In front of Woo on a low, black enameled table, sat a vase, a colorful vase with the subtle narrow curve of a young woman. Painted on the vase was a garden and a young woman in the costume of a long-past dynasty.
This vase was but a copy of the original. This vase was no more than four or five hundred years old, but it was a good copy.
When he was a boy in Beijing, Laio Woo had first heard the tale of the woman in the vase, the trapped goddess who came out once every hundred years knowing that if she could keep from falling in love with a mortal, she would never have to return.
The goddess, however, was so giving that she always fell in love and each century left a grieving lover to return to the delicate vase.
A legend and only a legend, but Woo had devoted his life to the quiet search for the vase, the original, if it still existed. He would have given all he had for that vase, to touch the original, see the goddess before he died.
Laio Woo had been many things in his life-a poor beggar, a thief, a trafficker in stolen goods, and, on two occasions, the cause of the death of another human. He had also, for more than forty years, since she was a young girl, loved Iris Chen. Not the love that would want her in his home or bed, but the love of a mortal for a goddess on a vase.
Woo knew that reality would destroy his love as a careless sweep of the hand would destroy the vase before him.
And so he had watched her. And so he had seen her fall in love with a mortal, an unworthy white mortal. He could do more to stop their union. He could but he knew he would not.
He rose from his chair and lit a candle before the vase. Then he walked to the door and switched off the lights.
Laio Woo looked back at the vase and imagined that the goddess danced slowly, subtly in the flicker of the candle. He stood for more than five minutes watching and then left the room, closing the door gently behind him.
Four Women at Midnight
Kenneth Franklin snored gently and in the dim glow of die light from the illuminated clock face on the bedside table Betty could see the white face of her husband. He wore his white silk pajamas, and he lay without a blanket flat on his back, arms folded on his stomach. Snoring gentry. Cheeks deep, sunken.
They had come home early, spoken little, and gone to bed without a "good night" All he had said was, "I've set the alarm for nine."
She wanted to hate him, but she couldn't. She knew she couldn't.
Her pillows were propped behind her and she was sitting up looking at him, unable to sleep, unwilling to get up and get a drink of water or wander through the house.
She would age quickly now. She knew that Kenneth was withering even faster and determined to take her with him in his decay.
Betty pulled back the comforter that covered her. The novel she had forgotten on her lap tumbled to the floor with a flutter of pages. Ken didn't move and the gentle snore did not alter.
She didn't bother to search for her slippers. She moved quickly to the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at herself in the mirror. There were no lies here. Without makeup her defeat was clear, naked.
Slowly, carefully, though she was going nowhere, she opened the top vanity drawer and began to apply her makeup. She had to be able to face herself in the mirror.
After ten minutes, though she had no idea of how much time had passed, the door opened behind her and in the mirror she saw the pale, white-clad figure of her husband.
"You closed the door. You know I need a light," he said and went back to bed.
No "What the hell are you doing?" No "Are you going somewhere in the middle of the night?"
Betty Franklin couldn't breathe and she couldn't finish and she knew she could not go back to bed and she could not wander through the house and she could not face herself in the mirror.
She wanted to scream, but the horror would be that Kenneth Franklin would have no response.
There was nothing she could do or wanted to do, and that was the greatest horror of all.
Wanda Skutnik stirred in her chair in front of me television on whose screen Greg Kinnear, who used to be on 'Talk Soup," Wanda's all-time favorite show, was staring wide eyed at some movie star Wanda vaguely remembered. The movie star was young, dark, and beautiful.
The front door opened, slowly, carefully. Wanda closed her eyes. Footsteps on tiptoed stocking feet moved across the squeaking wooden floor. The television went off.
"Ma," George Patniks whispered. "You up?"
Wanda grunted and, eyes still closed, muttered, "Up, I'm up."
"Let's get you to bed. You shouldn't sleep in the chair. You'll get a sore back. You'll get ulcers or something."
He reached down to help his mother up but she didn't take his hand.
"Gregor," she said. "You're all right?"
"I'm all right," he said. "I'm tired. I'll be on the TV tomorrow. You'll find out But I'm all right. No trouble."
"I thought the police…" she began and took his hand.
"I'm fine. No law trouble. A guy did something bad. I saw it. I'll have to testify is all."
With her son's help, Wanda sat up. She straightened her purple dress with her thick fingers and palms and looked at her son.
"You don't look good, Gregor. You want a snack? Corn Chex?"
"Just tired, Ma."
"You want to talk, Gregor?"
"Nothing to talk about," he said with a lopsided smile. "I'll take a shower, shave, and get a night's sleep. In the morning, you'll see, the old Gregor. Ma, what're you looking at me like that? You think I'm lying? Something?"
Wanda looked up at her son and smiled. It was a very small smile but it was enough.
"Oh shit," George said, looking away.
When he turned back to her, Wanda could see the tears in her son's eyes. He knelt in front of her. He had never done that before, never, even as a child. But now he knelt and put his head on his mother's lap. She stroked his moist hair and he said, "I can't go downstairs. I keep seeing her. I can't…"
"Sleep on the couch," Wanda said. "I'm not tired. I'll watch a rerun of a basketball game with no sound."
"I'm scared, Mom," he said as she stroked.
"I'm here," she said. "I'm here."
Charletta Wayne sat in the apartment window and looked out at the moonlight rubble that stretched below her across Thirty-eighth Street. It was a white and shadowed landscape, end of the world.
Her mother and father slept or pretended to sleep in the next room.
Charletta had come home less than an hour ago. She would have been home from the police station long before, but getting a cab to take her to this neighborhood was not easy and there was no way she could take the el this late at night.
Charletta had come home, kicked off her shoes, and sat in the chair by the window, not bothering to eat, not bothering to take off her dress, underwear, makeup.
She had talked to Lonny, talked to the police, talked to the man from the Public Defender's Office who represented her brother. Charletta's mother and father had refused to come. Her father's heart was bad. Her mother was humiliated. And so, as it always had, it fell on Charletta, the solid one, the smart one, the only person on either side of the family who had ever gone to college.
She had soothed her brother, talked rationally and reasonably with (he public defender, who struck her as tired and a little stupid but well meaning. Lord, she thought, if you're out mete among the rats and garbage, save us from the well-meaning and incompetent Something moved in the field and then stopped.
Tomorrow would be worse and it would be all up to Charletta, who stood tall and with dignity but no trace of beauty.
The Jewish policeman who looked like an old, tired dog had been patient with her, gone over the case against Lonny, told her what the doctors had done and that they were sure he would recover from his wounds and be all right.