A Date You Can't Refuse (41 page)

“You had a hole in your femoral artery,” Fredreeq said. “And they fixed it up and gave you a few gallons of someone else's blood and you've been having a lot of naps. You're going to be fine, but you should abandon your dreams of being a Rockette. And you're not looking great. If it were up to me, Simon would never see you like this. But he's been here a whole lot, throwing his weight around like he's J. Edgar Hoover.”

“What about Parashie?” I asked, which came out as “Fmpruchna?”

Joey shook her head. “Parashie's dead. Justifiable homicide. The
housekeeper did it, to save you. But also because she'd promised the kid that no one would ever take her away from her family. It seems that the orphanage Yuri found her in did a number on her brain.”

“Yeah. She was missing a conscience,” Fredreeq said.

“She was almost totally normal,” Joey said, “except for a habit of killing people. By the way, none of this is common knowledge and don't ask how come we know because we can't ever tell you and, in fact, we'll deny it all, if forced to.”

I closed my eyes. Then opened them. “Alik?”

Joey shook her head again. “Long gone. Halfway to Paris while we were all in Santa Barbara. The FBI is trying to extradite him, but the State Department will probably step in. On the other hand, there was an arrest this morning, an editor working at Disney was making copies of new films before the watermark went on them. So that leak's plugged and the route's closed, and that'll make the news. The trades and the
L.A. Times
at least.”

“Howdjaknowthisstuff?”

“I told you, don't ask,” Joey said.

“But since you did ask,” Fredreeq said, “We had a long talk with your boyfriend, who realized that indiscretion was the better part of valor. That if he wanted us to plead his case with you, he had better be forthcoming.”

“Whywouldja?”

“Plead his case?” Fredreeq asked. Her eyebrows went up and down twice. “You'll find out. When you can keep your eyes open for longer than four minutes.”

And she said some more stuff, I think, but I was asleep by then.

My ears woke up before my eyes the next time. I heard a rhythmic breathiness and a whimper. I opened my eyes. On the hospital bed next to me was Olive Oyl.

“Hey, puppy,” I said.

“Good,” said a voice in the doorway. “I thought I would have to leave the country without saying goodbye.”

I turned to see Yuri smiling at me. He looked at least ten years older than when I'd last seen him. He looked, finally, his age.

“Where are you flying to?” I asked. My voice was working much better. The tube in my mouth was gone.

“Bratislava. The family has a small castle in the countryside of Slovakia. We've been slowly moving our base of operations to that part of the world, preparing for the coup that will happen soon now, if all goes as planned.”

“Everyone's gone now? The whole family?”

“Everyone you know, except Bronwen and Zbiggo. We placed them with excellent media consultants.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “About how things turned out.”

Yuri nodded. “I knew I could live in the West without succumbing to its temptations. I did not consider my children. We all have our blind spots.” He walked over to my bedside. “I saw that Parashie was damaged the moment I found her, but I didn't think it was irrevocable. Alik, I knew not at all.” He looked down at his hands. “I believed it was Grusha who had killed Chai. It happened when I was in Mogilev. Grusha told me not to ask, and I trusted her. She is a soldier. Grusha found Chai dead, and she recognized the signs of selenium poisoning. Parashie had put it in Chai's borscht. Parashie had tried foxglove too, earlier, but it only made Chai sick.”

“And the car crash?”

“Grusha went to Alik, told him about Chai. They covered it up, with the help of two trainees—it's the kind of operation they can do. Alik wanted to protect his sister. And himself, I suppose.” Yuri looked deeply tired. “He and Grusha thought they could keep her under control, that it was one aberrant incident. The death of the young man dashed that hope. Once we learned of his connection to Chai, it was clear that Parashie had stabbed him. She is—was—a talented fighter. So. Alik came to me, told me everything, and we knew it was time to go. We moved quickly, but not quickly enough. The police know nothing of what I've just told you, about Alik or Grusha, that they covered up a murder. They won't be coming back to America.”

“You would have taken Parashie with you?”

He didn't blink. “She was my child.”

