and a cocktail until the day we saw both Vi and Wilma dressed to the nines in black. Vi sported a lace mantilla more appropriate for a bullfight than anywhere I could imagine in South Florida, and Wilma had a picture hat with ebony flowers. On the strength of our shared interest in quilting, I asked if they were off to a funeral.

  Vi didn't answer, but Wilma said, “Yes, our friend. Poor Hubert. It was terrible. We had to identify him."

  Carol and I were ready for the details, but Vi grabbed Wilma's elbow. “We're late already."

  "How about that,” said Carol when the women departed in their black widow outfits. “We were just talking about him recently. He's the man we met in the lobby. Wasn't his name Hubert?"

  I thought it was. Even Wilma and Hirsch didn't have an unlimited supply of gentleman callers.

  "Wonder what happened,” Carol said.

  "Could have been anything by the look of him, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys. He smelled like a still too, poor man."

  Carol thought this over. We were sitting on the beach after our swim when she said, “I don't think he can have died in the hospital, not if they had to identify him. Didn't Wilma say that?"

  Yes, she had. “Odd,” I said. “I suppose there will be a death notice."

  We went back and checked the morning paper. Then we looked at several back issues on the Web. No Hubert Reinschler in the death notices. As we were idly scrolling around, I stopped her. “Wait a minute. Wait, what's that?"

  "The hit and run—well, they think it was a hit and run. You remember. It happened near the sleazy motel."

  "I want to read that."

  Carol brought up the story. An unknown man, probably in his seventies, was found dead in an alley one morning. We had noticed the story originally because pedestrian accidents have a certain resonance with dedicated walkers, but we had not bothered to follow it up. Now we did. Three days later a little brief mentioned that the hit-and-run casualty had been identified as one Hubert Reinschler, 76, whose last address was a motel on Federal Highway.

  "That's too bad,” I said. “He seemed nice."

  "Probably drunk,” Carol said. “You were right about the smell of alcohol."

  "Maybe he had his reasons."

  We felt subdued for the rest of the day, and we were rather irritated when we heard Wilma and Vi returning in what we both thought was an inappropriately cheerful mood. As I say, our poolside chats promote a certain cynicism, and realizing that, I stopped Wilma several days later in the hallway and said I was sorry to hear about Mr. Reinschler. “I hope it was a nice service."

  "We did everything we should have,” she replied and walked straight to the elevator.

  "She was very odd,” I told Carol, “even if she is a demon quilter. And, you know, it sounded as if they'd arranged the service."

  "The pair of them are beyond me. Men have perverse tastes. Look at the latest one."

  "There's another one?"

  "You saw him. The thin gent. Very feeble. We saw him the other day getting into the car."

  "Oh, that's right.” I had a clear image of a stooped and bony man struggling with the door of Hirsch's car.

  "And they're very close."

  "Really?"

  "When I was waiting for the postman to finish putting in the mail the other day, I noticed a letter with a man's name in care of the Hirsch woman."

  "Scandal."

  "Well, I was hopeful, but it was from MetLife."

  "Could that be an insurance policy?"

  "Could be anything, I guess, but why use this address? I wrote his name down. Only way to go these days.” She reached into her pocket for what she calls Senilityguard—the little notebook she uses for shopping. “Peter R. Musgrove."

  "He could be a relative. He could be anyone—we don't know if he's the man we saw."

  We were curious enough to open the phone book. Thanks to Bell South, we located a Peter Musgrove who lived on the west side in a semishabby neighborhood of older homes and small apartment houses. His address was on the right side of Dixie Highway, but just barely.

  "Do you suppose he is the man we saw? He might be young, he might be someone else entirely."

  "We can check,” said Carol.

  "Why would we do that?” I asked, but I knew why. Just recently Vi Hirsch had traded in an elderly Pontiac, very nice but with some dings and paint scratches and the beginnings of seaside rust, for that cream BMW, and the condo manager had given me to understand that Wilma was having her unit redecorated and her balcony marble tiled. These were the two widows on fixed incomes who were always howling about expenses at condo meetings. Assessments even for essential repairs to the roof and the drainage system had been almost enough to drive them out of their homes. Almost.

  "Well,” I said. “It wouldn't hurt to go by his apartment."

  That's what we did. It was a blocky, faded-pink building with ancient air conditioners and rusting ironwork, unattractive except for the enormous banyan tree that shaded the premises from the next lot.

