“And keep us awake with the typing?”
“Pen, pencil, and pad, then?”
“Done!”
So it was agreed and the nights passed into weeks and the weeks leaned from summer into the first days of autumn and his voice grew stronger, as did the sound of his heart and the small commotions of his limbs. Sometimes as Maggie slept, his voice would stir her awake and she would reach up to touch her mouth, where the surprise of his dreaming came forth.
“There, there, Sascha. Rest now. Sleep.”
“Sleep,” he whispered drowsily, “sleep.” And faded away.
“Pork chops, please, for supper.”
“No pickles with ice cream?” both said, almost at once.
“Pork chops,” he said, and more days passed and more dawns arose and he said: “Hamburgers!”
“For breakfast?”
“With onions,” he said.
October stood still for one day and then …
Halloween departed.
“Thanks,” said Sascha, “for helping me past that. What’s up ahead in five nights?”
“Guy Fawkes!”
“Ah, yes!” he cried.
And at one minute after midnight five days later, Maggie got up, wandered to the bathroom, and wandered back, stunned.
“Dear,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Douglas Spaulding turned over, half awake. “Yes?”
“What day is it?” whispered Sascha.
“Guy Fawkes, at last. So?”
“I don’t feel well,” said Sascha. “Or, no, I feel fine. Full of pep. Ready to go. It’s time to say good-bye. Or is it hello? What do I mean?”
“Spit it out.”
“Are there neighbors who said, no matter when, they’d take us to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Call the neighbors,” said Sascha.
They called the neighbors.
At the hospital, Douglas kissed his wife’s brow and listened.
“It’s been nice,” said Sascha.
“Only the best.”
“We won’t talk again. Good-bye,” said Sascha.
“Good-bye,” both said.
At dawn there was a small clear cry somewhere.
Not long after, Douglas entered his wife’s hospital room. She looked at him and said, “Sascha’s gone.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“But he left word and someone else is here. Look.”
He approached the bed as she pulled back a coverlet.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
He looked down at a small pink face and eyes that for a brief moment flickered bright blue and then shut.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Your daughter. Meet Alexandra.”
“Hello, Alexandra.” he said.
“And do you know what the nickname for Alexandra is?” she said.
“What?”
“Sascha,” she said.
He touched the small cheek very gently.
“Hello, Sascha,” he said.
The sounds began in the middle of summer in the middle of the night.
Bella Winters sat up in bed about three a.m. and listened and then lay back down. Ten minutes later she heard the sounds again, out in the night, down the hill.
Bella Winters lived in a first-floor apartment on top of Vendome Heights, near Effie Street in Los Angeles, and had lived there now for only a few days, so it was all new to her, this old house on an old street with an old staircase, made of concrete, climbing steeply straight up from the lowlands below, one hundred and twenty steps, count them. And right now …
“Someone’s on the steps,” said Bella to herself.
“What?” said her husband, Sam, in his sleep.
“There are some men out on the steps,” said Bella. “Talking, yelling, not fighting, but almost. I heard them last night, too, and the night before, but …”
“What?” Sam muttered.
“Shh, go to sleep. I’ll look.”
She got out of bed in the dark and went to the window, and yes, two men were indeed talking out there, grunting, groaning, now loud, now soft. And there was another noise, a kind of bumping, sliding, thumping, like a huge object being carted up the hill.
“No one could be moving in at this hour of the night, could they?” asked Bella of the darkness, the window, and herself.
“No,” murmured Sam.
“It sounds like …”
“Like what?” asked Sam, fully awake now.
“Like two men moving—”
“Moving what, for God’s sake?”
“Moving a piano. Up those steps.”
“At three in the morning!?”
“A piano and two men. Just listen.”
The husband sat up, blinking, alert.
Far off, in the middle of the hill, there was a kind of harping strum, the noise a piano makes when suddenly thumped and its harp strings hum.
“There, did you hear?”
“Jesus, you’re right. But why would anyone steal—’’
“They’re not stealing, they’re delivering.”
“A piano?”
