The place had been trashed.
8
CARMENCITA BOAZ HEARD ABOUT the destruction of Maria Gonzalez’s apartment at ten minutes to six, and it bothered her, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Later she knew it would bother her a lot, like so much about living in the city did. She had told Itzaak that her dream was to move somewhere small and countrified, like New Hampshire, and he had laughed, but she had meant it. There might not be much in the way of Hispanic culture in New Hampshire, but Carmencita wasn’t sure she minded that. She’d had quite enough of Latin America when she’d been living in Latin America. Her New York neighborhood reminded her so much of Guatemala City, it made her want to cry. Carmencita didn’t like cities at all, and she wasn’t very fond of hot weather. She could just see herself in the New Hampshire countryside with the snow falling on her hair. She could see herself making maple syrup and apple cider and bringing up a pack of children who could all say the Pledge of Allegiance without Spanish accents.
The six men who were supposed to be on the show today were sitting in Carmencita’s office, looking dejected. A couple of them had come in breathing fire, but it hadn’t lasted. Carmencita had known it wouldn’t. The lawyers had gotten to them. The lawyers always did. There was something about hearing your most private obsessions spelled out in the language of tort law that took the starch right out of a man.
“It’s worse than getting a divorce,” one of the men complained, after it was over. “With a divorce, at least you know what it’s all about. With this, it’s like they just did it because they felt like it.”
The sentiment might be expressed a little inarticulately, but Carmencita knew what the man meant. Carmencita was not a feminist. It was her private opinion that the women in this case were what her friend at her neighborhood branch of the New York Public Library would call “grade-A number one ball busters.”
Ball busters was not an expression Carmencita Boaz used, except in the privacy of her mind. Nastiness was not a modus operandi she had been brought up to adopt. When she saw the women in the hallway, she was unvaryingly polite. When she talked about them to Itzaak, she was blunt without being obscene. In Carmencita Boaz’s background there were legions of nuns, nuns who had been her teachers, nuns who had been her aunts, nuns who had watched over her in playgrounds and at Mass, every last one of them repeating over and over again, “Carmencita, you must be a lady.”
Carmencita checked her watch, looked over her dejected brood, and tried her best encouraging smile.
“We’re going to go out to the set in just five minutes,” she said. “We will seat you around a low coffee table, on which will be placed pitchers of ice water and glasses in case your throats get dry. We’re going to try out a few seating arrangements—”
“Just don’t sit me next to Darlene,” one of the men said. “I’ll break her neck.”
“They always sit the husbands and the wives together,” another said. “Don’t you ever watch this show? The husbands and wives just sit there holding hands and calling each other the worst names—”
“I’m being accused of refusing to do something I never even heard of,” a third man said. “I’m being accused of doing something I can’t even pronounce.”
“You don’t think anybody watches this show,” the second man said, “but you’re wrong. All the wives watch it. And they talk to each other.”
“Oh, God,” the first man said.
Carmencita would have liked a drink of ice water herself. She would have liked a long talk with Itzaak, but Itzaak wouldn’t be available. He’d be up in the rafters playing with the lights. She opened her office door and motioned the men to go through it.
“Let’s get an early start,” she told them. “It can’t do any harm and you’re getting much too nervous. You’ll all be fine.”
“Of course I won’t be fine,” the third man said. “I’ll be the laughingstock of Port Chester, New York.”
Since this was undoubtedly true, Carmencita decided not to try to answer it. Instead, she made another falsely hearty gesture at the door, and was gratified when the men got slowly to their feet and headed in her direction. They looked like prisoners on the way to the electric chair, but then in a way that was exactly what they were. Carmencita got them into the hall in a ragtag cluster and headed down the hall for the set.
Sarah Meyer was standing at the set door, frowning. Sarah Meyer was always frowning. Carmencita paid no attention to her.