by John Domini
Owl Girl, he’d said finally, it’s your call.
After that, while he’d roughed up an estimate of how much they might ask for at the Consulate, the husband had sounded clipped, reined in. Nothing like the Jaybird who held forth in Roebuck’s office, this afternoon, his voice ringing off the wraparound block glass in the far corner. So far he’d been right about everything except the passports. All business, he laid out “the kind of help my family could use,” and fended off Roebuck’s objections (“I mean, it’s not just about tuition, when a guy like JJ or Chris gets an internship”). Barb was let alone, free to concentrate on the screen. On this page the Cyrillic lettering was wedged above Paul’s upraised blessing. The s’s were like snakes, the t’s like fangs. Most people, seeing that, would think of gypsies.
Yet the language, Barb came to see, was more or less English. The saint of fire whistles while he burns, she read, tu too tu.
But Roebuck was tapping again, the tabletop this time. “Our organizations can guarantee absolute security,” the Attaché said. “Nobody could reach you. That’s twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Nobody whatsoever.”
Oh, another guarantee. Barbara looked back at the black, contorted words. Today, as it happened, was Tuesday, and the meeting had started at two.
“Now you know,” Jay said, “we’re talking a bigger crew, at home these days. We’re talking my mother, too.”
“Certainly. Your mother can count on the same protection.”
Barbara extended a finger and dragged the cursor to another link.
“Yes, do take a look, Mrs. Lulucita,” Roebuck said. “By all means, do. You’ve been an inspiration to these people.”
“Then there’s the Center,” Jay said. “I don’t know what they know, out there…”
Every Lulucita link, just as the mother had suspected, carried the same cryptic sentence. The words stretched or fattened in different directions, but there was always the saint of fire and the echoing Tuesday-you-two. It made Barbara think of the dreams some of her visitors at the Sam Center had described, while she’d worked screening potential clients. Nettie had helped her with more pages from the copy room, guides to interpretation, material she called “Cliff Notes to Jung and Von Franz.” In this dream on the Lulucita website, posted to every page, the greatest enigma was the saint. The mother, grinding her teeth again, stuffing pillows over her inner alarms—the mother believed the line referred to an actual figure. She couldn’t think who it was, she’d never gotten much past Chiara and Francis and Teresa herself Still it rang a bell, the saint of fire. And she knew that two in the afternoon was a very American time for a meeting. Neapolitans tended to get together a lot later on, after dark.
“Hey Barb, you with us?” Jay gave her a touch at a rib. “You hear that, what Roebuck’s put on the table? ‘Sdecent.”
Barbara was bent over tightly, her purse digging into her lap.
“Not that anything’s written in stone, I mean. Not yet. First we talk to the kids.”
The mother nodded closemouthed.
“These are preliminary figures, ballpark. But still. Decent, hey?”
Sitting up, she felt as if she had to pull her entire head out of the splashy rectangle with the secret script. But Barbara could see what Roebuck and her friend had to offer just by once more taking in the Consulate space around her. Those greenhouse windows, that muscular desk. This was a castle keep for an Alpha princess, with round-the-clock security and junior-year internships.
“And we can walk away,” Jay went on, “any time we want.”
Barbara still felt something at the spot where he’d touched her. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” she said finally. “As soon as we step back out that door, we could end up knocked off our feet.”
Jay took this to be his wife’s way of bringing the subject back to their late NATO liaison. Vigorously he agreed, glowering at the two bureaucrats. Before he and Barbara presented this latest offer to the kids, Jay insisted, they needed to know precisely what the Lieutenant Major had been into. After a minute Barb began to say the same, spinning the laptop away from her, throwing its colors back in Roebuck’s face. Barbara told the woman to skip the euphemisms, the language of diplomacy or PR. “Just tell us about Silky.” The mother was aware she was distracting herself, allowing herself to enjoy the way the Jaybird swung his handsome head. But better that than to ask these three what they knew about saints. If what Barb had seen on the website was in fact a message from Romy, well, the Attaché had already made clear what she thought of the gypsy.
