Chapter Seven
Rome
In the days since her London assault, Zarabeth had eaten huge meals to regain her strength and perhaps also the demon’s. On her arrival in Rome the night before, she had checked every box on the breakfast card. Room service brought most of it, on a chrome cart with curlicue handles: toast, butter and jam, yogurt, sliced fruit, muesli, espresso. They had only given her grapefruit juice alas, and no meat. Still, enough to fill her.
She went onto the balcony to smoke. Zarabeth’s hotel sat east of the great Villa Borghese park. She saw green space and painting-blue sky, the downtown’s gritty bustle just a distant brown desert. The view from inside the mirage. Better than hiding in her London hotel, afraid of Underwood’s retribution.
Better but still secretive. When Jill sent Zarabeth to Rome, she would only say it involved a meeting, outdoors. Her cover was as an Italian-speaking staffer, on loan to help with Straightforward-Roma’s Simposio della realizzazione di Intelligenza Artificiale (hosted in English despite the title).
The lectures mixed theory and practice in artificial intelligence, from technical primers to venture panels, a chance for the firm to pick nerd brains over salad, for information to sell executives over steak. A fun room to work, no doubt, if tame after London—and after London, tame would do.
A cloud moved. Hot sun pressed on her. She took her cigarette inside. The cool chrome and tan furnishings soothed her after days in dark baroque Green Park. She unwrapped her Tarot cards and dealt. Product 4 upside-down, Product 10, Bankruptcy upside-down. A nervous survivor in a stagnant place. Did the cards mean her hotel room or her life?
At nine, she was the first to arrive on the lower level. She had made her face but dressed to move chairs and boxes, in black and pink London trainers, a pleated black skirt, and a white manga-cat top. In the fluorescent light the conference room looked stark and grainy, like its own phone selfie. Beige metal chairs sat stacked on carts by the wall. Even on tiptoe she couldn’t lift the topmost clear. She smiled at her own frustration. Too cool to move chairs in Reston. One demon later, a team player.
From the elevator came a gaunt white brunette in a gauzy black skirt and platform stilettos. Behind her, a bellman pulled a baggage cart loaded with boxes.
“Signora Piacitelli?” Zarabeth asked.
“Fabiana Moretti. You’re the American.” Fabiana pointed the bellman ahead, offered a limp handshake while looking Zarabeth up and down. “Cute shirt. The others are coming.”
Bottle-blonde Teresa and real-blonde Renata also led bellmen with carts. Also stimulant-slender, not dressed to sweat. Fabiana got chairs unloaded while the others unpacked boxes of journals and conference swag. The Polyglot soaked up their girlish slang.
At ten, the local director Minerva Piacitelli swept in, with air kisses for staff and waves to bell captains. She drew up before Zarabeth. She had brushed her chestnut hair high, like a bulwark against flood. Cool violet eyes glinted in her well-made ivory face.
“Good of you to help with our little conference,” she said in Italian.
“Optimized is delighted my skills are of use to the Rome office,” Zarabeth said floridly. “Plus I get a vacation.”
Minerva smiled, rubbed her temple. “Enjoying Rome?”
“What little I’ve seen. Last night I turned in early to read up on the conference speakers.” Really Zarabeth had watched frenzied tabloid news wearing a warm gel mask, eating gelato. “Technical for me, but the venture panel looks interesting.”
“Very professional. Special Projects sounds more exciting than event planning.”
“I’ve done many trade shows,” Zarabeth said. “I’m here to help.”
“Of course. What wonderful Italian! Many conferees only use English in email.” Minerva brushed her fingers through her hair. “Do you speak any other languages?” A trap in Minerva’s voice, as if to give Zarabeth some shit-work no one else wanted.
Zarabeth copied the staff’s curt mean wit. “I’ve picked up some Spanish from my maid,” she said. “But not so technical.”
