To Iceland, With Love
Page 7
appearing in the doorway, still barefoot and twirling her shoes like six-guns. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten.” She shifted the shoes to one hand and held out the other to Bob. “It’s my birthday and he promised me an orgy. You must be – “
“Bob,” Rififi prompted, when Bob was slow to respond.
“Bouffon,” Bob spat at his sidekick. But he shifted his cigar to his mouth and his gun to his left hand and got up to greet Jane. Like a moth to the blowtorch.
“Bob,” he repeated.
“Bob.” She took his right hand caressingly, alluringly in her own. “And I,” she crooned, leaning in seductively as though intending to exchange a cheek kiss, French fashion, “am Lady Lazarus.”
They had no idea what hit them, poor lambs. In a swift blur of motion, Jane backhanded Rififi with her shoes, twisted Bob’s arm behind him and laid him out on the concrete floor, where an elbow to the skull knocked him out cold. Stunned as much by Jane’s performance as the blow she had dealt him, Rififi seemed hardly to feel the purloined fork when John drove it into his thigh. John twisted free with relative ease and just as Rififi appeared to awaken to his change of fortune, John hoist him with his own petard, which is to say John confiscated Rififi’s own heavy duty chain and slammed him upside the head with it. The ungentle giant crumbled to the ground like a tall building wired for demolition. Jane neatly stood aside, tucking the Glock in her purse.
John looked at Jane. “I take back everything I said about those shoes.”
“When I think of the shit you gave me!” Jane said, steadying herself against him as she slipped them back on. “It always pays to buy the best. But it’s true what they say about being unemployed and losing your skills. That was a little sloppy.”
“Beg to differ. But we were lucky on the moron scale. Ten more IQ points,” John glanced at the prostrate bikers, “And it could have been ugly.”
As they prepared to leave, several policemen and a Sidney Greenstreet look-alike in a white suit and Panama hat entered the bar, followed at a timorous distance by the rest of the restaurant staff. The policemen hastened to tend to Bob and company. Sid stopped before John and Jane and doffed his ultrafino chapeau.
“I am an influential and respected man,” John muttered to Jane.
“You’d look good in a hat,” Jane opined in a whisper.
“On behalf of the Cuban Tourist Board, I most humbly apologize for any unpleasantness,” Sid said, bowing. A whiff of bay rum diffused toward them, pleasantly spicy.
“Ordinarily such things require a call to the relevant embassy.” The expressions on John’s and Jane’s faces grew brittle at the thought. “We express contrition, they express concern. Additional pleasantries and assurances are exchanged. Alas,” Sid sighed, “our respective countries have no formal relations at present, so I am afraid the pleasantries stop here.” John and Jane sagged slightly in relief and tried to mirror Sid’s regret. “We’ve had our eye on these two,” Sid continued, indicating Rififi and Bob as they were bundled past. “Canadians, but they have the American disease. Here we say ‘It’s in the water.’” He held out a fancy wooden box of Cohiba cigars, a bottle of Havana Club, and a small gift bag. Then he bowed again, this time indicating the door. “Don’t drink the water, senor, senora. If you know what’s good for you.”
Strolling back to their room through Old Havana’s romantic squares and exotic byways, John whipped out his Blackberry and started doing currency conversions.
“Oh look,” Jane said, reaching into the gift bag and pulling out a Che Guevara t-shirt.
“Fifty thousand?! Did you hear that? Three months ago it was almost half a million. Each. And the Canadian dollar is way down; which makes it – whoa. $45,000.”
“Hmmm,” Jane considered, examining the bottle of Havana Club. “About 12,000 Happy Meals. Or one Louis Vuitton handbag.”
7 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Under the ruthless glare of too many fluorescent lights, the walls of the Western Union lobby were screamingly yellow for that hour of the morning. Lines of Cubans waiting to collect remittances sent by relatives in the U.S., Spain, and elsewhere snaked from every teller’s window. Cheery Latin muzak kept the lines moving with fair efficiency. From behind dark glasses and with their luggage beside them, John and Jane stood at a sunny yellow check desk nursing petite paper cups of café con leche and a couple of economy-sized hangovers as they slogged through an absurd amount of paperwork. It did not help that every available pen was either out of ink or short enough to run dry after a stroke or two.
