She hunkered down next to me and snapped the rest of the rope with her pocketknife. Then she kissed me on the temple and said I was free, I could get up now. And this was the girl who once threw a three-day tantrum and tore her favorite doll to shreds, the girl who decided one fine day to shut her eyes and never open them again, and to put on dark glasses and walk around with a dog and a cane so that even her closest friends thought she couldn't see. She had finally grown up, my little sister. And she could see again. And we were in touch again. I was so happy I was ready to cry. I said, "You're married! You're a mother! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Look," she said, ignoring my excitement and pulling out of her purse a little fat envelope. "Hitler's fucking teeth. The original set, all of them, with cavities and everything."
That teeth nonsense again. I was wrong. She was never going to grow up.
"Come," she said. "Let's get out of here. I've got a plane to catch."
I started to cry.
"What's wrong with you?" she said.
I continued to cry and told her, through my tears, that I was fed up with her teeth games and her art forgery games and why wouldn't she grow up already and why had she gotten me involved in this charade when she never really needed my help and now that we had finally reconnected she was going to disappear again and I wouldn't see her again and she was all the family I had.
"It was a good idea," she said. "Admit it."
"How was it a good idea?" I cried, furious. Everything was a game to this girl, and meanwhile people were dying, like that kid Al. "I didn't do anything, I didn't stop anyone from doing anything. Everyone knew you weren't really dead."
"You did plenty, Louis," she said. "Come. Let's go."
"You used me," I said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"What are you going to do with those teeth?" I said.
"Money," she said, as if the answer were self-evident.
"You're going to sell them?" I said.
"No," she said. "I need the originals to harvest the DNA. I'm going to make perfect copies, so perfect that even forensic experts will never tell the difference, and I'm going to sell these copies to rich collectors for three million euros a set."
I had to laugh. "Three million euros?" I said. "Who's going to pay three million fucking euros for a false set of teeth?"
"Rich innocent relic-worshiping secret Nazis, mostly Austrian," she said. "That's why I'm moving to Austria."
"You're moving to Austria?" I cried.
"Only for a couple of years," she said.
"Don't go," I said.
She ignored this plea. She said, "Hey, you know what? I could use a helper. Do you speak German?"
"No," I said.
"Never mind," she said. "You'll learn. What do you say? You want to join me?"
Flawless false Hitler teeth, three million euros, it was all so stupid, it was pure fantasy. And yet--I was touched, touched that she had asked me. All of a sudden I saw her for what she was, craziness or no craziness. She was my sister, and I needed to help her, I needed to protect her. So what if the scam was ridiculous, not to mention utterly criminal? She was all the family I had. I felt a rush of nostalgia, and saw our old house in Glenwood, with the cow-spotted couch and the yellow curtains and the parquet floor and the antique knickknacks and that smell of cauliflower in the kitchen and the hum of the fridge motor and mom whistling some song out of tune and Uncle Mordecai coming for dinner. This was my sister and we were kids again. I said, "Zel, you know what? I think I might just--"
The door swung open and in came Joe, gun drawn, with Hannah, who was holding Didi under her arm like a small sack of potatoes. The girl was not complaining. On the contrary, she was smiling, she was having fun.
Zelda gave Hannah a long nasty look and said, "Cunt! Let go of my daughter."
Hannah avoided that gaze and held on tighter to her little human sack of potatoes.
Joe said, "Zelda my dear, the teeth please."
"Let go of my girl first," Zelda demanded.
Joe smacked his lips, then smiled and sat down on one of the stools. He took Didi from Hannah, sat the girl on his knees, and put the gun to her head. Then he repeated his request. The girl seemed completely unfazed, as if Joe's move had confirmed her childish impression, that these people were just goofing around. Didi looked identical, I now noticed, to my sister as a little girl, the same pale chestnut hair and the darkish skin and the round little nose and the huge glinting eyes wide open. Strange that I hadn't noticed this earlier. Our eyes met. She grinned, then stuck out her tongue at me. Yes, heaven help us, she was as wild as her mother, who used to find mice in the garden and take them to her room and play with them as if they were dolls, and name them, and love them, and sometimes kill them and place them on the doormat or the couch like a cat telling you she likes you.
Zelda said, "Don't worry, Dee, it's just a game. We're playing cops and criminals."