Minerva laughed. “You’ll fit right in.” Workmen arrived with platforms to build the stage. Minerva led her around, explaining registration and the buffet. “A sponsor is donating wireless. We have to monitor the server.”
“Good. What can I do?”
“When the caterers come, supervise refreshments. After that—you plan to change clothes, yes?”
“Of course.”
Minerva crinkled her nose. “With Americans you never know.”
* * *
Roman taxis were white German sedans, smaller than London’s cabs but better than the rust buckets plying Washington’s streets. Zarabeth’s driver took them smoothly around sharp curves, only minutes away to a sooty-white mansion north of Piazza del Popolo. Zarabeth wore her African-print sundress and the Governess pumps, both tighter since she had bought them.
The old concierge hurried her in, as if it were cold out. “Come, child, come come.” In the light she saw he was dreadfully mutilated with burn scars, as if to cow the uninvited.
She looked at him squarely. “Signora Piacitelli?”
He didn’t care whether she looked. “Yes yes. The third floor.” She followed him into a tall plaster silo with wide marble stairs rising clockwise, the central shaft filled by the tarnished brass grillwork cage of an antique wood elevator. He closed the elevator door behind her with a scarred three-fingered hand. “You’re in luck, they just fixed it.”
When she got out, a fit gray-haired olive-white man with big brown eyes waited with a glass of sparkling wine. “You are Zarabeth,” he said in thick English, the end of her name an F. “I’m Fabrizio.” He kissed her cheeks as if friends forever, gave her a glass. On her stem was a gold charm of a leaping cat.
The apartment had cork-yellow walls with colorful prints of old advertising posters. Minerva wore an apron over a tank top and jeans, and was sweaty from the kitchen. “So pretty,” she said, inspecting Zarabeth’s dress. “Soho? I love it.”
Another man joined them, Zarabeth’s height and twice her weight, in a white guayabera, his long thinning hair brushed back. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Alessio Taglieri.”
“That’s right,” Zarabeth said. “You were at registration.” A puppy playing with a ball for his wine charm. “Are you with Straightforward?”
“Alessio works for our sponsor,” Minerva said. “And Fabrizio is a civilian. Agricultural lobbying. Cincin.” They clinked glasses. Minerva’s wine charm was a rooster.
“So are we speaking English tonight?” Zarabeth asked.
“Minerva decided she needs practice,” Alessio said.
“You were fine,” Zarabeth said. “She was fine.”
“You are sweet. Come see what we’re having for dinner.” She led Zarabeth into the kitchen. On the cutting board sat chicken filets and piles of chopped vegetables. Minerva handed her a tobacco-hashish joint. “Do you cook?”
“Only with a microwave.” The joint had gritty smoke like bus exhaust.
“Americans. Go entertain the men,” Minerva said. “I have to watch the sauce. I really love your outfit, it goes so well with your color. Those shoes? Also London? Fantastic.”
Alessio stood in the doorway. “Where’s the prosecco?”
“In the, in the—” Minerva pointed.
“Refrigerator,” Alessio said, as Zarabeth said, “Fridge.”
“‘Fridge’? I like that better,” Minerva said. “It’s in the fridge. Pour for me too.”
In the living room Fabrizio paged through streaming stations. Alessio put a light hand on Zarabeth’s shoulder. “Fabrizio’s English isn’t good,” he whispered. “Not sure he’ll manage the first course.” His hand uncommonly cold, his soft British voice squirmy in her ear.
“Your English is excellent,” she said.
“I use it a lot. Minerva says your Italian is a wonder.”
“She’s kind.”
“Only when she wants something.”
“Ha. Why is a sunglasses firm sponsoring an AI conference?”
“Interfaces,” Alessio said. “As machines get smarter, the interface must change. Speech is for commands, not directions. Imagine if your car told you everything instead of showing it in lights. People need a virtual desktop, natural and unobtrusive.”
“Like sunglasses,” Zarabeth said. “Neat. And well-rehearsed.”
