Baby Doll Games (19 page)

It was almost dark when they stepped outside, and the rain had thinned to a fine mist that kept the sidewalks wet enough to reflect the gaudy neon lights that flashed and glowed up and down the avenue.
“Drop you, Lieutenant?” offered Jim. ‘The car’s only a couple of short blocks up.”
“No, thanks,” she said, slightly disappointed to find the hardware store next door locked tight, its interior dark. She had hoped to see the Pennewelf children again. “I feel like walking.”
“See you tomorrow,” they called and turned uptown.
Eighth Avenue was clogged with rush-hour traffic heading north from lower Manhattan. Taxis duked it out with buses at every intersection and there seemed to be more horns and squealing brakes than usual, or was it, Sigrid wondered, because sounds carried better in damp air?
Nauman would know, she thought, and suddenly felt quite melancholy. She gave herself a mental shaking. It was absolutely stupid to be pining about like the lily maid of Astolat. Oscar Nauman was a famous artist, educator, and obviously busy man and she’d probably misinterpreted his simple acts of friendship for something that would horrify and embarrass both of them.

Chapter 21

Personal notes of Dr. Christa Ferrell, re: Corrie Makaroff [Monday, 2 November-Everything's falling into place beautifully. When I returned to the office this afternoon after a session with Calder s movement class at the 8th-AV-8 Theater, I found Anne Harald here already beginning to interview Martha Holt. She’s as attractive as I remembered- a little gray in her hair, a few lines around the eyes. I just hope I still look as good at her age.
M’s a little dubious about the value of our department’s being included in A. H.’s mag. article; wonders if we won’t be perceived as blowing our own horn somehow. (As if horn-blowing’s sordid & slightly suspect. M’s a dear, but has old-fashioned view of selflessness that lets others walk all over her at times.) Anyhow A.H. & I reminded her that come budget time, higher visibility might get us a bigger slice of the pie.
Took A H. down to my office, explained why I had so many toys (6- made it clear that said toys were out of my own pocket-not supplied by the dept.). Only had time to show her the soundproofed observation room with its one-way window, which is next to my office, before Mrs. Berkowitz arrived w! Corrie Makaroff.]
Through informal police channels, I learned today that Ray Thorpe, Darlene Makaroff’s lover (and killer), was finally captured last week and will plead guilty to the murder, which means that Tanya and Corrie will not have to face him at a jury trial.
[NB-get technical jargon from Sig. H re arraignments, degrees of manslaughter, etc.]
While Corrie waited outside, I discussed this new development with Mrs. Berkowitz. In view of Tanya’s suggestion that her little sister might be afraid that Thorpe would return and hurt her, I thought it might reassure Corrie to know that her mother’s killer had been caught and would now be punished. Perhaps this fear has indeed constituted part of her blockage.
Mrs. Berkowitz eagerly deferred to my judgment. When Corrie entered, I took her upon my lap and kept my account of Thorpe’s capture and incarceration to simple concise statements. She listened silently, as if the words were nothing more than a description of the weather “Do you want to ask me anything about Ray?” I said gently.
She shook her head and slipped off my lap, so naturally I didn't force her and within only a few minutes, she was completely at ease again.
She set up her family of dolls upon the hassock and began playing with them. Unlike the last few sessions, though, Aunt Rag Doll was neglected for vignettes with Barbie/Darlene.
[Theoretically, I probably should have waited for Corrie to make the connections herself, but with A.H. observing, decided it wouldn’t hurt to nudge things along a bit.]
Casually, because I didn't want to undo any of our progress, I brought out a G.I. Joe doll and stood it in the open. Approximately ten inches tall, dressed in jeans and work shirt, G.I. Joe is quite definitely a masculine icon, with dark hair and beard. I rather suspected it might already represent Ray Thorpe because Corrie’s eyes always flicked in that direction whenever I mentioned his name.