“OK, I’ve gotten to the part about signing over our first born child,” John quipped.
“Yeah. They were asking about my immortal soul a minute ago,” Jane said. “Under intangible collateral. Here.” They traded stacks of paper and continued signing in silence. John finished first. He gazed at Jane so intently that she paused and looked back at him, eyebrows raised.
“Yes?”
“I say we make a few calls. You have to figure the heat is off. Under $50K American. That’s not just uncool – that’s downright cold. I had 18 years in, you had –“
“Same,” Jane insisted. When he looked skeptical she said, “They got me fresh out of prep school. Yale? Hello.”
“Yeah, but the point is, I’m offended. $50K offends me. Aren’t you offended? Jeez.”
“Bargain basement,” Jane agreed.
“Which brings up that whole Macy’s-Gimbel’s thing. Your outfit versus mine. Didn’t Macy’s buy Gimbel’s?”
Jane looked at him over her sunglasses. “I shop Barney’s”
“All I’m saying is – we don’t really know what happened. Who bought who, which merged with what, or why we went from assets to liabilities like that,“ John snapped his fingers.
“Downsizing is a bitch. Welcome to the decline of the middle class,” Jane shrugged.
“What – that was a reduction in force? We got RIFed?” John snorted, thinking of all the HR policies that would have to be rewritten. “OK, how do you explain the bounty then? It’s like a fraction of what it was, 10 percent. Just two months ago.”
“After-Christmas sale? Now for a limited time only… C’mon. What’s the common thread here? They’re cheap bastards. If they dropped the price it’s because they can. Supply and demand. Econ 101.”
“Or maybe,” John countered, “maybe what we have here is somebody protecting their backside, and not all that convincingly. Somebody made a mistake. And yes they’re holding onto this fig leaf. But they’re sending a signal.”
“A notice in the Times would have done,” Jane observed drily.
“What’s wrong with putting out a few feelers? What’s wrong,” John spoke quickly, knowing it was a leap but wanting to get it out there, “with asking for our jobs back?”
Jane looked at him steadily. A young woman with a stroller and sleeping infant stopped close by, reached in between them to rifle through the forms, failed to find what she was looking for, moved on. Finally Jane said, “Why don’t we just apply for unemployment and tell them where to send the check?”
“No, come on, think about it. Years of training, all our experience, not to mention all the shit we know – like I said, we’re assets, human capital. Why should they want to destroy the investment we represent?”
“You mean aside from all the shit we know, not to mention all the shit we’ve done?” Jane said. “You tell me. I have no idea why being accidentally married to a competing spook is a firing offense, much less a capital crime.”
“Bingo,” John said.
“What?”
“’Accidentally married.’ Who would believe neither of us knew?”
“They were in merger talks. We were already merged. That should have been a plus.”
“Two for the price of one,” John nodded.
“Thank you, Mr. Walmart. But that is my point. Why kill off your future? I’m thinking if we
do anything we should start by appealing to a higher power.“ They were standing in the shortest line, the one for foreign nationals, when she said this.
“I’ve heard God and Caesar have an understanding, something about separate checks, going dutch?” John pretended to be searching his memory.
“I’ve been thinking we should take this to Uncle Charlie.” The Italian gentleman in front of them who had been trading Euros finished his currency exchange and gave a double-take as he turned to leave and Jane caught his eye. He passed by slowly, lingering over his money, his wallet, and Jane. John cocked his head, putting his arm around Jane and baring his teeth in an annoyed smile.
“Ballsy,” he commented, watching the Italian leave the bank. At the revolving door, the man kissed his fingers in Jane’s direction and John waved. “You know that guy?”
“I have one of those faces. And I was a Glock Girl?” Jane said, handing the sheaf of papers to the cashier. “No hair-trigger puns, please.”
“I’m too mesmerized by the image of you hawking mass market tupperware. But back to Uncle Charlie. It is ballsy. But bright?”
“You sound like you’re planning to ask them over for cucumber sandwiches or something. Kind of hard to keep a porch light on when you don’t have a porch.” The cashier carefully counted out the money. Once. Twice. It wasn’t all that much, compared to the old days, but it was a fortune in that place, not to mention the end of their marital nest egg.