The Groaning Board

bicycle
tires on dirt paths. No vehicle traffic permitted: Central Park on a lazy, hot
summer day.
    Maybe another time we can take a row
on the lake, Wetzon thought. If there was another time. She knew rowboats were
for rent at the Loeb Boathouse. She’d always wanted to do it. Never the right
time, never the right company.
    Some years back a restaurant had
emerged on the upper section of Bethesda Terrace that led to the twenty-acre
lake, known only as the Lake. The steps were scattered with people, but Wetzon
found a place to sit and watch the activity on the water. Izz crawled onto her
lap. On the lake an adolescent boy with little experience in oarsmanship was
rowing a woman in a large flowered hat. The boat was making circles on the
crowded lake. The woman held on to her hat.
    “Get that idiot off the lake,”
someone yelled from one of the other boats.
    The sharp voice flitted over the
water and smacked into Wetzon’s consciousness. All of a sudden, with the rumble
of a bowling ball as it lurches down the alley, boats began to collide.
Everyone was yelling, oars thumped as the rowers fought their way out of the
tangle. They began slipping away like petals on a daisy, he loves me, he loves
me not.
    Two women were in the last boat to slide
away. One of them had shouted the first warning.
    Wetzon set Izz down and stood. She
descended the steps to the edge of the lake waiting for her eyes to focus
behind her dark glasses.
    The voice belonged to Minnie Wu, and
the woman she was with—Wetzon couldn’t quite believe it—was Ellen Moore.

Chapter Forty-Five

     
     
     
    “Where are
you?”
    Wetzon held the receiver away from
her ear. She slipped her feet into her patent-leather Ferragamos. “Hello. Earth
to Smith. Where do you think I am? Where did you call me?“
    “Oh, for pity sakes.”
    “What is your problem? I was just
leaving.”
    “Don’t stop anywhere, promise me.
There’s something you have to hear.” Smith’s abrupt disconnect slammed in
Wetzon’s ear.
    “It’s I who should say, ‘Oh, for pity
sakes,’ Izz, don’t you think?” Wetzon kissed the little dog’s snout and set her
down. Izz scrambled off and returned with her leash in her mouth, cute as you
please. “Anyone would think you didn’t have your walk, but you and I know
better.”
    The night had been endless, one of
those where she’d wake every hour. She had not heard from Bill. Finally, at
five, she crawled out of bed, exhausted, and took Izz for a walk.
    It was a hot, humid Monday. The first
workday after the Fourth. Everyone’s eyes looked a little glazed from the
four-day weekend. No one really wanted to go back to work. Including Leslie
Wetzon. Well, not really, she thought. Perspective was definitely needed as
quickly as possible, before Bill Veeder became too important. Her fingers
played with the gold chain around her neck. Bill had taken Todd Cameron’s cross
away with him.
    She let a couple of cabs with open
windows go by; on a day like today air conditioning was a must. In fact, it
seemed that no taxis had air conditioning anymore.
    Giving up, she settled for what was
available. “How come no air conditioning?” she asked.
    The driver was Asian. He showed her
his teeth, as if she’d made some uproarious joke. “Where you want go?”
    “Forty-ninth and Second.” One day,
she thought, before I die, I may get in a cab in New York and get a driver who
speaks and understands English.
    She unfolded her Times and
reread Micklynn’s obituary. It had been a slow-news weekend, so coverage of her
death in print and television was extensive. “Mysterious death,” it was called
in the Times. Television’s Entertainment Tonight called it a
“fearsome tragedy” and reported that Micklynn’s unique name was a combination
of her father’s, Mickey Bassinger, and her mother’s, Lynda. Extra Edition hinted at foul play. The photographs of Micklynn were all of a slim young woman
in sixties shmatte garb. Obviously, Micklynn hadn’t changed her costume, just
her body shape.
    Wetzon folded the newspaper and
stuffed it in her briefcase, wondering when the media would tell everyone how
Micklynn really died.
    When she got out of the taxi on
Second and Forty-ninth, the newsstand featured the Post’s blaring
headlines: chef’s STEW: ACCIDENT OR
SUICIDE??
    Four days without air conditioning
left the office stuffy. Darlene, inappropriately dressed in a vivid fuchsia
sundress with spaghetti straps that kept slipping from her