He looked again at his watch. It was almost time to leave the hotel.
He began to tremble.
Since he still had a few minutes, he went into the bathroom and emptied his bladder. He should have known better than to drink so much morning coffee.
He zipped up and then washed his hands, looking at his image in the mirror as he dried them. He forced himself to smile and said aloud to his image a line from a song in one of his favorite musicals.
“I believe in you.”
His image tilted up its chin and smiled back.
I believe in you.
When he left the room, the trembling began again.
13
Pedestrian traffic was heavy and moving fast. Everyone on Manhattan Island seemed to walk fast. It amused Pearl sometimes to think that if everyone just kept walking fast the direction they were going, it wouldn’t take long for all of them to reach the water. Then what would they do? Simply keep going like lemmings and all drown? Or mill about until the mood grew ugly and violence would ensue? The smokers would die first.
Pearl was irritated. Fedderman was supposed to have picked her up this morning in an unmarked and driven her to Quinn’s apartment, where the three of them were to discuss developments and plan the day.
But Fedderman hadn’t shown. Most likely he’d overslept, having drunk himself to sleep last night. Not that Pearl knew or had heard anything about Fedderman being in the bottle, but why wouldn’t he be? Pearl figured that in his place she’d probably become an alky herself, living a solitary life in some ten-by-ten condo in Florida, going outside now and then so the sun could bake your brain.
Different strokes…
She wished she could stroke Fedderman with a baseball bat.
Pearl had taken the subway uptown, and was now walking the remaining few blocks to Quinn’s apartment. It was a hot morning. The sun seemed to burn with an extra fierceness and cast long, stark shadows that emphasized angles. Traffic gleamed like multicolored gems strung along streets. Bagged trash was still piled curbside. Some of the plastic bags had burst or been cut open to get to the contents. New York could smell sweet and rotten on a morning like this.
She was standing with half a dozen other people waiting for a traffic light to change, everyone starting to perspire like her in the building morning heat, when her cell phone played its four solemn notes from the old Dragnet TV show. She fished it from her pocket and answered it a second before checking caller ID to see who was on the other end of the connection.
She was a second too late. She’d expected Quinn, wondering where she was and what was keeping her. Instead she saw letters spelling out Sunset Assisted Living. Pearl’s mother was calling from her modest but specially equipped apartment.
“Milton Kahn says you have something on your neck,” her mother said, without preamble. “Just behind your ear.”
Pearl wasn’t surprised. It was the way her mother often began phone conversations.
“I’ve got Milton Kahn on my back,” Pearl said, about the former lover she was trying to shed.
“He cares deeply about you, dear.”
“Mom, we tried. We’re simply not compatible. It wasn’t a take. Kaput! It’s over.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Pearl?”
“That I’m at work and don’t have time to talk.”
“Even about your future, God willing that you have one.”
Huh? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The thing on your neck, Pearl—Milton Kahn says it might be serious, and he of all people should know, the necks he looks at. Not that it’s critical now, but such things should be kept in check, dear, through regular visits to your doctor.”
“In this case my doctor would be Milton,” Pearl said. She knew the game. Milton Kahn was a dermatologist. He and Pearl had been the object of a matchmaking maneuver involving Milton’s aunt, also a resident of Sunset Assisted Living, and Pearl’s mother.
“Milton and I had a fling,” Pearl said, “that’s all. It can never be anything more.”
“Fling, schming,” her mother said.
“Almost all schming,” Pearl said, not even knowing what she meant.
Actually Pearl had enjoyed their brief, exploratory affair, but Milton Kahn could never be the steady lover of a cop, much less the husband that his aunt and Pearl’s mother envisioned. Pearl had broken off the affair. Milton didn’t want it to stay broken. Now he was apparently plotting to get Pearl concerned about what appeared to be a simple brown mole on her neck, just behind her right ear. The last time they’d seen each other, at a mutual friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, he’d brought the mole to her attention, feigning what she now knew to be great concern. The tiny mole had been there—well, she didn’t know how long. How often does anyone look behind his or her right ear? Knowing her medical insurance was scant, Milton was hoping to lure her to his office and place her under his care, then under him.
Pearl smiled as the light changed and she stepped down off the curb to follow the herd across the intersection. Dr. Milton Kahn only thought he was devious.
“Pearl?”
“I’m here, Mom. The mole on my neck hasn’t killed me yet.”
“Of these things you shouldn’t joke, Pearl. Mrs. Edna Langstrom—I don’t think you ever met her—didn’t have the chance, poor thing. She was a resident here in the nursing home—“
“Assisted living,” Pearl reminded her.
“Assisted hell, is what. But she was a resident like me, and she had this reddish rash on her neck, not far from where Milton says your mole is, and she tried to alert the medical staff here, but naturally they were too busy to pay attention—or so they claimed, though I often see them in their lounge drinking coffee—and the rash became larger and started to itch, and before dinner one night—pot roast night, your favorite—she fell over dead.”
“From the rash?”
“From a car backing up the driveway to let out Mrs. Lois Grahamson, another resident. The car was driven by her grandson Evan, poor man.”
“A car killed Mrs. Langstrom?”
“While she was distracted scratching her rash.”
“The point being?”
“That you should be careful, Pearl. Take precautions, such as seeing your doctor.”
“My doctor being Milton Kahn.”
“He’s a dermatologist, Pearl. You could do worse if you had a rash. You could do worse in many other respects.”
“I don’t have a rash.”
“A mole could become a rash, or worse, if you don’t take—”
“Mom, Milton Kahn tried and tried hard. He doesn’t do anything to scratch my itch.”
“Pearl!”
“He and I aren’t a match. We made an effort. It wasn’t a bad idea. It simply didn’t work.”
“Milton thinks it might yet.”
“Milton is wrong.”
“But you will do something about your rash.”
“I don’t have a rash.”
“Yet.”
“I’ve got to hang up now, Mom. Crime calls.”
“Don’t joke about your health, Pearl.”
“You’re breaking up, Mom.”
“Nothing is funny.”
Pearl held the phone away from her head, but didn’t raise her voice. “Mom, you’re brea…”
She broke the connection, figuring her mother had it wrong. It was Pearl’s mental health that concerned Pearl. She expected and even thrived on the pressure of the job she’d taken on, but she didn’t like the additional pressure applied by her mother, and now by Milton Kahn. He had a nerve, trying to use her mother so he could get back into her pants. Pearl’s pants.
Pearl realized she was on Quinn’s block. She made herself slow down. She’d been walking faster and faster as she talked on the phone, taking long strides for such a short woman. Now her heart was pounding away, and she was slightly out of breath. Unconsciously, she raised her right hand to her neck as she walked, tracing the area of the mole with her fingertips. The mole was there, all right. She could barely feel it.