“He’s been bad,” I told Corrie, careful not to give the doll a name. “He hurt someone and then he ran away. But the police caught him and now he s in prison where he can’t ever hurt anybody again.”
Corrie didn’t comment. She continued to play with the other dolls, but at one point she looked at me directly and said, “Never ever?”
“Never ever,” I promised, feeling that little thrill every psychiatrist must experience when the breakthrough begins.
Corrie studiously avoided that section of my toy shelves until the very end of the day’s session. Just before I opened the door to the waiting room, she looked over at the G.I. Joe manikin and said, “He was
very
bad.”
[I think A.H. was impressed w! the session. She asked intelligent questions afterward. Complimented me on my camera awareness. Says she got a-her words-“charming shot” of Corrie on my lap. Had a dinner engagement w! Matteo Accongio-a very sexy(!) heart specialist from Rome-but told her I could delay it if she wanted to discuss things further over a drink. She asked for rain check as she's moving later this week 0 needed to pack or something. Did ask me where I get my clothes. Get the impression she'd like to smarten Sig. up some. Prob. hopeless but mother love's classically blind. Gave her the names of my favorite shops. Suppose she can afford them. Wonder how much photojournalism pays?]

Chapter 22

Below West Fourteenth Street, Eighth Avenue veers west, and as Sigrid reached Abingdon Square, the rain began again with an earnestness that signaled an all-night soaking. The clouds overhead reflected a sullen yellowish brown and hung so low that they completely masked the tops of the Trade Center, the Empire State Building, and any other buildings more than twenty stories high.
Into Sigrid’s mind came a stray line of poetry: “For
the rain it raineth every day
She sheltered in a doorway on Hudson Street with three other homeward-bound pedestrians and weighed her options. Her apartment was less than twelve blocks away, down near the river and too far west of Seventh Avenue for the subway to be of any help. As for buses, even if Hudson suddenly reversed itself and became oneway southbound, she'd still be three and a half blocks from home when she got off the bus. Not that Hudson Street showed any signs of reversing polarity. Abingdon Square was clogged with traffic and all of it pointed north.
A taxi didn't enter into her considerations. New York City taxis react to water like the Wicked Witch of the West and instantly melt away with the first drops of rain. Only tourists or incurable optimists expect to find an empty cab during a rainy rush hour and Sigrid was neither As so often happens, choice had devolved into necessity: she had chosen to walk, so walk she must.
Narrowly avoiding a kamikaze bicycler who whizzed past draped in flapping sheets of fogged plastic, Sigrid crossed Hudson and plunged southward, dodging umbrellas and briefcases, sprinters and-sloggers.
“For
the rain it raineth every day.
…” What came next? “
Hey-ho!”?
No, that didn’t sound right. She stepped around a street vendor who was doing a brisk business in cheap umbrellas. Umbrellas? Umbrellas triggered something about a “
just and unjust fellow ”
A rainy spring day? Yes, and a tall-windowed brownstone house near Prospect Park, Aunt Edda fuming because her sister had gone off with her umbrella the night before, and blue-eyed Cousin Hilda chanting mischievously:
“The rain it raineth every day,
Upon the just and unjust fellow. But more upon the just, because The unjust hath the just
^’
s umbrella.”
Sigrid frowned as she waited for the light at Perry Street. “For
the rain it. raineth every day”
felt gloomier than Hilda's teasing verse. More like the refrain in a dirge and as inevitable as the final nails hammered into a coffin.
An icy rivulet ran from the brim of her hat down the back of her neck and she pulled her collar up to divert the flow. There were people who actually
liked
walking in the rain, she reminded herself. A hundred different poems, novels, and movies celebrated thunderstorms and April showers with undampened enthusiasm. Idiots wrote songs about it for other idiots to sing. Her pant legs clung wetly to her ankles and her shoes squished with every step. She remembered Gene Kelly splash-dancing along city sidewalks. What was so damned romantic about getting soaked?