“Thank you. But AI is a bigger opportunity. Italians excel at bespoke heavy manufacturing. We build trains and ski lifts all over the world. Future systems will need to react faster, and more fluidly, than a human operator. AI is the twenty-first century gearbox.”
“Sounds like you’re lobbying for government money.”
Alessio raised an eyebrow. “Really? Perhaps we should host this in Rome. Oh, wait.”
Dinner was long, the Italians slow and appreciative eaters. Between her high and the Polyglot’s appetite, Zarabeth’s stomach burned. She paced herself to Alessio, clearly the foodie of the group, but he was also the storyteller, with gossip about politicians. Too slow.
Explaining his job in agricultural policy exhausted Fabrizio’s English, but in Italian he was hardly more interesting. Soon Alessio picked a cool fight with him over protectionism. “You lobbyists are alarmist,” he said. “What’s so bad about competition and mass production? The South needs capital investment. Foreign firms, cross-border mergers, even a joint venture with, I don’t know, Norwegians. You would make that impossible.”
“The Norwegians don’t let the Chinese farm their herring,” Fabrizio said, English abandoned. “You can’t compete with shit just on price. Shit is always cheaper.”
“Now you’re just spouting slogans,” Alessio said. “All those well-fed boys in Palermo die from bullets. The Mezzogiorno soon goes the same way.”
“I’ve been told I speak Italian,” Zarabeth interrupted, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Agreed. Enough!” Minerva said. “Or no dessert. Fabrizio, help me in the kitchen.”
Alessio snorted, shook his head. Zarabeth looked over at him, willing to engage him out of boredom, but he stared at the kitchen. Did he want to fuck Minerva or Fabrizio? She dragged her finger through ricotta-flecked Marsala sauce, snuck a lick.
Peace came with strawberries in cream, sweet wine, and a fresh joint. They set on Zarabeth like stylists. “We’re bored with ourselves,” Minerva said. “Tell us everything.”
“How is it you speak such fine Italian?” Fabrizio asked.
“I dated this guy,” Zarabeth said unthinkingly. “In high school.” She remembered a boy a year ahead of her, only as Italian as college pizza, but pretty. “His parents were from Naples.”
“I’m envious,” Alessio said. “No one ever learned a language for me.”
“Was he handsome?” Minerva said. “Was it passionate? It must have been love.”
“Very handsome. I was sixteen, so of course it was passionate.”
“To your lover,” Alessio toasted, “with all our gratitude.”
Zarabeth blushed with pride at her lie.
After thick creamy coffee Minerva ended the night abruptly, insisting she and Zarabeth had work to do. Drunk Fabrizio pawed Minerva sullenly. Alessio took Zarabeth’s hand in his cold one and kissed her cheeks. Minerva closed the door and sighed.
“Sorry about Fabrizio,” she said in English. “He drank too much.”
“I wish I had men fighting over me. What work do we have?”
“None. It was either you or Fabrizio staying, and he can’t help with my English.”
Over glasses of grappa they talked about hometowns. Minerva had grown up in Bolzano, at the base of the Dolomite Mountains, where Austria and Italy bled into each other. “It was heavy industry, now it’s banking and tourism,” she said. “It helped when they got the Iceman.”
“Iceman?”
“This guy they found frozen in a glacier. Five thousand years old. The Austrians claimed him, but they analyzed the food in his—” she patted her belly.
“Stomach?”
“Yes. They found pollen from Alto Adige, so Bolzano got the museum. Of course, they make him Italian because of food.” Her phone buzzed. “Fabrizio. He still wants sex tonight.”
“Is he your only or just a regular?”
“He’s good company. I barely have regulars. The life of the businesswoman.”
“Beats squeezing out kids like a sow in the suburbs.”
“Sow?”
“Scrofa.” Also troia, which was a pun. Zarabeth shook her head. Fucking Polyglot. “It sounds like women have it tougher here, being taken seriously.”
