Water to Burn Read Free

device for bugs in the walls, something he called an “interference generator” to protect our cell phone connections, and a gizmo that checked my landline and answering machine for wiretaps. At one point, when the case stood open, I glimpsed a long narrow bundle, wrapped in black.
    “What’s that in the prayer shawl?” I asked.
    “The name is tallit.” He looked up and scowled at me. “Not prayer shawl.”
    “Sorry, but you called them that when you came to my office—the first time, if you remember.”
    “I had to use the sodding password I was given. That was just the kind of insensitive gaffe your State Department is known for.” He glanced into the case. “As for this, it’s just a bit of cloth. You never wrap things in a tallit.”
    “Okay. I didn’t realize. But what’s the thing in the cloth?”
    “None of your business.” He gave me the smile I call his tiger’s smile, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed. “But it’s in two pieces at the moment. Perfectly harmless.”
    “You mean it’s some kind of gun.”
    “You don’t want to know.” He shut the case and stood up.
    I could recognize a change of subject when I saw one. “How do you get this stuff through Customs?” I said.
    “Someone calls ahead. The security forces are waiting for me when I get off the plane.”
    I knew better than to ask who the “someone” was.
    “That reminds me,” he went on. “The next time you call your Aunt Eileen? Tell her I brought her a gift from Jerusalem.”
    “It’s not a gun, is it?” I said.
    “Don’t be silly! It’s a rosary. The beads were carved from wood grown in the Holy Land.”
    “She’ll love that. Michael will be glad you’re back, too. He’s been badgering me about eating more. On your orders.”
    “Not orders. A simple request. He’s a good kid, or he will be with a little supervision.”
    “Which you’re planning on supplying.”
    “Will you mind?”
    “Of course not. You’re right about my little brother. He needs it.”
    About three minutes later, my Aunt Eileen called. In my family, this kind of “mental overlap,” as we call it, is not coincidence. The first thing she said after hello was, “I dreamt last night that your Ari came back to San Francisco.”
    “He’s not mine, exactly,” I said, “but he did, yeah. He’s here now.”
    “Oh, good! Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Michael will be so glad to see him.”
    “I’ll ask.”
    Ari agreed so fast and so happily to accept the invitation that the truth washed over me: he liked my family. He actually liked the peculiar collection of my relatives that he’d met, the same people who had made my previous boyfriends all run like hell in the opposite direction. I’d have a better chance of stopping a tidal wave than of talking Ari out of our moving in together.
    “Six o’clock then,” Eileen said. “Your uncle likes to eat when he gets home from work. Besides, he has less time to drink that way.”
    “We’ll be there,” I said.
    During the call, Ari had been hovering nearby. I clicked off and slipped the phone back into my jeans pocket.
    “About that apartment,” he began.
    I sighed and surrendered. “I want to move down near the ocean.”
    Ari’s grin disappeared. “It’ll be cold and foggy.”
    “I know, but that’s where I need to live.” I got up and put my hands on his shoulders. “You’ll have me to keep you warm.”
    “Oh, very well, then.” He bent his head for a quick kiss. “Near the ocean it is.”
    My landlady, Mrs. Zukovski, wasted no time when it came to speeding the parting tenant. Just as we were about to leave to start apartment hunting, the glazier, a certain Mr. Hansen, arrived to give an estimate on the window. Mrs. Zukovski escorted him up; she’d put on actual clothes for the occasion, a pink polyester tracksuit almost as baggy as the muumuus she usually favored. It clashed, however, every bit as badly as they did with her purple hair.
    Hansen himself, a tall