Mr. X

‘Ned, are you all right?’

I tried to speak. ‘I’m not …’ I clapped my hands to my face, and the woman entwined around me turned to smoke. I lowered my hands.

‘I’m sorry.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ I wiped my handkerchief across my forehead and gave Laurie what I hoped was a reassuring look. ‘I guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.’

‘I don’t want to leave if you’re ill.’

I wanted overwhelmingly to be left alone. ‘I’m restored,’ I said. ‘Honest.’ I went to the outer door and opened it for her. Still puzzled, Laurie got behind the stroller, and tendrils of consciousness seemed to extend toward me. I remembered thinking that she looked like a great glowing golden panther.

‘The look on your face – it was like you were eating the most delicious ice cream in the world, but it gave you that ache in the middle of your forehead. Pleasure and pain.’

‘No wonder you thought I was sick,’ I said.

23 (#ulink_18899244-feb4-5e87-a9ac-0e1873541838)

Okay, I was stressed out, I told myself. At a time when thinking about anything but Star’s plight made me feel guilty, a good-looking stranger named Laurie Hatch had unknowingly pushed my buttons and induced a ten-second meltdown. On the other hand, maybe I was heading for another bizarre crack-up. Dr Barnhill’s perfunctory update faded in and out of focus. Over the top of his Martian head I glimpsed the entry into the ICU of a woman who would have been perfectly at home on the corner of Tenth Street and Second Avenue, and the sight of her reddish brown hair bushed out around the kindly, roguish moon-face floating above an opalescent tunic buttoned from waist to neck over loose black trousers made me feel better even before I realized who she was. Suki Teeter looked like a visiting maharanee. Dr Barnhill scurried up the aisle, and the maharanee rustled forward in a manner that suggested the chiming accompaniment of many little bells.

Nettie and May swung around with the stateliness of ocean liners and moved toward the curtain.

‘You have to be Suki Teeter.’ I held out my hand.

‘Honey-baby, please.’ She engulfed me in a hug. Her hair gave off the faint, pleasant odors of peppermint and sandalwood. ‘I would have been here earlier, but I practically had to recite the “Gettysburg Address” to get my car out of the shop!’ She stepped back. ‘I’m so glad you called me. And you’re sort of … sort of incredibly … My God! You’re a marvel, that’s what you are.’

‘You’re a marvel, too.’ The glow of Suki’s benevolent face intensified. Her wide-set, literally sparkling eyes were of two different colors, the right one a transparent aquamarine and the left as green as jade.

‘Tell me everything.’

I had nearly finished when Nettie swept the curtain aside and billowed out, May a step behind her. ‘Aunt Nettie,’ I said, ‘have you ever met Star’s old friend Suki Teeter?’

‘We met. You flicked cigarette ashes all over my porch.’

Suki said, ‘I’m very sorry about Star, Aunt Nettie,’ and went into the cubicle.

Minutes later, Nettie’s head snapped forward, and she seemed to turn to stone. ‘Now I have seen it all.’

‘What?’

Nettie scorched me with a look of the sort usually described as ‘baleful.’ ‘You called Toby Kraft.’

‘I thought he should know,’ I said.

Coming toward us in an ugly plaid jacket too heavy for the weather was a man with a gray, pockmarked face, Coke-bottle glasses, and a body like a cigar butt. His white hair swept back to a few inches above his shoulders, George Washington-style. Beneath the sweaty, savagely tiny knot of a defeated necktie curled the collar points of a shirt that appeared to have been worn for a week straight.

‘Who’s next?’ Nettie asked. ‘Mr John Dillinger?’

‘Why, that’s Toby Kraft,’ May said. ‘He must talk to the Devil himself.’

Suki Teeter parted the curtain, and my aunts moved sideways in unison. Sorrow had erased Suki’s normal radiance. She wrapped her arms around me. ‘Call me tonight, will you? Call me before that, if anything changes.’ She wiped her eyes without taking them from mine. The peculiarity of their coloring suggested that I was looking at two people contained in the same body.

Suki broke away and began moving up the aisle. Toby’s eyes, the size of eggs behind his thick glasses, focused on the front of her tunic.

May said, ‘Push those manhole covers off his nose, he looked any harder.’

Close up, Toby’s face looked like cottage cheese. ‘A good sport, that girl. Loyal as the day is long. Hiya, kid. Great to see you. Thanks for calling.’

He held out a fat white paw liberally covered with silver fur. ‘Isn’t it great to see this kid?’ The aunts did not respond. He released my tingling hand. ‘I wish I could look like the kid here for twenty-four hours. That’s all I ask – twenty-four hours. Hell, at least I got all my hair. How’s Star doing?’

I gave him a brief description.

‘What a lousy deal.’ He smoothed his hand over his hair. ‘I’ll let her know I’m here.’

May said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ She took his arm, and the two of them disappeared through the curtain.

‘Aunt Nettie,’ I whispered, ‘you must know that your sister is taking things from the nurses’ desks. What’s going on?’

She gave me a glance more aggrieved than angry and pulled me toward the end of the room. ‘Let me tell you some things you ought to know. What your Aunt May does is none of your business. She’s a magpie. That doesn’t hurt anybody. What did you see her take?’

‘A stapler,’ I said. ‘Some pencils and paper. But it doesn’t –’

‘These people, if they want writing supplies, they go to the storeroom and get for free what would cost us ten dollars at the store. May helps level out the balance. And you’re a Dunstan. You have to stand by your own people.’

I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Nettie’s force-field lost most of its intensity. ‘Now let me set your mind at ease. My sister might be slow on her feet, but she still has fast hands. May’s the best magpie in the world. Has been ever since Queenie passed away.’

‘Queenie?’

‘Queen of the magpies. How do you think she got that name? Your grandmother could leave a store, a color television set under one arm, pulling a dishwasher on a handcart with the other, and the manager would hold the door and wish her good morning.’

We returned to cubicle 15 in what must have appeared to be harmony. Nettie radiated the satisfaction of one who had accomplished a difficult task, and I was managing to hold myself upright.

Toby came out rubbing his fingers over a quilted cheek with what in him passed for melancholy. ‘Keep in touch, you hear? I want to know everything that happens. Your momma worked for me when you were just a squirt, did you know that?’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘How did the estate deal go?’ His eyes hardened, and I added, ‘The one you were telling me about.’

‘Oh, yeah. We’re moving, definitely.’ He gave me a sidelong look and strolled to the counter. ‘You staying at Nettie’s?’

I nodded.

‘If it gets tight over there, I can find you a room in a good clean place, no problem. And if you could use a couple extra bucks, maybe I’ll want some help in the shop. On account of you remind me of your momma.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ I said.

He nodded, and I nodded back, as if we had agreed on a business deal. Toby put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me down into a miasma of smoke and hair gel. ‘Between you and I, you spot May doing something which it might seem out of character for an old lady like her? Turn a blind eye. Word to the wise.’

‘She already swiped everything that wasn’t nailed down,’ I said.

Toby batted the side of my head and chuckled.