John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

They went unheard and they fought unfairly. Jay couldn’t lift a finger. But then again, Barb had spent most of her day in a carnival Scrambler, flung from one side of the car to another. In no time she wore out. She went limp so soon, she wondered what would’ve happened if her husband been able to get a hand on her when she’d attacked, a hand for instance at her panty-line. As it was the wife lost the heart for fighting halfway into a fresh insult. She swallowed what she was saying and slumped against his cook’s uniform, her cheek to its slick synthetic weave. With that, Jay too quit the struggle. His next word slackened into a moan. And the wife couldn’t pull herself off him. Instead, she found the Jaybird a useful prop, a loosely-packed duffel on which she could rest. Then this blinking and cooling, curled into him and herself both, rewarded Barbara with a terrific relief: a sense that she’d heaved off years of something or other weighing her down. She’d flung it off either just now in this semi-crypt or over the tussling course of the last five weeks. With that she spread her hands against him, believing they could bring healing. She could offer them both an ultimate healing, with no recurrence of this particular pain at least.

Also Barbara lay her overheated ear in the center of her husband’s chest. The thudding behind his ribs seemed the loudest thing in the hole, audible through even the groans and chuckling that followed. A patchwork laughter erupted from them both, ragged and short of breath.

Jay was the first to bring off actual words. “How’d you do that?”

Barb had to sneeze again, drenched in sweat and powdered with rock-dust. Eventually she explained, concluding that the man must’ve bought the thong on the street. “You know the kind of thing,” she said, “leather and beads.”

“Leather and beads,” the Jaybird said.

Barb ran her itching hands through the man’s chest hair, then risked a lick of her cuts. Nothing special, salt and chalk, but she’d skinned herself badly. She’d let herself go. The wounds could use another lick, and this time she let her tongue stray to Jay as well, his skin a more familiar taste. Then the next lick was just for him.

“Another time for that,” he said. “Owl Grr-irl. Another day.”

The big man needed Barbara’s help to sit up. Scooting behind him, she felt her way to Jay’s wrists, the belt wrapped together round them.

“Hey,” he said, “I’m sorry. It wasn’t about you. I felt helpless.”

Her own voice caught at the first syllable of a reply. The way her hands closed around his bindings, as he kept up the apologies, she might’ve been at prayer.

“Jaybird.” She coughed and snuffled. “If anyone should say they’re sorry—”

“But you were right, up there. Up at Cesare’s, you called it. I did tell the man. Kahlberg. We talked about that first day. I gave him the whole itinerary.”

“I know. Honey, I know.”

“The errands we needed to run. The first errand, the second. He got it all.”

“But there’s no way it’s your fault. All this, no way.”

“Fucking guy. He even told me the street. Of historical interest, he told me.”

“Jay, please. There’s something else, listen. I’m the one. I should apologize.” She fingered his bindings but couldn’t find where to begin. “Listen, Jay, I’ll just say it, I need to get a job.”

She felt him start to speak, then check himself

“The work at the Samaritan Center,” she went on, “that’s been great. At DiPio’s too, just great while it lasted. But otherwise I — this is nuts, what I’ve been putting us through. I need to get a life, an adult life.”

And when she did undo the belt, she didn’t know it until Jay’s rump started scuffing the floor as he turned to face her. “You want a job,” he said.

“Maybe I had something to prove by being a Mom. Maybe I did, once upon a time. But I’m saying, I’ve done that. Five times now, been there done that.”

He rubbed his wrists noisily. “Talking a degree, you know. Hey? A Master’s.”

That took her by surprise. She’d had all these explanations lined up ready to go.

“Talking an MSW. The program in Danbury. Then there’s certification.”

“I think I’m talking a green card.” Barbara settled against a wall. “It’s like I’ve got to immigrate into my own adult life.”

“Got to be on a new basis.”

“All I need to do is get over the water and become a citizen. But meanwhile, I’ve been driving us all crazy because I’ve been scared to get on the boat.”

“That’s okay, Barb. We’ve done the apologies. A little on both sides, okay.”

“You called it, the program in Danbury. That’s the one, that’s the future, and now I’m thinking of child care, it’s not a problem. We have the boys. We have Aurora.”

Neither of them was trying to find the exit.

“I hear that. With this, starting fresh, you’ll be a better mother anyway. Happier person. Plus Mom, yeah. I mean, a weekend now and then. It’s a plan.”

The Jaybird gave another groan, different, relieved, and maybe he got a good stretch. Barb was reminded of their scuffle. It felt as if the punching and name-calling had taken place in another life, already a long-ago life, and yet the thought gave her a shiver. What could it do, such craziness, except make her shiver?

“You know,” she said, “speaking of middle age. There’s menopause.”

“Barb, hey. Problems, I can think of a million problems. But now we’ve talked, we’ve got it on the table, a good plan.”

She squinted, trying to make him out. The dark showed her nothing but the lozenge pattern.

“Good plan,” she said.

It wasn’t much longer before they picked up the noise from the outer room. There was talk, there was movement, and after that came the faint unfolding petals of electric light. Jay and Barbara discovered they sat opposite the hole’s egg-shaped opening. As they put up their empty hands, Barb had to fight down another shiver at the blood on her wrists and hands. She’d marked up Jay’s uniform too.

The first man in carried no light, and when he stooped to enter, the beam behind him blinded her. Barb glimpsed only a shaved brown head and another pair of stringy sandals. The same flimsy footwear as the others — the same as you’d have found on the slaves who’d hacked out these cellars. Then the one with the light squatted at the opening, the space grew bright and hot, and after more blinking and squinting Barb recognized the man these crooks had gone to get. Fond.

If that was the name he still went by, this handsome and moon-scarred beneficiary of Paul’s most dramatic healing. The guy was so reed-like and flexible he had no trouble slipping into the cave, but his smell carried something different, a hint of wildflowers. And whatever you chose to call the man, refugee Lazarus or yippie guerilla, postcolonial hiccup or the last free-standing exponent of non-violence — whatever, it hadn’t lowered his status with his crew. Fond carried no weapon, yet with a single raised hand he held back the men outside the chamber. The closest might’ve been the African again, though she couldn’t make out his face. Not that she had any trouble understanding the way he shifted his light from hand to hand. He didn’t like finding the Americans untied.

“Easy,” Jay said. “I mean, look at us. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Fond,” Barbara said, pronouncing it English-style. “Great, oh, Fond ! What a load that is off our minds.”

The clandestino leader, folded mantis-style, crooked his narrow head.

“If it’s you,” Barb said, “we know we can talk.”

“Barb’s right,” Jay said. “Guy like you, no problem. We can work it out.”