"Temporary insanity?"
"She loves you the way you are, despite your many peccadillos. So don't you dare try to change. Besides, it wouldn't work. We are who we are. You, me. Victoria. Carl. All of us. Our true natures will come out, no matter what we do to disguise them."
"That's your advice, Irene? Don't change?"
"That's it. Although. ."
Here it comes, Steve thought.
"What's the Jewish word for money?" she asked.
"Yiddish word. 'Gelt.' "
Irene smiled at him and did her best impression of a Jewish mother. "Would it hurt you, Stephen, to bring home a little more gelt?"
Twenty-Four
It was dark, but the moon was three-quarters full-the waning gibbous, Bobby knew-so the yard was illuminated. Myron Goldberg spent a fortune on outdoor lighting, so the house was lit up, too. Bobby heard a whirring sound, followed by a whoosh. Below him, sprinkler heads popped out of the lawn like those aliens in War of the Worlds. A second later, water shot out, the spray chilling his bare legs. A dozen feet above the ground, Bobby was wedged into the crevice between the trunk and a gnarly limb of a mango tree.
Maria's mango tree. Bobby could smell the peachy aroma of the fruit, still green and hard. A wasp sat on one of the mangoes, antennae wiggling. Could the wasp smell it, too? It annoyed Bobby that he didn't know if wasps had a sense of smell.
Maria. Where are you?
While he waited, Bobby whispered to himself the names of the shrubs and flowers surrounding the Goldberg home. Even their gardener wouldn't know the real name of the honeysuckle with the flowers that looked like purple trumpets.
Lonicera sempervirens!
Then there was the bougainvillea vine with flowers so red, if you crushed them, the liquid would look like wine.
Maria! Where are you?
The wind picked up, rustling leaves. Bobby shivered and felt goose bumps on his legs.
If a goose gets cold, does he say to his mate: "Hey, take a gander at my people bumps"?
It was nearly midnight. Any minute now. The Goldberg house was dark except for the outdoor lighting that cast an eerie glow over the tree and the shrubs.
"When the clock strikes twelve, be there."
That was what Maria had said. As if he would be late. He'd been in the tree for at least an hour, and his butt hurt from the way he was wedged against the trunk.
"Should I throw pebbles against the window?"
"Totally old school, Bobby. At midnight, call but don't say who it is. Just say, 'Dance for me.' "
"What if your parents hear the ring?"
"I'll have the phone on vibrate, and I'll keep it between my thighs."
"Wow."
The conversation had pretty much left him breathless. Now he rehearsed his line several times, trying to lower his voice into a manly baritone, emphasizing the word 'dance' a few times, then the word 'me.'
"Dance for me." Definitely hit the "me."
The hottest hottie in the sixth grade was going to dance for him. She hadn't said "naked," but he had his hopes.
It seemed fair, Bobby thought. He had taught Maria how to divide decimals by whole numbers and how to change fractions into decimals. She had asked him if the quotient becomes larger or smaller as the dividend becomes a greater multiple of ten.
Duh.
He checked the time in the cell phone window. Oh, jeez, 12:03. He speed-dialed her number, listened to the brrring, heard her whisper, "What do you want?"
"Dance for me!" His voice cracking, but he got it out.
A light flicked on in the second-story window. Maria's bedroom. Bobby could make out a lamp near the window, probably on Maria's desk. A moment later, the light took on a reddish glow as Maria draped a red cloth over the lampshade. Ooh. This was gonna be good.
She stood in front of the window, her silhouette tinged reddish-black from the lamp, and she started dancing, moving her thin arms overhead in a motion that made Bobby think of someone drowning. If there was music on, he couldn't hear it. She slipped out of her top and turned sideways, her boobies the size of eggs.
Bobby heard his breathing grow deeper, and suddenly he wasn't cold anymore. He shifted his position between the trunk and the limb because of the tightness in his pants. But then new thoughts emerged, intruding thoughts, flowing like a river, breeching the dike his mind had erected.
That cloth over the lampshade. Is it cotton or polyester? What is its flammable rating?
And the lightbulb. He hoped it wasn't a halogen. Those babies throw off 250 degrees Celsius, which he calculated in about three seconds to be 482 degrees Fahrenheit.
Maria slithered out of her shorts, and judging from the angle of her elbow, her hand seemed to be in her crotch, but Bobby couldn't concentrate. He was certain that, any moment, the cloth would burst into flame. The curtains, the bedcovers, the wallpaper- everything would be ablaze. Would Maria even have time to run from the room? Was their A/C hooked up to natural gas? If so, he was sure it was leaking. The house was about to become a fiery inferno, and it was all his fault. In the window, Maria writhed from side to side and swiveled her hips. But in Bobby's mind, all he could see was an orange fireball exploding, tearing the house apart at the beams, incinerating Maria, her mother, and her father.
And that was when he screamed as loud as he could, "Fire! Fire! Fire!"
Twenty-Five
Steve ran full speed along Kumquat Avenue, took the bend to the left, then another left on Loquat. The only sounds were his Nikes hitting the pavement and his own breathing.
The phone call had come just after midnight, waking him from a dream that involved stealing home in the College World Series-instead of being picked off third base-and getting carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders.
"This is Eva Munoz-Goldberg. My husband is Dr. Myron J. Goldberg. ."
Doctor. As if I might confuse him with Myron J. Goldberg, garbage collector.
"Get over here and pick up your sicko nephew before I call the police."
Oh, shit.
Steve had grabbed the closest T-shirt-"I'm Not Fluent in Idiot, So Please Speak Clearly"-pulled on a pair of orange Hurricanes shorts, and took off down the street.
What now, Bobby?
As he ran, Steve envisioned his nephew being caught in Maria's bedroom. What was it Herbert had called her? A harlot-in-training. But maybe they were doing homework and just fell asleep on Maria's bed. Thinking like a defense lawyer.
The yard lights were blazing when Steve huffed to a stop. Spots embedded in planters illuminating the sabal palms, floodlights under the eaves of the barrel-tile roof, Malibu lights lining both sides of a flagstone path, and matching lanterns on bronze posts at the front door. All in all, as bright as the Orange Bowl for a Saturday night game.
Swaying from side to side, Bobby stood with his shoulders hunched and his arms hugging himself. Steve wrapped an arm around the boy and whispered in his ear. "It'll be all right, kiddo. Uncle Steve's here."
Myron Goldberg, a small man in his forties, wore a bathrobe and bedroom slippers and a look of consternation. His wife, Eva, her long black hair asunder, wore a white silk robe that stopped at midthigh. She was a petite but large-bosomed woman around her husband's age, and even without X-ray vision, Steve could tell she wore nothing under the robe. Cradled in the crook of her right arm was a short-barreled automatic weapon.