Roebuck didn’t look too happy now, either. She was taking her nails to her hair, raking back a few loose strands. “You must realize,” she was saying, “even if I had all the facts about the officer’s case, I couldn’t risk compromising the NATO investigation.”
“NATO?” Jay asked. “It’s a NATO investigation?”
The older woman fussed at her glasses, first a corner and then the bridge.
“In the food business, I mean. When we needed somebody to go over the books, we got someone from the outside.”
“Mr. Lulucita, I must say. If you believe anyone even remotely affiliated with this office is some sort of criminal, then what are you doing here?”
“Roebuck, hey. You want to know what I believe? I believe that yesterday my son almost stopped a bullet.”
“Well. Nobody in this office fired it.”
Barbara withdrew once more into code-cracking. She recalled that her own name-saint was no longer on the church calendar, but had once been associated with thunderstorms and artillery. The more disturbing question, though, was what Romy had wanted, today at two. A secret meeting, set up in private code, had to be about more than a hug and a kiss. No sooner had the mother checked out of the squabble in the office than she started to worry. The fresh static between her ears rose up so noisily, at first she didn’t notice when Roebuck switched the subject to her marriage.
“Yes, your marriage.” And when had the Attaché gotten so loud? “I must ask. After all, it’s you who insist we lay our cards on the table.”
Jay had his head in his hand, and he fingered the spot alongside his ear where the scippatori had hit him. “You—you want to know about—”
“We need to know, in this office. Certainly. Your marriage is a critical consideration for any arrangement we make today.”
“You’ve got no right. That’s personal.”
“We’ve got every right. The overseas community is a family too.”
To Barbara it looked as if the Jaybird had been cracked again. He shrank and avoided both women’s eyes, seeming to seek his reflection in the tabletop glass. Roebuck was the one angling forward now. She declared that, after the way Jay and Barb had marched in here making demands, the least could expect was a personal question or two. But the Attaché didn’t aggravate Barbara like the man from the UN. He’d tightened up his hauteur, his mouth shrinking into a satisfied nub.
“Now there are rumors,” Roebuck went on. “Disturbing rumors.”
“What,” Barbara said, or growled, “in the streets?”
“In the streets, precisely. We have our contacts.”
The best Jay could manage was shaking his head.
“We have every right,” the Attaché said, “to maintain an active network of contacts. Our interests here in Naples have a direct bearing on security at home.”
“And you’re saying, everybody’s been talking about our marriage.”
“We’re saying that it seems you two intend to divorce. There’s talk of you whispering, well. Whispering vicious things, in places less private than you supposed.”
“Vicious? Vicious, like—’Jay, fuck! Our fucking children might get shot!’”
“Mrs. Lulucita. We’re not impressed by gutter talk, in this office. Especially when it comes from a woman who needs to spend a half an hour every day with a priest.”
Barbara tugged at an armpit. “So what does that prove? A priest should be the least you
’d expect, with what I’ve had to deal with.”
“Perhaps. But then why should you husband have to sneak off to confession too? And why should that come as a complete surprise to you?”
Barb raised the other arm too, crossing them tightly, elbows up.
‘Your first week in the city,” Roebuck went on, “you inquired about a solo plane ticket back to New York.”
Jay glanced up. “What?”
‘Yes. A solo booking. So, then. What do you have to say, you two? Is this the end, for the family?”
The UN rep hoisted his long nose. “Is it the end?” he asked.
The husband collapsed again while these strangers teetered closer. Barbara looked elsewhere, first at the smooth gray shoulders of the laptop’s shell, concealing the rococo excess on the screen, and then away towards wraparound void of the office window. Both that and the little machine on the table could’ve been fragments of a single vast and multifaceted eye, a cosmopolitan organ that missed nothing. Which made them also—could’ve been—props for another reiteration of Barbara’s change-of-life first encounter with the city. This afternoon again presented the familiar moment: her big man going down amid a throng of gossips, observers who been listening in on other people’s conversations for three thousand years.