“Easier in America,” Minerva said. “Here, too much expecting the woman run the house. Partly because we still have houses, still have family meals. It’s better than it was.”
“Is that why you only have women working for you?”
“Ha. Like Amazons? No. Marketing, communications …” Minerva waved lazily.
“It skews girly,” Zarabeth agreed.
Minerva laughed. “You have so many good words. ‘Skews girly.’ This I think is the poetry of English, these weird sounds. Like a guitar.”
“You mean twangy?”
“Exactly. Twangy and skews and fridge.” She stared intently at Zarabeth, enraptured and high. “Wonderful words.” She emptied the bottle into her glass. “There’s more in the kitchen.”
“I’ll get it,” Zarabeth said, taking the empty.
“Bringen Sie etwas Wasser,” Minerva said. “Es ist in den Kühlschrank stellen.”
“Wasser, natürlich.” Zarabeth was in the kitchen before she realized. High and drunk she had missed the change to German.
Minerva watched her over the back of the sofa, eyes wide. “You have a Polyglot.”
Zarabeth clenched her teeth and gripped the bottle tighter. Club her and run.
“Oh, just tell me,” Minerva said. “Americans, so uptight. Your Italian was too perfect. And Optimized offering anything for free, ridiculous. What is this? An internal audit?”
“I don’t even have a badge for the Rome office,” Zarabeth said. “How can I audit you? I’m just here to help with the conference. After that, vacation.”
“So, something at the conference. Poaching talent? Or just using us as cover.”
They sat nervously still, candy pop music stupid in the air. Minerva’s phone rang. “Fabrizio again. Don’t go away.” She went to the kitchen to talk, just out of earshot.
Zarabeth stood by the open window. City noises, squat buildings and lights, empty streets. She spread her fingers, imagined herself a vengeful goddess, leveling buildings with a wave. Explosions, glowing orange sky, howling, death.
Nothing. Not a goddess, just a rube.
Minerva came back, phone still to her ear. “Of course I miss you,” she cooed in Italian. “I have a job. No, listen, good night.” Minerva closed her phone. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I should go.”
“Look, I have to—” Minerva smiled. “Another good word. Turf. This is my turf.”
“I get it. Thanks for dinner. See you tomorrow.”
Zarabeth took off her shoes and walked down the cold worn marble stairs circling the old elevator, unsteady on her sore feet. In the lobby the scarred man was gone.
She put on her shoes. Splintering chicken bones in her swollen feet. She panted through the pain. She should walk to the hotel in them, penance for her fuck-up.
Ten minutes waiting for a taxi. Penance enough.
* * *
In the morning, Zarabeth was shuffling her cards when Magda called. It was the first time they’d talked since they had met.
“I thought you learned your lesson about partying with the locals,” Magda said.
“Slow learner. You’re up late,” Zarabeth said.
“I don’t sleep much. Now don’t say anything. I’m sure they bugged the room.”
“Really?”
“I would,” Magda said. “So. They know you have a Polyglot. Three questions. How? I know what Minerva said. I don’t buy it.”
A long pause. Zarabeth had to talk, without saying anything. “Your friend?”
“Underwood? Such ghastly queers. Like Plato mixed with both Francis Bacons. Spunk, meat, blood, Latin. For the best really. Imagine if men could do magic? I tell you. Anyway, they didn’t talk to Underwood, that would be far too interesting. Second question, can you guess?”
“Why say it?”
“Exactly! Put you on guard and learned nothing. Not wise for a Minerva. She might have meant to warn you, but that’s not our corporate culture. What’s third?”
“Who,” Zarabeth said.
“I don’t understand?”
“You said ‘they didn’t talk.’ Who are ‘they’?”
“I did,” Magda said. “Funny, that wasn’t my question. Expense a foot massage. Ta-ta!”
The cards wouldn’t tell her Magda’s question. She wrapped them up and went to dress.
