She tells him this. He says he’s now one block away. It’s three minutes before eight. He says he’ll see us soon. He says he can’t wait. Lily hangs up.
I stare at my intercom, waiting for the doorman to buzz me. Finally, he does. It’s Adam, and he softly says to me, “You clownish fool, someone is here to see you, don’t ask me why. His name is Strad. I don’t envy him. He’s in for quite—”
“Send him up,” I say, having no time for his disorder right now.
“Jee-zuss!”
“Real fast, please,” I add.
“Fine, cunt,” he says, and hangs up.
I look at the clock. We’ve got two minutes left before the danger starts.
Ten seconds left. He’s still not here.
“CUCKOO!” shrieks the bird eight times at eight o’clock.
I hear a grim voice in my head saying, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin.”
Ten minutes go by, and still no Strad. Perhaps he got lost in the building. This is a common problem in my building, which is huge and consists of four towers, requiring visitors to take two elevators, which are separated by a long hallway and some turns.
I tell Lily this, to reassure her. She nods, chewing her lip.
Strad finally arrives at 8:11 p.m. and sheepishly confesses to me in the entrance hall that he got lost in the building.
“Yes, it’s very complicated,” Georgia calls out from the living room, her sarcasm unfair because it is.
Strad is carrying a shoulder bag, a violin case, a bunch of mixed flowers, and a bottle of red wine. He hands me the flowers and wine. “Thank you so much for inviting me,” he says, following me into the living room. “You can’t imagine how . . .” He stops mid-sentence as he steps across the threshold. He gazes around the living room at the masked and costumed furry mannequins. “Wow. Amazing. Wow.”
“Aw, we love eloquent guests,” Georgia says.
“Your decor is spectacular,” Strad says to me.
“Thank you,” I say.
He puts down his bag and violin case. He notices that none of us is wearing shoes, so he takes his off and puts them by the door.
Then he goes straight for Georgia. “Man, what an honor it is to finally meet you!” He takes her hand in both of his.
“Thank you,” she says.
“No, thank you. For all your books. Spending this evening with you will be such a blast.”
“A blast, possibly.” She turns to the rest of us and asks, “Did we cover that possibility? That it might be a blast?”
“Many times,” Jack says.
“And? What did we decide?”
“That it can’t be a blast as long as he’s with us.”
It’s true, we did cover the possibility of a small bomb and quickly realized that the killer would never use a method that had any risk of hurting the rest of us. As long as Strad is with us, no explosive would be used on him.
So I’m outraged at Jack and Georgia’s unnecessary exchange and offensive double meanings aimed at insulting Strad. Have I not just told them to act normal? Do they not care how their weird behavior will reflect on Lily? I guess they don’t, come to think of it.
Trying to hide my annoyance, I say, “I thought we decided not to be eccentric tonight?” I put a little water and Strad’s flowers into a small plastic vase. “If I detect even a whiff of eccentricity this evening, you will not hear the end of it.”
I take Strad’s belongings (except for his violin case, which he’ll need) and put them in my bedroom, because the killer might have cleverly hidden a weapon in Strad’s bag or coat earlier.
I then pour the wine into a lidded plastic jug and I lock the empty wine bottle in my bedroom with all the other glass items.
Strad strolls around my living room, looking at the costumed mannequins. He stops in front of my ballet bar and asks me, “Why do you have a ballet bar if you don’t use it?”
“What makes you think I don’t use it?”
He looks me up and down. “Wild guess.”
I feel slapped in the face on behalf of overweight people who do use a ballet bar. “The previous owner installed it,” I explain. “She was a ballet dancer. And I do use it for my costume design work with actors.”
“Fun piano,” Strad says, standing in front of the mirror piano. “The sound must suffer a bit in that kind of casing, but it’s great-looking. Am I right, Lily, that the sound suffers?”
“Yes, it suffers,” Lily says.
