Free Bereavements by Richard Lortz

rest of the time”— the dreary months— “we spend here, in New York.”
    “In a house,” Angel supplied, still with disbelief.
    “Well—There are very few houses in Manhattan. We call it that. It’s a converted Brownstone: four stories high and each a floor through: twelve rooms, I believe, though I’ve never quite counted; that excludes the kitchen and storage rooms which are in the basement—or at least on the ground floor. The real basement with the furnace and all is under those. And there’s an enclosed garden in the back.”
    “I live on the fourth floor,” Angel offered, discovering at least one feeble affinity. “But it’s a pain in the ass.” He regretted the last word and hesitated. “I mean—having to climb all them stairs all the time.”
    Dori glanced at him. “Mrs. Evans has an elevator.”
    This silenced the boy altogether, but some moments later, sufficiently recovered, he asked about Jamie.
    Dori frowned slightly, thinking it best not to answer.
    “Perhaps Mrs. Evans will tell you—whatever you want to know.”
    The next hurdle were “the husbands;” the question was a bit timid to be sure, nevertheless forthcoming. “Why . . . I mean how, did they all die?”
    Dori thought for a moment, desiring a satisfactory yet circumspect reply.
    One of them, Mr. Vincenti, had died of pneumonia, after an embolism—”that’s a blood clot—moved from his leg to his lungs.”
    Another was presumed dead (declared so, legally); the circumstances somewhat mysterious. It was thought that his private plane had crashed; in any event, “it disappeared . . .” Dori hesitated to say “over the Bermuda Triangle” . . . but it had, it was true, so he did, watching Angel’s eyes widen a little.
    And the third (actually the first in time, and Jamie’s father) had been killed by a bull, gored to death.
    This was apparently even more exciting than being devoured by the Bermuda Triangle.
    “He was a toreador!?”
    “Or a matador; I confuse the two. Yes. Celebrated. World-famous.”
    “But I thought all bullfighters were Spanish?”
    Dori shook his head. “Not at all. But Mrs. Evans’ husband was. Why is that surprising?—de Vinaz Rojas. Carlos de Vinaz Rojas.”
    “But my father is Spanish. So am I . . . I guess.”
    Were congratulations in order?
    “Ah—so,” Dori replied, Japanese style, and both of them laughed, liking each other, Angel so much, so quickly, there were instant tears in his eyes.
    Dori stopped for a red light. “Tell me about your father. Surely he doesn’t fight bulls, too!”
    All the light went out of Angel’s face.
    “No.” One word only; then an aching, finger-picking silence until they got to the house.
    His father.

    Why she should trouble so much about exactly what to wear was a bewilderment to Mrs. Evans, but, hanger after hanger in hand, she draped herself with dress after dress from a wardrobe that was twenty feet long in a walk-in closet that occupied an entire wall.
    Still—justifying her behavior—it was the first time, the very first time she was to abandon her mourning. She didn’t want to risk adversely affecting the boy with an appearance that was nunlike, intimidating, sorrowful or severe, but after so many months of unrelieved blackness and veils, every color, even the darkest, was an unexpected shock. All the reds were impossible, whatever the shade or mixture: rose, wine, magenta, pink. The greens, even the subtlest, looked cheap; the blues, icy, forbidding.
    She decided it had better not be a true color at all, and finally chose something metallic: a burnt crazed gold with a delicate thread of mingled black and green.
    The fabric was a kind that whispered when she walked. This seemed a pleasant if rather silly diversion, rather like a light, shy knock on the door of a stage that announced her coming before she appeared.
    She was about to go to the phone and call Rose to help her, then changed her mind, deciding against all the unsolicited