The Sex Sphere Page 4

"Where's Daddy?" Tom whispered up at Sybil. "Did he run away?"

  "I don't think he would do that," Sybil answered softly. Why would he? They'd been having good food and great sex; why would he run away?

  "Maybe he got lost," suggested Ida.

  The manager set the telephone down slowly, his forehead corrugated with worry. "Maybe you come into my office, a-Mrs. Bitter."

  "Why? What is it? Just tell me!"

  The manager looked around the lobby, then leaned across the counter to speak confidentially. "A note has been a-found at USA Embassy." His dark, liquid eyes stared at Sybil significantly.

  "What kind of note? From my husband?" Had he run away . . . or, oh God no, killed himself? "What are you trying to tell me?" The children at her sides began to babble questions.

  "Please, a-Mrs. Bitter. Do not excite. Beppo now take you to USA Embassy. Is only a-two hundred meter." The manager spoke rapidly to the night-clerk. The gaunt man stood up and began slowly to shrug himself into his shiny black raincoat.

  "What did the note say?" Sybil asked, keeping her voice level.

  The manager sighed. "Is a-very bad in Rome this year. Your husband has been-a . . . " He paused, groping for the word. "Bandits give him a-back for money. Or other things."

  "He's been kidnapped!"

  The children burst into tears. They knew all about kidnapping from years of schoolyard warnings. It took Sybil several minutes to calm them.

  And then Beppo led them outside. A cloud crossed the sun, the air cooled momentarily. Well-dressed people hurried this way and that, going for coffee, going to church. Sybil wondered if she should have gone back upstairs to get coats for the children.

  Ida stopped by a window display of chocolate eggs. They were the huge Italian kind, foil-wrapped and with a toy hidden inside. Alwin had planned to buy two for the kids today.

  Sybil signaled the night-clerk to stop rushing ahead, and waited for Ida. The child was just tall enough to see in the store window. From the side, Sybil could see the round little face reflected, no bigger than one of the giant Easter eggs.

  "Come on, Ida. We have to find Daddy."

  Still the blond little head stared into the depths of the store window. Was there a tear on her cheek?

  "Ida? Don't cry, honey."

  At this, Ida's face squeezed up and the fat tears popped out. In an instant her whole face was wet. Alwin had always compared this process to the squeezing of a grapefruit half. "I'm scared of the kidnappers," Ida sobbed.

  "Don't worry, sweetie," Sybil said, picking her up. Such a cuddly, curvy body this little one had. Rubber popo, you're the one. "Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right." Sybil carried Ida to Beppo and Tom, taking comfort from her own words.

  "Do you have a gun?" Tom was asking the night-clerk.

  "Subito, signora," the skinny man cried to Sybil. "I have hurry."

  They tagged after him as far as the corner, from where he pointed out the US Embassy building, half a block down the other side of the Via Veneto. The daylight shone through the night-clerk's lank strands of greasy hair, making unpleasant highlights on his scurfy scalp. Sybil was glad to see him go, the heartless prick.

  The light changed, and they could have rushed right across the street, but Sybil hesitated. Until she went and talked to some little American official, this was still unreal. Alwin kidnapped? For what? All they had in the world was some furniture, and the money they were saving for a house. Why would a kidnapper grab Alwin in his shabby old sport coat?

  Tom and Ida were examining the Italian comic books at the corner newsstand. Paparino was Donald, and Topolino was Mickey. Up where the children couldn't see, there were a bunch of the lurid Italian porno comics. Sodomy was the thing these men craved the most . . . . Sybil could feel it in their stares and pinches. Ugh.

  As if called up by the thought, a passing man in a suit and mustache ran his hand over her ass. A bony hand like a sheathed meat-hook. Sybil turned to glare at him, but he was already two paces into the street. She bought a Topolino and a Paparino to keep the children busy.

  The Embassy was housed in an enormous old dwelling, practically a palace. Freshly mimeographed sheets of paper were blowing up and down the sidewalk. Some kind of message in Italian. The guards let Sybil in after she showed her US passport. They were black marines with country accents.

  "My husband's been kidnapped," she told them.

  "We're doing what we can, ma'am. Just go on ahead in."

