Root (Book One of The Liminality)

by A. Sparrow

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Honest. An apology. That’s all he wants. We already got the stuff back. All of it.”

  “So, I apologize to this guy, then what? He gonna make me say a bunch of Hail Mary’s and let me go?”

  The line crept forward. I was only a few passengers away from being screened. A couple of TSA folks were giving us funny looks. One nudged his colleague and got on his walkie-talkie.

  “Come on, kid. You really don’t want to be on Mr. Sergei’s shit list.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do I really have to tell you?”

  “Tell ole Serge that he doesn’t have to worry. I ain’t ever coming back to the States. Never.”

  “That doesn’t do any good if he doesn’t get his apology.”

  “What kind of pussy needs everyone to tell them they’re sorry?”

  “Continuing to disrespect Mr. Sergei is going to make us feel any better granting you any mercy.”

  “I’m not disrespecting. I’m just—”

  “Listen kid. Think about your family. We know where they live. Think about that on that long plane flight.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Apparently, you don’t know shit.”

  What a total crock. This asshole was bluffing. What else was he making up?

  His eyes went dull and he grimaced. “You obviously don’t know who the fuck you’re dealing with, kid.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me out of line. I twisted around and squirmed free.

  A security guard came bounding over. “Hey, what’s going on here? You two know each other?”

  “He knows my name somehow, but no, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Both of you, let’s see a picture ID and boarding passes.”

  Mr. Sports Coat had this dazed expression, like a boxer fighting to stay alert after taking a punch.

  “I ain’t flying anywhere.”

  “Well buddy, then you need to leave this line. Only passengers allowed here.”

  He backed away slowly, looking me straight in the eye. “Expect us,” he spat. “Somebody will be in touch. No matter where you go. Mr. Sergei’s got connections all over. He ain’t one who ever forgets … or forgives … an insult.”

  He pulled out his iPhone and snapped my picture. “Have a nice flight.” He smiled, turned and walked away.

  Chapter 26: Roma

  I spent a good half hour in the men’s room trying to make myself look and smell presentable. I rinsed out my muddy socks and sneakers in the sink, wringing the socks as dry as possible before slipping them back on, stuffing paper towels into my sneakers to absorb some of the moisture.

  I practically showered under that tap, washing my hair with that medicinal-smelling soap from the dispenser. I didn’t care about the stares but I drew plenty.

  I emerged from that washroom a much better representative of humanity that the one who had entered. At least folks wouldn’t be as disgusted to sit next to me on the plane.

  I was still giddy over the idea that I was in a weapons-free zone. Here, past security, no one could touch me. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since Florida. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be calm.

  It seemed unbelievable, but it was true. By this time tomorrow, I would be walking through the same city as Karla, breathing the same air, watching the same clouds. That made me positively giddy.

  Feeling so up, of course, negated any chance of seeing her in Root any time soon, but I if I ever saw Root again if I could link up with Karla in the flesh.

  I wandered the terminal, too restless to sit. I had thick wad of cash in my jeans but resisted the temptation to load up on a bunch of junk from the gift shops. I would have loved to have gotten a travel pillow and a fresh T-shirt but they were way overpriced.

  I passed by a display of junky earrings and immediately thought of Karla, but an airport was a ridiculous place to buy a gift like that like that. I was sure I would have plenty of opportunity in Rome.

  I did pick up a newspaper, though, along with a Peach Snapple and a Kit Kat. I thought I might as well catch up on what was going on in the world and calm my hunger pangs. I didn’t want to stumble into the middle of a war or a natural disaster, not that either were likely in a place like Italy.

  The front page had a big article about the Occupy movement. I still had no idea what that crap was all about. All I knew were the jokes and quips I had overheard in public and by DJs on the radio—in other words, folks as ignorant as me. At least I had the sense to keep my mouth shut until I had a chance to figure out what that deal was all about.

  Apparently, a big protest march had just gotten busted up in DC with hundreds of people getting arrested on the National Mall. And now there were solidarity protests popping up around the world. My take on it? Good for them. At least someone cared enough about what was going on in the world to do something.

  The chocolate bar only made me hungrier. I couldn’t help myself and grabbed a slice of Sbarro pizza from the food court. When I returned to the gate, I saw the pilots and aircrew arrive in their green and gold uniforms. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were real African pilots, not some European mercenaries. Cool.

  When the boarding announcement came, I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. My heart thumped with anticipation. I could feel Root retreating from my consciousness at light speed, making for the weirdest mix of triumph and worry. In one sense, Karla and I were getting farther apart in one world, and closer in the other. I just hoped I was making the right choice about which one mattered more.

  I stepped through the gate and onto the weird little bus with benches that would take us to the plane. Good bye America.

  ***

  I had only flown a couple times before. The first time was with Mom and Dad just before we moved to Florida. They told me we were just going to Disney World but in actuality we had gone to close on the house.

  I went down the aisle, looking for my seat. For an African airline, it seemed as professional as any. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Chickens in the overheads? Goats in the aisle? The seats even had a video screen embedded in every headrest with a selection of on-demand movies.