* * *
A mess, to start, with the wireless out. The conferees, all fat in ill-fitting suits, complained with curt whines, as if the staffers were their mothers. Minerva went onstage and read the schedule aloud until the audience wandered in.
The keynote speaker was a retired Interpol secretary general, an old gray man in an old gray suit but his voice a robust Flemish bass. “No one questions that we design shoes and keyboards for our bodies, to be comfortable. Imagine a highway so safe you let your children play alongside it. How do we build one?”
Zarabeth ducked out. The morning pastries had been cleared, but they had left an urn of coffee and bottles of water. She filled a mug and took a bottle to Fabiana, on server duty. The storeroom for the server was a janitor’s closet, shelves of paper and bottled cleaners. Fabiana read a fashion magazine in a cloud of smoke. She took out her earbuds.
“Is it safe to smoke in here?” Zarabeth asked, offering the drinks.
“I don’t care,” Fabiana said, taking the water. “Why do I have to stay here? All I can do is page the technician.” She drank half the bottle. “How’s it going?”
“They’re seated. The speaker is some old fart who wants robot friends.”
“Do they still have food out there?”
“No.” Zarabeth lit a cigarette.
“Shit. No signal in here so bring music. Check this out.” Fabiana keyed to another program. The screen slowly filled with images: graphs, advertisements, news photos, website buttons. “It samples server traffic and randomly selects images. Each picture is on a web page opened by someone here.” Corporate banners, social-network headshots, a gaudy gold and diamond bracelet, a skinny white girl in a string bikini. “Watch out!”
Zarabeth’s cigarette had grown a long ash. When she moved her hand it fell. “Sorry.”
“Whatever. It’s a fucking closet.” Fabiana flicked her own ash on the floor and put in her earbuds. “Thanks for the water.”
Zarabeth walked through the rear doors out to the fish-smelling loading dock. She lit another cigarette, wondering if the firm sampled more than web images from the conferees, but nothing here seemed so glamorous as that. She had left the hash she palmed from Minerva’s cake in her cigarette pack. Tempting, but it would make her hungrier.
She called Jill Carson and got voicemail. “Hi. It’s ten, ten-thirty, here. Shit, you’re not even at work yet. Sorry. Anyway. Just … let me know.”
Inside, Renata put her on billing errors from registration. When those were done, she caught half of a presentation on solving shipping routes using virtual ants without central control, and the implications for cognitive structure. Our skulls, each a big ant farm, said the speaker. She could see the audience shiver. It made perfect sense to Zarabeth. She was never just one thing.
At lunch she chatted with two young imaging programmers dressed as twins, in gray-stripe suits and plain black t-shirts, curlicue hair.
The taller looked over the crowd with disdain. “Old fogies. All theorists. There’s nothing in Rome,” he said, more to his colleague. “We should be in Milan.”
“Training code in virtual worlds was fascinating,” the shorter said to her. “It puts the Turing Test on its head.”
Across the room Alessio, in a blue suit, chatted with a slender brunette. Zarabeth felt oddly jealous. She left the coders.
Minerva and Fabiana intercepted her. “Everything going well?” Minerva asked.
“People liked the virtual worlds lecture. I’m on the server at one.”
“We can’t smoke in there anymore,” Fabiana said. “The janitor has asthma.”
Zarabeth shrugged. “Anything I can do until then?”
“If you’re mingling,” Minerva said, “that’s a big help.”
“They just stare,” Fabiana said. “Like I’m from Mars. What do you talk to them about?”
“I just let them talk,” Zarabeth said.
Alessio had vanished. A group had formed by the coffee service around an older white man in a blue blazer, wearing a speaker’s badge. “What amazed me in Japan is their devotion to interaction,” he said in Brooklyn English. “They don’t mind if it doesn’t look human, so long as it knows how to act human. Even the way it nods. You should see the gestural subroutines.”
“Do they write them or evolve them?” a frail man with brushed white hair asked, also with a speaker’s badge, an air of picking a fight.
