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followed by Jimmy s disappearing hand, arm, body, and face, leaving behind
only the smile of the Cheshire Cat.
I turned to stare at ten pairs of dark, hooded eyes that were staring at me.
A man in his thirties got up, stood aside, and indicated the empty chair at
the kitchen table. I sat down, not happily.
At almost the instant I realized there was a wonderful, dark brown smell of
something baking in the apartment, the old woman--an old old woman, shapeless
and infinitely corrugated with wrinkles--sitting directly across from me
reached behind her, wearing a potholder mitt, opened the door of the oven,
pulled out a metal bread pan, and slapped it down on the table between us.
Langos,
she said. She pronounced it lahng-
osh
.
It smelled sensational. Some kind of deep-fried bread dough she d apparently
been keeping warm in the oven. I looked at it. The guy who had given me his
seat took a bowl full of garlic cloves off the sink and put it down in front
of me.
Bread, he said. Rub it with the garlic.
I reached in, took a piece of langos, burned my fingertips, squeaked, provoked
ten smiles, added an eleventh, my own, and rubbed the hot surface with a clove
of garlic. It tasted sensational.
Then the old, old woman began rattling off at me. She spoke uninterruptedly
for about a minute. In Hungarian. I smiled. I nodded. She stopped and looked
at me, waiting for a response. I thought of Arctic tundra.
A man in his fifties, sitting to my left, said, She asks if you know if
Laurie will marry Vic Lamont and if Cookie will go crazy and will Simon Jessup
kill Orin Hillyer?
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I stopped chewing. I smiled. I nodded. I looked from one to another of them,
hoping someone would take pity on a man lost in the desert.
The old, old woman, hearing what the man in his fifties had said, added a few
more words. I looked at the interpreter. He spoke resignedly: And will Adam
Drake fall in love with Nicole?
I hoped, with profound desperation, that Mia was neither greedy nor afflicted
with the djam karet attendant on ownership of a hooded clitoris.
I m sorry, I said slowly, but I don t know what she s talking about. I
smiled. I
nodded.
There was an appreciable drop in temperature around the table. The man in his
fifties said something short to the old, old woman. She snorted that special
snort translatable in any language as, Who asked for you, who sent for you;
who sent for you, who asked for you?
And so, every instant anguish, I sat there for the better part of an hour. In
Indonesia they have. a name for it:
djam karet...
the hour that stretches.
Eventually, open covenants having apparently been openly entered into,
Other-Than-
Mia and Jimmy emerged from the bedroom. It looked like a draw.
I got up at a signal from Jimmy, who drew me aside. I started to whisper my.
consternation, but he pressed my bicep for silence. Maybe-Mia took my seat,
and began speaking in a low, intense voice. In Hungarian. Or Urdu. Or tongues,
maybe. What do I know about glossolalia?
She was about fifteen seconds into the recitation when they all started
replying.
Eleven gypsies, all going at it like the Russians were invading Evanston. A
hailstorm of babble.
Jimmy leaned in and said, You know the FBI s list of Ten Most Wanted?
I nodded. Not happily.
They just made it to number one.
Terrific. I ll meet you in the car; say my goodbye& for me.
Shut up and listen.
It s a hype. It s a publicity dodge. The Feds never put anyone on that list
till a week or two before they re going to make an arrest. That way, they
spread it around about all these dangerous felons at large, and a week or so
later the Bureau makes a pinch, making it look as if they re right on top of
things. People they can t find never even get on the list.
You re telling me Jimmy Stewart s going to break in here any minute with a
Thompson submachine gun, is that it?
I m telling you they want to give themselves up; but they re afraid they ll
get wiped out if they just wait for the Feds to find them.
Why don t they run? God knows they re in practice.
Shut up and listen.
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