Fic: Everybody Comes to Pooja's, Part III
Whist
To improve the focus and attention span of his little operatives, and relieve his own boredom, one rainy weekend afternoon Reese decided to teach the children to play whist.
The card game’s simple format and linear rules made it easy for his four young spies to grasp the essentials of play in that single session.
Reese reserved to himself the position of dealer so that the game would move more rapidly, although he allowed Avani and Bijal to alternate at shuffling the deck. Five-year old Hari was assigned the permanent role of Dummy, although Reese called it “The Avenger” to keep the little boy happy.
Leena’s special charge was to turn over the final card in the pack revealing the trump for the round, a move she performed with great flourish like a magician pulling a rabbit from the hat. The three girls had no difficulty fanning out the thirteen cards in their hands. Hari held the two jokers in a fan shape too, but wasn’t allowed to play them although he would occasionally toss one of his cards on the table to interrupt the flow of the game.
On the second evening they played whist, Avani arranged the table so that she sat across from Reese as his partner. Even though the free-wheeling game didn’t actually involve partnership, Avani paid close attention to the cards Reese cast and after a few rounds she began purposefully throwing the hands. She played a lower card than his on almost every round, taking a trick only if forced to because she had a handful of trumps or just face cards remaining.
Mrs. Soni encouraged the card play at the back table in her restaurant as a way to keep her boisterous grandchildren and her restless tenant amused and confined to one place where she could watch them all. She brought small silver bowls of almonds or cashews to the game table and took orders for the fruity yoghurt drink, lassi, or milk. Reese might have boosted the challenge of the game by using the nuts as betting chips, but decided against it because Mrs. Soni would object to his teaching the children to gamble.
Avani adored these special evenings and made sure to rush her sister and cousins through their dinner in order to be ready to play if Reese was there.
Bijal was a flamboyant and occasionally reckless player, with the best memory at the table. She was not above reneging, even when the rules forbidding such cheating had been explained to her several times. When Bijal triumphed, legally or illegally, her crowing could not be contained and occasionally led to tears from the other players. Once Leena pulled the cloth off the table in frustration at Bijal’s repeated victories, a disaster that resulted in everyone being sent to bed early.
Avani on the other hand, used a quiet and strategic approach, patiently counting her cards, reserving her trumps, keeping a serene expression throughout the match. On the rounds she sat out, Avani stood behind Reese to observe his card choices; frequently she would press against the back of his chair to whisper a suggested course of play. Avani’s recommendations invariably resulted in a win, which made her especially proud.
On those evenings when Detective Carter came to the restaurant, she would arrive toward the end of the game and quietly watch the final rounds from a chair behind Hari the Avenger. She would take a few cashews, sip a lassi, and nod in approval of Bijal’s daredevil play or Leena’s dramatics. No matter who won the game she would applaud loudly.
Avani watched Reese to see if he tried to speed up the game on the nights when the police officer visited, but she could not see that he changed his play at all.
In contrast, the children changed a lot. Leena performed for the visitor, mugging through unnecessarily theatrical commentaries as the game unfolded. Bijal vied with Hari for a place on the detective’s lap. Coolly scowling, Avani stood apart from this babyish behavior, silently enduring these antics in hopes of prolonging the game.
But these evenings with the visitor always ended too soon and in the same way: the children shuffled off to their parents’ cars for the ride home or stowed in cots in their grandmother’s parlor.
After a while, Avani stopped playing whist. She refused to come back to the game table, no matter how much Bijal vowed to limit her cheating or Leena promised to be quieter. Even Hari’s offer to let her be the Avenger failed to win her back.
Reese volunteered to teach Avani an advanced variation on the basic game called bid whist, which he said was too complicated for the younger children. He had learned it in the Army, he told her, and he was sure she would be a champion bid whist player in no time.
But Avani resisted his challenge and declined to learn another card game which depended on the participation of the other children. And the visitor.
She told Reese she wanted him to teach her to play chess instead.
He agreed to start the lessons when they both could find the time.
+++++
Wet Work
He watched Carter push the kidnapper’s inert body off of hers.
Reese had done the killing, slicing the man’s throat from ear to ear in a single stroke, but some skewed gallantry required him to let her get to her feet unassisted.
The alley where they had tracked down their target was sheltered from the night sky by a delicate scaffolding of rusting fire escape ladders and black window boxes decked with last summer’s dead foliage.
Reese heard the cars rush by on the street at the end of the passageway, but a steady drizzle kept pedestrians to a minimum and he was sure no one had seen the three of them enter the blind alley.
The number was safe now, the threat eliminated permanently.
