Festival of Deaths(114)

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 seconds, 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.

There were four phone numbers under Shelley’s name in the red leather book, next of kin to call just in case. Two of these were identified as belonging to “Robert.” The other two were identified as belonging to “Stephen.” Two of these were the phone numbers—at home and at work—of Shelley’s husband. The other two were the phone numbers—at home and at school—of Shelley’s oldest son. It was such a pain when parents gave their children their own private telephone lines. Sarah’s parents would never have done any such thing.

Husbands come before children, Sarah told herself, and home comes before work. She punched in the number and her phone credit card and waited. She heard the phone picked up in New York and a deep bass voice say,

“Hello?”

“Hello?” Sarah could do breathlessly upset very well over the phone. The only thing she couldn’t make convincing was her face, and she didn’t have to. “Is this Mr. Robert Feldstein I’ve got hold of? Husband of Shelley Feldstein?”

“If you’re some kind of a reporter,” Robert Feldstein said, “I have already made it perfectly clear—”