Burial by Graham Masterton Page B

me. He can tune himself, almost It’s fantastic to watch.’
    â€˜Okay, then,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll give him a try.’
    â€˜Don’t look so disappointed.’
    â€˜I’m trying my damndest not to.’
    She checked her watch. ‘I have to get back to my class. It was good to see you again, Harry. Sorry I couldn’t help you personally.’
    â€˜Well, me too. How about dinner sometime? They opened this terrific Korean restaurant on 52nd Street, close to my office. Have you ever tasted
ojingu chim
?’
    Amelia gave me a long, level look. ‘Why do I have the feeling that
ojingu chim
is going to be something awful?’
    â€˜Come on, Amelia. What’s awful about squid’s bodies stuffed with pickled cabbage and chopped-up tentacles?’
    She stood up and went to the door, and waited for me smiling, one hand shading her eyes. I paid the check and came out after her and stretched.
    â€˜I still miss knowing you,’ she said, lightly kissing my cheek. ‘But not that much.’
    I called back at the Greenbergs’ apartment before I attempted to get in touch with Martin Vaizey. When he answered the door, Michael looked sweaty and yellow, like a man with malaria. Karen was sitting by the window with a freshly-brewed jug of iced tea.
    â€˜Any luck?’ Michael asked me.
    â€˜I don’t know yet. Amelia wouldn’t do it, she said she gave up mysticism years ago. But she gave me the name of a sensitive on Central Park West. Highly recommended, that’s what she said.
    I nodded towards the dining room. ‘How is it in there?’
    â€˜Awful … cold, scary. She keeps singing some song. The psychiatrist said that if she doesn’t show any signs of recovery by the end of the week, they’re going to have to pull her out of there whether she throws a seizure or not.’
    Karen came up. She was wearing a loose silk shirt of saffron yellow and a loose pair of silk pajama pants. Her hair was clipped back with yellow plastic barrettes. ‘Do you want some iced tea?’ she asked me. She knew I didn’t really want any; she was simply trying to show how concerned she was.
    â€˜I’ll find somebody, don’t worry,’ I told Michael, grasping his shoulder. ‘I guaranteed that I was going to clear your apartment, one way or another, and I will.’
    I was on the point of leaving when I heard Naomi singing from the next room. Her voice was shrill and keening, with loud ululations at the end of every line. It went on, and on, echoing a little, and every line seemed to be different. I approached the half-open dining-room door and listened hard, but I couldn’t make out a single word she was saying.
    â€˜Is that Hebrew?’ I asked Michael.
    Michael shook his head. ‘It’s no language that
I
ever heard before.’
    â€˜How about you, Karen?’
    Karen said, ‘Me neither.’ But the singing went on and on, high and insistent; until at last Michael came forward and closed the door.
    â€˜She was doing it all night,’ he explained. ‘I can’t take too much more of it.’
    â€˜Will you do me one favour?’ I asked him. ‘Will you record it for me? You have a tape-deck, don’t you?’
    â€˜You think it’ll help?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. It can’t hurt, whatever.’
    I gave Karen a peck on the cheek, squeezed Michael Greenberg by his sweaty hand, and then left the building and hailed a taxi. The cabbie had just arrived in New York from Swaziland or someplace like that, and he drove backwards and forwards across midtown for almost fifteen minutes before I discovered that he was looking for ‘Sanitary Parts Waste.’
    â€˜Central Park West, for Christ’s sake,’ I snapped at him. I told him to stop on the corner by Radio City, climbed out, and gave him some interesting physiological ideas about what he