John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Around her the leather got noisy. People turned whole-body, their feet shifting.

“It’s not true,” she repeated. “There’s no divorce. Jay and I, we’re still good.”

Roebuck brought her nails together under her chin, unexpectedly rabbitty.

“Mrs. Lulucita, well. Our contacts are claiming you’re the one who—”

“I know, I know.” Barbara’s chair was noisy too, given her effort to think. “I’ve been pretty crabby, a couple of times. Vicious, okay, maybe. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I guess I’m saying, I know what these people talking about.”

She worked up the right sort of smile, Oprah-sweet. There had to be evidence behind the rumors, and Barbara hadn’t spent this long dealing with children and their suppositions without learning to put evidence in different light. In this case the light she needed was right outside, the hot and aggravating sun, almost at solstice intensity. She had the vocabulary, too, the way to put her explanation across, thanks to her work at the Sam Center.

“Jay can validate these feelings. He’d be the first to acknowledge, a lot of stress.”

Though she couldn’t look at her Jaybird just yet. The mechanical box of colors on the table (for Roebuck, on edge, trying to take this in, had spun the laptop back Barbara’s way) was likewise too much. City Baroque. The wife found what she needed, rather, among the diplomas on Roebuck’s walls. The neutral squares of sun-glazed glass allowed her patter to continue. Still it wasn’t until her husband began to speak, coming in with firm and canny support—“Hey, I mean, stress? Let me tell you…” (support talky and taking up space, allowing Barb to breathe Mother of God in gratitude) — it wasn’t until the wife heard him back up her desperate play that she could so much as take his hand. Even after that Barbara kept avoiding his eyes, sensing only via the pressure on fingers and palm how the man regained conversational momentum. Her gaze remained elsewhere. She frowned again at the family website, its black could-be love-letter.

“Roebuck,” Jay asked, “you married?”

The husband regained full momentum… ‘sheen a pressure-cooker…we’ve all gone a little crazy…living in the volcano with no place to vent . A minute or two of this and Jay actually had Roebuck following his lead.

“Certainly,” the Alpha Wife said, “my husband and I have our days. I can think of moments when it’s as if I’ve just met my husband for the first time.”

Barbara could let her husband have the floor again, him and the other executive, while she herself put in only the occasional nod or phrase: “Aurora’s no problem, no.” With her free hand, the one not gripping Jay’s, she could first take time for an underwire that bit her ribs and then probe the outside of her purse until she found the nubbled shape of her rosary. Prayer would feel good, even silent prayer, punctuating her uncertainty with the names of God. It would feel as if she had a handle on what she’d just done, her screeching one-eighty. Beneath her fingers, however, Barbara’s purse-leather remained silent, no match for the squeaking chairs around her, nor even the muffled thrum and bleat of day-traffic out along the Bayfront. She didn’t have a handle. It was as if she’d stumbled on herself in this position, back to front and facing a new landscape. Just now the only motives she dared to identify for denying the trouble in her marriage were low ones, like anger or a general contrariness. As for the possibility that she’d actually told these people what she felt — that she remained committed to this man — no way she could think about that. She needed to tie it up in four or five decades of her rosary before she approached it. But her lower motives, her desire to smack down a woman like Roebuck, that Barbara could understand. Even on the far side of the Atlantic, she couldn’t allow the Attaché any further advantage.

But what was “advantage” here? Barbara’s announcement meant that Roebuck and her friends would get what they wanted, a PR windfall. And what would the mother and her family get? On the glass tabletop the five passports remained fanned out like a poker hand. What, did Barbara want to gamble? Stay in town?

And now Jay too had started to flag, no longer sounding so game and chummy. He’d lost enough steam for Barb to notice, at least. The more his off-again, on-again wife avoided looking him in the eye, the more his rally faltered. He never let go of Barbara’s hand.

“So,” he said, fumbling for another line of talk. “So…”

The Attaché was adjusting her jacket. Barb didn’t like to see her touch her lapel.

“Well,” Roebuck said. “I believe that’s everything.”

“Everything…”Jay ran a thumb over Barbara’s knuckle.

“Certainly you’ll need to speak with your children. There’s no one in this office who would object to that.”

Jay’s thumb was tentative, never completing a circle.

“No,” said Barbara. “No way we’re finished here yet.”

The two across the table gave her such a frown that she could compare eyes, Roebuck’s round Anglo periwinkle to the other guy’s leaf-shaped Arabian chocolate. After a few seconds of that, facing her husband came easy.

“There’s still Silky,” she reminded the Jaybird. “We’re not leaving here until we know what was up with that guy.”

Her husband the Jaybird. Nobody but Barbara would’ve seen the fresh energy coming into his looks. But Roebuck noticed soon enough, the way he followed up Barbara’s lead, letting go of her to lend his attack body English. He lay his stubby hand across the spread passports, vowing that before he and his wife went to the children with today’s offer, they would know everything they needed to know about the late Lieutenant Major. Jay had Attaché dropping her head, studying her nails. For a while the longest response she managed was a couple of frustrated words: You two .

“Roebuck. I mean. All Barb and I know is, his killer’s still out there.”

“Well, surely you realize that with an investigation in progress—”

“Sure sure, police procedure. Hey. Roebuck. You are the police.”

The UN man crossed his legs the other way, a body-language harrumph.

“You are the police,” Barbara said. “You make the rules.”

“That NATO investigation, I mean. It’s right here with us. It’s in the computer.”

“You two.” The Attaché spun the laptop. “Our organizations are under no obligation to tell you anything.”

Barbara put out a hand, stopping the machine in mid-spin. “Mother of God, you were spying on us.”

“Majorly spying, Roebuck. You might as well’ve had someone on the balcony.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. It was your security at stake, may I remind you.”

“My security? Mine and Barb’s and the kids? If that’s the case, hey. How come you can’t tell me anything except how my sex life is going?”

“Well. We’ve turned up nothing that indicates your family would be a target.”

“Oh, so you can tell us something about your investigation?”

Nobody but Barbara would notice the born-again feistiness in her husband’s face, in the corners of his mouth and his upraised brows.

“Jay’s right,” she said. ‘You called this meeting, you wanted our help. So if you’d thought it would cinch the deal, you’d’ve told us about Silky already.”

“Barb’s right. You’d’ve told us whatever it took.”

“You always had that card to play. That’s all we’re saying.”

The Attaché had shrunk back as far as her chair would allow. She shared another look with the UN rep and then set off on a tour of her outfit’s accessories, touching glasses and brooch and watchband. Barbara, watching, bit her tongue. When Roebuck let out a long exhale, to Barb it sounded like her Jaybird’s cry after he’d gotten hit.