Free Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell

sidewalk. Mallory switched on the ignition and put the car in gear. He had changed his clothes and donned a baseball cap, but from any distance, she could pick him out by the body language. He had the long-legged, no-bones gait of a scarecrow, and as he moved on down the sidewalk, he seemed blown along by the wind.
    He was awkward but not unattractive. She favored full beards and dark hair, and she would have found the lean, ruddy face very appealing if not for the possibility that Gaynor had gutted her old man and left him to die alone.
    Gaynor waved down a cab and Mallory rolled.
    She could see the pinch-faced matron in her rearview mirror, waving the business card like a small warning flag.

    Rabbi David Kaplan struggled with the legs of the card table. They were supposed to unfold from the table top, but perversely, they would not.
    â€œMy wife usually does this. She wasn’t expecting anyone to come.”
    â€œGood thing I brought the beer,” said Dr. Edward Slope. “Anything in the fridge?”
    It would have been Louis Markowitz’s turn to bring the sandwiches tonight. The doctor’s own wife, Donna, had set that policy, saying, ‘Don’t you expect Anna to cook for you,’ knowing that Anna would never have settled for cold sandwiches. It would have been a spread worthy of the Second Coming.
    â€œI’ve lived with that woman for thirty-five years,” said the rabbi, “and never have I seen an empty refrigerator. That’s the least of my worries.” One leg of the table dropped down, but he had no way to know he had accidentally moved the latch that held it in place. When his wife did this, it took three seconds. He supposed she just willed it to unfold itself and stand up on four legs. And for all he knew, it walked to the center of the room of its own accord.
    Slope wandered into the kitchen to stand at the open door of the refrigerator. Louis Markowitz’s refrigerator had been much like this one, as he recalled. Not so long ago, Louis’s shelves had been filled with real food, built from a woman’s blueprint of shopping lists and recipes, the makings of meals past and meals to come, warm colors of fruit and cool green vegetables, condiments and mysterious unlabeled jars of liquids. When the last woman had gone from Louis’s house, the refrigerator had changed its character, becoming shabby in its accumulation of deli bags and frozen dinners. Everything to the rear of the shelves had resembled small furry animals which had sickened and then crawled back there to die.
    Now Slope stared at Anna Kaplan’s well-stocked shelves. Food is love, said this refrigerator.
    He was assessing bowls and pots and checking under the lids of Tupperware when the doorbell rang. The new arrival could only be Robin Duffy. The lawyer had a hearty voice, usually upbeat. Tonight, it sounded through the walls like a mourning bell in the low octaves. Robin had known Louis Markowitz for many years, and he would be a long time getting over the death.
    Dr. Slope added mustard to the tray.
    Now they were three.
    Two weeks had passed since the funeral. Tonight, by some connectedness of spirit, the three of them had gathered together in this place where the fourth player, Louis Markowitz, had been loved by a close circle of men.
    Slope clutched a Tupperware container to his chest and made the contorted face of a man who would rather not cry. He set the plastic container on the tray. What was missing? he wondered as he picked up the tray. When the bell rang again, announcing a fourth person, the tray fell from his hands.
    He sank to the floor and slowly reached out for the heavy mustard jar, sturdy thing, unbroken. He crawled about the tiles, blindly groping for each dropped item, finding the butter and the knife with his eyes screwed shut, watertight.
    When he was again in full possession of everything he had lost, he carried the tray down the narrow hall and into the