The thought of suffering reminds me that we’re due for some, right about now. “Speaking of music, weren’t you going to play a little something for us?” I ask him.
“Oh, yes, why don’t you bless us with some of your music,” Georgia says, with an impressive lack of sarcasm.
“Sure!” Strad goes to his violin case.
I follow him. He opens it.
“Can I see this case? It’s so beautiful,” I say.
“Sure.”
I hold the case, caress the lining, examine it thoroughly inside and out and when I’m relatively certain that it’s safe, I say, “And can I see your violin too?”
He hands it to me. I’m not sure what could be hidden in a violin, but why not be thorough? As for the rest of him, I didn’t use the metal detector on him because I didn’t want to freak him out. Plus, no one is supposed to touch him. If anyone stashed a weapon on him in advance and tries to pickpocket him during the evening, we’ll put a stop to it before anything can happen.
I give him back his violin and he positions himself in front of the couch area, where we all take a seat.
Georgia raises her hand. “Oh, I’ve got an idea. Maybe Lily should accompany Strad on the piano. That would be so nice.” Her motive is all too clear to me: she’s hoping Lily’s music will mask Strad’s. But the pretext she gives is, “This way, Strad, you’ll be able to hear for yourself if the piano suffers from its casing.”
“Sure,” Strad says. “If you want to join me toward the end, Lily. I’ll signal you when I’m ready.”
Lily nods and sits at the piano. He plays for ten minutes, which is mildly unpleasant, before he gives Lily the nod.
She starts improvising, and I don’t know if my perception of her playing is influenced by my knowledge of her feelings for him, but her notes seem to coat his in silk. Her playing wraps itself around his in a manner that does not take us long to sense is rather erotic. Her sounds are caressing, clinging to his sounds, dripping from them, climaxing with them. Her notes are practically raping his notes, though the one thing they’re not really able to do is to beautify them. Lily’s power is not quite strong enough to counteract the mediocrity of his art.
When they’re done, Strad plops into an armchair. “That was exhilarating! I don’t think the sound from the piano suffered much.”
“Oh, I think it suffered,” Georgia says.
Jack starts talking to Strad about his acting ambitions.
Georgia walks by the low side table next to Strad’s armchair without noticing that the bottom of her long cardigan is getting caught on the bouquet of flowers Strad brought me. Jack is the only one besides me who notices what’s about to happen and lunges at the vase to steady it before it topples over and spills.
The only thing the three women notice is Jack lunging in Strad’s proximity. Misinterpreting his abrupt movement as an attempt on Strad’s life, they hurl themselves at him and he falls under their weight. On his way down, his lip and nose get smashed against one of my ottoman cubes. He is now face down on my thin rug, the women on top of him holding his arms and sitting on him like hens.
“Stop! Stop!” I cry, hurrying toward them. “Get off him. I saw everything.”
They stare up at me, not convinced, and not getting off him. They’re waiting for me to offer an explanation, which they know I can’t give them in front of Strad.
“I order you to get off of him right now,” I tell Georgia, Penelope, and Lily in a calm but commanding voice.
They fina
lly obey, reluctantly. Not only can I not give them an explanation, but they realize they now have to help me come up with a fake one because Strad is watching us, horrified.
“Why did you just attack him?” he asks them.
Jack struggles to his feet, his nose and lip bleeding. He touches the side of his face, where he’ll undoubtedly have a bruise.
He gazes down at the floor. There lie the flowers and plastic vase on the wet rug.
Strad looks at all of us, waiting for our explanation.
We stare back at him, stumped, having no idea what to say.
In the silence, the cuckoo clock tick-tocks like a metronome.
I try to buy us some time by fetching a paper towel and an ice pack for Jack.
Perhaps I could say the women thought Jack was headed toward the stereo, and he has terrible taste in music.
“Why isn’t anyone speaking?” Strad asks. “Lily? Why did you pounce on Jack?”
