About the B'nai Bagels (18 page)

On the countertop in the corner of the kitchen near the dining alcove, there was a small telephone. Turquoise. Rotary dial. Not touch tone. Amedeo had seen people in the movies use a rotary phone, and he knew the phrase “dial a number,” but he had never done it.

Mrs. Zender said, “That’s a princess phone.”

“Does it work?”

“Of course it works. Except for my cleaning service, which is not here today, everything in this house works.”

Amedeo lifted the receiver. The part of the phone he
held to his ear had yellowed from turquoise to a shade of institutional green.

Mrs. Zender sat at the kitchen table. Amedeo felt he was being watched. He turned to face the wall of cabinets.

The cabinets reached to the ceiling. It would take a ladder to reach the top shelves. The cabinet doors were glass, and Amedeo could see stacks and stacks of dishes and matching cups hanging from hooks. Behind other glass doors there were platoons of canned soups—mostly tomato—and a regiment of cereal boxes—mostly bran. Everything was orderly, but the dishes on the topmost shelves were dusty, and the stemware was cloudy, settled in rows like stalagmites.

Finally, he heard, “Your call may be monitored for quality assurance,” and was told to listen carefully “to the following options.” He realized that he could not exercise any of the “following options.” He could hardly press one or two when there were no buttons to press. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “I’m supposed to push one for English.”

Mrs. Zender smiled wide. The last of the red runes had been washed away. “Do nothing,” she said. “Just hang on. When you have a dial phone, they have to do the work for you.” She threw her head back and laughed.

Amedeo didn’t turn his back on her again.

As soon as the call was finished, they returned to the long, dark hall, where the heat and the music swallowed them. Mrs. Zender paused to say, “I suppose you put central air-conditioning into your place.”

Amedeo hesitated. Until that moment, he had never thought of central air-conditioning as something a person put in. He thought it came with the walls and roof. “I suppose so,” he said.

“Sissies,” Mrs. Zender said. Then she laughed again. She had a musical laugh. “I chose a sound system over air-conditioning.”

“But,” Amedeo replied, “I think you’re allowed to have both.”

“No,” she said crisply. “Karl Eisenhuth is as dead as my husband.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yes, a pity. There never will be another sound system like this one.”

Reluctantly, Amedeo left Mrs. Zender, her veils, her house.

Now, Amedeo watched William walk through that peeling, painted front door without stopping or knocking and into Mrs. Zender’s world of sound and shadow.