  I had a middle seat, and both of my seatmates were Ethiopian, as were most of the passengers, it seemed. They didn’t seem to notice my sogginess, or the musty odor that still permeated my clothes. To tell you the truth, one of those guys could have used some deodorant.

  Only about a quarter of the passengers were American or Italian. This was supposedly a brand new route for Ethiopian Air, though they had long been stopping in Rome to refuel. Only recently had they started letting passengers off and on, before continuing on to Addis Ababa, which I guess is their capital.

  The in-flight magazine had an article about some tourist destinations with the most exotic names—Axum and Gondar and Lalibela. There was a crossword puzzle too, but someone had already completed it.

  I was more sleepy than hungry by the time the flight leveled off and the stewardesses came around with the food. But the darned stewardesses woke me up every time they had something to give. Man, were they pushy, practically shaking me by the shoulders until I opened up my eyes. But it was probably a good thing I forced down a meal while I could. Who knew how long my cash would last in Europe?

  I drowsed off before they had even taken my dinner tray, waking only when the stewardesses had come around with breakfast. I was startled to see the location screen with that little plane superimposed over a map. We had already crossed much of Spain and almost in Rome. It was as if we had been teleported across the Atlantic.

  That sure got my heart pittering again. Only a few more hours and I would be on the ground. I wish I’d had the time to buy a map or something. I had no idea about the layout of this city or its transportation options. I knew more about Root and Luthersburg than I knew about Italy or Rome.

  But I was confident I could get it all sorted out. Once I found Karla, everything would be fine.

  ***

&n
bsp; I raised my seatback in preparation for landing. The plane banked over a bunch of dry looking fields and orchards. That was fucking Italy down there! Oh my God!

  People clapped after the wheels touched down, as if some had not expected to survive the trip. I sat there all nervous and sweaty as we pull up to a gate.

  I got up when the door opened and retrieved my CVS bag from the overhead bin and waited to exit the place. Most people stayed put in their seats, traveling on to Ethiopia, which despite the tourist propaganda, I still thought of as a place filled with starving people and scrubby deserts. I was glad to be getting off here in Italy.

  I stepped out into the terminal in a daze, grateful for all the signs in English. I had no clue how to speak or read Italian. The only words I knew were pizza and spaghetti. If Mom’s home schooling had been deficient in any area it had been the language department.

  I cruised through immigration, which was basically a rubber-stamp affair. I had no baggage to claim other than the anxieties weighting my brain. I approached a crowd of all these anxious, waiting faces greeting passengers.

  And then there was a guy there, tall and tan, with a cruel smirk that stood out from all the other expressions. He held a placard bordered in black and gold. In block letters, my name was written in Sharpie. ‘James Moody.’

  ***

  I nearly peed my pants. I forced myself to look straight ahead, but out of the corner of my eye I could see this guy looking at people and glancing at his phone. The fucker probably had my picture.

  Why would they show their hand like that? Did they actually think I was stupid enough to walk up and say hi? Were they just taunting me?

  I ran into the nearest rest room and locked myself in a stall. These weren’t like American toilet stalls; they had no gap below or above the walls, so I had this little sound-proofed closet all to myself. I felt pretty safe in there. For nearly an hour, I didn’t dare come out.

  When I did emerge, that guy was gone. There was a new crowd of people greeting the arrivals. I shuffled past, turned the corner towards the ground transportation area and took off running.

  I found a map posted on a wall with train and bus routes. I wanted to go to straight to Vatican City, but I was shocked to see how far the airport was from the city proper. It was like 30 km away, which is about 20 miles. I wasn’t even in Rome yet.

  The train—the Leonardo Express—cost fourteen Euros, way more than I was willing to spend. The bus was like one third the price, so I found a currency exchange booth and handed over five twenty-dollar bills. It was a bit sickening to get back only about seventy Euros. I hoped the prices I had seen so far weren’t representative of the overall cost of living here or I would be screwed. I wasn’t feeling as good about the deal I had made with those guys in Pittsburgh.

  Euros in hand, I started walking away and spotted that guy with the placard over by the taxi stand. The fucker actually thought I was flush enough to hire a taxi.

  I left him behind, rushing down a hall that led to a bus terminal, bought myself a ticket from a machine, and pretty soon I was on a bus heading the right direction. I didn’t know where exactly it would bring me, but I was pretty sure it was headed towards Rome.

  ***

  The traffic was horrendous, but we finally reached a place called Termini, which sounded kind of fatal. I had exact no address for Karla, only the vague sense that she lived within walking distance of the Vatican, since she had said she often attended mass under that alabaster dove. So I headed off on foot in that general direction, thinking I’d save a little cash by not taking the subway.

  Rome dazzled me right off the bat. The Termini area was a little blah, but I was soon cutting through alleys and plazas that looked like something out of a movie set. It was so unlike Central Florida or Ohio. I loved it.

  I stopped in front of a few restaurants and looked at the menus posted by their doors. The stuff I saw on people’s plates looked amazing, but the prices made me lose my appetite. If only those Euros didn’t count for half again as much as a dollar, maybe I would have sprung for a bowl of pasta. For now I kept walking, consulting the free map I had picked up from an information booth at the Termini.