Lily doesn’t reply. Instead, she busies herself picking up the flowers and wiping up the spill.
I can’t stand the silence anymore, so I’m about to blurt out my absurd answer, but just before I do, Georgia casually says, “Training.”
I exhale softly, having complete confidence in her powers of fabrication.
“Excuse me?” Strad says.
“It’s training.” She shrugs.
“Training? To be what, Charlie’s Angels?”
“No. We’re training him. He asked us to attack him at unexpected times as part of his ongoing maintenance program. It keeps his reflexes sharp.”
“Is that true?” Strad asks Jack, with a twinge of excitement.
“Yes. It improves my reaction time,” Jack says.
“For what?”
“For my job. I’m a cop, you know.”
“I thought that was over. I thought you worked at a senior center now.”
“Only part time. I’m also an undercover cop.”
“But I thought you couldn’t be a cop because of your limp and your cane and the fact that you can’t run.”
“That’s why it’s a great cover.”
“So you can run?”
“No, that’s why it’s a great cover.”
“What’s a great cover? Not being able to run?”
“Yes. That’s what makes it really good.”
“But how can you be an undercover cop if you can’t run?”
“By doing special training, like you just saw.”
“That makes up for not running?”
“More than makes up for it. You saw how intense it was. The women did an excellent job, I must say. I’d been reproaching them lately for not going at it with enough conviction.” He takes the paper towel and ice pack and presses them to his face. “I just never thought they’d attack me when a guest was here. Which, of course, is why it’s the perfect time to do it.” He chuckles and turns to his aggressors, giving them a thumbs-up. “Nice work, by the way.”
Even though Jack is usually not the one who comes up with the ideas, he’s quite good at riffing off them once they’re out there.
Blood is still running out of his nose. He wipes it again with the now mostly red paper towel.
“I don’t know, this seems weird,” Strad says, shaking his head, looking suddenly skeptical again.
“It’s a form of conditioning, like Pavlov’s dog,” Jack says. “When you get attacked and hurt on a regular basis and at various random times, you start jumping at the slightest abrupt movement because you know pain is coming. That jumping is a desirable state of conditioning.”
“It is?” Strad says. “Like those kids who shield their faces if you make an abrupt gesture near them because they get slapped at home regularly? That never seemed good.”
“But for adults it’s good. Especially for cops. That’s what average people don’t realize when they watch those big Hollywood action movies. In those movies, it takes a lot to faze the heroes. But in real life, it’s the opposite. The toughest, most effective guys, the best fighters, the police heroes, the army heroes—all the best ones—they jump at the slightest abrupt movement.”
I’m struggling not to smile. My friends too. The tension has left their faces. You’d think the threat had left the room.
“Thanks again, guys,” Jack says to his trainers, giving them each a high-five. He spins back to Strad. “Oh, and just so you know, they’ve asked me to put them through the same rigorous training, so we may be attacking each other at various times. Don’t be too startled.”
The three women chuckle uneasily.
I tell everyone it’s time for dinner.
We move to the dining table. I serve them a cold meal of fancy sardines in herb sauce, which I bought already prepared from a nearby gourmet shop. I serve Strad last, and once his food is in front of him, I don’t take my eyes off it. I can’t believe he’s the only person in the room I can absolutely trust.
We scare easy tonight. At one point Georgia sneezes. It practically gives me a heart attack. A few minutes later Penelope drops her plastic fork. We stare at her with terror.
Things get misinterpreted. The slightest sounds. If someone laughs, the rest of us hear it as evil and expect the worst.
“Wow, you guys are like jumpy, high-strung thoroughbred horses,” Strad says. “You’ve really honed that flinching trait.”
A few grunts is the only response.
