The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  “You bear a striking resemblance,” Saul answered.

  Jeffrey continued on and looked up at Melissa and said to her calmly, “I never marched on Stone Wall.” He looked at Saul and shook his head disapprovingly. He turned back to Melissa and continued. “What is it that you want from me, young lady?”

  She shuffled in her seat and said in a mild voice, “I was hoping I could become your assistant, maybe run a few errands for you and learn how to act from a real playwright.”

  Jeffrey looked at Saul and asked Melissa, “Who said I needed an assistant?” He already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it for himself.

  “Saul said you had writer’s block and that the stuff you were writing right now was dreck, and that the best thing that could happen to you was to surround yourself with young and vibrant people like me and Saul. You know, to give you that kick in the tuchas that you need.” She smiled proudly, knowing she was able to speak the words without succumbing to shyness, while Saul stood glaring at her with a wide-open mouth and what could only be described as horror at the honesty she had just shown. He looked at Jeffrey, who was not as amused, and changed the subject.

  “She is very talented and a hard worker, Jeffrey. I just thought she would be a breath of fresh air in this place and that you and I could use that little extra something that she brings to the table.”

  Jeffrey looked at the smiling, awkward face of young Melissa Foreman and the expectant expression Saul was shooting him and agreed to allow her to come to the cabin after school and on the weekends. She reminded him that it would have to be after the Sabbath, and he agreed to that as well. He made her promise that she was to tell no one about Saul or that she was helping him, and she happily complied.

  He stood and offered her a small notebook that he had been writing in and instructed her to read every page and return to him with a report on what she had read and how she would change things if she were the playwright. Melissa happily agreed to the task, thanked Jeffrey for the opportunity, and smiled widely at Saul. She probably would have hugged him if there were anything to hug. She left the cabin and promised Jeffrey that he had not made a mistake.

  Jeffrey turned to Saul and asked, “This was your big idea on how to help me get past my writer’s block?”

  Saul smiled and replied, “Young juice for the old berry.”

  Jeffrey wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but just smiled and watched as the young girl skipped up the road on her way home.

  Chapter Thirty: Houseguest

  Saul was busy with his daily household chores, making the living quarters as comfortable and relaxing as he could possibly see to, so that Jeffrey had nothing to worry about other than the task of writing and getting his head back in the game. It was one of Saul’s favorite things to do, and he remarked to himself how funny life and death were.

  When he was alive, he would never in a million years have chosen to willingly clean up after himself, preferring to hire a housekeeper to do the work for him, but in death he had become a bit of a neat freak and found that the only thing more intolerable than being dead and stuck on earth instead of the fantasy world of heaven was being stuck in a world that was full of clutter; he could not abide clutter.

  He took this time of the day to reflect on what turns his existence had taken in the last couple of weeks since Jeffrey had arrived and how amusing it was that, after what seemed to be an eternity of being alone and not allowing himself to be seen by anyone, he now had both Jeffrey and young Melissa Foreman to keep him company, to talk to, and to share what was now his life with. Things were good as far as he was concerned, and he really thought this was all part of a grand design to finally allow him to experience some joy after the torment and punishment that he had suffered as a result of his committing suicide all those years ago.

  Jeffery was upstairs taking a much-needed nap after he’d been up most of the night trying to work on a script that would just not come to him, and Saul was thinking about what to serve his new friend for dinner when he saw a car approaching from the main road.

  He did not recognize the vehicle, and thought perhaps it was filled with religious students come to speak to Jeffrey about the end of the world and his repenting before it was too late. It certainly was not Melissa, as she had not yet learned to drive, and Saul was the one who had promised to give her lessons to begin with. As he watched the car pull closer and eventually into the parking area in front of the house, he thought of waking Jeffrey to alert him to the guest, but then thought better of it. He wanted to see who this unannounced visitor was before getting the house into a panic.

  The woman who stepped from the car was quite beautiful and somehow familiar to Saul. She was of slender build and walked with a confidence not often found in women of her age. She looked around at the surrounding woods and appeared to check her phone to see if she still had service up here in God’s country.

  Saul continued to watch her and became more and more suspicious of this young woman, who he swore he knew from somewhere. He doubted that he had seen her before, but was also certain that her familiarity was not to be ignored. Somehow, somewhere, he had seen this woman, and it was driving him crazy.

  She approached the house, and Saul was captivated with her face and those dazzling sea-green eyes that he could now make out and was sure that he had, in fact, seen her somewhere before.

  “What’s going on?” Jeffrey asked from behind, yawning off the last remnants of sleep that still lingered. “What do we have, a visitor?”

  Saul turned to Jeffrey and answered, “Probably a Bible freak.”

  “Too pretty to be a Bible freak.” Jeffrey peered closer out the window and continued, “Holy shit! Saul, you have to disappear.”

  “Why?”

  “You just do. I know this woman, and she’s going to want to come in the house.”