“It’s not true,” Barbara said.
Around her the leather got noisy. People turned whole-body, their feet shifting.
“It’s not true,” she repeated. “There’s no divorce. Jay and I, we’re still good.”
Roebuck brought her nails together under her chin, unexpectedly rabbitty.
“Mrs. Lulucita, well. Our contacts are claiming you’re the one who—”
“I know, I know.” Barbara’s chair was noisy too, given her effort to think. “I’ve been pretty crabby, a couple of times. Vicious, okay, maybe. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I guess I’m saying, I know what these people talking about.”
She worked up the right sort of smile, Oprah-sweet. There had to be evidence behind the rumors, and Barbara hadn’t spent this long dealing with children and their suppositions without learning to put evidence in different light. In this case the light she needed was right outside, the hot and aggravating sun, almost at solstice intensity. She had the vocabulary, too, the way to put her explanation across, thanks to her work at the Sam Center.
“Jay can validate these feelings. He’d be the first to acknowledge, a lot of stress.”
Though she couldn’t look at her Jaybird just yet. The mechanical box of colors on the table (for Roebuck, on edge, trying to take this in, had spun the laptop back Barbara’s way) was likewise too much. City Baroque. The wife found what she needed, rather, among the diplomas on Roebuck’s walls. The neutral squares of sun-glazed glass allowed her patter to continue. Still it wasn’t until her husband began to speak, coming in with firm and canny support—“Hey, I mean, stress? Let me tell you…” (support talky and taking up space, allowing Barb to breathe Mother of God in gratitude)—it wasn’t until the wife heard him back up her desperate play that she could so much as take his hand. Even after that Barbara kept avoiding his eyes, sensing only via the pressure on fingers and palm how the man regained conversational momentum. Her gaze remained elsewhere. She frowned again at the family website, its black could-be love-letter.
“Roebuck,” Jay asked, “you married?”
The husband regained full momentum…‘sheen a pressure-cooker…we’ve all gone a little crazy…living in the volcano with no place to vent. A minute or two of this and Jay actually had Roebuck following his lead.
“Certainly,” the Alpha Wife said, “my husband and I have our days. I can think of moments when it’s as if I’ve just met my husband for the first time.”
Barbara could let her husband have the floor again, him and the other executive, while she herself put in only the occasional nod or phrase: “Aurora’s no problem, no.” With her free hand, the one not gripping Jay’s, she could first take time for an underwire that bit her ribs and then probe the outside of her purse until she found the nubbled shape of her rosary. Prayer would feel good, even silent prayer, punctuating her uncertainty with the names of God. It would feel as if she had a handle on what she’d just done, her screeching one-eighty. Beneath her fingers, however, Barbara’s purse-leather remained silent, no match for the squeaking chairs around her, nor even the muffled thrum and bleat of day-traffic out along the Bayfront. She didn’t have a handle. It was as if she’d stumbled on herself in this position, back to front and facing a new landscape. Just now the only motives she dared to identify for denying the trouble in her marriage were low ones, like anger or a general contrariness. As for the possibility that she’d actually told these people what she felt—that she remained committed to this man—no way she could think about that. She needed to tie it up in four or five decades of her rosary before she approached it. But her lower motives, her desire to smack down a woman like Roebuck, that Barbara could understand. Even on the far side of the Atlantic, she couldn’t allow the Attaché any further advantage.
But what was “advantage” here? Barbara’s announcement meant that Roebuck and her friends would get what they wanted, a PR windfall. And what would the mother and her family get? On the glass tabletop the five passports remained fanned out like a poker hand. What, did Barbara want to gamble? Stay in town?