  Inside, there was an enormous marble entrance hall with a single silver-haired lady behind a metal desk. DOT HOOK, said the plastic nameplate. DOT HOOK, RECEPTION. She looked alertly at Sybil and the two children.

  "My husband has been kidnapped," repeated Sybil. "What can we do?"

  "Oh, so you're the wife." Dot Hook paused to savor the information. "Mrs . . . ."

  "Bitter. Sybil Bitter. Did you get a note?"

  "That's right, Sybil, there was a note nailed to our front door. With a stiletto. Do you want to see it?"

  This felt viciously unreal. "Yes," Sybil said. "Of course. What do they want?"

  "Well, I think you'd better have a little talk with our Mr. Membrane about all this. He's our vice-consul in charge of vice. Room 36G." She pushed a button on her special Dot Hook intercom. Zzuuzzz. A voice crackled back.

  "What is it?"

  "The wife is here, Mr. Membrane. Syllable Bitter."

  "Send her . . . up."

  "Ten-four, Mark." Dot Hook glared provokingly at Sybil. "Can we find our own way?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "To 36G."

  "She talked to that box," Ida stated questioningly.

  "It's a walkie-talkie," Tom explained.

  "Bill-leee!" bawled Dot Hook. "Take Mrs. Bitter up to 36G."

  The taller of the marines marched snappily over. Sybil and the children followed him up a flight of marble stairs.

  "Don't say thanks or anything," Dot Hook called after.

  "What's wrong with that woman?" Sybil asked the marine.

  "I don't rightly know," he said, with a sunny smile. "Women is all crazy."

  Sybil smiled. The music was nice, even if the words were wrong. "Did you see the kidnappers' note?"

  "I guess I did. It was stuck on a knife in the door. Just like being at the movies. This Rome is a hell of a town."

  "Are kidnappings common?"

  "Well . . . they ain't unusual. There's been four Americans already this year."

  Hearing this made Sybil feel a little better. The situation was bad, but not unheard of. No worse than losing your wallet, really. Alwin the wallet. Sometimes he said that's all he was. No, Sybil would say, that's not all. You're my fat cock, too.

  They were walking down a long Americanized hall. Green carpeting on the floor, air conditioners plugged into the windows. But the heavily ornate moldings above the windows, the fat scrolls hanging there like iced curls of butter . . . the moldings said, "Italy." Italian architecture made Sybil think of food. Especially right now. They'd rushed out of the hotel without breakfast. Cappuccino, butter curls and shiny Italian rolls, a soft-boiled egg. The children must be getting hungry, too.

  Just then the marine stopped at one of the doors. 36G. M. MEMBRANE, VICE-CONSUL. "He in here, the man you got to see."

  "Thank you."

  "And seein' is believin'."

  "Goodbye."

  "I'm leavin'."

  "Back to duty?"

  "You know it!"

  "Well . . . "

  " . . . hell. Right on there, ma'am. You need any help, just rattle my cage. Bill Buttwhumper. Pleased and pleasin'." He held out a large, dark hand. Sybil laid hers in it. A gentle pressure.

  The door to room 36G swung open. Buttwhumper saluted, turned sharply on his heel and strutted off down the hall.

  "Do you miss your Daddy, sweetums?" Mark Membrane, vice-consul, was kneeling on the green carpeting, cozying up to Ida. His attention turned to Tom. "Do you like football?"

 
The children hung back, unpleasantly surprised. Membrane looked up at Sybil. He was a skinny, rawboned man with a boyish face and a heavy shock of blonde hair. He wore a blue cord suit. "Mrs . . . Bitter?"

  He rose smoothly to his feet and took her hand. "It's a terrible thing . . . terrible."

  "I'm sure it is," Sybil said, stepping into the room and finding herself a chair near the desk. "But nobody has yet explained to me what's actually happened. Can I see the note?"

  "It's partly . . . in Italian," Membrane said, closing the office door. He beamed down at the children, looking like a pale stork, like Ichabod Crane. "Would you two like some Coca-Cola®?" You could hear the trademark.

  "Yay!"

  "I'll . . . get some." Membrane had the habit of pausing dramatically in the middle of some sentences, as if to accumulate the necessary charge of sincerity to finish his . . . message.

  He extracted two cans of Coke from the icebox under his plastic bar, a squat affair stamped in parquet repetitions. He gazed pleasantly at Sybil. " . . . Something for you?"