“For
the rain it raineth every day”
she reminded herself grimly. Especially in November.
As she crossed West Tenth Street, she misjudged the curb and went down on one knee. Her only injury was a scrape on her right palm, but a passing car completed her drenching with a tidal wave of dirty gutter water. Feeling gloomier than this raw November evening, she trudged the last few blocks, past locked warehouses and deserted buildings, sustained by two visions: a steaming tub of fragrant hot bubbles and her warm dry bed.
Number 42-1/2 was a solid green wooden gate set into a nondescript high brick wall. Sigrid unlocked the gate and entered a small courtyard where narrow herb beds had flourished riotously for Roman Tramegra all summer. Now that the bee balm and lavender had faded and the dogwood in the center had dropped its red leaves, everything was beginning to look brown and tattered. Beneath the tree, ankle-deep in wet leaves, a three-foot statue of Eros faced winters onset with a stoical smile on his marble face.
Pelted with rain which hadn’t slackened for a moment, Sigrid hurried across the garden and let herself into the vestibule. There she lingered a moment, her wet coat streaming onto the mat as warm air surrounded her at last and the aromas from Roman s kitchen welcomed her home with promises of pea soup and buttery, onion-flavored croutons. She had lived alone for so many years that she’d been cautious when Roman suggested sharing this particular apartment. Tonight, for the first time, she admitted to herself that it was comforting to come home to someone.
She hung her hat and coat on the halltree, stepped out of her ruined shoes, and walked down the short hallway, bracing herself for Roman s clucks and fussing when he saw how chilled and wet she was.
“It smells wonderful in here,” she said, then halted in the doorway.
Instead of Roman’s soft bulk before the stove, it was Oscar Nauman’s lean height, “Hello,” he said and then his penetrating blue eyes swept her bedraggled form. “Are you all right? What the hell’s happened to you?”
“I walked home,” she said, drawing herself up defensively.
“In the rain? You?” he snorted. “I thought you hated to walk in the rain.”
“I do,”
“You’re drenched. He crossed the green-and-white tiled floor to take a closer look. ’And shivering. And why are you barefoot? Oh, God! Is that blood on your hand? You were mugged, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t mugged,” she said, snatching her hand away. “I fell and scraped my hand. That’s all. Where’s Roman?”
But she spoke to his back, for he was already striding across the living room and down the hall that led to her bath.
“I’ll start your tub,” he said. “You get out of those wet things before you catch a chill.”
From pure habit, Sigrid started to argue, then remembered that a good hot bath was exactly what she’d planned. Anyhow, only an utter fool would try to make a power play out of spending another minute in these soggy clothes.
She closed the door to her bedroom and immediately put her gun in the top drawer next to her bed, but before she could shuck off the black suit and white blouse, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Appalled, she hastily finger-combed the dark hair back from her face. No wonder Nauman had started at the sight of her. She could be an ad for a horror movie: stringy wet hair, drawn face, no makeup, clothes that looked as if she’d clawed her way out of a muddy grave.
She stared at herself despairingly, suddenly remembering a squib Roman had pointed out to her in
The Village Voice
last month: “Flying in from London for the opening was the ever-so-elegant Lady Francesca Leeds, who graced the arm of the ever-so-attentive Oscar Nauman.”
Nauman had asked Sigrid to go with him to that event, but she had to work. Just as well, she’d thought, reading that little tidbit. No gossip columnist would have thought it worth mentioning had Oscar Nauman escorted a less-than-elegant police lieutenant.
He rapped on her bedroom door. “Tub’s full.”
His footsteps returned toward the kitchen as she finished undressing, took a robe from the closet, and slipped into the deliciously steamy bathroom next door. When she reappeared twenty-five minutes later, her hair was dry and soft again, she’d creamed her face and touched her lips with color, and she wore the black Peruvian robe and black slippers embroidered in gold threads which Anne had brought back from a Moroccan bazaar.