I was tired myself, more tired than I could remember ever being before. I let my head fall back on the pillow. The world was changed. Questions of morality and loyalty and right and wrong were no longer black and white for me, if they ever had been. I was too tired to judge Yuri's choices. I looked at the sleeping form on the bed next to me. “Do they let dogs in hospitals?”

Yuri half smiled. “I am not without connections. Kimberly would like her to stay with you for a time. The quarantine procedures in Europe are quite Byzantine and my wife can't bear for the dog to be crated up. Grusha thought you would be willing to keep her until we straighten it out.”

I nodded. I had no idea what the Oakwood Garden Apartments pet regulations were, but if I had to move, I had to move. It wouldn't be the first time.

Yuri must've read my mind. He came to the foot of my bed. “Your things have been returned to your apartment, and a check deposited into your account. I hope that's not intrusive.”

I looked down at myself, at the thin blanket covering me. Fluids were entering and leaving my body through translucent tubes, and my hospital gown was open in the back. Intrusiveness was relative. “Yuri, I wasn't just working for you,” I said. “I was working for the FBI. They hired me to spy on you.”

“So I've been told.” Yuri came to the head of the bed and brushed the hair from my forehead and planted there a gentle kiss.
“Vyzdoravlivajte
. Heal.”

When I opened my eyes again, Yuri was gone. On the bed next to Olive Oyl, Simon was stretched out, asleep. I watched him a long while, his breath rising and falling in time with the yellow dog. After a few minutes, I turned my face to the wall and fell back asleep.

H
e stood at the foot of my bed, where Yuri had stood the day before, and looked at me. Then his face broke into a big grin. “You've been talking in your sleep.”

“Really?” I said. “Did I say anything of interest?”

“You wanted to know if we wore the same size hospital gown.”

“And what'd you say?”

“That I'd steal one for you when they let you out. We'll wear it every night. We'll alternate.”

“Very sexy.”

He pulled up a chair. “In other news, Bennett Graham retired two days ago.”

“Retired?”

“Yes. It was agreed by all concerned that his use of civilians was such an egregious violation of policy that he would be happier in the private sector. And in still other news, Lucrezia Zola was indicted three days ago, along with her brother Guillermo.”

“For how long?”

“If she deals, she could be out in fifteen. Or she could do twenty-five to life. I'm hoping for life.”

“You going to tell me about the case?” I asked.

“In exhaustive detail. Until it puts you to sleep. I'll read to you from the transcripts. You can watch the trial. I can teach you how to smuggle pseudoephedrine hidden in bolts of raw silk.”

“That could be fun. Did you sleep with her?”

His eyes didn't waver from mine. “Twice.”

My heart stopped. Then started again. “Was it fun?”

“Not as fun as arresting her.”

I leaned back in my bed and closed my eyes. “I think I'd like to be alone.”

When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

“W
ollie, wake up.”

My brother's voice pulled me out of a sound sleep. My eyes blinked open. “What? P.B., what's happened? Are you okay?”

“You're the one lying in a hospital bed,” he pointed out. “You don't look so good. They said you're okay but you don't look okay.”

“How'd you get here?” I asked.

“Apollo and Uncle Theo. They're down in the cafeteria.”

“Apollo drove?”

P.B. nodded and, apparently satisfied I wasn't at death's door, opened a book.

“What are you reading?”

He held it up.
Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything
.

“So how are those superstrings?” I asked. “And did they find the theory?”

“I'm only on page one thirty-one.”

“Well, how's it look? Will there be a happy ending?”

He shrugged. “They've dealt with relativistic covariance, quantization, and grand unified symmetries, so Green and Schwarz are happy. But they haven't even broached the deeper meaning of closed loops.”

“Well, then.” I thought for a moment. “Is Mrs. Winterbottom mad at me for ditching the Madonna?”

“I don't think so,” he said without looking up. “She sent you flowers. Those yellow ones. Uncle Theo read all your cards.”

“You're kidding.” On a table by the window, there they were, an extravagance of yellow roses, screamingly cheerful. “So I guess she liked our chalk painting?”

“I don't know, but a bunch of other people liked it. They liked that it was a collective work. We named her SuperVirgin, and she changed a little. Apollo wanted her to have rings, like Saturn. And bright green skin.”

