Late in the Standoff

by Tracy Daugherty

  So. The cops’ theory wasn’t a secret. But this asshole—this asshole!—slipping “terrorism” into the story, though it had nothing to do with Anna Lia. And the word scheme, as if she were a mob boss.

  The anchorman glanced at a monitor to his left, then the scene switched to the Continental Arms. The camera panned up the side of a building and rested on Anna Lia’s charred patio rail.

  A reporter’s voice said, “The bomb exploded in this upstairs apartment, where Anna Lia Clark, thirty-two, had lived alone for the past year. Police say the powerful blast hurled Clark through the plateglass doors and onto the balcony, where she died of a chest wound. The explosion blew out windows and set off burglar alarms in several other apartments, but no one else was injured.”

  The reporter—Libbie had noticed him today in the parking lot—appeared on camera in a pale suit and tie. He shoved a microphone into a blond woman’s face. She wore a green T-shirt.

  “What kind of a person was she?” the reporter asked.

  The woman (“Neighbor,” said a graphic at the bottom of the screen), nervous, said, “Very quiet, very intelligent, uh … just a everyday person. Nothing about her would ever make you think anything like this would happen.”

  The reporter turned and addressed the camera again. “Twenty-nine-year-old Nicholas Smitts says he dated Anna Clark for the past six months. Smitts says Clark was extremely angry with an ex-boyfriend over something the boyfriend had done to her. He also said Clark had attempted suicide and had talked about making a bomb to kill the boyfriend.”

  The reporter smoothed his hair. “Smitts says he tried to talk her out of her plans, but Clark purchased books on how to build explosives. Mr. Smitts declined an on-camera interview, but his brother Gary told us Clark was extremely bitter about the past.”

  Now a dark-haired man, “Boyfriend’s Brother”—Libbie recognized him—appeared onscreen, by a shaded brick wall. “She had been hurt tremendously by an ex-lover,” he said haltingly, gazing down. “She was trying to get over that, and Nicholas was helping her quite a bit, but some of the friends she had when she was dating this other man kept opening old wounds.”

  Libbie bristled. She and Carla were Anna Lia’s oldest friends here in the States.

  The reporter summed up: “Police are now satisfied no one else was involved in the scheme. Tom Wess, Eyewitness News.”

  Carla switched stations. Channel 2’s coverage was brief. Their reporter said the apartment had been completely destroyed. He identified Anna Lia as an “Italian national” and said a friend of hers told police she wanted to kill a radio disk jockey named Roberto Capriati.

  “The exact reason she wanted to kill the man,” the reporter added, dropping his voice, “is not known.”

  Libbie felt protective of Anna Lia, hearing these strangers describe her. She glanced across the room, at a framed eight by ten on Danny’s coffee table: Anna Lia at a picnic. Curly blond hair charged out of her head like light rays in a child’s sketch of the sun. Amazing hair, wild and sexy—though you could see the gray beneath her eyes.

  Channel 8 was vague. They didn’t even name Anna Lia; they simply said that a woman who’d planned to murder her boyfriend with a pipe bomb was killed instead when the bomb accidentally went off in her home. “The woman was found fully clothed and wearing rubber gloves on the balcony of her apartment,” the newsman said.

  “Shit,” Libbie whispered. They’d love it if Anna Lia was a nude terrorist. Carla switched off the set. She went to make tea. Libbie heard her crying in the kitchen.

  She called Hugh again. “Did you hear the news? Did you hear what they said?”

  “Yes. It was awful. Libbie, I don’t understand … I mean, what’s it look like over there?”

  “There was a fire, but the apartment wasn’t gutted. The police searched it today. They said we could go in tomorrow and collect some of Anna Lia’s things. Hugh, they made her sound like a madwoman.”

  “I know.”

  “And this Nicholas fellow—he and his brother were real eager to spill their story to the press before anyone else had a say.”

  “Who is he?” Hugh asked.

  “Some kind of engineer. Anna Lia started dating him after she broke up with Roberto. He was with her at Carla’s party the other night, remember?”

  “No.”

  Libbie hadn’t recalled him, either, until earlier this evening. At one point, Danny had pointed out the window. The man with the stiff leg had emerged from his apartment with his older brother. They were standing under Anna Lia’s balcony (the area was still sealed off with yellow police tape) and whispering. Libbie recognized Nicholas’s face, then—but she hadn’t remembered his odd walk.

