David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

They were in the back of a fish store. Feargal and Sarah got out to speak to a man, presumably the man who had answered the phone and opened the door. He was in a bloodied white smock, silver gloves and a long knife in loops on his belt. He and Sarah talked, leaning close together. The rank and briny smell of fish was rolling into the van, its progress slowed by the refrigerated chill of the room. Sarah came back. She leaned herself into the van.

“Okay, you’re going on by yourself. Someone else is going to collect you on the quays.”

“No. I want you to come with me.” If there’s one you think you can trust, try to stick with that one . Leila remembered that from the courses.

“I can’t. It’s either me or Feargal they’re after. Sorry. I was certain you were safe. That house we brought you to is a week old. But I’ll be where you’re going. You’ve just got to get to the quays.”

Feargal, on his phone, called back to them: “Not even the quays. She’s just got to make it to the Horse Market. She can get scrubbed there.”

“What do you mean, scrubbed?” said Leila. And she thought, Eww, a horse market? She was looking at the long knife on the fishmonger’s belt.

But there was no time to object. Sarah took her by the hand and led her through the store and then hustled her out the front door and onto a deserted street.

“That way,” said Sarah, and pointed down the road. “You’ll be met at the market.” In her voice now there was urgency instead of kindness.

Leila took off, not running, exactly, but moving quickly. She was scared. She wished she weren’t alone on a deserted street in a strange city.

But then she rounded a corner and came into a long, cobbled square, and she wasn’t alone anymore. It was wild, teeming with man and beast — five hundred souls, easy. And the horses, if that’s really what they were, were shocking to her. A few were full-size and strong-seeming, but most of them were runted and stunted, some the size of dogs. They were being raced and prodded and kicked and brushed and preened by a strange class or type of people the likes of whom Leila had never seen, people who looked to her like white Aboriginals in gaudy leisurewear. Men in small groups were drinking from plain brown bottles, and some were staggering; boys and girls roamed in packs, flirting and fighting.

And as she stood there taking in the anachronism, two light-eyed boys galloped past her on a pair of raggedy ponies, the ponies’ shoes ringing the cobbles, the boys bold as brass. Leila staggered back from the galloping boys and into the dark doorway of a pub.

“Keep going, Lola,” said the man who steadied her. He was in a cap and tie and dirty shirt. “Get into the meat of it,” he said, and pointed at the market square. And then he did a quick head tick, which Leila followed, and saw that half a block away, a tall man in a too-heavy coat had been startled by the same galloping boys. She saw him look for her — it was one of the men from the white Ford.

So she dove into the market. Cap and Tie followed her, and Too-Heavy Coat was quick behind; Too-Heavy Coat was talking into a phone, and he was making right for her. But a commotion engulfed him suddenly. Leila turned around to see what had happened: a clutch of men had surrounded him and were accusing him of some transgression, loudly, but in a language that made no more sense to her than stones clattering in a wave’s sandy pullback. Some of the men carried heavy sticks, the nonviolent purpose of which was hard to fathom. Cap and Tie brushed past her strongly. “Keep on, girl,” he said as he did. “Not far now.”

It had been done for her, she saw — the entrapment of her pursuer. These people were somehow on her side. So she kept on, through the long square, past old women in multiple skirts and young men in spotless tracksuits and a little girl swinging a broken bottle at her tormentors, who ducked and darted and laughed. Leila was invisible, ignored. But if she stopped moving, someone — one person in a small task- or drink-engaged group — would catch her eye and give her a distinct tsst or a nod and then return to ignoring her. And at the far end of the square, the vibe was less intense — there were tourists snapping pictures and vendors selling things sweet and greasy; a spiffy streetcar clanged by. She was back in the real world.

And there, in a taxi rank by the streetcar, was Dermot, her taximan from the morning, which seemed like a week ago now. She beelined toward him and he saw her coming and opened the rear door and she slid into the black vinyl of the backseat as if it were home.

“What the fuck was that?” she asked him.

He laughed as he quickly started the taxi. “That was the Horse Market.”

“They were speaking…that wasn’t even Irish, was it?”

“No. That would be the Cant.”

“The what?”

“The Cant. Gammon. Shelta.” The words meant nothing to her. Dermot saw her confusion. “The Traveler language,” he said.

Dimly, Leila recalled a movie that Rich had loved in which Brad Pitt played a bare-knuckled fighter who spoke unintelligibly. Leila had heard about Travelers once but assumed the whole thing — a nomadic white clan people, unassimilated by their small modern European host state? — was too bizarre to really exist. Because she had spent fifteen years helping the downtrodden, Leila sometimes forgot that she didn’t know everything about downtroddenness.

Dermot steered the little taxi down a hill and across a river that was channeled into a sort of unsightly trough with two lanes of traffic down both sides, like vinyl piping. Then up a hill and past about ten churches and into a smaller web of streets dotted with butchers and newsagents, phone stores and charity shops and bakeries.

“Where are we now?” Leila asked Dermot, leaning forward in her seat.

“The Liberties,” said Dermot.

They stopped outside a building with its name carved upon it: Widows House of the Parish of St. Nicholas Without & St. Luke. A man inside opened the front door. He was in his fifties, wearing a leather jacket.

“You’re Lola Montes,” he said to Leila by way of greeting.

“No, I’m not,” said Leila. “What’s your name?”

“Nicotine Lozenge,” said the man, proud and mischievous.

Leila sighed, without rancor.

Neither was this place, apparently, their final destination; it was just another safe house. But the so-called Nicotine Lozenge offered her newspapers and a seat at his kitchen table and tea, which he served in a pot, and he did that slightly dainty thing where he held the lid of the teapot with one finger when he poured. Her dad did it that way.

“You’ve been very reasonable, Lola,” said Nicotine. “We appreciate that.”

“You’ve left me no choice but to be. And you people also keep implying that you’re going to be able to help me somehow. Anyway, you’re really burning through the amount of time and attention I have for you and your cause.”

“All right, so,” he said. “Milk?”

“What?”

“For your tea.”

“Yes, please.”

“How much?”

“Milk?”

“Time.”

He was using on her some of the one-step-ahead stuff she used on people when she wanted them to feel like she was in charge.

“Three, four hours,” she said.

It was a bluff, they both knew. If Leila walked and tried to get back into the ticketed world herself, she would, as Ricky Ricardo used to say ominously, Have some ’splainin’ to do . Still, she wanted to let this man know she was not someone to be pushed around and that Dear Diary better make its pitch soon.

He took a sip of his tea and said: “For the last ten years, Lola, what have you been working for?”