"Boooo…" she whispered again. Her hands started shaking, and her large emerald ring vibrated against the arm of the chair. Her eyes were rolling around, and her jaw seemed to be stuck wide open. I could see her pale slimy tongue, and her $4,000 bridgework.
"Okay," I said. "That's it. I'm calling an ambulance, Mrs. Herz. Look, here I am going to the telephone. I'm dialing the number, Mrs. Herz. It's ringing."
Suddenly the old lady stood up. She grabbed for her stick, missed it, and it clattered on to the floor. She stood swaying and shuffling on the carpet, as though she were dancing in time to some song that I couldn't hear. The operator said: "Yes, can I help you?" but I put the phone down and went across to my hopping, waltzing old client.
I tried to put my arm around her, but she flapped me away with one of her scaly paws. She jogged and danced, muttering and mumbling all the time, and I just didn't know what the hell to do with her. She must be having some kind of fit, but I'd never seen a fit where the sufferer does a one-woman conga round the floor.
"Booo…" she whispered again.
I danced around her, trying to keep up with her scuffly little waltz. "What do you mean, 'boo'?" I asked her. "Mrs. Herz, will you please sit down and relax, and tell me what the hell's going on?"
As abruptly as she had started to dance, she stopped. The energy seemed to fall out of her like an elevator sinking to floor-level, foyer and street. She reached out for something to support her, and I had to grab her arm to stop her from pitching over. I gently laid her stiff old body back into the armchair, and knelt down beside her.
"Mrs. Herz, I don't like to bully my clients, but I do think you ought to have some medical attention. Now, don't you agree that would be sensible?"
She stared at me blindly, and her mouth stretched open again. I admit I had to look away. The outsides of old ladies are okay, but I'm really not too keen on their insides.
"Boot," she whispered. "Boot."
"Boot?" I asked her. "What the hell have boots got to do with anything?"
"Boot," she quavered, much more shrilly now. "Boot! BOOOTTTT!!"
"My God," I said. "Mrs. Herz, just you calm down and I'll fetch an ambulance straight away. Now, don't move, Mrs. Herz, it's perfectly all right. You're going to be fine, just fine."
I got up and went over to the telephone and dialed the emergency service. Mrs. Herz was shaking and trembling and rabbiting on about "boot, boot" and they seemed to take half an hour to answer.
"Can I help you?" said the operator, at last.
"You certainly can. Look, I need an ambulance straight away. I have an old lady here who's having some kind of a fit. She's as rich as they come, so tell the ambulance crew they don't have to make any detours through the Bronx before they get here. Please hurry. I think she's going to die or something."
I gave my address and telephone number, and then turned back to Mrs. Herz. She seemed to have stopped twitching for the moment, and she was sitting there quiet and strange as though she were thinking.
"Mrs. Herz…" I said.
She turned toward me. Her face was old and fixed and rigid. Her watery eyes stared right into mine.
"De boot, mijnheer," she said gruffly. "De boot."
"Mrs. Herz, look, please, you don't have to worry. The ambulance is on its way. Just sit there and keep calm."
Mrs. Herz gripped the arm of the chair and got to her feet. She had trouble standing straight, as though she were walking on ice. But then she pulled herself erect, and stood there with her arms hanging down by her side, taller and firmer than I'd ever seen her stand before.
"Mrs. Herz, I think you'd better…"
But she ignored me, and started to glide across the carpet. I'd never seen anybody walk that way before. Her feet seemed to skate silently over the floor as if she wasn't really touching it at all. She slid quietly over to the door, and opened it.
"It really would be better if you waited," I said lamely. To tell you the truth, I was getting the creeps with all this, and I didn't know what to say to her at all. She didn't seem to hear me, or if she did, she wasn't taking any notice.
"De boot," she said again, in a harsh voice. And then she glided out of the door and into the corridor.
Of course, I went after her. But what I saw next was so sudden and weird that I almost wished I hadn't. One second she was just outside the door, and I was reaching out my hand to take her arm, and then she was sliding away down the long bright corridor, as quickly as if she was running. But she wasn't running at all. She was rushing away from me without even moving her legs.
"Mrs. Herz!" I called, but my voice went strangled and strange. I felt a huge dark surge of fright inside me, like seeing a white face at the window in the middle of the night.
She turned, once, at the end of the corridor. She was standing at the head of the stairs. She seemed to be trying to beckon, or lift her arm — more as if she were fighting something off than trying to call me to help her. Then she disappeared down the stairs, and I heard her stiff old body falling and bumping from step to step.
I pelted down to the end of the corridor. Doors were opening all the way along, and anxious and curious faces were peering out.
I looked down the stairs. Mrs. Herz was lying there, all twisted up, with her legs at peculiar angles. I rushed down and knelt beside her and felt her stick-like wrist. Nothing, no pulse at all. I lifted her head, and a long slide of glutinous blood came pouring out of her mouth.
"Is she okay?" said one of my neighbors, from the top of the stairs. "What happened?"
"She fell," I told him. "She's seventy-five. She's not too good on her feet. I think she's dead. I called an ambulance already."
"Oh, God," said a woman. "I can't stand anything dead."
I stood up, tearing my long green gown. I just couldn't believe any of this, and I felt as if I'd wake up in a moment, and it would still be early morning, and I'd be lying in bed in my turquoise silk pajamas. I looked down at Mrs. Herz, wrinkled and old and extinct, like a pale balloon that's leaked itself to death, and the sick started rising in my throat.
Lieutenant Marino of the Homicide Squad was most understanding. It turned out that Mrs. Herz had left me something in her will, but it wasn't enough for me to have pushed her down the stairs.
The detective sat upright in my armchair, in his stiff black raincoat, with his black brush-cut hair sticking up at all angles, trying to read from a grubby scrap of paper.
"It says here that you're entitled to a pair of Victorian vases," he sniffed. "We're having someone check on the value right now, but you don't look the kind of guy who'd knock an old lady off for a vase."
I shrugged. "Old ladies like her are my bread and butter. You don't go pushing your bread and butter down the stairs."
Lieutenant Marino looked up. He had a wide, squashed face, like an opera singer who's fallen on hard times. He scratched his spiky hair thoughtfully and cast his eyes around the room.
"Some kind of fortune-teller, aren't you?"
"That's right. Tarot cards, tea leaves, that kind of stuff. Most of my clients are elderly ladies like Mrs. Herz."
He bit his lip and nodded. "Sure. You say she was acting unwell the whole time she was here?"
"Yes, I mean I thought there was something wrong from the moment she came in. She's pretty old and infirm, but she usually manages to chat for a while, and tell me how she's getting on. But this time she came in and sat down and never said a word."
Lieutenant Marino stared at his piece of paper. "Did you get around to telling her fortune? What I mean is, was there any reason she might have killed herself? Any bad news in the tea leaves?"