No one tries to make conversation during dinner except Strad, but he doesn’t get very far. He asks me about my costumes. I give him brief, bland answers. I’m not capable of more. The others don’t seem to be either. So he gives up. The ticking of the clock is noticeable in the silence. There isn’t even the familiar clanking of cutlery—typical of conversationless meals—since everything is plastic and paper. I spend long stretches of time in a sort of trance, staring at Strad and his plate, lost in thought, trying to make sure I haven’t overlooked any killing methods or schemes the murderer might have come up with.
While Strad chews on his food, Lily, too, stares at him. But hers is a very different look from mine. Her look is one of adoration.
Strad gazes at all of us sitting there stiffly, and says, “Do you guys always have this much fun?”
Georgia can’t help laughing.
When the fake bird flies out of the clock at nine, screaming “CUCKOO!!!” we all hit the ceiling except Jack.
“I saw it coming,” Jack explains.
Three more hours to go. Why did I think marking the slow passage of time with this clock would be a good idea?
“Ah!” shouts Strad, slapping the table, which scares me even more than the cuckoo did, “I have been wanting to ask you something for ages, Georgia!”
“I’m all ears,” she says.
“What in the world is the anagram for ‘Whiterose’ at the end of your novel The Liquid Angel? I’ve been racking my brains for months. I simply must know.”
“Otherwise what? You’ll die?” Georgia says.
He chuckles. “Uh, something like that.”
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” She pauses. “Which is why I’ve given you the answer.”
“What do you mean you’ve given me the answer? No you haven’t.”
She turns to the rest of us, “Have I?”
We nod.
She turns back to Strad. “You see. I have.”
“When?”
“A few seconds ago.”
After a pause, he says, “You’re not going to give it to me in a way I can understand?”
“Guess not,” she says. “I’m a little sadistic, I suppose.”
Nothing much but chewing goes on at the table for a while.
Strad gets up. “Where’s the bathroom?” he asks me.
We all get up. He looks surprised and says, “No, please, you don’t need to get up.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “Jack, will you lead the way?”
“Certainly,” Jack says, and proceeds toward the hallway. I keep an eye on Strad’s
plate until everyone has left the table. We begin escorting Strad to the bathroom.
“Uh, what are you guys doing?” he asks.
“Showing you to the bathroom,” I say, trying to sound as casual as possible. “We’re almost there.”
We go through the hallway, turn a corner, and there we are, all crowded in front of the door.
“Please make way,” I say, and open the bathroom door. I take a quick look, to triple-check that everything seems safe, and show him in.
Strad steps inside, closes the door, and we hear nothing. After about thirty seconds he says, not very loudly, “Are you still there?”
I don’t answer right away, unsure what to say. Finally I answer, “Yes.”
Softly, he says, “Why?”
After a pause, I say, “In case you need anything.”
“I don’t need anything. You can go back to your seats now. I’m sure I can find my way back even though I got lost in your building.”
I don’t think this requires a response, so I give none. We still hear nothing. Time passes and still we hear absolutely nothing. I get worried. Having him out of my sight makes me nervous even though I’ve searched that bathroom multiple times and found no danger. I imagine things. Impossible things, perhaps, but when they’re dwelled on, they start to seem possible. I imagine a lethal gas seeping through the bathroom vent. I imagine a deadly electrical current connected to the metal faucet knobs and activated only when Strad is in the bathroom. I imagine that maybe I was not vigilant enough about staring at his plate and that now he’s quietly dying from poisoning.
I’m straining to hear the slightest sound. My fingertips are against the thin wooden door that separates us.
And then I hear him say softly, “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I reply, almost as softly.
“I’m a bit uncomfortable with you all standing out there, you know,” he says.
I nod and murmur, “We know.” That wasn’t meant for him to hear and I don’t think he did.
There is the sound of the sink faucet going on, and a second later, the bathwater running. I have a preposterous vision of the killer having arranged for these faucets to turn on by themselves. The door would be locked, jammed, no way to unlock it, the faucets would keep running, no way to shut them off, and the tiny bathroom would fill up like a fish tank.
The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel Page 10