Didi nodded. She knew it was all a game.
"I'm not playing games," said Joe. "And I'm not gong to wait all day."
Zelda shot him a long menacing glance. "If she is harmed, you will die," she hissed, cool as a frozen carrot. "It's as simple as that."
"Just hand over the teeth," he said.
I finally caught Hannah's eye, that strange-looking girl, so ugly yet so attractive. I asked her, silently, with my eyes, what the hell she was doing, and how could she do this to her own niece. She just looked away.
"Easy now," said Joe, as Zelda put her hand in her purse to retrieve the envelope. "I'll shoot if you pull anything funny. Just hand over the teeth. I paid for them. They're mine."
"You didn't pay for them, you jerk," said Zelda. "I got them for you."
"Yeah? Well it was my idea," he said. "This is my racket."
I looked over to Hannah. Again she refused to make eye-contact.
Zelda produced the teeth envelope and said, "They're all here. Let go of my daughter first, and then I'll give them to you." She opened the envelope to show him that she wasn't lying.
Joe opened wide his eyes, his mouth too. He had seen his treasure. He was excited, drooling almost. However, he said, "No. First give it to me; then I'll let her go."
This standoff lasted for some time, each refusing to go first. Finally I said, "Come on, Zel. For the love of God. Give him the fucking teeth."
"Fine," Zelda said. "Here they are, asshole. I'll put the envelope on the stool next to you." And she was going to do just that, when Didi, who was fed up with this game, somehow managed to slip out of Joe's grasp and ran straight towards me. It all happened so quickly, and I could hardly see what she was doing. I felt something latch onto my legs and I leaped up in fright, thinking it was a snake or something like that, and so I tripped on her and keeled over onto Joe, who jumped up from the stool to avoid me and tripped on it and dropped his gun and staggered into the stainless steel shelves with the jars of teeth, which came crashing down on his head like a cascade and knocked him out cold.
I was on the floor, disoriented, and Hannah was squatting next to Joe, trying to revive Joe. When I finally picked myself up, Zelda had seized Didi's hand and run out with her. I called after them, asked them to wait for me. They didn't. I decided to follow them. However, I noticed that Hannah was making for Joe's gun. I pushed her aside and seized the weapon, and cocked it, and aimed it at her. "What's wrong with you?" I said. "Why are you doing this?" She didn't reply, just looked me defiantly in the eyes. "What?" I said, and she still wouldn't reply, so I gave up trying to strike up a conversation and looked her straight in the eyes. God, she was so gorgeous and so ugly with her crooked nose and large ears and frizzy hair. And yes, yes, yes, we were staring at each other again, yes, like that time in her apartment, when we first met and held hands and her fingernail snapped somehow. Her face was still tense and defiant, the frown, the clenched lips, the eyes aflame, and yet it was showing signs of relaxation, the rudiments of a smile. I said, "What?" again and she just nodded and kept staring at me and I at her, and I thought I was starting to understand what she was thinking, what we were thinking. We were communicating. We were starting to understand each other. This was love, I thought. What was the point of using words? I had her and she had me, and all we had to do was get out of this place, and then we would get to know each other for real and figure everything out. She would tell me what her childhood was like among all those weird Jews, and I would tell her what Glenwood was like in the eighties in the house my parents owned with the cow-spotted couch and the daguerreotype on the wall and Uncle Mordecai coming for dinner and the yellow curtains and the hum of the fridge motor, and eventually we would kiss and I would undress her in the dark and she would undress me and we would tear at each other like animals and we wouldn't even care that the contraceptives were out of reach and we would run away somewhere faraway like Tuscany and settle down and own a vineyard and make expensive Chianti and we would have a son and call him Marcello so he would fit in and we would make him a sister and call her Ida and four more sisters in quick succession, Rosalinda, Isa, Alessandra, and Marcella, and they would all speak fluent Italian and help out in the vineyard until they went to college and we would finally have the house all to ourselves and we would tear at each other like animals despite our gray hair and we would die together in a motorcycle accident on the road to Carrara. I said, "Hannah." She did not reply. I said, "Hannah, let's go somewhere. Do you want to get some coffee? I just want to talk. I need to talk to you. I've got so many things to say to you. Hannah?" She was looking away, and without a word she ran out the door and was gone.
