Act of God (3 page)

Vida dreaded going in there. She didn’t want to know what, exactly, the officer had meant by
bedding.
It was a storage closet filled with clothes she never wore. She was hardly about to start wearing them now.

“Take everything,” Vida called back.

“Red suitcase is mine,” the pretty prisoner whispered under her breath, forcing the boy officer to lean close, close enough to smell her skin.

Vida hesitantly entered the guest room. It had never looked cleaner. The closet light was on. Vida’s wardrobe had been parted, like theater curtains, swept to either end of the hanger rod, revealing a camp of sorts. The bedding, which
she’d dreaded seeing, was a clean white comforter and fairly new rose-patterned sheets. Vida only bought solid colors. Near the pillow, suited in a matching floral pillowcase, stood the guest room’s gooseneck lamp. Arranged around the lamp’s base, as if on a vanity table, lay a brush, a tube of lipstick, an emery board, and a paperback,
The New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose.

When Vida, speechless, failed to instruct the policewoman as to what belonged to whom, the prisoner took charge. “Linens are mine, but not pillow. Lamp not mine, but book and brush is. Also, I have shoes.”

Wearing latex gloves, the policewoman bagged the linens, sundries, and a pair of high heels.

“Don’t forget suitcase,” the prisoner reminded the boy officer. Bound in handcuffs, she used her lovely chin to point even deeper into the closet, under Vida’s swept-aside hems. The policeboy had to crawl on hands and knees. “Marie,” he called to his partner, “take a look at this.”

Ordering the prisoner not to move, the policewoman joined him in the closet.

Alone with the prisoner, Vida suddenly found her voice. “How long were you planning on staying? You thought I wouldn’t notice a stranger living in my house? What did you use for a bathroom when I was home? I don’t want to know.” Vida looked back at the closet. The naked pillow and the gooseneck lamp had been set aside for her—as if she’d want them now. She’d call Goodwill tomorrow and have them take everything away. Then she’d call one of those special crime scene cleaning services.

“Ma’am, have you seen this before?” asked the policewoman, signaling her over.

Reluctantly, Vida stuck her head in the closet. She noticed the pale, otherworldly glow only after the boy officer
pointed it out. It appeared to be emanating from a bulge in the wall. The policewoman shined her flashlight on it. “Oh my god, is that a mushroom?” Vida reeled around and shouted at the prisoner, “What have you been doing in there?!”

“It already there when I move in.”

No one had to tell the twins that this wasn’t an ordinary break-in. In addition to the police cars, a fire truck now blocked the street,
HAZMAT
lettered across its bright red side. Still in her bathrobe, eating a corn muffin with her coffee, Kat watched from the parlor’s bay window, while Edith, showered and dressed, sat at her desk phoning an exterminator.

“What’s a biohazard response team doing at a burglary?” Kat wondered out loud.

Edith walked over to see for herself. “Maybe it has to do with the mold infestation,” she said, opening the window. She called to the firemen, “Are we safe? Should we leave?”

“Stay where you are for the moment,” said the chief. He wore yellow-slicker coveralls, rubber gloves, and disposable booties, but unlike his crew of six, he didn’t have on his respirator. It dangled from a strap around his neck.

Frank and a small flock of curious neighbors stood cordoned off behind a squad car, its front doors open like wings.

“Who called the HAZMAT team?” Edith shouted to him.

“Not me. I’ve never seen a truck like that in my life.”

“Maybe the burglar had bird flu?” suggested Gladys, the neighbor who lived next door with her seventeen cats.

“The lady cop told me the burglar was sleeping in Vida’s
guest room without Vida even knowing,” Frank told the twins.

“For how long?” called Kat.

“Long enough.”

Someone knocked at the door.

“Ladies, we’re going to need you to vacate,” said the policewoman, now wearing what looked like a house painter’s mask. “Toxic mold has been found in your landlady’s closet. At the very least, the building will need to be fumigated. Make sure you take all your important papers.”

“We have thousands of important papers, we have a historical archive in here,” said Edith.

“Just take what you need for now.”