  "Park for a minute,” Carol said. We found the lobby open and she pushed Musgrove's bell.

  "What are you going to say?"

  She was connected before she could answer. “Hello. Mr. Musgrove?"

  He buzzed us right in. “He's not very careful."

  Musgrove was in a back apartment, and he was waiting with the door half open: a short, square old man with white hair and thick glasses. He was clearly surprised when we came within his focal range, and I figured he'd confused Carol's voice with Vi's. Otherwise, he looked spry and upright.

  We'd clearly gotten the wrong guy; I was casting about for some sort of excuse, when Carol said, “So sorry to bother you, but we've been looking for an apartment for my nephew.” Carol can be incredibly glib when she gets going. Far as I know she has no nephew and certainly not one studying business at Florida Atlantic.

  Mr. Musgrove said there was considerable turnover but nothing at the moment. Which was too bad because the apartments were kept very nice. “Neighborhood's a bit noisy, but a young fellow wouldn't mind that."

  We agreed youth was rarely troubled by noise, and the apartment looked decent. So did Mr. Musgrove, who seemed without too many health issues or bad habits. He might be a pleasant dinner companion, a date for the movies, a man one could get fond of. As we were leaving, I said, “I forget how we heard about the apartment. Was it Vi Hirsch, Carol?"

  She said it was, and he said, “I know Mrs. Hirsch. She's been very kind."

  This was worse than I'd thought. One old man was charity, two or three made me nervous. Still, when we compared notes back in the car I suggested Musgrove was not a man to put himself in harm's way.

  "He opened the door without knowing who I was."

  "He thought you were Vi Hirsch."

  "Perish the thought."

  "I'm guessing she visits pretty often."

  "Why?"

  "A beautiful head of hair and functioning brain cells?"

  "Maybe. But is that enough to pay his insurance?"

  "No,” I said immediately. “Not if that's what she's doing."

  "I hope he doesn't go walking at night,” said Carol.

  "You don't really think—"

  "I sort of think,” said Carol, “and so do you."

  We had rather a somber ride home. It's one thing to dislike one of your neighbors—and in a condo as big as our complex you're bound to dislike a few. It's quite another matter to associate them with fatal accidents or worse. That night we sat in my living room and hashed over our options. We hadn't a shred of proof that Vi and Wilma—Wilma of the tiny, perfect quilting stitches!—were anything other than good Samaritans, except for their coming into money right after the death of a near derelict.

  "Mr. Musgrove isn't rich either."

  "More valuable dead,” said Carol and stopped herself, appalled.

  I nodded. “Assuming he's insured."

  "Assuming. We need to warn him. But first we need to g
et to know him. How do we do that?"

  "Grocery shopping? Everybody has to do shopping. He probably walks. Didn't he say he had to give up his car?"

  We got out our big area map and found Ideal Market. It was across the highway, which was bad, but within six blocks of Musgrove's apartment, which was good.

  "What time of day do we go?” Carol asked.

  "Morning, I think, but not rush hour. Not super early but before it gets too hot. You realize we have no idea of what day he goes or how often. It could be ages."

  "Would you rather just confront the Hirsch woman?” Carol knows full well that I hate conflict. She rather enjoys a scrap, not me.

  It took us nearly a week, and we were getting tired of lurking about the aisles and buying things we didn't particularly need, before we spotted Peter Musgrove with a cloth shopping bag over his arm and a cane in one hand. We parked and hustled in after him. I picked up the Tampa Tribune, Carol got a bottle of dish liquid, and we wound up behind him in the check-out line.

  "You're Peter Musgrove, aren't you?"

  He turned slowly. In the bright store light, it was easy to see that his eyes were clouded. “We came looking for information about an apartment one day."

  He remembered. We chatted about nothing and walked out together. Carol remarked on the heat and when Musgrove agreed it was dreadful offered him a ride. Simple as that. Soon we were on such good terms that we were taking him with us to the big Publix, where the selection is better and the prices are too.

  Within two weeks, we knew a fair bit more, and what we learned didn't set our minds at ease. Vi Hirsch had been very kind to him, very. He'd met her at his church right after his wife died. It had been a long, ruinous illness, and Vi had actually paid the deposit on his present apartment when he'd come up short of cash. “She's not always the easiest woman,” he admitted, but she was helpful. “I don't see to do paperwork so good anymore.” Carol and I exchanged a glance.