“Sorry, that’s under my non-disclosure agreement.” The crowd smiled at the dodge. “My point was how we researchers will have to think. Gestures impart meaning, or respect—so are they part of language? We get caught up in our own categories. Evolve, design, body, word. With AI it’s a big blender.”
Zarabeth’s phone buzzed. Jill Carson. She stepped away to take the call.
“We’ve narrowed it down,” Jill said. “Wednesday, sunrise to sunset. Just be ready to walk out the door of your hotel at quarter to six your time.”
“To do what? Work clothes?”
“Casual. Like you would go shopping in.”
“That’s not so casual here.”
“Are they dressy?” Jill asked. “I’ve never been.”
“My toes are bleeding from high heels.” Zarabeth yawned loudly.
“Late night out?” Jill asked.
“And an early morning.” Zarabeth had a thought. “I’m sure it was tough on Sasha, too.”
“Oh!” Jill yelped. “Oh. Yes. Of course Sasha worked here longer. I should run.”
Sasha was not a welcome subject.
* * *
At the evening sponsor party in the white-on-white hotel bar, investors swam around the nerds like dolphins, sounding for money. German, Swiss, French, neat and clipped. The Polyglot recognized accents and wanted to use the language. It was tripping her up.
She found Alessio. Air-kisses. “The virtual-ant stuff seemed good for your gearbox.”
“Way over my head,” he said.
“So you’re just here for the women? I saw that little girl you were talking to.”
“She’s a city planner in Sorrento.”
“Did she like your sunglasses pitch? See the future in the monitors of tomorrow.”
“Oh, I like that,” Alessio said. “I’m stealing it. No credit but I’ll buy you a drink.”
“The drinks are free. Buy me lunch. Thursday’s good.”
“Thursday it is. Noon?”
“Have your sunglasses call my sunglasses,” she said.
In her room she changed to yoga clothes and made a hash/tobacco joint. While she wrote her report, she watched an insect documentary in Canadian English with French subtitles. A black spider, her hairy abdomen mottled purple like a scrotum, dug a burrow in sandy dirt. When an ant walked by, the spider leapt out, too fast to see even in slow motion. Swarm cognition versus brutal patient predation. Code that.
Over her weak phone signal she logged into an onion network and searched for Sasha Blackwell. She found no one who could be Magda’s Sasha. She searched Magda Crane and found obvious links, press materials and investor packets, dating to the seventies. In a yellowed group shot of junior staff she was the only one to look at twice. Blond helmet of hair, big white earrings, dress tight on her slim build. A hottie in the days of free love.
On the next page, a link to a New York society rag:
… offered by Magda Crane, née van Brugh, who debuted at the 100th Anniversary Ball forty years ago this night
Zarabeth felt sick like after her night with Rex. The day Missy texted. Everyone else with more money and no mother to drink it away. She wiped her sour mouth and keyed Magda van Brugh.
A social register traced the name to Dutch settlers of Albany County in the 1600s. Magda’s birth announcement, daughter of George and Alma, no siblings. An equestrian site listed steeplechase victories, a boarding school listed honors in debate and oratory. No wedding announcement, but John Crane’s obituary, a CIA analyst hit by an unknown car. Magda had been twenty-six. She could have remarried, or lived off her family, but she went to work.
Magda was the Amazon. Minerva was something else.
* * *
Tuesday morning started with a prototype of a robot eel, dropped in segments in a glass aquarium. The segments found each other in less than a minute. The screen above them became a camera view, ghostly hints of the audience beyond the glass, to huge applause.
Zarabeth ducked out to raid the remains of the buffet. The meat was gone but there were fruits and pastries. She sat behind the audio/video board to eat. On stage now was the frail man from yesterday’s lunch discussion, discussing Bayesian decision-making. Unlike most presenters he used an overhead projector, with a transparent sheet of printed equations. Zarabeth admired the retro spirit. He wore a white polo shirt and light gray pants. With his wispy build he looked like a bare dandelion head.
