“We hope.”
“Leave that part out,” Quinn said, and broke the connection.
Mitzi said it aloud to see how it would sound: “There is a smoking section, but it’s not exactly in the plane.”
No, that one wasn’t funny, and it reminded passengers they were in an aluminum tube six miles up going five hundred miles per hour. No laughs to be mined here.
Her cell sounded the five key notes of Comedy Tonight, and she yanked it from her pocket. Ah! Fedderman was calling. The cop.
She listened to his message from Quinn, then she sighed and thanked him. He said he was really sorry, and she believed him.
Okay, she thought, putting the phone back in her pocket. She’d forget about the married serial killers idea until later, and if it still seemed workable she’d see if she could talk with Quinn.
Meanwhile, time to get back to work.
Mitzi continued strolling in Washington Square, paying little attention to the many pigeons strutting and flapping around her feet. The day was another incineration, and she was wearing baggy shorts and a sleeveless T- shirt. Several homeless people were lounging in the park, one of them curled in the fetal position on a bench she was approaching. In the shade of a tree, two heavily bearded men were using an upside-down cardboard box for a table and were deeply involved in playing chess. Tourists were ambling about, as were students, artists with sketch pads, and various Village types. Mitzi, with her Doc Martens boots and spiked white blond hair, guessed she was one of the Village types. She seemed to be attracting no attention whatsoever, and found herself rather grateful for that. It made it easier for her to think. To work.
Which was what she’d been doing when she received Fedderman’s call. She sometimes sold jokes to the airlines. It seemed that all of them were incorporating comedy into their welcome and safety spiels. It was good PR, and the informality of comedy helped to soothe nerves and put passengers at ease. Other than comedians, few people died in the middle of a joke. But with all the passenger traffic and frequent fliers, airborne comedy ate up material in a hurry. The airlines depended on people like Mitzi to provide them with a steady supply of humor. Reassuring takeoff and landing humor in particular was in high demand.
Despite the warm temperature, the direct sunlight on Mitzi’s face made her smile. Her twenty-fifth birthday was today, and she felt good, as long as she stayed away from thoughts of getting older and more wrinkled. Crow’s-feet were beginning to form at the corners of her eyes-she was sure of it. If the light was right and she smiled wide, people must be able to see them. If she dwelled on it too much the truth was undeniable and unbearable: time was marching all over her.
On the plus side there was Rob. They were going out for dinner tonight, and, knowing Rob, he’d have some kind of birthday gift for her.
As she passed the bench with the homeless man curled up on it, he mumbled something she couldn’t understand, then turned his head away, as if she’d impolitely disturbed his sleep. An empty wine bottle was on the ground beneath the bench, along with a used condom. Mitzi guessed the bench had seen a lot of action last night. The man mumbled again in his sleep, something unintelligible about flying or dying.
When she was well past him, Mitzi slowed her pace.
I walk down the aisle to the only empty seat in the plane, and this drunk sitting next to it says…
‘Would it embarrassh you if I shang?’ I say ‘not at all,’ and then I find out that in his language shang means…
The pigeons waddling about on the pavement, pecking at minute bits of whatever, parted way for Mitzi, but never moved more than a few feet. They didn’t seem to sense anything imminent. Mitzi caught a shadowy movement in the corner of her vision, and a large dark bird-a hawk-swooped down, used its fully spread dark wings as brakes, sank its talons into a white and gray pigeon, then regained height, carrying the helpless pigeon away. It had all happened so suddenly and noiselessly that it might have been an illusion. As if she had the Discovery Channel on with the sound off, only it was real.
Mitzi looked around. No one else in the square seemed to have noticed what happened. The pigeons, pecking away at miniscule edibles, went on about their business as if nothing had occurred and one of their number weren’t missing.
Poor pigeon.
You’re shanged, pal.
Mitzi stood staring up at the sky, but the hawk and its prey were nowhere in sight.
Had she imagined it?
She didn’t think so.
A peregrine falcon. That’s what she must have seen. She knew they were in the city, and that they hunted pigeons, but few people had actually seen them in action.
Now Mitzi was one of those few. Seeing it had, in a way, been exhilarating. In another way, disturbing. Whatever it was, it had sure put the cap on comedy.
She picked up her pace and walked toward one of the park exits, unable to shake the image of the large dark bird suddenly appearing and deftly using its powerful wings to entrap the pigeon while it gained a grip and managed to lift off with its stunned prey. She couldn’t get over how it had all happened so abruptly, disturbing nothing around it, and then it was over. It was the way fate sometimes dealt with people.
She understood then what was making her uneasy. The strike of the falcon seemed so incongruous as to be prophetic. She had seen this rare and startling sight. Mustn’t that mean something? Hadn’t she somehow been chosen?
Don’t be so childish and self-absorbed. Everything that happens to you doesn’t have to be infused with hidden meaning and great gravity. God, fate, whoever, whatever doesn’t telegraph his, her, its moves. Prophecy before tragedy? Ask the pigeon.
The oversized leather boots she was wearing were starting to give her a blister. Mitzi concentrated on that. It was a real and imminent problem.
She walked more carefully on the hot pavement, scrunching up her toes and trying to keep the boots from rubbing, as she left the square and made her way toward her subway stop. On the subway she was still trying to put the incident with the pigeon out of her mind.
But she couldn’t.
She knew she’d probably dream about it tonight.
But she wouldn’t.
69
Pearl hadn’t slept more than an hour straight last night. This was insane. She was torturing herself. She knew it had to end, and only she could end it.
Finally she’d worked up the courage to read Dr. Eichmann’s pathology report.
She sat on the sofa with a knife she’d gotten from the kitchen to use as a letter opener. But when she inserted the narrow blade into the corner of the envelope, the flap popped open of its own accord. It had been barely sealed.
How dare they send a document like this in a way that allows anyone to read it!
Had someone read it?
In her anger Pearl imagined some ham-handed postal employee noticing the unsealed flap and checking to see if there might be money in the envelope. Then, disappointed, reading the results of her biopsy. Sharing the information with fellow employees, all of them making a big joke of it.
Calm down, idiot!
Postal employees were no more likely than cops to behave that way. And the envelope was sealed, only lightly. It didn’t appear to have been tampered with, and probably had found its way, like thousands- millions — of letters, to its proper recipient unread.