Edith hurried to her desk to collect her BlackBerry and purse. She packed an overnight bag with a change of clothes, sundries, and a copy of her insurance policy. Then she reached under the bed to retrieve the shoe box where she kept their mother’s original rent-controlled lease. Even before she raised the lid, she saw a faint greenish luminosity emanating from underneath. A mushroom was feeding on the ancient document. With a tremor of fear so elemental that it shivered all the way back to childhood, she lifted the bed skirt and peeked underneath. The rug was stained with iridescent drips, as if phosphorescence had leaked from the mattress. She looked up. Another mushroom sprouted from the bed frame.

Meanwhile, Kat sat immobilized in the second bedroom, Edith’s former office, on her unmade bed. The three-ring binder, thick with her mother’s most promising letters, was the first and only possession she had definitively set aside to save. The rest of her belongings—T-shirts, a washed-out batik sari, stretched-out underwear, yoga pants, sandals, and a Goodwill winter coat—seemed almost foolish to save,
except for her beloved scarves, each bought in a different city. Should she pack the pantsuit that Edith gave her to wear for job interviews? Would remembering to pack the suit finally convince Edith that she was serious about job hunting as soon as the book was finished?

What else should she take?

Edith appeared in the doorway. “You’re not dressed yet? You’re not packed? They’re telling us we’ve got to get out of here,
now
!”

“Let me get this straight,
she
breaks into my house and
I
have to get out?” asked Vida, incredulous.

“Everyone has to leave. Your downstairs tenants have already been evacuated,” explained the policewoman, her voice commanding despite the mask covering her mouth and nose.

“Why not I get mask?” demanded the pretty prisoner, wildly indignant, as only those speaking with Russian cadences can sound. Still in handcuffs, she sat perched on the sofa’s arm, bare legs crossed, while the boy officer stood behind her at military at-ease.

Vida couldn’t help but admire the girl’s moxie. Then she remembered the bedding in the closet, and a shiver of revulsion jolted her, as if the white comforter and the clean sheets had been a rat’s nest. “When can I return?” she asked the masked officer. “Tonight? Tomorrow? How many nights are we talking about?”

“Just pack what you’ll need for now,” said the policewoman.

Vida already had the packed overnight bag for her ruse to catch Frank. She had made a reservation at the Lohito Grand, a thirty-story aquamarine whale breaching the
Lower East Side tenements. She went upstairs to her office, directly above the guest room, retrieved her laptop, and then stopped by her bedroom to collect the emergency cash she kept in her underwear drawer. Only when she saw the neatly folded panties did it occur to her:
she
had worn them all. Why couldn’t she have just stolen the cash and the jewelry and then run away, like a normal thief?

Vida glanced back at the guest room on her way out. The pretty prisoner now stood over the boy officer. Fumbling through her open red suitcase, he was trying to find her something to wear over Vida’s lace panties. On the street, Vida followed the policewoman over to the squad car. Frank and the nosy neighbors crowded around the twins. Normally, whenever Frank saw Vida, he gave her the
grin.
Not today. He looked right past her. The pretty prisoner was making her slow descent down the stoop steps, escorted by the policeboy as if she were being debuted at a cotillion wearing a white gown rather than being arrested in skintight pink Capris. Her shoulder-length black hair was loose and wild. She was still in handcuffs. Who let the ponytail down? Vida recognized the girl’s gait, an amateur’s stage walk, every brazen sway designed to hide fright. Vida had used that exact same gait for her first audition, Tess, the rebellious daughter, in the off-Broadway production of
Six Degrees of Separation.
In those days, Vida still went by her given name, Debbi. Her parents, a Filipina dental hygienist and an Irish locksmith, had thought it was the American spelling.

“You’ll need to come to the station if you want to press charges,” said the policewoman.

“How long will that take? Please, can’t you just drive her to another neighborhood so that she doesn’t come back?”

“You can get a restraining order to keep her a thousand feet from your house, but you’ll still need to come in.”

“What’s she charged with?”

“Criminal trespass.”

“That’s all? She’ll be out tomorrow.”

“We can charge her with first-degree burglary if you think she’s stolen anything.”

The only items that Vida could prove had been taken were the Ziberax T-shirt and the lace panties. Vida preferred not to have to testify in court,
I’m the Ziberax lady and that’s my T-shirt and those are my panties.
“Let her go,” Vida said.