A pause grew long. The man stared ahead, frozen. In the monitor his face sagged, drool from the side of his mouth. “Cut his mike,” she told the tech. “Turn it all off.”
She jogged up the side aisle. Minerva and a hotel manager met her at the stage. The frail man shivered, his left hand curled. “Microphone’s off,” Zarabeth said.
Minerva nodded. “Excuse me,” she shouted in Italian, “we have a medical issue. Please stay in your seats for a moment.” She repeated herself in English while unclipping the microphone from his shirt. “Can you take him someplace?” she asked the manager.
The manager was wary. “What’s wrong with him?”
“A seizure, obviously. He won’t bite.”
The manager tried to steer the frail man by pushing on his shoulders, hugged him awkwardly to heft him offstage. In the break area the manager stood the frail man against the wall. “Can you watch him?” he asked Zarabeth, backing away. “I have to call the ambulance.”
The man was drooling again, now onto his shirt. Let him drool.
A new voice from the conference room. They had continued the lectures. She scanned her e-mail. Invoices from her bank. Another party invite, $10 Light Beer Buckets. The start of Washington summer.
The frail man made quick nods like a start-up screen. Rebooting.
She found the Mercurex network video and held it up to him.
“Look at this,” she commanded in Italian. “What is this?”
He kept nodding but his eyes focused on the phone. “Protein. Signal protein. Antigen.” He stopped nodding. A bone in his neck cracked. She hid her phone.
“I was speaking …” He smiled sheepishly at Zarabeth. “I see. When I’m nervous. How long?”
“Not long. An ambulance is coming.”
He frowned. “I hope I can finish my talk,” he said.
* * *
Wednesday, Zarabeth dressed to move, black pants and blouse, black and pink London trainers. Eyeliner and lipstick, just in case. The cloudy sky flickered like a tube light. She did light yoga to morning television, hosted by opiate-slow anchorwomen in shiny mermaid green, string-music segues and sea-blue sets. Wired at night and zoned by day. Land of stabbed Caesars and poisoning Borgias, of the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta and the Mafia. Good for fun, good for crime, bad for business.
She dealt her cards: Data 5, Money 2, Product Director. Careful work brings success despite the caprices of the powerful. A strangely optimistic reading. She could lighten up. Maybe it would be an adventure.
At nine, a text message came from a blocked number: Go sightseeing in the Foro Romano. Like a card from a board game. Zarabeth looked it up. Ruins of the center of the Roman Empire, two kilometers south. She grabbed her blazer.
The Foro sat below street level, excavated from the buildup of centuries around it. Stones, pillars, walls, bleached and yellowed, shaky Latin carved and half-erased. Zarabeth had seen collapsed barns in New England, but nothing like this ancient devastation, a thousand-year ruin of a thousand-year civilization. Crumbs of empire, scrubbed clean by time of the last human desires, soothed her skin. She changed direction randomly, doubling back on paths, looking for someone too often in her field of view. No one. Less tradecraft than playacting.
She took off her blazer and smoked in shade near the Temple of Vesta. Skinny school kids ran giddily past her. Girls climbed up the headless female statues. When their heads assumed the curvy bodies, the boys hooted and took pictures. People from her school had gone on such trips, cheap tour packages with free tickets for teachers. Zarabeth’s mom paid for loser men and a different vodka at each meal.
Zarabeth was here now. Better late than never. Here now, you worthless cow. She sang it in her head.
Maybe she was a decoy.
As if to answer her, a new text: Piazza del Risorgimento. West of the city, across the Tiber River. She left by the southeast exit, near Circo Massimo. In the crazed city driving she fixed her lipstick.
The empty, brown Piazza del Risorgimento seemed less a town square than an abandoned lot. Her skin itched furiously. Behind her sat the Vatican, its sanctity burning the Polyglot. As she paid the cab, a third text came: Walk up Via Cola di Rienzo, north side. Window-shop, go in stores but not food market. Turn off your phone and put it away.