  “He’s into all these survivalist magazines,” she told Hugh now. “Gung-Ho. Soldier of Fortune. You know? Stuff like that. Marie, Anna Lia’s friend at the record store, went to Nicholas’s one night for a kegger. She told Danny the place was like an arsenal.”

  “Does Danny think Anna Lia got the bomb there?”

  “It’s so crazy, Hugh. The police say she was piecing the thing together all by herself. Anna Lia couldn’t work a toaster, much less make a bomb. Then this nutcase, this Rambo living below her—you’d think the cops would check him out—”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  “I don’t know. They’re buying his story—he’s the only one they’re listening to. Don’t you think it sounds fishy?”

  “It does,” Hugh said.

  She assured him she was fine; she’d try to get some sleep. She’d phone first thing in the morning. As she hung up, she glanced out the window. The apartment manager had already replaced the shattered patio door and repaired the utility closet. On the sidewalk beneath the balcony, glass cubes glinted with late-evening sunlight. The charred railing was still in place; otherwise, this pleasant little corner of the Continental Arms was peaceful and serene.

  Carla stayed with Danny while Libbie went shopping for dinner. KKLT was playing ranchero music on her van’s radio—too loud and bouncy for her mood. Roberto’s morning show was the only one she liked on that station, anyway.

  She turned down Shepard toward a newly gentrified section of the Heights. Once, she’d had an evening picnic in a park here with Anna Lia. It was just after her breakup with Danny. Anna Lia was talkative that night. She told Libbie about an abortion she’d had ten years ago in Rome, about the awful guilt she felt and her struggle to reconcile her behavior with her Catholic faith. Eventually—shortly after arriving in Houston—she’d thrown off the Vatican’s teachings. “The church is fine for men,” she’d said. “But it doesn’t know spit about a woman’s problems.”

  Libbie envisioned the wide columns and the vaulted ceilings of St. Anne’s Cathedral, where she and Hugh would be married two weeks from now. The sanctuary had always felt cold to her, hard and austere, and she shivered now, thinking about it.

  She stopped at an Albertson’s, bought pork chops, corn, a bottle of wine. She took the long way back to Danny’s, to steel herself for the tough night ahead.

  Danny, awake now, had become frantic while she was away. Carla was relieved to see her. “He keeps talking about breaking into Smitts’s apartment and beating him up,” Carla whispered. Libbie heard the shower running, soap skidding on tiles, Danny cursing. “Or pounding sense into the police. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  “Maybe this chardonnay’ll relax him,” Libbie said.

  “Or make him worse.”

  The food and drink—the ritual of sitting down together—did settle them all, though none of them ate much. Afterwards, Danny fell into his easy chair in front of Jeopardy on TV. “I guess we’ll have to call her folks,” he said. “I’ve got Gustavo’s number around here somewhere. It’s an arm and a leg to talk to Rome.”

  “We’ll take care of it tomorrow,” Libbie said.

  Danny laughed. “Gustavo still hates me.”

  “Why?” Carla asked.

  “You know. He figures if I hadn�
��t married Anna Lia, she’d have come crawling back home by now.” He chewed his lower lip. “Too bad she didn’t,” he said.

  He slept in the chair while Libbie and Carla washed and dried dishes. Libbie went to turn off the TV. A pet commercial reminded her of Anna Lia’s cats, Suzi and Robi—besides Danny, Anna Lia’s most faithful companions. No one had mentioned them. Were they still in the apartment? Had they run off after the blast, through the broken glass door? If so, where would they spend the night?

  She remembered Emily, then, her buddy from grad school, saying one night, during a study break, “Back home in the Thicket, at dusk, screech owls used to swoop down and pluck little kittens off the ground. When I was a kid, I lost every one of my pets that way. I’d cry and cry and cry.”

  One minute, boundless energy.

  Then nothing.

  Like Emily herself. Wind. Scattered leaves.

  Like Anna Lia.

  Why couldn’t Libbie cry?