  "Tomato juice?"

  "V . . . . . . 8®?"

  "That will be fine. Can I see the note?"

  "Certainly . . . ."

  Sybil waited awhile for the rest of the sentence, then plugged in another token.

  "Can I see the note?"

  Membrane was draped over his little bar, measuring out the Cokes and the V–8.

  "Would you kids like a Milky Way®?"

  "Yay!!"

  "Can I see the note?"

  "It's partly . . . "

  " . . . in Italian," Sybil interrupted, rising to her feet. "Show me the fucking note!"

  "Your Mommy is . . . under stress."

  "BAAAAAAOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!"

  "Poo an' pee, poo an' pee!"

  "We're all under stress, Mr. Membrane. And you aren't helping much. My husband has been kidnapped, and you won't even begin to discuss it. The facts! I need to know what's going on!"

  Membrane gave the children their Cokes, gave Sybil her thick red juice, then walked behind his desk, where he briefly rummaged.

  "Here."

  Sybil took the piece of pink-brown paper. Butcher's paper. There was a hole in the middle. She scanned down the page. It was written in English, and this is what it said:

  "We have taken your tool. Alwin Bitter has been conscripted into the People's Army, Division of Nuclear Weapons. Ransom him before it is too late. Your reply must be multiplied on papers drifting from the Embassy window. We await. —Brigate Rosse"

  "Who's that?" asked Sybil. "Brigate Rosse?"

  "That's the Italian part. It means Red Brigade. But they aren't." Membrane's unformed face held something sly.

  "They aren't the Red Brigade?"

  "No. Everything's wrong. The technique, the language, the . . . reply method. It's not the Red Brigade at all. These days every kidnapper says he's the Red Brigade just to . . . cause alarm. I'd be willing to bet that . . . "

  "That?"

  " . . . these fellows are just after some money. But . . . "

  "But?"

  "What is your husband's occupation? To the best of your knowledge."

  "He's a theoretical physicist. Unemployed. Not really unemployed. On a grant. He has a Humboldt grant to do research in Heidelberg this year. Next year we don't know what we'll do." Sybil shot a glance over at the children, not really liking them to be in on all this. But they were absorbed in their comics, flipping the bright pages.

  Membrane gazed meditatively at the ceiling. It was clear that he was already in possession of the few poor facts Sybil knew.

  "Could your husband assemble a . . . nuclear device? An atomic bomb?"

  "I don't know. Probably. In grad school he used to talk about how easy it would be. He's good at making things. But you said you don't think he's really in the hands of bombers."

  "Not . . . yet."

  "What do you mean?"

  A long, thoughtful pause. "How much can you pay? To get your husband back."

  "Nothing. A few thousand dollars. Nothing, really."

  "That's good."

  "Why?"

  Membrane leaned across the desk, his Adam's apple jutting out over his button-down Oxford-cloth collar and regimental-stripe tie. "I am going to tell you something in strictest confidence. Someone out there has enough nuclear fuel to build a hundred-kiloton bomb. Two months ago an LWR fuel-assembly truck was hijacked near Mestre. We have got to find that fuel."

  "What does that have to do with my husband?"

  "We will use your husband for . . . bait. To flush out the real terrorists, the ones with the reactor fuel. In return . . . " He held a silencing hand up to the spluttering Sybil. "In return I give you my solemn word that your husband will be . . . freed unharmed. Look at this."

  He handed her a freshly mimeographed sheet of paper. A message in Italian. It was, Sybil realized with horror, the same as the papers she'd seen blowing up and down the sidewalk in front of the Embassy.

  "You've already replied? What did you say? What does this say?"

  Membrane picked up another copy of the message, cleared his throat and began sonorously to sight-translate.

  "'In the affair of Alwin Bitter. Greetings, revolutionary comrades. We, as Americans, feel sympathy for your woe. But freedom is not anarchy. Nor anarchy freedom. Professor Bitter is a man of peace, an atomic scientist. To think that his long and intimate association with weapons projects enables him single-handedly to build a bomb is fantasy. To take his close ties with the US Embassy for military involvement is gross self-deception. Do not harm this innocent man, or the gravest consequences will ensue. We stand prepared to pay a ransom of one million US dollars.'"

