After the rides were over, the Arab helped Benny off the camel and handed him to Daniel, kicking and giggling. Daniel said, 'Sack of potatoes,' and slung the little boy over his shoulder.
'Me too! Me too!' demanded Mikey, pulling at Daniel's trousers until he relented and hoisted him up on the other shoulder. Carrying both of them, his back aching, he began the walk home, past the Train Theater, through the field that separated the park from their apartment building.
A man was walking toward them, and when he got close enough Daniel saw that it was Nahum Shmeltzer. He shouted a greeting and Shmeltzer gave a small wave. As he approached, Daniel saw the look on his face. He put the boys down, told the three of them to run up ahead.
'Time us, Abba!'
'Okay.' He looked at his watch. 'On your mark, get set, go.'
When the children were gone he said, 'What is it, Nahum?'
Shmeltzer righted his eyeglasses. 'We've got another body, in the forest near Ein Qerem. A repeat of the Rashmawi girl, so close it could be a photocopy.'
BOOK TWO
As a small child, the Grinning Man had been a poor sleeper. Fidgety during the day and afraid of the dark, he went as rigid as hardwood during slumber, easily startled by the faintest night sound. The type of youngster who could have benefited from warm milk and bedtime stories, consistency and calm. Instead, he was yanked awake regularly by a raging of voices: the bad-machine sound of his parents tearing each other apart.
It was always the same, always terrible. He'd find himself sitting upright in bed, cold and wet from pee, toes curled so tightly that his feet hurt, waiting with a burnt-rubber taste in his mouth until the ugliness came into focus.
Once in a while, in the beginning, they did it upstairs- either of their bedrooms could serve as a killing ground-and when this happened, he'd climb out of bed and tiptoe from the Child's Wing across the landing, make a stumble-sneak to the Steinway grand, then slide under the giant instrument and settle there. Sucking his thumb, letting his fingertips brush against the cold metal of the foot pedals, the undercarriage of the piano looming above like some dark, voluptuous canopy.
Listening.
Usually, though, they fought downstairs, in the walnut-paneled library that looked out to the garden. Doctor's room. By the time he was five, they did it there all the time.
Everyone except her called his father Doctor, and for the first years of his life, he thought that was his father's name. So he called him Doctor, too, and when everyone laughed, he thought he'd done something terrific and did it again. By the time he learned that it was a stupid affectation and that other boys called their fathers Dad-even boys whose fathers were also doctors-it was too late to change.
Lots of times Doctor was cutting all day and into the night and slept at the hospital instead of coming home. When he did come home, it was always really late, way after the boy had been put to bed. And since he left for rounds an hour before the boy woke up, father and son rarely saw each other. One result of this, the Grinning Man believed, was that as an adult he had to struggle to retrieve a visual image of Doctor's face, and the picture he did produce was fragmented and distorted-a cracked death mask. He was also convinced that this problem had spread like a cancer, to the point where anyone's face eluded him-even when he managed to dredge up a mental picture of another human being, it vanished immediately.
It was as if his mind was a sieve-damaged-and it made him feel weak, lonely, and helpless. Really worthless when he let himself think about it. Out of control.
Only one type of picture stuck well-real science brought power-and only if he worked at it.
At first he thought Doctor was gone a lot because of work. Later he came to understand that he was avoiding what waited for him when he crossed the threshold of the big pink house. The insight was useless.
On Home Nights, Doctor usually put his black bag down in the entry hall and headed straight to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a sloppy sandwich and a glass of milk, then took the food into the dark-paneled library. If he wasn't hungry, he headed for the library anyway, sank into his big leather chair, loosened his tie, and sipped brandy while reading surgical journals by the light of a glass-shaded lamp with a weird-looking dragonfly on the shade. Unwinding before plodding heavily up the stairs for a few hours of sleep.
Doctor was a fitful sleeper, too, though he didn't know it. The boy knew because the door to Doctor's bedroom was always left open and his thrashing and moans were scary, echoing harshly across the landing. So scary it made the boy feel as if his insides were rattling and turning to dust.
Her bedroom-le boudoir, she called it-was never open. She locked herself in there all day. Only the smell of battle brought her out sniffing, like some night-prowling she-spider.
Though he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd been allowed in there, his memories of the place were vivid: cold space. An ice palace-that was the image that had stayed with him after all these years.
As white and bleak as a glacier. Treacherous marble floors, white porcelain trays crammed with diamond- faceted crystal bottles, the facets sharp enough to wound, beveled mirrors that spat back skewed reflections, filmy hangings of white lace, dead and sickeningly ephemeral, like the molt of some soft-boned albino reptile.
And satin. Shimmering acres of it, shiny, cold, snotlike to the touch.
At the center of the glacier was an immense white four-poster bed on a platform with a tufted satin headboard, smothered by gelatinous layers of satin-sheets and comforters and draperies and pendulous window valances; even the closet doors were padded with panels of the slimy stuff. His mother was always naked, lying exposed from the waist up under a frothy satin tide, propped up by a satin bed-husband, cocktail glass in hand, taking small sips of an oily-looking colorless liquid.
Her hair was long and loose. Harlow-blond, her face ghostly and beautiful, like that of an embalmed princess. Shoulders white as soap, with little bumps where the collarbones arched upward. Rouged nipples like jelly candy.
And always the cat, the hateful Persian, fat and spineless as a cotton ball, snuggled against her breast,
