John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Every Lulucita link, just as the mother had suspected, carried the same cryptic sentence. The words stretched or fattened in different directions, but there was always the saint of fire and the echoing Tuesday-you-two. It made Barbara think of the dreams some of her visitors at the Sam Center had described, while she’d worked screening potential clients. Nettie had helped her with more pages from the copy room, guides to interpretation, material she called “Cliff Notes to Jung and Von Franz.” In this dream on the Lulucita website, posted to every page, the greatest enigma was the saint. The mother, grinding her teeth again, stuffing pillows over her inner alarms — the mother believed the line referred to an actual figure. She couldn’t think who it was, she’d never gotten much past Chiara and Francis and Teresa herself Still it rang a bell, the saint of fire. And she knew that two in the afternoon was a very American time for a meeting. Neapolitans tended to get together a lot later on, after dark.

“Hey Barb, you with us?” Jay gave her a touch at a rib. “You hear that, what Roebuck’s put on the table? ‘Sdecent.”

Barbara was bent over tightly, her purse digging into her lap.

“Not that anything’s written in stone, I mean. Not yet. First we talk to the kids.”

The mother nodded closemouthed.

“These are preliminary figures, ballpark. But still. Decent, hey?”

Sitting up, she felt as if she had to pull her entire head out of the splashy rectangle with the secret script. But Barbara could see what Roebuck and her friend had to offer just by once more taking in the Consulate space around her. Those greenhouse windows, that muscular desk. This was a castle keep for an Alpha princess, with round-the-clock security and junior-year internships.

“And we can walk away,” Jay went on, “any time we want.”

Barbara still felt something at the spot where he’d touched her. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” she said finally. “As soon as we step back out that door, we could end up knocked off our feet.”

Jay took this to be his wife’s way of bringing the subject back to their late NATO liaison. Vigorously he agreed, glowering at the two bureaucrats. Before he and Barbara presented this latest offer to the kids, Jay insisted, they needed to know precisely what the Lieutenant Major had been into. After a minute Barb began to say the same, spinning the laptop away from her, throwing its colors back in Roebuck’s face. Barbara told the woman to skip the euphemisms, the language of diplomacy or PR. “Just tell us about Silky.” The mother was aware she was distracting herself, allowing herself to enjoy the way the Jaybird swung his handsome head. But better that than to ask these three what they knew about saints. If what Barb had seen on the website was in fact a message from Romy, well, the Attaché had already made clear what she thought of the gypsy.

Roebuck didn’t look too happy now, either. She was taking her nails to her hair, raking back a few loose strands. “You must realize,” she was saying, “even if I had all the facts about the officer’s case, I couldn’t risk compromising the NATO investigation.”

“NATO?” Jay asked. “It’s a NATO investigation?”

The older woman fussed at her glasses, first a corner and then the bridge.

“In the food business, I mean. When we needed somebody to go over the books, we got someone from the outside.”

“Mr. Lulucita, I must say. If you believe anyone even remotely affiliated with this office is some sort of criminal, then what are you doing here?”

“Roebuck, hey. You want to know what I believe? I believe that yesterday my son almost stopped a bullet.”

“Well. Nobody in this office fired it.”

Barbara withdrew once more into code-cracking. She recalled that her own name-saint was no longer on the church calendar, but had once been associated with thunderstorms and artillery. The more disturbing question, though, was what Romy had wanted, today at two. A secret meeting, set up in private code, had to be about more than a hug and a kiss. No sooner had the mother checked out of the squabble in the office than she started to worry. The fresh static between her ears rose up so noisily, at first she didn’t notice when Roebuck switched the subject to her marriage.

“Yes, your marriage.” And when had the Attaché gotten so loud? “I must ask. After all, it’s you who insist we lay our cards on the table.”

Jay had his head in his hand, and he fingered the spot alongside his ear where the scippatori had hit him. “You — you want to know about—”

“We need to know, in this office. Certainly. Your marriage is a critical consideration for any arrangement we make today.”

“You’ve got no right. That’s personal.”

“We’ve got every right. The overseas community is a family too.”

To Barbara it looked as if the Jaybird had been cracked again. He shrank and avoided both women’s eyes, seeming to seek his reflection in the tabletop glass. Roebuck was the one angling forward now. She declared that, after the way Jay and Barb had marched in here making demands, the least could expect was a personal question or two. But the Attaché didn’t aggravate Barbara like the man from the UN. He’d tightened up his hauteur, his mouth shrinking into a satisfied nub.

“Now there are rumors,” Roebuck went on. “Disturbing rumors.”

“What,” Barbara said, or growled, “in the streets?”

“In the streets, precisely. We have our contacts.”

The best Jay could manage was shaking his head.

“We have every right,” the Attaché said, “to maintain an active network of contacts. Our interests here in Naples have a direct bearing on security at home.”

“And you’re saying, everybody’s been talking about our marriage.”

“We’re saying that it seems you two intend to divorce. There’s talk of you whispering, well. Whispering vicious things, in places less private than you supposed.”

“Vicious? Vicious, like—’Jay, fuck ! Our fucking children might get shot!’”

“Mrs. Lulucita. We’re not impressed by gutter talk, in this office. Especially when it comes from a woman who needs to spend a half an hour every day with a priest.”

Barbara tugged at an armpit. “So what does that prove? A priest should be the least you’d expect, with what I’ve had to deal with.”

“Perhaps. But then why should you husband have to sneak off to confession too? And why should that come as a complete surprise to you?”

Barb raised the other arm too, crossing them tightly, elbows up.

‘Your first week in the city,” Roebuck went on, “you inquired about a solo plane ticket back to New York.”

Jay glanced up. “What?”

‘Yes. A solo booking. So, then. What do you have to say, you two? Is this the end, for the family?”

The UN rep hoisted his long nose. “Is it the end?” he asked.

The husband collapsed again while these strangers teetered closer. Barbara looked elsewhere, first at the smooth gray shoulders of the laptop’s shell, concealing the rococo excess on the screen, and then away towards wraparound void of the office window. Both that and the little machine on the table could’ve been fragments of a single vast and multifaceted eye, a cosmopolitan organ that missed nothing. Which made them also — could’ve been — props for another reiteration of Barbara’s change-of-life first encounter with the city. This afternoon again presented the familiar moment: her big man going down amid a throng of gossips, observers who been listening in on other people’s conversations for three thousand years.

“It’s not true,” Barbara said.