Song of Susannah

Susa

She looked around quickly and saw no one in the immediate vicinity. That was good, but she thought it would still behoove her to transact her business here as quickly as she could. Jake had drawn quite the little crowd with his key. She had no urge to do the same, if she could avoid it.

“Mathiessen,” she began, “you mentioned—”

“Mats,” he said.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Call me Mats, if you would. I prefer it.”

“All right, Mats, you mentioned a—”

“Do you speak Swedish?”

“No,” she said.

“Then we will speak English.”

“Yes, I’d prefer—”

“I have quite an important position,” Mats said. His eyes never left the turtle. “I am meeting many important peoples. I am going to cocktail parties where good-looking women are wearing ‘the little black dress.’ ”

“That must be quite a thrill for you. Mats, I want you to shut your trap and only open it to speak when I ask you a direct question. Will you do that?”

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.

Susa

“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, thenorth, 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 Susa

“Yah, Susa

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. Susa

“Toocoooool, ” one of them said, almost in a sigh.

“Totally awesome,” said the other.

“You girls go on about your business,” Susa

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!”Susa

“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!” Susa

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 Susa

“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 thesköldpadda? ”

“Yes.” Susa

“Yah, to hell witdot guy!” Mats cried, and although he was still weeping, he was now smiling, too. There was something divinely childish in that smile. It made Susa

“And your bowels?”

“Yah?”

“Like clockwork for the rest of your life,” Susa

“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 thesköldpadda ?”

“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, honkywas Detta’s thought, but Susa

The sly look remained.Don’t kid a kidder, it said. That was what it looked like to Susa

Susa

“I see,” she said, “but thesköldpadda 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), Susa

“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?

Susa

(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.