'That enough?' I said.
He did a quick estimate, like someone guessing jelly beans in a vat in a store window, sucked his teeth, and ran off with the coins rattling.
Fannie was busy emptying the wine glass. I refilled it and sat down to wait. At last she said, 'Someone's been outside my door every night now for two nights. They come and go, go and come, not like ever before, they stop, they breathe out and in, my God, what are they doing outside an old collapsed ruin of an opera singer fat lady's door at midnight, it can't be rape, can it, they don't rape 38o-pound sopranos, do they?'
And here she began to laugh so long and so hard I couldn't tell if it was hysteria or an amazed and self-surprising humor. I had to beat her on the back to stop the laughs and change the color in her face and give her more wine.
'Oh, my, my, my,' she gasped. 'It's good to laugh. Thank God, you're here.
You'll protect me, won't you? I'm sorry I said what I said. You didn't bring wthat dreadful thing with you and leave it outside my door. It's just the hound of the Baskervilles, hungry, come in on his own to scare Fannie.'
'I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Jimmy and Pietro and Sam, Fannie,' I said, and gulped my wine. 'I just didn't want to read obits to you, all at once. Look here. Constance Rattigan will be downstairs in a few minutes. She wants you to come stay a few days and…'
'More secrets,' cried Fannie, eyes wide. 'Since when have you known her?
And, anyway, it's no use. This is my home. If I left here, I'd waste away, just die. I have my recordings.'
'We'll take them with.'
'My books.'
'I'll carry them down.'
'My mayonnaise, she wouldn't have the right brand.'
'I'll buy it.'
'She wouldn't have room.'
'Even for you, Fannie, yes.'
'And then what about my new calico cat…?'
And so it went until I heard the limousine shrug in against the curb below.
'So that's it, is it, Fannie?'
'I feel fine, now, now that you're here. Just tell Mrs. Gutierrez to come up and stay a while aftou leave,' said Fannie cheerily.
'Where does all this false optimism come from, when an hour ago you were doomed?'
'Dear boy, Fannie's fine. That dreadful beast isn't coming back, I just know, and anyway, anyway…'
With a terrible sense of timing, the entire tenement shifted in its sleep.
The door to Fannie's room whispered on its hinges.
As if shot a final time, Fannie sat up and almost gagged on her terror.
I was across the room in an instant and threw the door wide, to stare out into the long valley of the hall, a mile in this direction, a mile in that; endless dark tunnels filled with jet streams of night.
I listened and heard the plaster crack in the ceiling, the doors itch in their frames. Somewhere, a toilet muttered incessantly to itself, an old, cold, white porcelain vault in the night.
There was no one in the hall, of course.
Whoever had been there, if he ever was, had shut a door quickly, or run toward the front or out the back. Where the night came in in an invisible flood, a long winding river of wind, bringing with it memories of things eaten and things discarded, things desired, things no longer wanted.
I wanted to shriek at the empty halls, the things I had wanted to shout along the night shore outside Constance Rattigan's Arabian fort. Go. Let be. We may look as if we deserve to, but we don't want to die.
What I shouted to emptiness was, 'All right, you kids. Get back in your rooms.
Go on, now. Git! That's it. So. There.'
I waited for the nonexistent kids to retreat to their nonexistent rooms and turned back in to lean against the door and shut it with a fake smile.
It worked. Or Fannie pretended it did.'You'd make a good father.' She beamed.
'No, I'd be like all fathers, out of mind and out of patience. Those kids should have been doped with beer and slugged into their cots hours ago. Feeling better, Fannie?'
'Better,' she sighed, and shut her eyes.
I went and circled her with my arms, like Lindbergh going around the earth and the crowds yelling.
'It will work itself out,' she said. 'You go now. Everything's all right. Like you said, those kids have gone to bed.'
The kids? I almost said, but stopped myself. Oh, yes, the kids.
'So Fannie's safe, and you go home. Poor baby. Tell Constance thanks but no thanks, and she can come visit, yes? Mrs. Gutierrez has promised to come up and stay tonight, on that bed I haven't used in thirty years, can you imagine? I can't sleep on my back, I can't breathe, well, Mrs. Gutierrez is coming up, and you were so kind to come visit, dear child. I see now how kind you are, you only want to save me the sadness of our friends downstairs.'
'That's true, Fannie.'
'There's nothing unusual about their passing on, is there?'
'No, Fannie,' I lied, 'only foolishness and failed beauty and sadness.'
'God,' she said, 'you talk like Butterfly's lieutenant.'
'That's why the guys at school beat me up.'
I went to the door. Fannie took a deep breath and at last said, 'If anything does happen to me. Not that it will. But if it does, look in the icebox.'
'Look where?'
'Icebox,' said Fannie, enigmatically. 'Don't.'
But I had jerked the icebox open already. I stared in at the light. I saw lots of jams, sauces, jellies, and mayonnaise. I shut the door after a long moment.
'You shouldn't have looked,' protested Fannie.
'I don't want to wait, I've got to know.'
'Now, I won't tell you,' she said, indignantly. 'You shouldn't have peeked. I'm just willing to admit maybe it's my fault it came into the house.'
'It, Fannie? It, it!'
'All the bad things I thought you dragged in on your shoes. But maybe Fannie was responsible. Maybe I'm guilty. Maybe I called that thing off the streets.'
'Well, did you, or didn't you?' I yelled, leaning toward her.
'Don't you love me any more?'
'Love you, hell, I'm trying to get you out of here and you won't come. You accuse me of poisoning the toilets, and now tell me to look in iceboxes. Jesus God, Fannie.'
'Now the lieutenant is mad with Butterfly.' But her eyes were starting to well over.
I couldn't stand any more of that.
I opened the door.
Mrs. Gutierrez had been standing there a long while, I was sure, a plate of hot tacos in her hands, always the diplomat, waiting.
'I'll call you tomorrow, Fannie,' I said.
'Of course you will, and Fannie will be alive!'
I wonder, I thought, if I shut my eyes and pretend to be blind.
