“Please go,” Finkelstein said.
“Come on, you got a Dr. Tree? No? I’ll tell you, if not today you’ll get him later on, he’s on the way. He’s coming to investigate specimens. I’m the important one! It’s me he’s interviewing, Finkelstein, not you! I’m the study!”
The red wig dipped again.
“Aha!” Rosa cried. “I see you got Tree! You got a whole bunch of Trees!”
“We protect the privacy of our guests.”
“With barbed wire you protect. It’s Tree, yes? I can see I’m right! It’s Tree! You got Tree staying here, right? Admit you got Tree! Finkelstein, you S.S., admit it!”
The manager stood up. “Out,” he said. “Get out now. Immediately.”
“Don’t worry, it’s all right. It’s my business to keep away. Tree I don’t need. With Trees I had enough, you don’t have to concern yourself—”
“Leave,” said the red wig.
“A shame,” Rosa said, “a Finkelstein like you.” Irradiated, triumphant, cleansed, Rosa marched through the emerald glitter, toward the illuminated marquee in front. HOTEL MARIE LOUISE, in green neon. A doorman like a British admiral, gold braid cascading from his shoulders. They had trapped her, nearly caught her; but she knew how to escape. Speak up, yell. The same way she saved Stella, when they were pressing to take her on the boat to Palestine. She had no fear of Jews; sometimes she had—it came from her mother, her father—a certain contempt. The Warsaw swarm, shut off from the grandeur of the true world. Neighborhoods of a particular kind. Persky and Finkelstein. “Their” synagogues—balconies for the women. Primitive. Her own home, her own upbringing—how she had fallen. A loathsome tale of folk-sorcery: nobility turned into a small dun rodent. Cracking her teeth on the poison of English. Here they were shallow, they knew nothing. Light-minded. Stella looking, on principle, to be light-minded. Blue stripes, barbed wire, men embracing men…whatever was dangerous and repugnant they made prevalent, frivolous.
Lost. Lost. Nowhere. All of Miami Beach, empty; the sand, empty. The whole wild hot neon night city: an empty search. In someone’s pocket.
Persky was waiting for her. He sat in the torn brown-plastic wing chair near the reception desk, one leg over the side, reading a newspaper.
He saw her come in and jumped up. He wore only a shirt and pants; no tie, no jacket. Informal.
“Lublin, Rosa!”
Rosa said, “How come you’re here?”
“Where you been the whole night? I’m sitting hours.”
“I didn’t tell you where I stay,” Rosa accused.
“I looked in the telephone book.”
“My phone’s disconnected, I don’t know nobody. My niece, she writes, she saves on long distance.”
“All right. You want the truth? This morning I followed you, that’s all. A simple walk from my place. I sneaked in the streets behind you. I found out where you stay, here I am.”
“Very nice,” Rosa said.
“You don’t like it?”
She wanted to tell him he was under suspicion; he owed her a look in his jacket pocket. A self-confessed sneak who follows women. If not his jacket, his pants. But it wasn’t possible to say a thing like this. Her pants in his pants. Instead she said, “What do you want?”
He flashed his teeth. “A date.”
“You’re a married man.”
“A married man what ain’t got a wife.”
“You got one.”
“In a manner of speaking. She’s crazy.”
Rosa said, “I’m crazy too.”
“Who says so?”
“My niece.”
“What does a stranger know?”
“A niece isn’t a stranger.”
“My own son is a stranger. A niece definitely. Come on, I got my car nearby. Air-conditioned, we’ll take a spin.”
“You’re not a kid, I’m not a kid,” Rosa said.
“You can’t prove it by me,” Persky said.
“I’m a serious person,” Rosa said. “It isn’t my kind of life, to run around noplace.”
“Who said noplace? I got a place in mind.” He considered. “My Senior Citizens. Very nice pinochle.”
“Not interested,” Rosa said. “I don’t need new people.”
“Then a movie. You don’t like new ones, we’ll find dead ones. Clark Gable, Jean Harlow.”
“Not interested.”
“A ride to the beach. A walk on the shore, how about it?”
“I already did it,” Rosa said.
“When?”
“Tonight. Just now.”
“Alone?”
Rosa said, “I was looking for something I lost.”
“Poor Lublin, what did you lose?”
“My life.”
She was all at once not ashamed to say this outright. Because of the missing underwear, she had no dignity before him. She considered Persky’s life: how trivial it must always have been: buttons, himself no more significant than a button. It was plain he took her to be another button like himself, battered now and out of fashion, rolled into Florida. All of Miami Beach, a box for useless buttons!
“This means you’re tired. Tell you what,” Persky said, “invite me upstairs. A cup of tea. We’ll make a conversation. You’ll see, I got other ideas up my sleeve—tomorrow we’ll go someplace and you’ll like it.”
Her room was miraculously ready: tidy, clarified. It was sorted out: you could see where the bed ended and the table commenced. Sometimes it was all one jumble, a highway of confusion. Destiny had clarified her room just in time for a visitor. She started the tea. Persky put his newspaper down on the table, and on top of it an oily paper bag. “Crullers!” he announced. “I bought them to eat in the car, but this is very nice, cozy. You got a cozy place, Lublin.”
“Cramped,” Rosa said.
“I work from a different theory. For everything there’s a bad way of describing, also a good way. You pick the good way, you get along better.”
“I don’t like to give myself lies,” Rosa said.
“Life is short, we all got to lie. Tell me, you got paper napkins? Never mind, who needs them. Three cups! That’s a lucky thing; usually when a person lives alone they don’t keep so many. Look, vanilla icing, chocolate icing. Two plain also. You prefer with icing or plain? Such fine tea bags, they got style. Now you see, Lublin? Everything’s nice!”
He had set the table. To Rosa this made the corner of the room look new,
