Festival of Deaths(16)

“She shouldn’t yell at you like that,” Itzaak said. “It’s not proper.”

“I ran down to Eidelhauer’s and got pastries. You want something to eat?”

Eidelhauer’s was a kosher bakery. Itzaak like to think Carmencita went there out of sensitivity to him, but she might not have. Lotte Goldman kept kosher, too. People who worked for the show got used to buying kosher when they wanted food for the office.

Carmencita handed him a Danish and perched on the edge of his desk. “I wish we knew where Maria was. It’s making me crazy. She must have been the one who took the permissions out of my file. Nobody else would have bothered. I wonder where they are.”

“They were very important?”

“DeAnna had to get the lawyers down here to get new ones. Not having them certainly caused a lot of trouble and cost a lot of money. I don’t know. It just doesn’t make any sense. Have you seen her?”

“I was with you,” Itzaak pointed out.

“I know you were with me. You’re a funny man, did you know that?”

“I wish I was. Then maybe you would laugh at my jokes.”

“I don’t mean that kind of funny. I mean funny. I mean you don’t, well, you know. You don’t act the way men act.”

“I don’t?”

“You know what I mean.”

Itzaak blushed. “It’s not that I don’t feel it,” he said. “It isn’t that, if that’s what you think.”

“Of course that’s not what I think. I think just the opposite. That’s just my point.”

“Do you want me to—to act like—ah—”

“Of course I don’t. That’s not what I meant either. I just wish—”

“What?”

Carmencita sighed. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I have a good time when you take me out. Don’t stop.”

Itzaak thought he was as likely to stop taking Carmencita out as a crack addict was likely to stop doing dope, but that didn’t seem to be a very delicate way to put it, so he didn’t. He took his feet off his desk and leaned forward over the blotter. It was something to do.

“So,” he said. “What about Maria? Has nobody seen her at all?”

“Not since we all left here this afternoon,” Carmencita said. “I rode down with her in the elevator.”

“And?”

Carmencita shrugged. “And nothing. We talked about this sale they’re having at Macy’s. Bathrobes and bath towels and things like that.”

“She didn’t say where she was going for the evening?”

“She wasn’t going anywhere for the evening,” Carmencita said. “She said she was going straight home and going to bed. She had to meet the Siamese twins here at three A.M.”

“It seems like an odd time for anybody to be coming into the airport.”

“It was. It was one of those chartered flights that cost a dollar ninety eight. I guess they aren’t rich Siamese transvestites. Either that, or DeAnna was having one of her moods. Maria must have turned the ringers off on her phone and then slept through her alarm.”

“Maybe you should go up there and get her,” Itzaak said.

Carmencita nodded. “I suggested that myself, but DeAnna sent Prescott Holloway. I’m supposed to be soothing the savage breasts of the husbands before showtime. Except now they’re all in with the lawyers and nobody wants me around. You want another Danish?”

“No thank you,” Itzaak said. “I’m not so happy with you soothing the savages, as you put it. They sound violent.”

“They’re very sweet, really. They’re just terribly hurt. I mean, most of them didn’t even know their wives wanted—what their wives say they want. The women just went off and joined this support group and now here they all are about to go into worldwide syndication and it’s humiliating. It’s not embarrassing for the wives, you know, because the wives will be able to look important at cocktail parties for months after we air. But for the husbands…”

“I am sure you would never do such a thing to your husband,” Itzaak said.

“I am sure that if I was a boss, I would never do something like this to my assistant,” Carmencita said. “Oh, well. There’s nothing but to see it out and hope for the best. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to sit with you to watch the taping.”

“Why not?”

“Because even if Maria is found, we’re going to need two people to handle the guests. We can’t herd them all together in a group. They fight.”

Itzaak shook his head. “They’re going to fight when they get home.”