“I work for all of them on that floor, you see, they share me,” she said. “Like a valuable property. It is not easy to get somebody to clean and cook at the drop of a hat-is that what you say?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes Madame Simonova asks me to spend the night when she is feeling very ill, as I have said, or Madame Hutchison asks if I will do her shopping.”
“And Carver Lennox?”
“Yes.”
“And you worked as a waitress for him at his Christmas party at the club?”
“For extra money, yes. It was a good job. I work for Lily some times, but that’s different. She helps me. She tries to help me get papers. She is a very nice woman.”
“I’m glad.”
She looked at me. “She loves you,” she said.
“What?”
“Lily. She loves you.” Marie Louise smiled at me. “Perhaps this is why I feel I can trust you. I saw how she looked at you today, yesterday. Once I saw her staring at a photograph of you. Virgil Radcliff is nice, but it’s different.”
I was flustered. I wanted to hear more, much more. Instead, I just said, “Go on about Mrs. Simonova, please.”
“Often people played cards at her apartment early on Friday evening, but this past week, she was feeling too ill. She asked me to stay late, and I was in the other room when Dr. Hutchison came to visit.
“What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear much, but I think he gave her some medicine, because later she asks me to return some pills to him. When I returned them, I saw the label had his name on the bottle. Miss Celestina took the bottle from me.”
“Did you notice what color?”
“Blue,” she said, and I thought of the Altace from the drugstore. “The same sort of pills she asked me to pick up a few days earlier.”
“On 145th Street? At Duane Reade?”
“Yes. From this Ravi at the pharmacy. I always speak with him.”
“Did anyone else visit Simonova Friday evening?”
“Sometimes, I heard Madame Simonova on the phone, but that evening, Friday, Mr. Lennox visited her, the second time during the week, or perhaps even the third. Almost every evening he would drop in, and each time the words became more and more angry.”
“And he was there Friday, you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Before or after Dr. Hutchison?”
“After. Yes, definitely, I am sure. I was frightened to leave the kitchen, they were so angry, especially him. He was very angry.”
“You hear anything?”
She shook her head. “Only their angry voices.”
“Did anybody else come?”
“One woman. I don’t know who she was,” said Marie Louise, finishing her wine. “That was delicious,” she said. “Thank you. I must go now,” she added.
I paid, trying to absorb everything she’d told me without getting out a notebook. I didn’t want her to stop talking. I didn’t want to make it look official.
I excused myself and went into the bathroom and scribbled what I could on the receipt for lunch. I called Virgil, told him to stay with the building. I had to get back to the Armstrong. I almost called the bank manager-Mr. Cash-and told him to forget the meeting, it could wait, but he sent a text saying he was twenty minutes away now, no apology, but he was coming. Wait for me, he said.
“I’ll drive you,” I said to Marie Louise.
“Thank you. It is very cold. To 116th Street, please,” she said. “Just for one minute to check at home, and then I will go to the Armstrong, where I have work to do.”
My car was parked across the street from the restaurant and we got in. She settled back, smiling as if enjoying some unexpected luxury, and gave me directions. For a few minutes we drove silently through the icy day while Marie Louise closed her eyes.
At 116th Street, she asked me to pull up in front of a little shop. She got out, pulling her down coat around her.
“Is this where you live?”
“Yes,” she said, and went through a narrow door next to the shop. I got out to look in the window.
It was a crummy storefront, the window jammed with bottles and boxes, dusty jars of dried herbs, and dusty jars with strange names, not in French, but some African language, I guessed. I got back in my car.
Marie Louise came back out of her apartment five minutes later and she turned into the shop. I could see her through the window, inspecting various items, turning over the bottles with fierce intensity.
“You often buy things in that store?” I asked when she got in the car.
“Yes.” She indicated her purse. “Madame Simonova is dead, so I have purchased some things to try to help her.”
“Help who?”
“Madame Simonova.”
“But she’s dead.”
“In my country, we hold many things in our heads at the same time, old and new, do you understand? One day you may have a modern procedure at a clinic, the next day you visit a native doctor. In Bamako, our capital city and my home, we are known for our treatments for many things. Western doctors visit just to procure these, many from our baobab tree,” she said, looking at me, and smiling. “This is what I explained to you about the black dog.”
“I see.”
“These djinn, these ghosts in the Armstrong, I try to make them disappear,” she said. “This is difficult for Americans to understand.”
“Yes.”
“But many of them are so superstitious,” she said. “Many of them give all their money to faith healers, to psychics, they believe God created the world in seven days, as in a film, rather than evolution, they believe in some heaven where God resembles a big black actor, isn’t that right?”
I nodded, then I stopped short at a red light. “Are you OK?”
“Yes, fine,” said Marie Louise. “You know, this is a strange, difficult country,” she said. “Before I come, I read how many American people of color say they have roots in Africa, they admire Africa, yet here many look down on us. They think we are poor and backward, except perhaps for a few musicians.”
“That’s hard for you.”
“Yes. It is ironic now that we are Africans in Harlem, from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, but we are the lower classes.” She paused, looking at me. “They say they are African Americans, but so many have never been to Africa, and know nothing. Many speak no foreign languages, and also they have a chip on their shoulder-is that what you say?”
“You can say that.”
“I understand this, I married an American, and then he died, as I told you, and nobody believed I was married. I had lost the papers in Mali, where I married him. I went to see his family, his sister, but she was angry all the time, angry at me, angry at everybody,” said Marie Louise. “She told me about slavery in the United States as if no one else has ever experienced this, even though she had a good job and a nice apartment.” Marie Louise grinned. “I told them that it was black people, Africans, who sold her ancestors into slavery. She was quite unhappy with me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault,” said Marie Louise. “And your Lily has always been so nice, and also Dr. Hutchison, I
