John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Seductively, or almost, the priest cocked an eyebrow.

“But at the head of the host,” he went on, “there’s Paul.”

“Yes.” She began to nod. “Paul.”

Cesare’s look turned sober again, and the mother stopped nodding. God knows, today’s visit must seem strange. It wasn’t a week yet since the Refugee Center, the second “healing episode,” and every evening before dinner Barbara had arranged for time with the old man. Today they occupied their usual pew, a couple of rows back from the altar to the New Age, and the priest lounged as comfortably as his robes allowed. Nonetheless this must’ve seemed like something different. Barb had come poking at the front intercom during the afternoon riposo , when even a rabble-rouser like Cesare shut up shop for a couple of hours. By the time the father answered the buzz she’d actually pulled off one of her flats, preparing to rap the heel on a window somewhere, and — a stranger to herself — she’d found herself leaking tears too.

She must’ve been a sight, through the viewing slot. She had to wonder, was this menopause? Was it time she took a serious look at the possibility?

What had brought her to the church today, wet-eyed and unshod and flushed from climbing, was hardly a tragedy. Her family excursion had been cut short, that’s all. In the morning Barb and the kids had headed out with the Lieutenant Major, him and his army, and then they’d come back early and liaison-free.

Cesare returned to his point. “I do realize that what I’ve asked of you and Paul, it might seem like overmuch, just now. The straw that broke the owl’s back.”

She reached to tug an armpit, then let her hand drop. “Oh, listen. The least I could expect was that you’d try to enlist us in your cause.”

“Well I won’t withdraw my request. I want you to stay on in Naples.”

Through the thin leather of her purse, she could feel the vertebra of her rosary.

“Forgive me for saying so, but I believe it’s what Christ wants too.”

“All right. I told you already, when I ask myself what I’m still doing here, that’s always one of the answers I come up with. We can do a lot of good in this city.”

“Indeed yes, but it may be that you’ve already done enough. You speak of my ‘cause,’ now. Yet as for that, hasn’t your husband already done enough? Just the other day, didn’t he minister to the lost sheep down in Castel dell’Ovo?”

The hunger strikers, the old man’s pet project. As for Jay’s visit down to the security ward, a new holding pen in an old waterfront castle, the most Barb felt she could offer was a Neapolitan shrug.

“Signora, I do recognize, even I, that what’s good for the starving protesti may not be good for you. As you say, you’re the one who’s had five children.”

“Is that how you’d prefer me?” Barbara asked, “Just another unhappy wife?”

The lines around his squint lengthened.

“Cesare, am I saying anything about what Jay did, down at dell’Ovo the other day? Today is about today. That’s what I’m here for, today and this girl again, this gypsy. She doesn’t take Kahlberg’s shit. Excuse me, but I have to call a spade a—”

“It’s as clear as the cross on the wall, Mrs. Lulucita. Quite brilliantly clear, don’t you know. You feel as if, yourself, day after day you swallow that man’s shite.”

“Well he’s my Lieutenant Major, isn’t he? My tax dollars at work.”

“And you swallow any disgusting business he slaps on your plate, while this girl picks it up and heaves it back in his face.”

“You’ve got it, that’s what I’m saying. Romy, this teenager, this orphan, a week ago she was a quadriplegic. Still she’s got Kahlberg looking over his shoulder. Today, you should’ve seen what she did. She comes out of nowhere and in another minute…”

“Oh now, signora, you know where Romy came from. You know perfectly well where she gets her information. ‘Na clandestina , that one.”

Barbara shook her head. Not that she denied the allegations about Gypsy Romy, especially not when it was the good Father who brought them. The girl must’ve had criminal contacts, going back to a criminal past — the poor girl. And wasn’t that a good reason for a mother to shake her head?

“Of course,” the priest went on, “these days it’s no great a challenge to find you, signora. You’re a regular traveling circus, the Flying Lulucitas.”

That stiffened her neck. Barbara pointed out that the resurrected gypsy did more than merely catch up with the family entourage, once they all arrived somewhere. “The girl’s always there first. She’s waiting for us.”

“Quite right. We must assume she has her spies.”

But Barb didn’t like to think about spies, either. Spies and spying — the cloak-and-dagger which must’ve been some part of Jay’s and Silky’s arrangement — that was more or less why she kept rushing back to this Dominican Jesuit. Everybody around her seemed to have made a place for that arrangement, in their new Mediterranean lives. And Barbara knew what she’d seen out at the Centro Rifugiati . She had evidence enough to show the same backbone, to take her own life back to Long Island Sound. But here she sat, Mother Maybe-Maybe-Not.

Whenever she thought about her terrible hour or so at Jay’s worksite — the family had actually spent more time at the hospital afterwards, with DiPio and a fresh wave of media — some new uncertainty started sawing at her backbone. The idea that Jay and the NATO man were trading favors had started to seem dubious as soon as Barbara had stumbled out of the chapel shadows. The camp plank-way beneath their feet revealed splinters, mud, blotches of pesticide. The stink had gotten worse as the sun rose higher, and the campers who lined the walk remained battered, hand-to-mouth, and impossible to talk to. What sort of a favor was this?

Later she reminded herself that the job wasn’t the favor — the family’s cushy Vomero setup was the favor. But then she had to ask another question. Just what sort of service, she had to wonder, could the Jaybird provide for Kahlberg? What names could the husband have heard, through the nylon walls? Any criminal activity in the camp had to be nickel and dime. Nobody was scheming to tunnel into Langley, Virginia. Nobody had any way to hijack the next trainload of Euros down from Milan. Jay had Muslims in the camp, to be sure, but not nearly room enough for a madrassa, nor anything like weapons either. Spoons and brooms, that’s what they had, like the clandestini who’d tried to kidnap the American Boss. And as for that ragtag group, a four- or five-some, they posed no threat to international security.

Really, what could Barbara’s husband do for NATO? Kahlberg’s people must’ve had plenty of stool pigeons already.

She knew better than to expect answers from her husband, anyway. The wife watched what he said, closely; she flipped over every evasion and poked at its underbelly. The day Jay paid a visit to the strikers down in Castel dell’Ovo, though she didn’t know what she might be looking for, she’d scrutinized the clips on the TV news. Over the past week, though, Barbara found herself looking more and more for help from the Samaritan Center. Not that she sent an email, much less made a phone call. She felt too shaken for actual contact, too much in the wrong. But the mother went back to her web research, the sites where she’d learned a thing or two about screening cases for counseling. Library work always had a calming effect, for Barbara. More soothing still was the file folder she’d insisted on bringing from Bridgeport, the one labeled Sam C//Nettie , which held printouts and clippings marked up by her mentor. Every line highlighted in orange, every backwards jotting and five-pointed star, seemed to strengthen Barb’s better judgment. She paid special attention to the verbal cues or body language that might reveal what a person had on her mind. On his mind, rather — the Jaybird’s mind.