Neatly arranged on the low ebony living-room table were big art books and a copy of the Italian men's _Vogue_ magazine with guess who on the cover? Weber Gregston. What I couldn't see, Eliot described to me, and vice versa. After a while I felt like a relative who's come to take stock of things after a member of the family has died.
«Tell me you're _sure_ you don't want to go in.»
«Eliot –«
«Okay, I was just asking. But let's leave him something to let him know you were here. Remember how he said he'd like that?»
Neither of us had a pen or paper, so a note was out. Eliot suggested we make a little pile of stones at the door, but that reminded me too much of a Jewish cemetery.
«Wait a minute. I know.» I fished down deep into my purse and came up with the last postcard Weber had sent from Florida. There was a brass mail slot on the front door and I shoved the card through it.
«Maybe he'll just think you didn't like what he said on the card, Cullen. Let's go in and write him a real note.»
«Come on, Eliot. You'd just steal something if you went in.»
It was dark when we got back home and Danny was lying on the couch reading a book. Mae was sitting on the floor hitting her favorite stuffed animal – an ugly green squirrel – with a plastic spoon.
«Hallo!»
«Where have you two been? I was beginning to worry.»
«Oh, we drove around! All over the place. I took Eliot to Westhampton. . . . I'm sorry, Dan. We should have called.»
«Yes, that's right. What are we going to do about dinner?»
The tone of his voice and the snip of the words sent Eliot and me scuttling off pronto into the kitchen to get things going.
A few minutes later Danny poked his head around the corner to say he was going out to the store to buy some brownies.
«But Dan, we've already got . . .»
His eyes told me to be quiet; he wanted to go away from us for a while, and _not_ just into another room of the house. I wished we hadn't gone to Weber's, no matter how much fun we'd had casing the place out. When Danny James went out for brownies at six in the evening, it meant he was angry as hell and didn't want to be around his wife. It also wrung my heart to realize he was mad because he'd been worried.
I waited until I heard the car door slam and the engine start up before I dared to look out of the kitchen window. I felt Eliot's hands on my shoulders as he leaned over me to have a look too.
«We're such little shits, Cullen.»
«Boy, don't I know it!»
«Can you imagine how he'd feel if he knew where we'd really been? Oh, my God!»
«Spare me. Let's just go and make a _very_ beautiful dinner and pray he comes back in one piece. He hasn't done something like this since we were in Italy.»
I brought Mae in from the living room and put her in the high chair. Then we set to work making a king's feast. Eliot started to sing «Can't Help Loving That Man of Mine» but stopped dead as soon as he saw the look on my face.
Danny's return half an hour later was marked by two sighs of relief from the kitchen, but no hugs and kisses all around. He walked into the kitchen, put a bag on the counter and walked out again.
I looked into the bag and my heart broke all over again. Next to some frozen brownies was the newest issue of my favorite magazine. Damn him! Damn all good people who make you feel so keenly aware of your own smallness, ineptitude and spite with the flick of their wrist or an unconscious blink of the eye.
I wanted to run into the living room waving my spatula, to yell at him, «Why do you have to be so damned nice? You make me feel one foot tall!»
But I didn't do that; I turned the potato pancakes over instead.
Our dinner was eaten in silence; the final nail being driven into the day's coffin when Dan insisted on doing all the dinner dishes.
Eliot and I went into the living room and sat looking helplessly at each other.
«Maybe there's a Weber Gregston movie on TV.»
There was a tremendous crash in the kitchen and Danny yelled, «Mae, don't!»
He had dropped the casserole dish on the floor and, fast as only a child can be when it's interested in something, Mae picked up a fanged piece of broken glass that had landed on her chair.
When I got there, the shard had bit deep into her silly putty hand and there was blood all over. . . . All over everything. Mae looked at the red gush interestedly – it was something new for her.
Danny saw me bolt for her and threw up his hand to stop me in my charge. «Don't scare her, Cul! Do it slow. If you scare her it'll be worse!»
Perfect sense. My face went through six changes while I took slow giant steps toward her.
«Good job, kiddo! Let me have a look.» I could feel the hysteria rise inside me like vomit.
The cut was very deep. A gut-sickening gash that had no end.
«What should we do, Dan?»
«Oh, my _God!_»
That did it. Eliot's whoop on first seeing what had happened scared the hell out of Mae and the whole thing exploded right there. Mae started to scream.
«Eliot, shut up and call the operator! Tell her what's happened and ask for the nearest emergency service or doctor. Whichever one is closer.»
Eliot stood unmoving in the doorway, his hands pressed to his mouth.
«For Christ's sake move, Eliot! Cullen, get her over here. Let me try and clean it up.»
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Eliot disappear. I lifted the blood-ribboned Mae up and out of her wooden high chair.
Danny took hold of her at the sink. The first thing he did was lift her up so she was right at eye level with him. He gave her a big smile and wiggled his evebrows.
«Hey baby, what a hand! Look at all of that great blood! Let's wash it off a little, huh?»
Seeing her Daddy smile calmed her a little, but the screams soon returned when he began rinsing the hand in cold tap water.
«Cul, go get a clean handkerchief or something; anything, a rag. Just make sure it's clean. I'm going to try to make a bandage.»
Eliot blasted through the door with the name of a doctor a mile away.
«Go call him. See if he's home.»
«No, let's just go, Danny. We'll waste –«
«No! If he's not there, we'll just have to come back here again. Call him!»
The doctor wasn't home, but his answering machine gave the name of someone else. The doctor _was_ home and told us to come right over. He would be waiting for us.
Danny wrapped her hand and then carefully bound it at the wrist with a rubber band from my hair.
When we got in the car. Mae was really on the edge of something bad. The pain had obviously arrived and she didn't like one bit the shift we'd made from warm house to cold car.
Danny told me to drive because I knew the way. He sat next to me with Mae on his lap, jiggling her up and down and singing little songs in her ear.
In the backseat, Eliot asked if there was anything he could do.
«Yes, sing. Let's all sing a song. Mae likes it when we sing, don't you, Kiwi?»
I looked at Danny and loved him for everything he had in him: all the stores of strength and sanity I knew from our everydays together, and all the extra parts he had for moments like this, when coolness and clarity were the only things that mattered.
Eliot started singing. Unfortunately. He didn't stop singing until we were getting out of the car in front of the doctor's house.
Later, when the doctor told us we had bound Mae's hand a little too tightly, I felt like telling him to . . . My husband had wrapped that hand and nothing he did could be wrong.
«Mom, this is Night Ear. He'll show us around.»
We stood at the gates of another city that looked so much like Kempinski: the same turrets, campaniles, mobs of black birds flying to and fro over the high stone walls. We were outside Ophir Zik, the City of the Dead. I knew nothing about it except that I didn't like anything about its name.