Earthquake I.D.

Chapter Fifteen

287 John Domini Chapter Fifteen The Refugee Lazarus had come back to his idea about a video. “Our arrangement, madame?” Barbara couldn’t follow him at first, instead staring at his long-toed feet, before which Jay had turtled down over the automatics, indulging himself in a oneman Demolition Derby. The husband sent black bits and pieces sailing through the flashlight’s dwindling glow, the magazines in one direction and the bodies in another. Barb understood, she approved, but when the metal landed it clattered like tin, as if somehow she’d wound up in a space without dimension. When Barbara once more took in the outlaws around her, keeping her own gun cradled against her hip, the five young men appeared like sketches on a clay vase. The two scippatori, huddled over her passport, might’ve been heroes of Troy consulting a map. She was back on the second floor in the Nazionale, cruising the display cases of kitchenware. Then on one of the kraters or serving bowls, one of the figures began to speak. “Madame? You recall our arrangement, the prayer on-camera?” Barb slid the revolver behind her, tucking it against her spine. With her whipsaw turned to feathers, with her eyes and ears likewise playing tricks, she wondered about the meager word “relief.” She needed some word out of a fairy tale, an incantation. The rangy clandestino looked a bit like a celebrity again, lifting his chin, regaining his swagger. “The video, Mrs. Lulucita? You are listening, please? I will tell you now how this film will be made.” “Oh, Fond.” She suffered fresh tenderness towards him even as she shook her head. “No more playacting, I just can’t.” “But, playacting, what is the relevance? My project is never merely artistic.” 288 EarthquakE I.D. “No more movies, no screens or media. From now on it’s real life, face to face.” Jay was back on his feet, stepping up behind her. He put one hand on her panties’ waistline, the other on the gun. “But, face to face, just so. Just so will be our video statement, much better enabled back up on the street. Up there, it will be the NATO, yes, but also the news.” “The—news.” Barbara, trying to think, became aware of the limestone in her scalp. “There’ll be cameras, you’re saying. You’re saying you and I can talk face to face, like human beings. And the newspeople, they’ll make the video.” “Works for me,” said Jay, a bit loud. “Hey. Sooner we’re back to sea level, I figure, sooner we can make this right.” Fond frowned at that, his gaze dropping. He stared at Barbara’s belly as if he could see through it to Jay’s busy fingers, trying to take her weapon. The leader of the Shell grumbled that, here in Naples, they couldn’t make much “right”— the real problems were down in the Sahel. “Don’t go there,” Jay said. “Don’t go back there, squabbling, trouble. We’ve been there and we just saw better, a lot better, a beautiful thing.” The handsome skin-and-bones went on frowning. “La vie est ailleurs,” he said. “Whatever. Pont is, I mean. We all just saw the same thing down here.” Then why was the Jaybird still trying to take Barbara’s weapon? She gave him a look, over her shoulder, then told her kidnapper to speak English. “Life is elsewhere.” He perked up, sounding prideful. “From 1968.” Jay remained at Barbara’s back, close enough to make the snatch, as once more he acknowledged that he liked Fond’s idea. “They’re the pros, up there, the newspeople. It comes to spectacle, I mean, that’s what they do.” Jay wasn’t just telling the man what he wanted to hear, either. Also the husband reiterated that a trip to Mali didn’t seem realistic. The problem wasn’t only that the Lulucitas had family issues, he pointed out; on top of that, the authorities might question their security. “Hey, never mind Africa, they might not let us back into New York.” 289 John Domini “But I will say the rosary with you,” added Barbara. The young man squinted down at her, picking at his low beltline. “Fond, you know me. You know I’ll have to get those beads out.” “I know, yes. For this reason, I...