Carter swayed as she stood in front of him, unsteady on her feet even though she had ditched her usual heels to wear black running shoes for the two days of their stakeout.
Just as high as my heart. Suddenly she seemed so small and he remembered the description of Rosalind from some long ago Shakespeare class, but knew he would never tell her about the poetry.
Flecks of gore dotted her face and blood splashed across her throat and down under her shirt to her breasts.
The killing was unavoidable, he knew. Reese would have preferred to use a gun, but he could see no sure way to avoid hitting Carter as she grappled with their quarry, so he had bent over the man’s back and slit his throat as she held him close.
He pocketed the man’s blunt knife and the snubbed-nosed gun he had fired when he launched his attack.
“You have to get out of here.” Reese felt the new urgency rise up in him even as the immediate heat of the violent moment subsided.
“We have to take care of the body.” She sounded cool and practical, but her eyes were huge and glittering and he knew she was in a certain kind of shock.
“I can handle that. You need to get out of here. Now.”
She held out her hands and seemed surprised to see the blood drying there.
“Carter, look at me. You are not hurt, but you have to get out of here. I’ll take care of the body. No one will find it.”
He pushed her shoulder to start her moving back to the lighted street.
“I can help you.” He knew she would have been of some assistance in slinging the man’s body into the trunk of the car.
But after that he had no desire for her to witness what he had to do.
“No, you can’t. You need to get cleaned up, destroy your clothes. Go to the corner, there’s a taxi stand in front of the hotel. Get away from here as quick as you can.”
She turned and started walking slowly toward the street, following his command without further argument.
But that wasn’t right either.
“Carter, wait. You can’t go home. You can’t let Taylor see you like this.”
She stopped to look down again at her hands and then back into his eyes. He knew she didn’t have an exact idea of what her face looked like, but he thought she could guess how bad it was from his expression.
“Here’s what you do: Go to Pooja’s. Mrs. Soni will let you in. Stay there until I get done. Give me three, four hours. “
“You’ll come back there tonight?”
“Go in the back door through the kitchen. It’ll be locked by now, but if you knock on the window, Mrs. Soni can hear you. She’s usually working late in her office in the kitchen.”
The plan was set, she had a direct order, he knew she would follow it. He was satisfied that the immediate danger was over as he watched her stride with new purpose into the glare of the avenue.
Retrieving the blue sedan was quick, stopping at HQ to pick up a satchel of chemical supplies, a hammer, saw and shovel was easily done too. Finch was at his keyboard, but a nod from Reese confirmed the success of the mission and eliminated the need for further communication.
Dismembering the body took longer than he had figured. Wiry and dry, the man’s supple sinews did not sever easily. Gouging out the teeth was next, then hacking off the fingers and feet, and completing the decapitation begun by the knife blade to the throat. Reese stuffed the parts into four black plastic bags, mixed a dissolving solution, and sat in the car for three hours while the chemicals did their work. During the fourth hour, he dug a pit, emptied the warm slurry from the bags, and filled the hole with earth again.
Then he drove to the fancy flat Finch had rented for him in a sleek building on the Upper East Side to wait for the morning.
The apartment’s icy white walls and marble floors amplified the scant moonlight so that Reese didn’t need to turn on any of the overheads. To facilitate his vigil, he scooped the grounds and drew the water for a full pot of coffee, enough, he hoped, to see him through the night. He wanted to stay awake and made the brew as dark and bitter as possible.
While the coffee dripped, he unfolded a fifth plastic bag to discard his soiled clothing, keeping only his belt and shoes. He briefly considered running a bath in the extravagantly deep canoe-shaped tub. But the idea of it felt indulgent; crude austerity suited his mood better.
In the shower, with the steaming rivulets flushing the grease and blood and filth from his body, Reese allowed himself to think at last about Joss.
He imagined that Mrs. Soni had greeted her at the back door of the restaurant. He thought the older woman would let her in without a word, and lead her straight upstairs to his room, stopping only to retrieve fresh towels. Two yellow towels, he was sure.
Joss would pause near his bed to set down the towels and wait for Mrs. Soni to close the door behind her. When she was alone she would take off her stained shirt and slacks with deliberate slowness. She would move slowly to occupy the time with necessary tasks until he arrived.
He saw her, beautiful as always, in her white bra and panties, both crusted now with the dead man’s blood, as she approached the mirror in the bathroom to examine her face.
Thinking about that first glimpse of her gore-smeared face made him wince.
He should have found another way to kill the man. It was his duty to protect her from the attack, of course, but also from exposure to the intimate ugliness of this particular death.
His selfishness had brought this pollution down on her. If he hadn’t wanted her with him, wanted to talk to her, to see her reactions to his clever tactics, wanted her to admire his weapons and his strength, then this wouldn’t have happened.