  Carla called her sister again. Libbie made a bed for Caria on the couch, then spread some pillows and a sheet on the yellow shag carpet for herself. Cicadas screamed in the trees outside. As she closed the curtains, she noticed a slipper of moon toeing the tops of the oaks.

  While Danny snored in his chair, Libbie and Carla sat by a window in the dark apartment. “I have this funny feeling … it’s like she’s still here,” Libbie whispered.

  Carla nodded. “I know. I have that feeling, too.”

  “I mean, it’s so unbelievable, it’s … unacceptable.” She shook her head. “But also, let’s face it, it’s pretty typical of Anna Lia, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Another one of her crises. She’ll come waltzing in here any second to tell us what’s up; we’ll help her solve her problem, the way we always do, and we’ll all get back to our lives.”

  Tears streaked Carla’s cheeks. “Or it’s like her spirit’s here somewhere. Still angry. I’ve always heard that people who die violently, their souls can never rest.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Carla said. “Edgar says he prays every night that Old Man Evil will stumble down an alley somewhere and break both his legs.” Edgar was Carla’s boyfriend, a Guadalajaran reggae singer and a partially lapsed Catholic.

  “He’s crazy,” Libbie said. “I’ve told you that.”

  Carla laughed. “He’s worried some pissed-off ghost’ll find the key to his door. A jealous dead husband, probably.”

  “Where is he tonight?

  “Galveston. Three nights at the Bali Club.”

  The phone rang. The women jumped. Danny didn’t stir; Carla leaped across the room to catch it before it sounded again. “Hello. Hello?” She placed both hands on the receiver. “Hello?” She looked at Libbie, then hung up. “Nothing.”

  The ghost talk and the silent phone spooked them both. They pulled the comforter off Danny’s bed and huddled under it.

  For a long time Libbie couldn’t sleep. The apartment was chilly (she couldn’t find the thermostat), the refrigerator hummed, and Anna Lia’s laughter skittered through her head.

  She had met Anna Lia in the fall of ’82, in her Level One language course at the LCC. Libbie’s specialty was coaching advanced nonnative speakers to write academic papers in English, but now and then she taught a beginning course. Anna Lia learned fast, with a passion for absorbing American culture, understanding American humor, and making new friends. By the end of her first year in Houston, she was nearly fluent, with a good grasp of idioms, though her accent was thick. Bright and highly social, she was the most popular student among the teachers at the LCC.

  She’d arrived from Rome that year with her father, Gustavo, a pianist and composer, famous in Europe, who’d been hired for six months by the Warwick Hotel to entertain guests in its swanky piano bar. Libbie remembered him as a handsome man, with a square jaw and thin lips, wire-rimmed glasses, and dark copper skin.

  She only saw him at the hotel, when she’d go with Anna Lia; he always wore a black satin tux and a bow tie. Elegant, graceful. In his long career, he’d performed with Xavier Cugat, Abby Lane, and once appeared onstage with Sophia Loren. Libbie didn’t like the music he played, but she never told Anna Lia that. He gave the Warwick’s upper-crust crowd what it wanted: Rodgers and Hammerstein favorites, the theme from Dr. Zhivago, Scott Joplin rags. Better-than-average pop tunes.

  He played with a romantic flourish, slow phrases that rose to a smoldering crescendo: long trills on the high notes, quick runs up and down the keyboard.

  Hearing him, Libbie understood where Anna Lia got her gushy ideas about love: a movie musical vision of perfection combined with Italian emotion—embodied in the distinguished figure of her father, whom she adored.

  It was a standard no man could match. Libbie used to tell her that, in late-night talks over popcorn and wine. Anna Lia would laugh and agree. But then she’d leap into another disastrous affair, convinced she’d found the Ideal.

  Danny kept her on an even keel for a while, to Libbie’s relief and surprise. He was no one’s idea of perfection, but he was solid—and he worshipped Anna Lia. Libbie met him when Anna Lia brought him to the Warwick one night. In his frayed Pendleton jacket and scuffed cowboy boots, he was as out of place as Libbie in the bar. He didn’t share any of Libbie’s interests, he could be a little loud, but she liked him because he was kind to her friend. Always attentive and polite.

  Still, eight months later, when she learned they planned to marry, Libbie worried. Despite Danny’s honest affection for Anna Lia, he wasn’t really her type—a far cry from tuxes and bow ties and The Sound of Music. When Libbie voiced these concerns, Anna Lia cried. “He’s good to me!” she said. “He cares for me, good!”

