April Smith: White Shotgun

“If we really are related, am I supposed to spy on my own family?” “Go and observe, then we’ll decide. Don’t bitch; this is a high-class assignment. Siena is a beautiful city. Plus, they have the best gelato in your life — at a hole-in-the-wall called Kopa Kabana. And you’re there for Palio,” he adds, his eyes taking on a rare sparkle.

“What’s the big deal about a horse race?” “It’s not a horse race, it’s ‘a spectacular,’ as my father would say. Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like it — tens of thousands of people squeezed into a piazza, all going nuts.” “Security must be interesting.” He nods. “They have their hands full. Siena is made up of what they call contrade, like neighborhoods — actually little city-states, with their own seat of government and coat of arms — who have hated one another for centuries. Instead of killing one another, they have a race. It’s the most dangerous, fastest horse race in the world. Ninety seconds, that’s it, in the middle of town, on a track with mattresses stuck in the corners. The jockeys ride bareback and do anything to win — make deals, shove one another off the horse. The whips are made of the skins of calf penises. It’s so crazy Italian.” “Calf penises?”

“They use them to whack the hell out of each other. It’s a blood sport. Someone always gets hurt. God forbid the horse. The horse eats at the table. I kid you not. They have outdoor dinners, and the horse eats at the table. Kind of like Thanksgiving at my in-laws’ house,” he muses, screwing in an ear pod as the phone rings with my alleged new family member on the line.

“Oh, Ana!” exclaims Cecilia Nicosa when I’ve picked up and identified myself. “How beautiful to hear from you! I was hoping I would, but I was never certain that you got my letters.” Her accent would be hard to place. Latin, but not quite.

“I was on vacation in London when I got the call from Los Angeles that you were looking for me,” I say, maintaining eye contact with Dennis.

“Where are you now?” she asks.

“At the FBI office in Rome.”

“Rome! That is just two hours from us!” she says, and immediately invites me to come and stay with her husband and their teenage son, Giovanni, in their “little house on a hill.” Dennis gives the thumbs-up. We settle on a train the following day.

“A car will take you back to your hotel,” he says, “and drop you off tomorrow at Stazione Termini. Look for Caffè Nicosa, smack in the middle of the station. Get the prosciutto, goat cheese, and arugula panino. Trust me.” Despite the frigid air-conditioning, there are sweat stains under his arms. Had the interview been that stressful?

“I trust you,” I say with a hollow laugh.

“We should be in good shape in Siena. No worries; I work closely with the locals. I’ll be checking in.” He hands over a bound report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. “For Trusted Agents Only. PROFILE: NICOLI NICOSA.” “Reading material for the train.” “How long have you been keeping files on my relatives?” I ask lightly.

Dennis lays a big hand on my shoulder. “The city never sleeps.”

At Stazione Termini the next day, an impatient crowd is staring at a board where all the departure signs are rolling over to say, “Soppresso.” Nearby, a group of exhausted teenagers lies in a pile on top of their rucksacks in the middle of the floor. I ask what’s going on.

“It is a train strike,” replies a girl with a Persian accent. “We’ve been waiting all night.”

Everybody in Rome seems to know the trains aren’t running, except the FBI’s legal attaché. I wonder why this is. Has Dennis Rizzio been prisoner of the mock Bureau office so long he has forgotten that we are actually in Italy?

At least Caffè Nicosa is where he said it would be, a deftly lit island of elegance in the center of the hall. Brick dividers, aluminum moldings punched out with playful circles. Starbucks, it is not. Enviable customers are picking at tiny balls of mozzarella in nice white bowls. Floating like a golden leaf in a sea of sweaty, pissed-off commuters, Caffè Nicosa beckons you to come in and be civilized. I am dying to sit down with a cold glass of Pinot Grigio and bask in the irony of reading the FBI file on its owner, Mr. Nicosa, but every table is occupied and there’s a long line.

Slowly I come to understand that the only way to get to Siena in the foreseeable future is by bus. I text Cecilia the change in plans and haul my suitcase outside, where the devilish cobblestones break a wheel. The heat is laughable; the hot winds must blow directly from Algeria, because my face has dried out like a date. When I shout, “Stazione d’autobus?” over the car horns and swirling grit, a man in uniform directs me to a city bus, with instructions to get off at the last stop.

When I arrive at the bus terminal an hour later, there aren’t many passengers left. It is the last point before the freeway in a run-down section of bleak, graffiti-covered apartment buildings that look as if they’ve taken one too many power punches to the midsection. I squeeze myself and the rebellious roller bag into a tiny cafeteria the size of a gas station convenience store, where skinhead families and black-shrouded nonnas have taken refuge from the hundred-degree heat. The mood is tense and incendiary, as if a harsh word could cause the place to combust. There are round signs dangling from the ceiling with Coca-Cola bottles riding rocket ships. I stare at the floor, meditating on the black and green diamond pattern of purgatory.

Hell is waiting. Hell is being unable to go forward or back, when your boyfriend is in parts unknown and home is a stack of cartons in a storage locker. What am I doing in this remote Roman ghetto, so far off the track that my sense of self has dissolved like the puddle of melted Popsicle at my feet? The language, the foreignness, the uncertainty, the heat, are percussive beats like the blood pounding in my head, urging me to flee. The exhilaration of being plucked out of London for a whirlwind trip to Rome now seems hideously misplaced. It’s just another assignment. The arrows lined up and put me in the picture with Nicoli Nicosa, that’s all.

Like Sterling, I am a soldier for hire, part of whose job is to soldier on alone. Every time I catch a TV monitor showing encounters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, I wonder if he’s there, boosting my spirits by remembering that we both keep making the same choice. When I’m working, I don’t question things. I feel whole. I know my world, and I’m confident there. As long as I respect the coach, I can be a good team player, but in this job, the best work is often done off the grid, on your own terms. You deal with the blowback later. Sterling and I are the same — happiest when we’re acting solo. Or maybe it’s the American way to go it alone. Looking around, I seem to be the only non-Italian packed into the Roman bus station; certainly the only woman not in the company of a mother or a sister.

There’s no place like Italy to make you feel like an orphaned child.

I leave the cafeteria, dragging the suitcase toward an open lot backed by tenements that has been turned into a field of corn, a hopeful sign that somewhere in this degraded landscape the human spirit has prevailed. Ahead at the horizon is an elevated highway where cars are speeding out of the city.

Silhouetted against the setting sun is a woman, six feet tall with storklike legs, wearing nothing but a bikini and heels; obsidian-black skin, hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, languidly moving to a boom box playing African music. Curtains of laundry flutter from the windows above her. A car pulls off the ramp. A white businessman steps out. The woman extends her hand and leads him into the cornfield.