Festival of Deaths(110)

Lotte had gone off to the bathroom fifteen minutes ago. She still wasn’t back. DeAnna cast another look at Carmencita’s door—what for? Carmencita was asleep. Itzaak was in there talking to her as if she could understand every word he said—and then headed down the hall for the bathrooms. The ladies’ room was in the elevator lobby, on the right side of the elevator bank. The men’s room was on the left. DeAnna stifled her perennial impulse to go into the men’s room and see if she could use a urinal and went into the ladies’ room instead.

“Lotte?”

“I am here, DeAnna. I am smoking a cigarette in a toilet stall, like the girls in that movie you gave me about the convent school.”

“The Trouble with Angels.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Come out of there and I’ll light a cigarette, too.”

“What will happen if they catch us?”

“They’ll ask us to put it out. And then they’ll ask for your autograph.”

The door to the last stall on the far end opened and Lotte came out, looking diminutive and furious.

“This is a crazy situation in this country, DeAnna, the way it is with smoking. It is one thing to be concerned about health. It is another to turn your country into a health police state.”

“Now, Lotte. Don’t exaggerate.”

“I am not exaggerating. There are three places where smoking should never be prohibited. In hospital waiting rooms. In psychiatrist’s offices. And at tax audits.”

“I’ll give you the tax audit.” DeAnna reached into her pocket for the pack of cigarettes she had taken off Lotte earlier in the day and lit up. “God, I’m feeling tired. Do you suppose Mr. Demarkian has a clue to what’s been going on around us?”

“I don’t know,” Lotte said soberly. “I will tell you, DeAnna, he is not what I expected him to be.”

“What did you expect him to be?”

“I thought he would be more like Sherlock Holmes,” Lotte said, “or like Columbo that I watch late at night when I can’t sleep.”

“At least that’s a range,” DeAnna said.

“Range or not, Mr. Demarkian is not like either of them. He does not seem to do anything but ask the same questions, over and over again. I do not think he is very intelligent.”

“I do.”

“Do you? Well, DeAnna, maybe you are right. I do not have any expertise in these things. Today I have been feeling that I do not have any expertise in anything.”

“Yeah, I know,” DeAnna said. “I’ve been having the same kind of night.”

Lotte’s cigarette was out. She leaned back, dumped the butt in the toilet, and reached for another.

“I think about Hanukkah,” Lotte said. “About David and Rebekkah and their children and the way Jews in America have taken a very minor holiday and turned it into a wonderful occasion for families, a wonderful occasion for children, because families and children are what are in the end important. I mean, DeAnna, what else is there? Does it really matter if I get a forty share next week? A hundred years from now, who will remember?”

“Oh, my, my, my,” DeAnna said. “You’ve got it even worse than I do.”

“I haven’t got anything,” Lotte said. “I’m just at the end of my rope. Carmencita is lying in there half-dead, and tomorrow morning what are we going to do? We’re going to go into the studio and tape a show on five women who are suing Saks Fifth Avenue for having caused their shopping addiction with the mail-order catalog.”

“Oh, that show,” DeAnna said. “I’d forgotten that one.

“I had not forgotten that one, DeAnna. It is impossible to forget. Why do these people expect us to take them seriously?”

“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.”