John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

“Jay?” She swung his way, in the crowded hole. “Jaybird?”

“We don’ need him,” one of the kidnappers said, out of the cell’s backlit opening.

“What?” she asked. “What are you saying?”

“You the one, Missus. Him, man, we don’ need.”

“What — what are you thinking?” The flashlight beam shifted and she noticed the purse at her hip, still shut, snaps fastened. “What do you want?

“Oh, listen,” she went on, “anyway, really, whatever it is you want, forget about it. This will get you nowhere. You’ll be lucky if they don’t send you to Abu Ghraib.”

Tough talk. Barbarian talk, surging up anew after the discovery in Cesare ’s back room. “Maybe,” she went on, “maybe Abu Ghraib is what you’re scared of? You’re facing prison, deportation?” This seemed the likeliest possibility. “You’re facing deportation and you think, with Jay and me, you can negotiate a deal. You think, the Americans can make a difference for you. Mother of God, do you really believe…”

The kidnappers moved away without responding. The lights cast a wan back-glow, and the sandal-shuffle echoed a bit longer. Barb was left in a dark so thick that her staring had a lozenge pattern, a ripple of snakeskin. She sneezed, chilled. Still she couldn’t shake the clarifying anger that had sprouted in her, a sense that she had the nerve to handle this. Until a year ago she wouldn’t have dared to take on a challenge like Maria Elena, and since then Barbara had grown that much stronger.

Beside her Jay stirred, finding his voice with another obscenity or two. She tried to imagine an escape. They would sit back to back, pick off each other’s…

“Barb?” Jay asked. “Hey?”

“Right here, Jaybird.” Was he talking into a wall? “I guess,” she went on, “I’m more angry than anything else. I’m not hurt.”

She had to wait for his response, “…angry…,” then wait again.

“Well I’m hurt,” he said finally. “The fucks whacked me in the head. I’ve got to wonder, where’s Paul when I need him?”

The best she could manage was a smile he couldn’t see. “Try a few deep breaths,” she said. “The air’s supposed to be good for you.”

“Smells like lemon.” He seemed to be extending his legs. “Lime and lemon.”

“The rock’s supposed to have this great stuff in it, the vitamins and minerals for the whole region. It’s in the fruits and vegetables, it’s in the mozzarella.”

“The waters. The healing spa waters.”

It would do no good to look concerned. “Jaybird, really. They hit you.”

“I’m okay, Owl Girl. Between a headache and a broken head, hey. I guess I know the difference.”

No good to nod, either. She nudged backwards with one shoulder, and there he was, his heaving ribcage. He spoke again: “Just, what would be nice, about now? I mean. Would be nice if we had a clue, here.”

He gave a sigh, her elbow lifting against his chest.

“You notice they didn’t bother to tie our feet,” he said.

Barbara wanted to talk about something else. “Jay, have you noticed how, in this city, everywhere you go triggers another round of starting over?” She sat up, losing touch of him. She explained that where they found themselves now was a case in point; they were back at the beginning of things, for Naples.

Jay took his time responding. “At least,” he said, “the money’s no problem.”

“Huh? Jay, look at where we are.” She almost laughed at the expression: look . “It’s the Sotterraneo. It’s back to the raw materials.”

“The ransom, forget about it. Roebuck, I mean. She’s got it in petty cash.”

“Jay, would you listen? Anyway, can’t you see this isn’t about money?”

He sighed in a way she’d always hated, as if she was ten years old.

“Jay, haven’t you still got your wallet? Don’t you see what they’re doing? They’ve gone off to get somebody, and he’s going to tell us what this is about. Now, for once, stop this, the tough guy. Stop and think about what I’m telling you. Ever since the first morning in town, this family’s had to stop, step back, and start over.”

She’d never brought the idea up to him, not even at bedtime. “I’m not saying we’re not at the age. Middle age, aren’t you always getting turned around? Isn’t there always something that takes you back twenty years? Always something makes you think you have to start over. But around here, it’s not just about our age.

“Around here, also we’re tripped up by this incredible Naples past.” She’d never told him, between the urges to obliterate and the efforts to repair. “The city goes back three thousand years. And it triggers a kind of syndrome, it takes us back too, so that…”

“Jesus, Owl. Are you telling me how you feel ?”

The contempt she heard — that might’ve been the echo.

“Telling me how you feel. Let’s see if I got it. We’re all getting nowhere.”

“Jay, don’t.” She had the nerve for him too, now. “I’m talking about emotions.”

“I mean, it’s beautiful. We’ll just sit here talking emotions, since whatever we try, hey. We’ll get nowhere.”

“It’s better than sitting here babbling about money. If you’d done half the work I did at the Sam Center—”

“Aw, not again. Sam Center, Holy of Holies. Give me a break.”

“If you’d done half the work I did, you’d realize there’s nothing more dangerous than a personality that’s stuck in old patterns.’’

“Okay, Doctor. How about this, okay? If we’re all the time winding up back at Square One, think of it this way.” He might’ve sat up. “Doesn’t have to mean we’re stuck. Maybe it means just the opposite. Hey, how about that?”

She flexed her bound wrists till they burned.

“How about, we might go anywhere? We’re back to Day One, this godforsaken hole, okay. But then, how about, somebody does some actual work ?”

“Mother of God.”

“Barb, I mean. It comes to work, you haven’t got a clue. The sacrifices.”

“Listen Jay, here’s a clue. You talk about sacrifice, but you love it. Your work, all the politics and the deal-making, you love it. Swapping favors—”

“Oh, here it comes. Everybody’s dirty except Barbara.” She heard a scrape, and his knee bumped hers. “Everybody else is some kind of bottom feeder.”

“You’re saying, I play the saint? Jay, if it were up to you, the kids and me, we’d have built you a shrine by now.”

“Hey. All I ever did was sell pasta. That’s your — your husband .”

“We’d have a shrine, Saint of the Holy Paycheck. Martyr of the working man.”

“Angry Barb. Angry, angry, angry Barb.”

She jerked herself around, banging her fists against a wall. “Well it gets old, it gets very old, when every day, it’s all about money.” She might’ve cut her hand against a spur in the rock. “All you ever want is money and a good car—”

“Hey, what do you know about it? Never earned a nickel in your life. We had to come here to Naples to help the poor, holy of holies, and still you weren’t willing to earn a nickel to make it happen. Didn’t matter who you hurt, didn’t matter even if you hurt your own children , because—”

Barbara began to scream. She had to scream, her cuts burning and full of grit, and she heaved herself across the scaly floor towards the man’s growl. She had to get her hands on him. Seizing Jay by his soaked jacket, getting a fistful of chest-hair too, she set him bellowing. The man struggled to throw her off, his hips bucking and his midsection twisting, humped over still-bound hands. Now grunting, now louder. With the harsh words the two of them spat out, liar, witch , with their choking and hissing amplified around the hollow, what? your hands? , she would’ve thought that the kidnappers could hear. The din seemed enormous, a monster in an alley. At least one of their captors should’ve heard, the man who’d tied her up. He should’ve kept an ear cocked, after using such a cheap scrap of leather on her. One good spur in the tufa had been all she needed in order to tear free. Yet the crooks didn’t show, while Barbara and Jay scuffled around the hole, two arms against none. The two of them might’ve been having this blowout in a bedroom a few hundred feet overhead.