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the oranges in the fruit bowl had been sliced and squeezed into grotesque parabolas.
     Maximum damage in minimum time, yet they had overlooked the dead weight hanging off the balcony: amateurs? Worse: zealots?
     I doubted they had found what they were looking for. You had to know Barnard, and Maxine, for that.
    Found the crème de menthe at the back of the liquor cabinet, where one would normally keep the more repellent
digestifs.
Although the bottle looked and felt full, few would be tempted to decant the sticky emerald liquid. Just as well, because
     it wasn’t alcohol, and that wasn’t really a bottle. Snapped off its neck, took a few scraps of paper from its belly. On the
     way out I noticed deep, fresh dents in the door frame, paint on the floor: Barnard hadn’t been hauled out of here in a rug.
     Near the Arlington Bridge I got to a phone. “I found her, Maxine.”
    After ten years reading tone of voice, the Queen didn’t even sigh: six of the Seven Sisters confirmed dead, and the violinist
     had outlived them all. Unbelievable. “How bad?” she asked.
    “Naked in bed with a tampon down her throat.”
    A moment of silence as Maxine considered the mechanics of that. “Barnard could have fought off three men with one hand.”
    “Puncture on her neck. I got some blood.” The second tampon lay stiff as a finger in my pocket. “They took the body away in
     something big.” I sighed: how banal.
    “Where were you, hiding behind the shower curtain?”
    “No, under the bed with a teddy bear. You would have preferred casualties?”
    Her silence shouted
yes.
“Who were they?”
    “Couldn’t tell you. I was hanging off the balcony. My arms are a lot longer than they were an hour ago.” That got no sympathy
     whatever. “I found a theater ticket in her bottle. Show’s tomorrow night.”
    “What’s playing?”
    “
La Ronde.
The ticket cost a thousand bucks. Fund-raiser for endangered species.”
    “Bizarre.”
    So was Schnitzler in English. I felt for my knife as a man in tennis whites sauntered by. When he wandered around the bend,
     I squinted at the little slip of paper that had been in Barnard’s bottle with the ticket. “‘Yvette Tatal. Saint Elizabeth’s,’”
     I read. “Mean anything to you?”
    “No.” Heavy breathing on Maxine’s end. “Why didn’t they find you hanging off the balcony?”
    “Amateurs in a rush.”
    “They kill a pro, toss the apartment, take the body, and
miss you?
”
    I had never heard the Queen raise her voice before. Her fear galloped through my blood. “Maybe I got lucky.”
    Maxine only chortled. “Look for me after the play.”
    I returned to the Watergate complex, circled a few times but saw no large, clunky objects leaving the premises. Nothing emerged
     but toilers and spoilers, all alive. Each time I passed the triple fountain, I listened for that soft, knowing laughter, proof
     that another woman, drunk with love, had defied the gods. But the sound had vanished with Barnard. I went back to my hotel.
     Same doorman: damn, he had seen me go and come. I entered the elevator with a Korean whose eyes crawled torpidly over the
     curves in my black leather. Left that poor sod on the third floor and unlocked my door. My white concert gown still draped
     a chair. Bed looked wide and barren as Antarctica, with two silly chocolates on the pillow now. I stashed the bloody tampon,
     all I had left of Barnard, in the minibar. As I grabbed a beer, the phone rang.
    “How’d it go?” Curtis asked.
    “Better than last time.” I could hear eggs and sausage crackling on my manager’s end of the line. Sunshine would just be warming
     the violets on the kitchen sill. Home, Curtis, safety: all a fantasy now. He listened to “My Night at the White House,” aware
     that the pull in my voice had nothing to do with Brahms. “I might stay here a few days,” I said finally.
    “What about Duncan?”
    “I left him dancing with a few menopausal Cinderellas. He’s probably