  The sun was getting low. I came to this square dotted with several fountains. These Italians were big on fountains.

  There were tourists all over the place, including lots of kids my age or slightly older. I got the feeling though, that most of them weren’t nearly as worried about their money, from the looks of all those shopping bags and the way they didn’t blink at shelling out the Euros for those overpriced bottles of water from the refreshment carts.

  The map told me I was getting closer to the Vatican. I was about to turn left when I reached another plaza with yet another fountain and steps that seemed to go on and on up a series of terraces. I couldn’t help but be drawn up to the top, even though it was the opposite direction from where I wanted to go.

  I scanned the faces sitting on the steps as I went up, and they spanned the spectrum. There was a middle-aged woman crying and being consoled by a young woman I assumed to be her daughter. There were couples making out. Young men drinking beer. Old men trying to catch their breath.

  I didn’t stop until I reached the railing at the top and there, down a long avenue brushed with shadow and glinting in the late afternoon sun, was the dome that could only be St. Peters Basilica—the very place that harbored the alabaster window with the dove.

  The thought of being so close to the real Karla Raeth was enough to send me soaring over Rome.

  Chapter 27: Vaticano

  From the heights above the Spanish Steps, I could see these huge boulevards leading like spokes down to the river and to the Vatican City beyond. For some reason, the sight brought Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz to mind. Who was I? Dorothy?

  I trotted down those steps in triumph. I hadn’t felt this glorious since before the whole depressing deal with Dad and Mom and the house went down. It felt like I had survived some trial by fire and emerged hardened and ready for the next phase in life.

  I hung a right at the fountain and made my way down the long and wide Piazza di Spagna. Some sort of commotion was going on around several islands of grass and palm trees edged by curbing. Each island was crowded with little tents and protest signs. Apparently, this was part of Occupy Roma.

  It didn’t look like much. There were people banging away on laptops, handing out food to whoever wanted it, and another bunch standing in a circle banging on drums. I stood beside the other tourists and gawked for a bit before continuing on.

  I weaved my way through and around the throngs, cruising all the way to the river into the blinding sun without stopping. I crossed the Tiber just as the river fell under shadow. I knew it was the Tiber from the plaque in the middle of the bridge—the Ponte Umberto.

  All these ancient marble arches and glittery domes made my head flutter with the unreality of being here. The place seemed so ethereal and surreal, even more so than Root. Each time I stepped it felt like my feet were not quite landing on the ground.

  There again was that dome in the distance—St. Peter’s. I recognized it from a picture on a tourist map I had rescued from a trash barrel. Karla had said that she lived only a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Square, which was called Piazza San Pietro on the map. I decided to focus my search on a couple neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the Vatican City.

  I hurried along while there was still light, coming up on this huge fortress-looking thing called the Castel Sant’angelo. When I came to the next intersection and crossed the road, there was that dome again, looming ever larger.

  I saw some people on the corner make the sign of the cross, so I did the same, for good luck and to blend in, if nothing else.

  The apartments in the few residential buildings I passed on the main road had huge doors, lavish balconies and picture windows. They looked like places bankers and business executives might live—way too upscale for Karla. Something about her
made me doubt that she was a rich girl.

  I turned up a small street past yet another small church, until I found a street where the apartments looked more humble, built on a more human scale.

  My head threatened to flutter off my shoulders. I suspected that some of my giddiness was due to low blood sugar. I had to eat something, so I stepped into this neighborhood pizza joint. My lack of Italian proved less of a hurdle than expected, once I figured out their ass-backwards system for paying for food.

  I pointed at a couple of squares of cheese pizza and they whisked them up, wrapped them in paper and ribbon as if they were a birthday present, set a skinny can of Coke beside it and then handed me a slip of paper that looked like a receipt. But the big guy behind the counter refused my money, and when I went to reach for the pizza, he yanked it away.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a lady at a cash register behind me. I handed her the receipt and a ten Euro note. She rang up the order and handed me back a different slip along with some change. This was the ticket to free up my gift-wrapped pizza. I walked out of that shop victorious, feeling like I had mastered some arcane ritual.

  So I went down the street, munching pizza and systematically examining the names on every mailbox and doorbell in the foyers and outer walls of each building, looking for Raeths.

  That pizza was gone before I had reached the end of the block. And man, that crust made Sbarro’s taste like sawdust. Even the Coke tasted better here, somehow less sweet than the American stuff and much more effective at quenching my thirst. I kind of liked this Roma place.

  ***

  Street after street, building after building I searched and found not a shred of luck. I couldn’t find a name posted anywhere that was even close to Raeth. It was enough trouble finding names on name plates that didn’t end in vowels.

  I did buzz a Carla with a ‘C’ at one point, just to be thorough, but he turned out to be a man whose brother’s name was Andrea. Go figure.

  I worked my way up another short block, all the way to this major east-west thoroughfare between the castle and the walls of the Vatican. It was starting to get dark. Though the sidewalks were well-lighted, in some doorways I had to squint to make out the writing on the mailboxes. I wish I had brought a flashlight.