She was collateral damage he could have prevented.
He thought of her in the shower now, water cascading down her breasts, her stomach, coursing along her thighs.
Maybe she wept, maybe not.
It didn’t matter that she had killed before, that she had seen death before. This was a death he thrust upon her, one she didn’t deserve to see.
He turned off the torrent of hot water and dried his body, welcoming the brisk irritation of new towels against his back and chest.
When she turned off the water (it would run cold after ten minutes), she would wrap herself in one yellow towel and make a turban of the other. He could picture her small smile when she found that Mrs. Soni had laid out a silver tray with a tea pot, two cups, and a saucer of cookies on the table next to his window.
Chamomile tea for sleep, ginger cookies to settle the stomach. Four cookies he imagined, not crunchy but soft the way he liked them. Joss would take two and save two for him.
Would she blow on the hot tea before she removed the yellow towel or would it slip from her breasts? He could see the muscles of her brown shoulders, still slick with water, flexing and bunching as she reached to pour the tea.
Or would she find a discarded white shirt of his to ward off the chill? He could see her in his shirt, now pushing the cuffs toward her elbows, now stretching her arms up to fasten her hair into a high knot.
She would look for the white silk cloth she kept on the door knob in the bathroom and tie it around her hair. Dampness would mold the white shirt to her breasts, turning the fabric transparent against her skin and outlining the shape of her dark nipples.
He lay down on top of the white silk sheets in the enormous bed and let the fabric chill his body.
She would sit cross legged on their bed, eating the cookies, the shirttails riding up so that her brown thighs were exposed. He could imagine her sex, damp too, pressing against the sheets of their bed as she ate.
His arousal, hard and unwanted, pounded through him like a tidal wave.
Why should he take comfort from these thoughts of her? Why should his body find amusement or relief or oblivion on this polluted night? He didn’t deserve the gift she gave him now.
He didn’t deserve to be with her at all.
He lay still now, his erection pulsing hard against his stomach, his hands clenched in the white sheets beside his flanks.
He wouldn’t let his hands play her role this night.
As his mind scanned the square familiar room, he could picture Joss lying down at last under the covers on his side of their bed.
He could see her turn toward the wall and hug her knees to her stomach. She would wait for him, breathing in his scent from the sheets and from the shirt embracing her.
As he waited for her to fall asleep, his brutal excitement subsided; but the desire, calmed at last, remained constant.
He remembered another line from Rosalind’s play:
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.
Released at last, he let his thoughts drop and drop like rainwater and when the night hours were over, he felt refreshed.
+++++
Wounded
Most of the time, Reese sustained only minor cuts, bruises, and nicks, defending or defeating the numbers. Firing high powered guns at them kept most assailants too far away to do much direct damage.
He used the first aid kit he kept at headquarters or the more elaborate collection he stored in his bathroom at Pooja’s to treat these scratches on his face, hands or arms. The occasional graze from a glancing bullet burned for a while, but he managed to ignore the pain of those incidental wounds. The headaches he treated with aspirin and ice from Mrs. Soni’s kitchen.
Reese had always prided himself on his resiliency and his stoicism.
So he was unprepared when the knife wound on his left shoulder turned bad.
For a few days the long gash oozed, then it puckered and festered, then it began to stink. Reese didn’t believe the wound was deep; the muscle didn’t seem to be affected. But the hot pulsing under his skin and the angry trench of pus demanded expert attention.
He didn’t want to go to a clinic or hospital: too many questions and demands for I.D. and insurance proof. So he cleaned the wound as best he could and stayed under the covers in his bed, hoping his body’s defenses would do their work.
After a week, fever hit him hard. Mrs. Soni knocked on the door in response to his moans and entered when he didn’t immediately ask her in. His glazed eyes, parched lips, and damp forehead told her part of the story, the brown crusted blood on his t-shirt told the rest.
She didn’t bother to try to persuade Reese to go to the hospital; his late nights and erratic tenancy had long ago convinced her that his work was dangerous, illegal, and secret. The information about his employer that she had collected from her informal network of contacts confirmed these suspicions.
So Mrs. Soni cut away the filthy shirt, washed his face and chest with cool cloths, covered him with a second blanket, and telephoned Dr. Krishna Patel, who was married to the third great grand-daughter of her oldest sister.
Dr. Patel arrived after the restaurant’s dinner service was completed to find his patient groggy and his elderly relative anxious.
Mrs. Soni felt guilty for not knowing how long it had been since Reese had been knifed. She believed he had suffered for at least a week before she discovered him, but neither she nor the doctor could get a coherent response about how he had sustained the injury or when. Mrs. Soni thought of calling his employer, but she decided that if John had chosen to not contact Mr. Finch, or Burdette or Peacock or whoever he was, then she had no right to violate those wishes.