And now Jay too had started to flag, no longer sounding so game and chummy. He’d lost enough steam for Barb to notice, at least. The more his off-again, on-again wife avoided looking him in the eye, the more his rally faltered. He never let go of Barbara’s hand.
“So,” he said, fumbling for another line of talk. “So…”
The Attaché was adjusting her jacket. Barb didn’t like to see her touch her lapel.
“Well,” Roebuck said. “I believe that’s everything.”
“Everything…”Jay ran a thumb over Barbara’s knuckle.
“Certainly you’ll need to speak with your children. There’s no one in this office who would object to that.”
Jay’s thumb was tentative, never completing a circle.
“No,” said Barbara. “No way we’re finished here yet.”
The two across the table gave her such a frown that she could compare eyes, Roebuck’s round Anglo periwinkle to the other guy’s leaf-shaped Arabian chocolate. After a few seconds of that, facing her husband came easy.
“There’s still Silky,” she reminded the Jaybird. “We’re not leaving here until we know what was up with that guy.”
Her husband the Jaybird. Nobody but Barbara would’ve seen the fresh energy coming into his looks. But Roebuck noticed soon enough, the way he followed up Barbara’s lead, letting go of her to lend his attack body English. He lay his stubby hand across the spread passports, vowing that before he and his wife went to the children with today’s offer, they would know everything they needed to know about the late Lieutenant Major. Jay had Attaché dropping her head, studying her nails. For a while the longest response she managed was a couple of frustrated words: You two.
“Roebuck. I mean. All Barb and I know is, his killer’s still out there.”
“Well, surely you realize that with an investigation in progress—”
“Sure sure, police procedure. Hey. Roebuck. You are the police.”
The UN man crossed his legs the other way, a body-language harrumph.
“You are the police,” Barbara said. “You make the rules.”
“That NATO investigation, I mean. It’s right here with us. It’s in the computer.”
“You two.” The Attaché spun the laptop. “Our organizations are under no obligation to tell you anything.”
Barbara put out a hand, stopping the machine in mid-spin. “Mother of God, you were spying on us.”
“Majorly spying, Roebuck. You might as well’ve had someone on the balcony.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. It was your security at stake, may I remind you.”
“My security? Mine an
d Barb’s and the kids? If that’s the case, hey. How come you can’t tell me anything except how my sex life is going?”
“Well. We’ve turned up nothing that indicates your family would be a target.”
“Oh, so you can tell us something about your investigation?”
Nobody but Barbara would notice the born-again feistiness in her husband’s face, in the corners of his mouth and his upraised brows.
“Jay’s right,” she said. ‘You called this meeting, you wanted our help. So if you’d thought it would cinch the deal, you’d’ve told us about Silky already.”
“Barb’s right. You’d’ve told us whatever it took.”
“You always had that card to play. That’s all we’re saying.”
The Attaché had shrunk back as far as her chair would allow. She shared another look with the UN rep and then set off on a tour of her outfit’s accessories, touching glasses and brooch and watchband. Barbara, watching, bit her tongue. When Roebuck let out a long exhale, to Barb it sounded like her Jaybird’s cry after he’d gotten hit.
‘You two. One would think you’d been married to the man.”
“No,” said Barbara. ‘You still don’t get it. Wrong connection. It’s that Silky could’ve been one of our kids.”
“Well.” The woman gave a tiny shrug, nothing Italian. “The evidence thus far points clearly towards trafficking in false documentation. False papers.”
The UN rep looked more disapproving than ever.
“Earthquake I.D.,” Jay said.
“Counterfeit, yes. Certainly there’s a market.”
Barbara found herself imagining that it was she who’d left the Arab so disappointed. She’d let this man down, and a lot of other people too, because she should have guessed this weeks ago.
“The evidence appears pretty convincing,” the Attaché went on. Kahlberg appeared to have gotten hold of a template for the new documents of identification.
“He did it himself,” Barbara put in, loud and exasperated. “He did it himself, he ran the things off in the print shop. How could we not have guessed?”