Mats closed his mouth. He even made a comical little zipping gesture across his lips, but his
eyes never left the turtle.
“You mentioned a hotel. Do you stay at a hotel?”
“Yah, I am staying at the New York Plaza-Park Hyatt, at the corner of First and Forty-sixth.
Soon I am getting the condominium apartment — ”
Mats seemed to realize he was saying too much again and shut his mouth.
Susannah thought furiously, holding the turtle in front of her breasts where her new friend
could see it very well.
“Mats, listen to me, okay?”
“I listen to hear, mistress-sai, and hear to obey.” That gave her a nasty jolt, especially coming out as it did in Mats’s cute little Scandihoovian accent.
“Do you have a credit card?”
Mats smiled proudly. “I have many. I have American Express, MasterCard, and Visa. I have
the Euro-Gold Card. I have — ”
“Good, that’s good. I want you to go down to the — ” For a moment her mind blanked, and then it came. ” — to the Plaza-Park Hotel and rent a room. Rent it for a week. If they ask, tell them it’s for a friend of yours, a lady friend.” An unpleasant possibility occurred to her. This was New York, the north, in the year 1999, and a person liked to believe that things continued to go in the right direction, but it was best to be sure. “Will they make any unpleasantness about me being a Negro?”
“No, of course not.” He looked surprised.
“Rent the room in your name and tell the clerk that a woman named Susannah Mia Dean will
be using it. Do you understand?”
“Yah, Susannah Mia Dean.”
What else? Money, of course. She asked him if he had any. Her new friend removed his wallet
and handed it to her. She continued to hold the turtle where he could see it in one hand while she riffled through the wallet, a very nice Lord Buxton, with the other. There was a wad of traveler’s checks — no good to her, not with that insanely convoluted signature — and about two hundred
dollars in good old American cabbage. She took it and dropped it into the Borders bag which had lately held the pair of shoes. When she looked up she was dismayed to see that a couple of Girl Scouts, maybe fourteen years old and both wearing backpacks, had joined the businessman. They
were staring at the turtle with shiny eyes and wet lips. Susannah found herself remembering the girls in the audience on the night Elvis Presley had played The Ed Sullivan Show.
“Too coooool, ” one of them said, almost in a sigh.
“Totally awesome,” said the other.
“You girls go on about your business,” Susannah said.
Their faces tucked in, assuming identical looks of sorrow. They could almost have been twins
from the Calla. “Do we have to?” asked the first.
” Yes!” Susannah said.
“Thankee-sai, long days and pleasant nights,” said the second. Tears had begun to roll down her cheeks. Her friend was also crying.
“Forget you saw me!” Susannah called as they started away.
She watched them nervously until they reached Second Avenue and headed uptown, then
turned her attention back to Mats van Wyck. “You get a wiggle on, too, Mats. Hoss your freight down to that hotel and rent a room. Tell them your friend Susannah will be right along.”
“What is this freight-hossing? I do not understand — ”
“It means hurry up.” She handed back his wallet, minus the cash, wishing she could have gotten a longer look at all those plastic cards, wondering why anyone would need so many.
“Once you have the room nailed down, go on to where you were going. Forget you ever saw
me.”
Now, like the girls in their green uniforms, Mats began to weep. “Must I also forget the
skölpadda? ”
“Yes.” Susannah remembered a hypnotist she’d once seen performing on some TV variety show, maybe even Ed Sullivan. “No turtle, but you’re going to feel good the rest of the day, you hear me? You’re going to feel like . . .” A million bucks might not mean that much to him, and for all she knew a million kroner wouldn’t buy a haircut. ‘You’re going to feel like the Swedish Ambassador himself. And you’ll stop worrying about your wife’s fancy-man. To hell with him,
right?”
“Yah, to hell wit dot guy!” Mats cried, and although he was still weeping, he was now smiling, too. There was something divinely childish in that smile. It made Susannah feel happy and sad at the same time. She wanted to do something else for Mats van Wyck, if she could.
“And your bowels?”
“Yah?”
“Like clockwork for the rest of your life,” Susannah said, holding the turtle up. “What’s your usual time, Mats?”
“I am going yust after breakfast.”
“Then that’s when it’ll be. For the rest of your life. Unless you’re busy. If you’re late for an appointment or something like that, just say . . . um . . . Maturin, and the urge’ll pass until the next day.”
“Maturin.”
“Correct. Go on, now.”
“May I not take the skölpadda? ”
“No, you may not. Go on, now.”
He started away, then paused and looked back at her. Although his cheeks were wet, his
expression was pixie-ish, a trifle sly. “Perhaps I should take it,” he said. “Perhaps it is mine by right.”
Like to see you try, honky was Detta’s thought, but Susannah — who felt more and more in charge of this wacky triad, at least for the time being — shushed her. “Why would you say that, my friend? Tell, I beg.”
The sly look remained. Don’t kid a kidder, it said. That was what it looked like to Susannah, anyway. “Mats, Maturin,” he said. “Maturin, Mats. You see?”
Susannah did. She started to tell him it was just a coincidence and then thought: Calla,
Callahan.
“I see,” she said, “but the skölpadda isn’t yours. Nor mine, either.”
“Then whose?” Plaintive. Den hoose? it sounded like.
And before her conscious mind could stop her (or at least censor her), Susannah spoke the truth her heart and soul knew: “It belongs to the Tower, sai. The Dark Tower. And it’s to there I’ll return it, ka willing.”
“Gods be with you, lady-sai.”
“And you, Mats. Long days and pleasant nights.”
She watched the Swedish diplomat walk away, then looked down at the scrimshaw turtle and
said, “That was pretty amazing, Mats old buddy.”
Mia had no interest in the turtle; she had but a single object. This hotel, she said. Will there be a telephone?
THREE
Susannah-Mia put the turtle into the pocket of her bluejeans and forced herself to wait for twenty minutes on the park bench. She spent much of this time admiring her new lower legs (whoever
they belonged to, they were pretty fine) and wiggling her new toes inside her new
(stolen)
shoes. Once she closed her eyes and summoned up the control room of the Dogan. More banks
of warning lights had gone on there, and the machinery under the floor was throbbing louder
than ever, but the needle of the dial marked SUSANNAH-MIO was still just a little way into the yellow. Cracks in the floor had begun to appear, as she had known they would, but so far
they didn’t look serious. The situation wasn’t that great, but she thought they could live with it for now.
What are you waiting for? Mia demanded. Why are we just sitting here?
I’m giving the Swede a chance to do his business for us at the hotel and clear out, Susannah replied.
And when she thought enough time had passed for him to have done that, she gathered her
bags, got up, crossed Second Avenue, and started down Forty-sixth Street to the Plaza-Park
Hotel.
FOUR
The lobby was full of pleasant afternoon light reflected by angles of green glass. Susannah had never seen such a beautiful room — outside of St. Patrick’s, that was — but there was something alien about it, too.
Because it’s the future, she thought.
God knew there were enough signs of that. The cars looked smaller, and entirely different.
Many of the younger women she saw were walking around with their lower bellies exposed and
their bra-straps showing. Susannah had to see this latter phenomenon four or five times on her
stroll down Forty-sixth Street before she could completely convince herself that it was some sort of bizarre fashion fillip, and not a mistake. In her day, a woman with a bra-strap showing (or an inch of slip, snowing down south they used to say) would have ducked into the nearest public restroom to pin it up, and at once. As for the deal with the nude bellies . . .
Would have gotten you arrested anywhere but Coney Island, she thought. No doubt about it.