Dr. Patel wanted the patient upright in order to gain better access to the wound. So Mrs. Soni sat behind Reese on the bed, propping him against her as the doctor worked. She preferred this position because she didn’t have to see exactly what it was that Dr. Patel did. He spoke softly as he worked so she knew that after inspecting the seeping wound, he cut and drained the infected area, washed it with solution, packed it with a combination of antiseptics, and made over thirty tiny stiches to close the incision.
Dressed in a clean t-shirt and repositioned under the blankets, Reese who had remained silent throughout the operation, sighed and stared directly at Mrs. Soni for a moment before his eyelids fluttered shut. She hoped he was in less pain.
Dr. Patel instructed Mrs. Soni on how to change the dressing on the wound and left her gauze, bandages, tape and antiseptics enough for two changes for each of the following three days. Asking no further questions, the doctor also gave her a prescription, written in her own name, for oral antibiotics and a powerful painkiller.
Mrs. Soni was as good a nurse as she was a cook. She tended to Reese with a precision and regularity that reminded him of the Army. Reese found the whole process vaguely annoying, his sleep punctuated by her regular visits to his room and the clockwork delivery of mild soups and soft delicacies.
On the morning of the third day, Mrs. Soni commanded that he choose between a sponge bath and a shower. He chose the shower, but embarrassingly needed her help to get back into bed after the exhausting exercise. At the end of his visit that evening, Dr. Patel pronounced her a first-rate medical professional and prescribed more bed rest, a recommendation Reese found redundant but irresistible.
As he drifted in and out of sleep, he wondered if Joss had asked about him and if Finch wondered where he was and what Mrs. Soni might have said to put them off.
He wondered how she was able to concoct such bland but delicious meals from a kitchen renowned for its tongue-searing recipes.
He wondered if he would ever get out of bed again.
One evening, he didn’t know how long after Dr. Patel’s second visit, Reese was awakened by soft whispering voices he identified as belonging to Mrs. Soni and a child. He drifted back to sleep for a long while, to be awakened again by gentle sniffling coming from the overstuffed armchair near his window.
Avani.
Reese focused his gritty eyes on her face, noting the tears staining her cheeks and dripping onto her yellow print dress.
It hurt him to hear her cry like that, for his sake, he supposed.
“Why are you crying, Avani? “ His voice sounded harsh and abrupt to his ears, but she smiled a little to find he was awake.
“Grandmother says that you are seriously hurt.”
“Well, yes, I was. But now, thanks to her, I am getting better fast.”
The girl thought about that for a short while and then burst into a fresh round of crying.
“Now, why are you crying? I told you I am getting better. Or is that what’s making you cry?”
He hoped that would sound like a joke to her.
“I am sad because I caused you to get hurt.” She looked out of the window, studying the full moon sitting low over the city high rises.
“What in the world makes you think that?” He struggled to arrange pillows behind his back so that he could sit up and look directly at her.
“I caused you to get hurt and I am so sorry now.” She repeated her assertion and sobbed.
“You’ll have to do better explaining than that, you know.”
No answer.
“So, how exactly did you hurt me?”
She gave in.
“I thought I hated you and I wished you got hurt and you did, that’s how.”
“So you put a curse on me, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Avani, how old are you, ten?”
“Ten and a half years old.”
“O.K. Ten and a half. So you know that curses are not possible, don’t you?
“You study science in school and you know that just because you hate me you didn’t cause me to get stabbed.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“I know.”
He closed his eyes again, sank back down into a horizontal position, and they rested silently for several minutes.
He had not quite drifted off again when she piped in a brighter voice:
“Would you like me to read to you as you fall asleep?”
“Yes, I would like that very much.”
Avani pulled a large green leather bound book from behind her in the chair and laid it on her lap.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
After reading two stories, “The Brave Little Tailor” and “Faithful John,” Avani paused to study her patient.
He heard her gather her breath to let out her questions in a rush of words.
“Detective Carter, is she your friend?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Does she spy for you?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Does she read to you?”
“No, she doesn’t. You are the only one, Avani.”
“Good.”
She spoke in the firm no-nonsense tones of her grandmother.
“Then whenever you want a story, just call me and I will read to you.”
“I will, Avani, thank you.
“I need to sleep now. But I will always remember that you are a good reader.
“And when I want another story, you will be my one and only reader.”
At midnight, Mrs. Soni lifted her sleeping granddaughter from the arm chair and let the worn pale man stretched peacefully in bed continue his rest.