As an artist, Nauman immediately noticed how the matte black of her robe emphasized the sable highlights in her hair and turned her eyes a luminous silver, but he’d learned that compliments made Sigrid uncomfortable so he said nothing. He had set the dining table while she bathed and now he ladled Roman’s thick split pea soup into shallow bowls.
“Where
is
Roman?” she asked, seating herself before a steaming bowl.
He sprinkled a generous handful of croutons over her soup. “I gave him a quarter and sent him off to the movies.”
Sigrid did not smile back. “He’s not my kid brother.”
“I’ve noticed the lack of family resemblance,” he assured her as he uncorked a bottle and poured the sparkling wine into their glasses.
“Champagne? With soup?”
“Why not? A split of champagne should go very well with split peas.” He raised his glass. “Actually, there aren’t many things champagne doesn’t go with.”
Sigrid sipped the wine and she couldn’t have said why, but Nauman was correct-as he usually was about food and drink-this particular demi-sec went quite nicely with the faintly smoky Savor of the soup.
As they ate, they spoke of the sudden change in weather from autumn to winter, of an art film he’d seen, a new book she’d read, yet every conversational gambit seemed to dead-end into a strained silence broken only by the clink of silverware against china.
Rain beat upon the living room windows. “Poor Roman,” she said. “It’s such a wretched night. I wonder where he had to go?”
“I told you,” said Nauman, refilling her glass.
“You weren’t joking? You actually asked him to leave his own house? Why?”
“He didn't seem to mind. Anyhow I lent him my car. He said there was a nightclub act he wanted to catch over on the East Side. More soup?”
She shook her head and her “Why?” hung between them.
“I told him we wanted to be alone for a while tonight.” His eyes held hers. “Don’t we?”
Confused, she looked away and her slender fingers toyed with the stem of the champagne flute. “How were things in Connecticut? Did you find a plumber?”
“Sigrid-”
She stood up hastily. “I’ll make coffee.”
“There's still champagne.”
She let him fill her glass a third time, then retreated into the living room and stood looking out into the storm- tossed courtyard. She could see Nauman’s reflection in the wet dark glass and an anticipatory shiver swept over her as she felt him pause behind her. Only inches away. So close she could smell the familiar blend of turpentine and German cologne that emanated from his tweed jacket.
“For the rain it raineth every day," she murmured nervously
“What did you say?”
Sigrid repeated the words. “It’s been running through my head all evening. Do you know what it’s from?”
“Shakespeare?” he hazarded.
Sigrid handed him her glass, and the black robe swirled in graceful folds around her slender ankles as she turned from him and fled down the hall for her
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Nauman was right. It was Shakespeare. She pulled her battered copy from the bookcase on die far side of her bed. “It’s
Twelfth Night
," he called, then saw that Nauman had followed her, a wine glass in either hand.
“It’s
Twelfth Night"
she said again, suddenly aware of the bed between them. “One of the Clown’s songs,
“But when I came to mans estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
“Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain H raineth every day!”
Despite the wine, her voice sounded like a croak in her own ears.
“Things haven’t changed much in four hundred years, have they?” Nauman observed.
He handed Sigrid her champagne across the width of the bed and reached for the book. Without seeming to notice where they were, he put his glass on the near table and sat down upon the bed to leaf through the plays. “This song’s better,” he said and began to read in his warm baritone:
“Tell me, where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.”
He closed the book with a sardonic lift of his eyebrow. “Care to answer that, Lieutenant?”
She stood mutely and he stretched out his hand to her. “Siga?”
“No!” she said and something between anger and bewilderment welled and darkened in her wide gray eyes. “I don’t know how to play games, Nauman. I don’t understand the rules. I thought- But then you avoid me and now tonight-”
He caught her hand and drew her down on the bed beside him. “Sh-h,” he said. “I had to.”