“Are you sure?”

Vida made one last assessment of the prisoner, who was standing defiantly under the fierce sun as if under a hot spotlight; the girl was well aware that she held the rapt attention of her audience. A professional at reading and conveying expressions, Vida also noted that the girl’s rebellious insouciance was one exhalation short of panic.

“Let her go, but warn her that if I see her again, anywhere near here, I’m pressing charges.” Despite the nonstop chatter coming from the squad car radio, when the policewoman removed the handcuffs and told her she was free, Vida heard the prisoner’s response.

“Where are sheets and pillowcase?”

Wheeling her suitcase behind her, Vida approached the fire chief. “What happens next?” she asked as calmly as she could manage.

“The city temporarily condemns your building.”

“And?”

“And you fumigate.”

“Who do I contact?”

“I’d phone my insurance company and find out what your mold coverage is. If you’re covered, your agent will suggest a fumigator.” His expression remained officious, but Vida noticed the spark of recognition in his eyes. His
face suddenly changed from stoic commander to charmed admirer as he struggled to hold back the
grin.

“Who else should I be calling?” she asked.

“I’d call my lawyer,” he said, unable to contain the
grin
any longer.

Before she could reach for her cell phone, Edith strode toward her. When Vida first bought the building, she had tried to buy out all the tenants, made them generous offers, more than the realtor had recommended. Only Edith had said no and never made a counter offer. Maybe she could buy her out now?

“I left five urgent messages and you never called me back. I warned you last week that a foul odor was coming from the laundry room,” Edith began, barely able to control her rage. “Now we have a catastrophe on our hands. I found a mushroom growing under my bed. All the furniture will need to be thrown out and burned. And what about my mother’s archive? Can you promise me that the fungicide won’t destroy the letters? When can we expect to go home?”

“I wish I knew. No one’s telling me anything either,” Vida said.

Edith didn’t believe her. In her summer dress and sandals, Vida must have charmed an answer or two out of the fire chief. He practically had to wrestle his eyes off her before returning to duty. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Where are we supposed to live?”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m out on the street myself.”

A sedan navigated around the emergency vehicles and pulled up to the curb. Wheeling her suitcase behind her, Vida got in. When did she have time to call a car service? Edith wondered. She watched Vida settle in the rear seat, subsiding into the cool interior. Before the tinted window rose, Edith called, “I expect to hear from you this afternoon, or you’ll hear from my lawyer.”

She looked around for Kat, but Kat wasn’t where she was
supposed to be, guarding their luggage and purses as Edith had asked. Kat was waving good-bye to the newly released prisoner.

“You know her?”

“Ashley? I thought she was Vida’s maid. We met in the garden. She said hello and introduced herself. What kind of a burglar introduces herself?”

Gripping the hot iron banister, Edith eased herself down on Gladys’s stoop, which was thick with cat hair. The noon sun smoldered directly overhead. The air felt unusually still, as if the morning had run out of breath. Her anger rapidly evaporated into despair. She remembered what she’d forgotten to pack in her haste—her heart medication. And she hadn’t washed her hands since she’d touched the infested shoe box.

Kat joined her on the steps. The humidity had varnished Kat’s permanent suntan resin yellow. Her blond wisps lay sweat-plastered to her scalp, dead cornstalks rain-beaten on the ground. She hadn’t had time to put on her makeup, and her eyes looked naked and vulnerable.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Edith said out loud to herself.

Kat gently guided Edith’s chin until they faced each other. Looking directly into Kat’s eyes was both greatly comforting and oddly disquieting to Edith. They were born with matching pale blue irises down to the coronas of forest green around the pupils, but over time, Kat’s dark nimbuses had widened, leaving an impression that her stare vectored just beyond this world. She smiled reassuringly at Edith with her zealous teeth.

“Edie, we’re going to be fine. We’ll treat ourselves to a nice hotel,” she said, as if their eviction was cause for celebration and she was picking up the tab.

The policewoman came over and took off her painter’s mask. Edith was surprised to see that a policewoman wore lipstick. “Do you ladies have someone to call? Anyplace to stay tonight?”