  "But that's so misleading," Sybil cried. "It makes him sound like an important bomb specialist! They'll never give him up!"

  "They'll . . . have to give him up," Membrane said with a faint smile. "Word spreads fast in Rome. No matter who has him now . . . the real terrorists will come and get him."

  Chapter Four: Orali and Rectelli

  It was bad sleep, there on a pile of rags somewhere beneath the Colosseum. My body was immobile with exhaustion, but my brain was racing . . . trying to find a way out, trying to find a next move. There were lots of dreams. Here's one of them:

  * * *

  I'm outside the Colosseum, running down endless streets with shuttered doors. Finally I find a café-bar which is open for the early workers. No one inside will talk to me or even look at me. In the back there is a billiard table, and arched doors leading down. On the green baize lies a dead man, crumpled like a bag of garbage. His legs are missing . . . not really missing, just stripped of meat. Butchered. The man behind the zinc bar is cooking a greasy cannibal stew. He passes out huge glass mugs of beer, bubbles a-tick. The mugs are so big and so clear you could almost go skin-diving in them. He won't give me one, just shakes his head. Then into each of the mugs he ladles a chunk of fresh-cooked leg-meat. I recoil and rush out through those arched doors in back.

  I'm running down a slope, down the radius of a series of concentric circles, heading deeper and deeper underground. It's an invisible underground Colosseum. Demons peer at me from odd nooks and crannies. A rumble of voices all around. There are thousands of us drifting down toward the impossible center.

  In the half-light I pause in front of an . . . exhibit, some kind of recess in the wall where a tasty bit of knowledge might be served, something about quarks and quantum chromodynamics . . . but instead there's a gray-white demon with a swollen tick's body. He scrambles about, then splits a vent and spews hot liquid on me. It's foul, with lumps, stinking and stuck to my body, marking me for all to see. Somewhere below, Minos is waiting to judge me . . . .

  * * *

  I woke with a start. I knew where I was. My back was killing me, and my hurt finger throbbed. I looked at my watch. Quarter of ten. Lafcadio still sat on the sofa, guarding me with the robot and the machine gun on his lap. He hadn't noticed yet that I was awake, and
I studied him through slitted eyes.

  His dry black hair stuck out from his head in asymmetrical tufts and auras. There was a festering scab-crust along the outer curve of his left ear. His skin was a sallow yellow, blued along the jawline by sixteen-o'clock shadow. His mouth was a thin twisting line, never quite at ease, never quite unamused. It was as if he were constantly holding back both screams and laughter. He kept his eyes squeezed almost shut, possibly in an effort to valve down the boom and bustle of consensus reality.

  He wore a plain black suit, shiny with wear, and a stained white shirt with no necktie. The suit pockets bulged with worthless objects. Now as I watched he fished out a sheet of paper with some sort of geometric diagram and studied it intently, turning it from side to side like a monkey would. His hands were off the machine gun . . . but this did me no good, as the chain fastening me to the wall was so short. Yawning loudly, I sat up.

  Lafcadio put away his diagram, whispered to his robot, and then smiled at me in a friendly sort of way.

  "Stavvi Minòs orribilimente, e ringhia: essamina le colpe ne l'intrata; giudica e manda secondo ch'avvinghia." Apparently he spoke no English . . . strange for a physicist, but not impossible, especially in Italy.

  "I'm sorry." I threw out my hands. "I can't understand you at all. I only know about twenty words of Italian. Non capisce."

  But that didn't stop him. He wanted to talk. He had something on his mind. "Luna," he said, molding an ass-shape in the air. "Baciare e entrare." He made the traditional hand-gesture for coitus, the erect right index finger bustling about in the loop of left thumb and forefinger. Apparently he was asking if I liked sex.

  "Sure. Molto bello. Me and my wife every night." Smilingly I pumped the air with both fists, as if lifting myself up and down on a bed.

  Lafcadio went to the door of our stone room and peered out. Was he going to set me free? Tell me a secret? Sexually assault me?

  "Ecco," he said, laying his gun down on the sofa and stepping close to me. He fumbled for something in his pants pocket and then brought it out. A tiny bean or seed it looked like, lying in the center of his dirty palm.

  Looking lovingly down at the little lump, Lafcadio began . . . blowing kisses at it. Pursing his lips and making coaxing noises.