“That's fine. So the book's good?”

“It's my new meds.” He still didn't look up. “I can read on them. For the last seven years, all I could concentrate on was comic books.”

I hadn't realized that. How could I not know that? “Hey—did you ever get your guy?”

“Who am I, Sergeant Preston? What guy?”

“Your physicist. Joseph—Plutonski?”

“Polchinski.” He kept reading.

“Who's Sergeant Preston?”

He looked up, astonished. “You're kidding.”

“About what?”

“Man, Wollie. You don't remember Sergeant Preston? The first comic book you ever bought for me?”

I shook my head.

“You read it to me for a whole year till I learned to read myself. Sergeant Preston and his dog King. They always got their man.”

“Really?” I wondered in what deep recesses of my mind Sergeant Preston dwelled, exerting his subconscious influence. “So, did you ever find your man?”

My brother looked up again, a slow smile breaking over his face, the kind he graced me with every year or so. “No. But it ain't over till the fat lady sings.”

A
man stood at the foot of my bed with a chart in hand. “Hello, there. I'm Dr. Hurwitz and I'll be your physician this evening. Would you care to hear the specials?”

“Uh …”

“Jell-O. Okay moving on. The patch job we did on your artery is healing nicely. Equally important, your hair's not going to fall out.”

“Well, that is good news.”

“It is, isn't it? Your friends were concerned that someone might be poisoning you, so we ran some tests.”

“And I'm normal?”

“No. You have highly elevated levels of hCG. I'll run another test tomorrow, to see if the hCG levels are increasing. You've been through a lot, so we'll have to see.”

“What is hCG? Poison?”

He finished writing on my chart and looked up at me. “Not exactly, although it can produce nausea, starting at about five weeks. It's a hormone.”

The room went blurry. “What kind of hormone?” I asked.

“The pregnancy hormone.”

My heart stopped.

J
eanne, the nurse, wheeled me out of the hospital, with Fredreeq at my side. It was impossible not to feel chirpy, wearing street clothes and not being hooked to anything resembling a catheter.

“And here's our ride now,” Fredreeq said, helping me up out of the wheelchair at the hospital entrance.

“Where?” I asked, looking around for Joey's Mercedes.

“There,” Fredreeq said, pointing to a car a half block away, pulling out of a parking lot on Gracie Allen Drive.

“That's—Simon's car,” I said.

“Yes. Oh, well. Suckered again. But as long as he's here, he can drive you home.”

“No.”

“Listen—”

“No. I'm not driving anywhere with him. I don't want to see him anymore.”

“Wollie, I—okay, hold on.” Fredreeq waved to Simon, then yelled, “Drive around the block.” She waited until he pulled away, then turned back to me. “He's mad about you, and you're nuts about him. You can't let some crazy felonness in a fur coat ruin your life. She's up the river and you're down here in the yacht, so wake up and smell the flowers.

That man wasn't seduced by her, he was seduced by his job. These superhero guys are all alike.”

“He was seduced by her too.”

“Okay so he's a pig. But you gotta realize that he was on that textiles case before he met you. He was single when he signed on for it and they moved him into that penthouse and gave him that cover story. That's what I call a mitigating circumstance. By the way I told him not to tell you the truth about sleeping with her, but he's got integrity, so what are you going to do?”

I stared at her. “Fredreeq, don't take this wrong, but is it possible for you to mind your own business?”

“When you find me minding business that is not mine to mind, you let me know. But this is not that. Here, I want to fix your lips so you don't look so much like a corpse.”

I brushed her hand away. “I'm not going to forgive—or get back with— Hey, Fredreeq, I'd have thought you'd be the first one to tell me to forget this guy.”

“Well, I'm not. And here's why. Nobody's perfect. And when there's no ring on the finger and no promises made, it's understandable that men do stupid-ass things. Women too. It's that damn job. Listen, I have not even started yelling at you about letting some delinquent girl punch holes in your arteries with a meat thermometer.”

“That's got nothing to do with this.”

“I'm looking at the big picture here and you are looking at the microscopic view. I know you had some near-death experience up on that mountain, but it's time to come back to life now. That girl died up there, but you didn't. And you didn't kill her, either.”