  “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

  “Not in this case!” Jeffrey shouted. “Now get the hell out of here! Please.”

  Saul gave Jeffrey a sad look and slowly evaporated in front of his eyes and was no more. Jeffrey looked around to be sure the ghost was indeed gone and checked himself in the mirror next to the front door. He looked a mess, all shadows under his eyes and pale skin from lack of sleep, and he opened the door.

  Rachel smiled uncertainly when she saw the shadow of the man she had known for so long and merely said, “You look like shit.”

  * * *

  Her apartment was lovely; it was everything he had expected and more. Colorful and airy, full of great light, it had a certain flow to it that made you feel like you were in a much larger space than you actually were.

  There were some pictures sprinkled around the living room, and the hallway had photos of landscapes on the walls. In her bedroom, she had an entire corner devoted to stuffed animals, and that amused him very much. He had always liked stuffed animals and would have never thought that she would be the type to appreciate them as well.

  He picked up a small gorilla that held a heart that said “Love” on it and looked deep into its glass, lifeless eyes and made a monkey face at it. He loved toys, and stuffed animals were toys after all.

  When he was a boy, he had always had to share his toys with the other little boys and girls who attended his mother’s day care and that had always bothered him. He never received anything new on Christmas or Chanukah, even though he celebrated both, and that bothered him even more. The only time he was exposed to play things was when his mother allowed him to stay at the day care with her. But her idea of play things for him was of the more violent type, as she sent him out into the world from a very young age to hunt down small animals and torture them or to hurt the children left in her charge. As he got older and more dangerous, she taught him to hunt grown men and to bring them to her for display as he taught them the Way.

  Now as he walked around her apartment, the young woman who had the answers, the woman who knew his target better than anyone else, he was
certain that he had made the right decision in coming here. She would lead him to Jeffrey David Rothstein, because she would be the bait he needed to ensure that he had the upper hand when that happened.

  Louis Grecko always counted his assets before taking on any new venture, and knew that Rachel Benjamin was the biggest asset that he had been blessed with in a very long time. Rarely did he have a victim who he hunted who was so stupid as to leave behind a treasure like she was, and Louis knew that he would use her to her fullest and that her value was without measure.

  He opened the drawers of her dresser and admired her taste in clothing, a lot of comfortable wear with various team logos on them. Louis was never a fan of sports in general, but he did like the mascots and the colorful logos that the uniforms were adorned with. It’s like going to an opera or a well-produced musical, he thought, except for the fact that it takes place outdoors.

  Louis opened the drawer that held her undergarments and picked out a pair of black lace panties that smelled of lavender. He stuffed those in his pants pocket and unzipped. He wanted to leave her a present, but knew he could not leave any physical evidence that he had been in her apartment. Instead, he looked at his exposed penis and pointed it toward her smiling face, which was in a picture of her with Jeffrey at a gala premier. He wanted to masturbate in her drawer in the worst way, to leave her this gift, but he could not. His only pleasure that he could take was to imagine that her smiling face in the photo was that of a woman smiling at what he was offering.

  He was even more certain of the fact that he was going to keep her for himself once this business was over and done with. She would be his new plaything, and she would be the one who would help him find the Way in his own life. She would learn the path, the path that the music taught him, but he would teach her the true meaning of submission and dominance. She would be his conquered pet, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

  Once he was done with Jeffrey, she would be his. All he had to see to was that the job he did on Jeffrey was thorough enough to leave no doubt in her mind that he was the one to save her from herself and that her beautifully painful life with Louis would be for the best.

  * * *

  “I can’t get over how bad you look,” Rachel said as she sipped from her glass of wine. “What the hell have you been doing up here this whole time?”

  “Working, or at least trying to work.”

  “From the look of things, you could be doing this in New York just as easily as you are up here.” She lit a cigarette and walked to the window looking over the pristine lake. Jeffrey watched as she seemed to be deep in thought and wondered why she would just show up like this unannounced. There were certain things that Rachel did not do, and being spontaneous was one of them. Every decision she ever made was well thought out, and she considered every consequence. Her unexpected arrival told Jeffrey that something was wrong, and he had to try to find out what it was.

  Jeffrey walked to join her and asked softly, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She looked at him and replied, “Things have just been so odd without you around. There have been a lot of questions about you, and I am running out of excuses for where you are.” She shook her head and continued, “Why couldn’t you just tough it out in the city with me and we could have figured things out together?”

  Jeffrey thought about her question, and even though its merit was not to be argued, she was not appreciating the fact that he needed to get away. He had been in the grind long enough, and he felt at his core that it was the stress of his work life that was a major contributor to his current situation.

  He reached over and grabbed her hand, pulling her close, and wrapped his arms around her. He thought he felt her shake a little as he touched her and considered that she too was experiencing stress that she was not prepared for. He held her tight and knew she would stay for at least the night.

