A Superior Death

darkness of her inner ear-then finally, faintly, the burr of a phone ringing on the fourteenth floor above Park Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street.

“ParkView Clinic,” came a toneless voice. But for twelve years of experience, Anna would have waited for the machine’s beep.

“Is Dr. Pigeon in?” Anna asked formally. “It’s her sister.”

“One moment please.” Never a spark of recognition, never an “Oh, hello, Anna” in all the years. Hazel-a name Anna found at odds with the cold telephone persona-was the ideal receptionist, Molly said. A woman with an imagination wouldn’t have lasted a week in the position.

“Will you hold?” pierced through the static.

“I’ll hold.” Music, Yo Yo Ma on cello, drifted down the wires through the white noise.

A young man came and sat down on the waiting bench. He had dark thick hair that seemed both wild and well coiffured, the envy of any girl. His eyes were wide-set above chiseled cheekbones. Anna prepared herself to ignore him. Her rare phone calls were too precious to be spoiled by the pressuring eyes of a too pretty boy. Before she had time to edit him out of her world, he flashed her a smile and she recognized him: Tinker’s husband, sans cape.

“Can’t talk long. Give me the news.”

Molly’s voice, sudden and startling, seemed to speak from inside Anna’s head. It sounded so faint, so rushed, her isolation felt more complete. A heaviness grew in her chest. She had no news. She was just making contact, drilling a long-distance hole in her loneliness. “You’re at the office late,” she said.

“My four o’clock had a lot on her mind today. Still afraid her husband will leave her. Been coming to me twice a week for eleven years about it. I must be one hell of a shrink.”

“You do her good.”

“Maybe. If not for my fees, her husband could’ve afforded a divorce in 1986. This connection is bloody awful, Anna. Have you found someplace even more godforsaken than West Texas? Tell me you’ve got flush toilets.”

Anna laughed. “Sorry.”

“Seven minutes, Anna.” There was a short sucking silence; Molly lighting a cigarette.

“Those things’ll kill you,” Anna said.

“This from a woman who carries a gun,” Molly returned.

“Not anymore. It would be more likely to drown you here than save you from the bad guys. I carry it in a briefcase like any self-respecting Manhattan drug dealer.”

Molly laughed, almost a cackle. “Six minutes… nope. Four.”

“Why? What’s up?” Anna forced herself to ask, though suddenly she knew she didn’t want to hear of any glittering social event, any cozy gathering.

“Promised to go to a function up in Westchester. A political winetasting.”

“Wine’s not your drink.”

“Not like it’s yours.”

Anna ignored that.

“Two reasons: A client of mine is obsessing on it. Can’t name names but you’ll find his byline in the Girls’ Sports section of Sunday’s Times.” Anna laughed-that was how Molly always referred to the Style section. Molly continued: “A rediscovered batch of very pricey long-lost stuff. Supposedly made during Prohibition, the year of the perfect weather in California. When the sun, the grapes, the soil, had reached the mythical moment. Twenty cases were bottled, then mysteriously vanished. Last month a couple of the prodigal bottles returned. My client is most distraught. Swears it’s a hoax. As you may have guessed, he wasn’t the one to rediscover it.

“Secondly: It’s in Westchester County. I haven’t been there for a while. I thought I’d stop by Valhalla-” Molly interrupted herself with a snort of laughter. “Valhalla. A good Christian cemetery, no doubt. Look up Zachary. See if the eternal flame still burns or whatever.”

“My mother-in-law takes care of that,” Anna said.

“Does Edith still think his ashes are under that god-awful marble slab? Speaking of mental health,” Molly went on without giving Anna time to answer, “do you still have them? Sprinkle them, Anna. Do it. ‘Lake Superior, it is said, never gives up her dead.’ Do it.”

“Don’t you have someplace to go?” Anna asked irritably.

“Right. Stay out of Davey Jones’s locker.”

And the line went dead.

Anna settled the receiver back in the cradle. The heaviness in her chest had grown more oppressive. Maybe she’d been hiding in the wilderness long enough. Maybe it was time to go back to civilization. It would be good to shave her legs, pull on something silk, go to a pretentious party in lipstick and hose.

She looked out the window of the phone box. Damien still inhabited the bench. Not with the air of a man waiting impatiently-or patiently-but of a man with no better place to be. The wide-set eyes were fixed on a pileated woodpecker high in an aspen tree. He watched with the total unaffected concentration of a child.

A red feather floated down through the golden-green leaves and landed a yard or two from his sneakered feet. He picked up the feather and the lovely smile flashed. Not for Anna this time, for the giver of the gift: the woodpecker.

Anna banged open the door of the phone box and the bird flew off in an aerial scramble. “I’m finished,” she announced unnecessarily.

“You’re Anna Pigeon, aren’t you?” Damien’s voice was soft and high. Over the phone he would be mistaken for a child. In person, with the clear greenish eyes and styled dark hair, it didn’t seem inappropriate.

“You’re Damien,” Anna replied.

“There’s a party tonight in the lodge for Denny Castle of the Third Sister. Can you come? Tinker and I must talk to you.” He’d dropped his voice to a furtive level and, with a melodramatic flair Anna couldn’t help but admire, glanced over his shoulder.

She didn’t laugh but it took some effort. “I’ll be there,” she replied. “In my official capacity.”

If Damien knew she was teasing him, he was not affected by it. “Good,” he said, then again, firmly, as if coming to some inner decision: “Good. It is necessary.”

As he turned away and walked to the call box, throwing his shoulders as if a cloak swirled down from them, Anna allowed the smile inside to break the neutral set of her mouth.

Officially the party would start at half past eight, when Denny Castle was to bring his new bride into the dining room. Unofficially Anna commenced toasting the happy couple shortly after she got off the phone with her sister. Trying, and fairly successfully, to float the heavy weight off her heart, to water down the loneliness with wine.

Sitting on the lodge’s wooden deck, overlooking the harbor, she sipped a mediocre Beaujolais and let the silver of the evening sink into her soul. Sadness didn’t seem half bad when there were no human mirrors at hand to reflect it.

“To Piedmont,” she said and lifted her glass to the paling sky. The Beaujolais had a lovely color, catching the light without dulling it.

“Piedmont?”

The voice was so calm and well modulated that it made scarcely a ripple in Anna’s solitude. “My cat,” she said easily and looked up from the deck chair where she sprawled to see who had addressed her.

A small woman-five foot two or so, shorter than Anna- stood a few yards away, her arms crossed against the coming chill. In the pearly evening light her hair shone a pale gold, almost certainly from a bottle, but so artfully done it was hard to tell. She wore it shoulder-length with bangs blunt-cut just above eyebrow level. Her dress, heavy silk from the way it moved in the breeze, was of nearly the same shade, a color close to that of winter sunlight. Her face was heavily lined. Crow’s-feet fanned out from the corners of her eyes and partway down her cheeks. There was a pronounced parenthesis around her mouth where the nasolabial folds carved their mark. Faint creases, held at bay by lipstick carefully applied and fixed with powder, cut into her lip-line. But for the wrinkles she showed no age at all. Her body was narrow-hipped, slim as a willow wand, her voice resonant, her gaze direct and challenging.

Anna pegged her as a rich tourist. Maybe a doctor’s wife up from the Twin Cities on a tasteful little yacht named the Kidney Stone or the Aqueous Humor.

The woman smiled, a friendly pretty smile which gave absolutely nothing away. Anna revised her first