“I see.”
“I’ll call you, Artie, and you have my cell. It’s the same number, you know that, right?”
“Lily, listen to me, you didn’t do anything wrong, OK?”
“Sure, Artie. Right.”
She went to the TV set, picked up a remote, and pressed a button. A woman appeared on the screen. It was Marianna Simonova.
“Lily.”
“Just watch.”
“Hello, Lily darling, this is what you want? You are certain you want this old woman she sings for you?” Simonova paused, smiling and smiling, then she spoke again, her blue eyes shining, as she spoke into the camera.
Her face was alive, her voice clear. She wore a red sweater; gold silk scarf wrapped around her head. “I sing for you old folk song from my country,” she said, and raised her hand. She was holding a wine glass. I couldn’t see if the finger was intact. “When I shall be gone, my darling, you toss away stupid video, yes? So nobody see how bad I am singing.” She reached down, picked up a guitar. “OK, I sing famous song everybody know, so if you want you can also sing,” she said, as if there were an audience.
She sang “Moscow Nights.” She sang it simply, no melodrama, just a voice that was surprisingly young and clear, singing the familiar song about the river and the silver moon and the dawn and Moscow evenings. Behind me I could hear Lily humming along very softly.
Watching Marianna Simonova so alive on the dusty screen, I could understand why Lily had been seduced. Simonova finished the song. Lily picked up the remote and froze the picture. Simonova remained on the screen.
Hands in her lap now, back straight, staring at the woman on the TV, Lily sat so still she made me think of a little girl waiting for her punishment. “I killed her,” she said again.
CHAPTER 9
Well, I’m off,” said Celestina Hutchison as she emerged from her apartment. She was wrapped in a mink coat. In one gloved hand was a leash, a black Lab at the end of it. “You all been visiting with Miss Marianna?”
We had just left Simonova’s apartment when Mrs. Hutchison appeared, popping out of her apartment like a jack-in-the-box, as if she had heard us. Lily stroked the dog’s nose. Then she introduced me.
“How do you do,” Mrs. Hutchison said. “And this is Ed, Ed for Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington, you know.” She tugged at the Lab on the leash. “Lionel’s idea. Ed’s name. I don’t care for jazz music. I must go now; my sister is expecting me. She always so looks forward to a little visit with Ed.” She said, turning to lock her door. “I always have to lock up when Lionel is home alone.
“Lily, dear, you know how he just wanders about, going out on the terrace or up on that damn roof for a smoke. It’s fine for him, but what about me? What am I to do if he drops dead from smoking? What if he just falls down dead from being out in the cold? Such selfishness.”
Moving toward the elevator, with Lily and me in tow, this tiny woman-she wasn’t five feet tall-was an imperious figure. She pressed the button, holding her dog tight on its leash.
“Are you just visiting?” she said to me.
“Yes.”
“I believe I saw you talking to Lionel earlier, you were on Marianna’s terrace. Isn’t that right? You had something to say to each other?”
“Lily asked me to fix a leak in Mrs. Simonova’s apartment.”
“It takes some gall the way that woman gets other folk to do her chores. I think she believes she’s some kind of aristocrat and we were all put upon this Earth to serve her,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “I guess I should ask how she is feeling, her being so sick, or so she claims,” she added. “Damn elevator appears to be stuck on the third floor. You’d think those people could just walk instead of holding the elevator so long.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” said Lily indicating a chair near the elevator. “I’ll hold Ed while you rest.”
“Thank you, dear girl.” She gave Ed’s leash to Lily, then snapped open her black leather purse and pulled out a little bottle of hand lotion, removed her gloves, and began to rub it into her hands.
“Jergens lotion,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “I have always favored it over the more expensive brands, like all performers back when Walter Winchell’s radio show was sponsored by Jergens, and his sign-off line was ‘With Lotions of Love.’ I enjoyed that: lotions of love, and I always did relish the cherry-almondy scent. Lotions of love,” she said again. “Nothing like it for dry skin, I have even made Lionel use it in the winter. Would you like some, Lily dear?”
The elevator arrived, finally. In it was the doorman I’d seen when I first arrived at the building. He wore a North Face jacket and a fancy peaked cap with gold braid on it. His name tag read Diaz.
“How very nice,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “We have an elevator man at long last.”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Diaz held out a stack of mail to her.
“Oh, dear, Lily, take the mail for me, won’t you please?” Mrs. Hutchison took the dog’s leash and stepped into the elevator.
Before he pressed the button to shut the door, Diaz looked at me and said, “That Caddy, that belong to you, man?”
“Right,” I said.
“You blocking the front drive, man, you wanna move it?”
“Soon as I can.”
“How about now?” said Diaz as the door slid shut.
“Poor Celestina,” Lily said, after the elevator had gone. “All she wants is to sell her ‘damn apartment,’ as she calls it, and go somewhere warm. She’s always in that ratty old mink.”
“Why doesn’t she?”
“Lionel won’t move.” Lily held out the stack of letters she had taken from Diaz. “Artie, I have to go get my purse. Can you put these under the Hutchisons’ door, the one next to Marianna’s?”
“You know everybody around here.”
“They’re old. I listen.”
“Mrs. Hutchison didn’t like Simonova. What was that about?”
“She hated Marianna. She decided Lionel was having an affair with her, if you can imagine.”
“Was he?”
“What do you think?” she said, and I took the mail from Lily, who went into her own apartment and shut the door.
Before I put the mail under the Hutchisons’ door, I glanced through it. Habit.
There were what looked like Christmas cards. A few bills. A letter from a real estate agency in Florida.
The last envelope was addressed to Dr. L. R. N. Hutchison. Idly at first, I looked at the return address. Then I opened it, carefully as I could. Inside was a letter indicating that Hutchison was a founding member of an organization promoting assisted suicide, along with a flyer announcing a new edition of a book called Final Exit.
From somewhere a radiator clanged.
From one of the apartments-I couldn’t tell which-the radio blared out an all-news station.
A toilet flushed.
Somewhere else, Ella Fitzgerald sang “Give It Back to Indians.” The words ran in my head on a loop after that-“Broadway’s turning into Coney / Champagne Charlie’s drinking gin”-and I couldn’t make it stop.
From Lily’s place I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner.
Behind the door of apartment 14C, a dead woman, Marianna Simonova, lay on the sofa in a freezing room.
As I got into the elevator, I looked at my watch. It was ten a.m. I’d been in the building, what was it, three hours? Four?
