Ring of Fire Read Free Page A

she declares, examining her fingertip. “Your room needs a good cleaning. It’s not healthy for you to live in the middle of all this dust. Especially given your condition.”
    “Linda!” snaps Irene, sensing she’s about to launch into one ofher rants about hygiene. “My legs are paralyzed, not my brain! A little dust has never killed anybody.”
    Totally unconvinced, Linda turns the glass ball upside down, her lip curling with disgust. Delicate white snowflakes begin to whirl around inside the globe. “Horrible,” she proclaims, putting it back in its place after a few seconds. “This is just the kind of thing that only helps create clutter.”
    “You don’t have to like them! Besides, this is my room and I’ll keep whatever I want in it.”
    “And all these horrible old pictures?” her sister goes on relentlessly. “And those old dressers, with the unmistakable smell of mildew that old dressers have? They’ll ruin all your clothes, I tell you! You should get yourself some new dressers, like the ones in my room. And put vanilla potpourri in them. One sachet for each drawer and all your clothes will smell like—”
    “Like vanilla! Yes, I can imagine!” Aunt Irene practically howls. “Linda, would you mind trying to focus on our problem with the rooms rather than thinking about sterilizing my life?”
    Elettra hangs up the phone for the fifth time.
    “No luck. Not even at the Milton. It looks like the whole city’s full, as stuffed as a Christmas goose.”
    “Oh, that’s right!” exclaims Linda. “Speaking of food, what should we eat tonight? I could make a few slices of polenta with a little lard, or … or some amberjack. We could bake it with a few potatoes and fresh parsley. …”
    Elettra ignores her and makes a sixth attempt. But this call, as well as the following one, is no use. “Everything’s full,” she finally summarizes.
    “Well then …,” sighs Aunt Irene. “That only leaves plan B.”
    “Don’t even think about it!” Aunt Linda says, holding out her hands. “I’m not giving my room to strangers!”
    “Linda, we don’t have any other—”
    “Besides, it’s a mess, a total mess. And you know what they’d do! They’d go in there with shoes on! You know perfectly well no one goes into my room with shoes on! Oh, no! And the bathroom? It needs disinfecting. And once they’re gone? I’d never be able to use it again! There would be strange germs, viruses I don’t have antibodies for. Or you two, for that matter! There are illnesses that can survive steam at a hundred degrees Celsius! They said so on TV! Like the man who brought the bird flu virus back with him to Turkey. Did you read about that?”
    “Linda!” Irene grabs her wrist, cutting her off. “Listen carefully. In your room we can put the two ladies. The French woman and her daughter. Look at me: women. She’s a perfume designer. Clean, sweet-smelling. And she’ll only be sleeping here a couple of nights.”
    Her sister grunts, not very convinced. “And where would we put the Chinese man?”
    “In Fernando’s room.”
    “And Fernando?”
    “On the sofa in the sitting room.”
    “The sofa in the sitting room is fragile!” Aunt Linda protests. “You know perfectly well that Fernando breaks everything he touches. Besides that, he sleepwalks!”
    “Look who’s talking …,” breaks in Elettra. “You’re a sleepwalker, too.”
    “I am not,” exclaims the aunt. “Once in a while I just happen to … to talk in my sleep a little, that’s all.”
    “A little?” her niece teases.
    Irene tries to bring the argument to an end. “Let’s keep the Americans in room four. The French ladies go in your room, you come here to sleep in my room,” she summarizes, “and the Chinese man goes in Fernando’s room.”
    “Fernando can’t sleep on that sofa,” insists Linda.
    “Then he’ll sleep under the sofa!”
    “He can’t sleep on the floor. It’s dirty.”
    “Listen, Linda,” her sister