  At that point, she needed good care. Gustavo had all but abandoned her when he’d returned to Rome after his engagement at the hotel. Anna Lia had told him she wanted to stay. He refused to allow it. He couldn’t stop her, she insisted. She was a grown woman now. She’d made friends here in America. She pleaded with him to understand.

  The Immigration and Naturalization Service required her to produce a Statement of Support, guaranteeing financial backing as long as she stayed in the States. Gustavo wouldn’t sign it. He claimed he didn’t have the money; he wasn’t a salaried man. Anna Lia knew he was just being obstinate.

  Libbie remembered one awful night, Gustavo’s last evening at the Warwick, in a corner of the bar. For hours, father and daughter wept, fumed, belittled each other. The hotel’s tacky sculptures—copies of classical nudes—stared with long, stupid faces at their table.

  The day her father left, Anna Lia swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets, the first of four suicide attempts in the next few years. Libbie learned not to take them seriously. Anna Lia would gobble Dexedrine then immediately call someone—usually Libbie or Danny—to tell them what she’d done. She was never in any danger of dying. Trips to the Ben Taub emergency room, and the stomach pump, became a weary routine.

  Libbie couldn’t stay mad at her—Anna Lia was so grateful for the smallest kindnesses. “You know, you can just ask” Libbie told her one night in the hospital. She tried to sound stern. “You don’t have to stage this … this theater.”

  Anna Lia grinned, with teary eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess I’m my father’s baby, after all, eh? What do you call it? Show biz? I truly am sorry, Libbie.” You could tell her to grow up, but that would be like chastising a child for being a child. For whatever reasons (her father’s road trips when she was a girl? her mother’s firm hand? the church?) she was probably as emotionally mature as she’d ever be.

  Soon after Gustavo’s departure, Danny offered to sign Anna Lia’s Statement of Support. At the time, he was working as a troubleshooter for a small oil company and didn’t have much cash. But support her he did.

  Libbie supposed his Texanness—his straightforward manner and dress—appealed to Anna Lia now because it clashed with her father. She was running from what she co
nsidered a betrayal. But Libbie feared it was only a matter of time before she’d need more excitement than Danny could provide.

  A few months after the wedding, when she did stray, it was with a suddenness and fierce intensity that none of her friends—maybe not even Anna Lia herself—expected.

  Libbie woke around three. A noise startled her. She lay on the floor, listening. Danny’s light snores. Carla’s even breathing.

  She blinked and checked her watch. Last night, at around this time, Anna Lia was—what? Making a bomb? Libbie couldn’t picture it.

  Her legs were cold. She was about to get up and look for another blanket when she heard scuffles on the flagstones outside the door. Her fingers and toes went numb.

  Carla turned over on the couch. “Libbie?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  Carla lifted her head. “There it is again!”

  Libbie heard a scraping on the concrete, a heavy thump. She rose slowly. Leaning forward, she straightened her clothes. Carla tiptoed behind her toward the door. Another scrape outside—a jazz drummer brushing his snare.

  “What are we going to do?” Carla whispered.

  Libbie looked at her. Then she smacked the door with her palms. “Who’s there!” she shouted. “What do you want?”

  Danny woke with a gruff, “What? What is it?”

  Shuffle-scrape, thump, shuffle-scrape, thump.

  “Danny, somebody’s out there!” Carla said.

  He ran to the door, shoving both Libbie and Carla aside. He tugged it open. On his porch, a small flower pot lay overturned and cracked. The packed dirt hadn’t spilled much, but the daisies were crushed on the plastic bristles of the welcome mat. The moon had set. No light. No wind. No sound.

  3

  Anna Lia’s apartment smelled like the ash in the air, only thicker. The dining room and the kitchen looked like they had just been straightened and cleaned. The table was polished, the floor swept. The salt and pepper shakers, shaped like a pair of swans, nuzzled each other on the counter next to the stove. The other half of the place had collapsed. Plants had overturned—dirt grizzled the carpet—angels and kittens, delicate glass figures, had shattered. A long gash, like the crack in the Liberty Bell, split the television screen.