  * * *

  There was something very wrong with this picture. Why had this woman shown up so unexpectedly and why had Jeffrey never mentioned her before? Saul did not like surprises, and what gave him even more trepidation was that she appeared to be planning on staying, and that was inconvenient for the ghost to say the least. He was not about to reveal himself to her, even if Jeffrey told her it was fine. There was only room in Saul’s existence for so many people to know about him, and at the moment he was content to limit that number to two, Melissa Foreman and Jeffrey.

  There was something even more disturbing to Saul about this woman. He was certain he had seen her before, but where?

  He thought long and hard about where he may have run across her path, but was lost to any hint or revelation as to her identity. It was a puzzle that he could not piece together, but he was certain that he eventually would. He knew her and had the sneaking suspicion that she was not to be trusted.

  Saul knew that he was going to have to figure out her true nature in being here before it was too late and the damage was irreversible.

  There was something in those eyes. He was sure of it.

  Chapter Thirty-One: Someone’s in the Kitchen with Cloris

  Heinrich Schultz carried a dozen roses and a carton of cigarettes as he knocked on the door of the home where Cloris Weiner and Louis Grecko lived. He knew that the odds of Louis being home were slim, but carried a CD of Pagliacci’s music in his pocket just in case so the eccentric bounty hunter could entertain himself to the music of the sad, tragic clown while Heinrich discussed business, as well as other more sordid details, with his mother.

  Cloris was a former member of the Mossad, the Israeli version of the CIA, and was as ruthless as she was unstable. She had a way about her that left you wanting to both flee from and run to her at the same time. Heinrich found it intoxicating to be in the same room with her, and he always knew that when he came to visit their evening would always lead to the bedroom and a night unlike any other.

  The two of them had met years earlier at a social gathering of orthodox Jews and German Americans in an attempt to put the past behind them and to basically ignore that the Holocaust had ever taken place. It was the brainchild of Shmueli Rabinowitz, who was a survivor of a not-very-well-known concentration camp called Latkebratten. He had survived among his German captors, and found that, aside from the whole killing issue, they were a delightful group of people, and he wanted nothing more than to get to know them better once the mishegas of World War II was over.

  Standing outside of Cloris’s apartment, which Heinrich had bankrolled for years, he wondered what to expect of this evening now that the two of them had been reunited in a way. It had been a couple of years since they had seen each other, due to the unstable nature of Louis and the fact that Cloris herself had an incendiary temper to say the least.

  Heinrich needed to talk to her because Louis had disappeared without a trace and was not checking in with updates as to the progress he was making in his search for Jeffrey David Rothstein. It was not like Louis to go rogue, and the implications of his doing so were too horrifying to think about. The dangerous thing about working with her son was that if he was not controlled you faced an entity who could turn on you without thinking, and that was a danger Heinrich was unwilling to risk.

  The door opened, and Cloris stood before Heinrich with a cigar hanging from her mouth and a glass of gin in her hand. She gave what could only be described as a bothered smile and invited him in.

  The apartment smelled of sweat and tobacco, the windows were closed, and there was not a fan or an air conditioner to be found. Heinrich loosened his shirt collar and handed Cloris the flowers and cigarettes. She accepted them and motioned him to take a seat.

  She poured him a glass of gin and served it; it was tepid and tasted stale, which was unsettling in itself because alcohol doesn’t go bad, but it matched the environment that he was in. There was something wrong with anyone who chose to live like this when they had every opportunity to live better and happier.

  Cloris had always struck Heinrich as b
eing the kind of woman who appreciated order above everything else in her life, but this apartment was anything but orderly. He watched as a cockroach crawled up the wall behind the television, and was certain that he heard the scampering of feet that could only belong to a mouse or something larger. He felt dirty just being here, and he had not even touched anything yet.

  Heinrich watched her closely to try and decipher what kind of a mood she was in, whether she was in a mentally accommodating place to answer questions regarding her son. It was always a crapshoot with Cloris. You never knew how she was going to respond to even the simplest of questions or conversation. She had done many things while working for the Mossad, and it left her with something far worse than any form of post-traumatic stress disorder Heinrich had ever seen or heard of. Sometimes she was a ball of nerves and prone to tears for no apparent reason, while other times she was quick to violence with a ferocity that did not match her slight build.

  She was the only person he knew of who could properly control Louis, and he had been aware of the fact for some time now that she went about it in ways that were unsavory at best. At an early age, she had begun abusing her son sexually and physically, which had left scars that could only be imagined. And as Louis grew older, she had taught him to hurt other living things, and even worse, to take pleasure in doing so.

  “How have you been, Cloris?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and answered, “Where is my son?”

  This was disturbing for Heinrich to hear. If she did not know where Louis was, that meant he was off the grid and could be up to anything. The mere thought of Louis Grecko being on the loose among the general population was disturbing beyond anything Heinrich could imagine.

  “I was hoping that you could tell me,” Heinrich answered.

  She sat back and closed her eyes. “He said you hired him for a job. He said you promised to come by more often. He told me that you gave him chocolate milk.”