Via Cola di Rienzo had sleek boutiques, jewelry and clothes and clever housewares. The sun was high and hot but her itch was gone. In a shop she saw her new sunglasses, made by Alessio’s firm, bronze frames with large gold lenses. They changed the set of her chin and swept her cheeks higher. Catalyst for her new Roman self. In the shop mirror, she brushed her hair with her fingers, back and out like a cobra’s hood.
She dawdled up the street, catching the eyes and flirts from young well-dressed men with slicked dark hair and sharp faces, not a case of Asperger’s among them. She studied shop windows, idled at newsstands and screens of headlines. Just a bored girl, shopping, again.
In the distance she saw the forbidden food market, a huge white arcade amidst traffic and bustle. She thought about Fabrizio at Minerva’s dinner, defending fresh food. Less crazy here than it had sounded. She paused by a wedding dress in a tiny storefront, white silk with concentric circles of gold thread, austere and stately, like a soldier of virginity.
Saliva ran in Zarabeth’s mouth. This dress she would never wear. No suburban sow, no minivan, no kids. She was shaking now like the frail man. Men wanted her sleek strong surface. Deeper, where it was scarred and barren, they didn’t want that. No one stays in a big empty room. Here now, you worthless cow. She turned away, hotter than the Polyglot had been.
“Signorina!” In the dressmaker’s door a shrunken old woman in dreary black smiled sycophantically. “You forgot your package.” She offered a white paper shopping bag.
“I’m sorry,” Zarabeth stammered, “this isn’t—”
The woman hooked the handles on her outstretched hand. “It will look lovely on you.” She retreated into her burrow.
The bag weighed little. Inside was a white box, with a small envelope taped to the top. Find a public phone, it read. English words, Italian penmanship. She palmed the envelope.
She found a phone across the street, a chrome box like a robot head. The yellowed plastic privacy afro obscured the sidewalk and made her feel less safe. She clamped her calves around the bag, opened the envelope and took out a red phone card. On the inside flap of the envelope was a phone number, country code 241. Eat me, it read. Her fingers fought her. Fuck Magda and her mind-games. She made a fist, beat the phone once, twice. The pain cleared her head. She dialed. When she heard the first ring she tore the flap in strips and started chewing. The paper tasted bitter. Maybe it was poisoned.
A machine answered with a rapid handshake tone, a lower pitch than a fax machine. A second series of high-pitched louder tones. Behind them faint noise, or maybe the real message. She closed her eyes, envisioned a figure eight of moving red lines, drawing and redrawing itself. Could the Polyglot graph code?
The phone spat out the card with a loud clunk that startled her. She hailed a cab back to the hotel. She turned on her phone, searched country codes. 241, Gabon. She had never heard of it and didn’t care to look it up. She left the card on the cab floor. No one had said not to.
Her room, already clean. In the box, a gorgeous black halter-top woven with silver thread. It raised her breasts and slimmed her. Not virgin, not wife. Bauble. She stripped naked, curled up in the bedcovers. She wanted to gnaw on something.
* * *
Alessio chose a restaurant on Esquilino, near Termini Station. The dining room faced a small sunlit garden. Alessio wore blue gabardine, silver pin through his striped green tie. By the table, a bottle of white already open.
“I did not mean to be early. You’re on time like a good American,” he said, air-kissing her. “Red flatters you.” They sat. “The wine’s all right. I like the sunglasses.”
“I bought them in your honor yesterday.” It was a good seat but bright. She kept the sunglasses on. “Via Cola di Rienzo.”
“You went shopping?”
“My vacation begins,” she said. “I got these and a top. Also some sightseeing.”
The server came to pour her wine.
“Do you like oysters?” Alessio asked.
“I thought you didn’t eat them in months without an R?”
“That was before refrigeration. How are they?” he asked the server.
“They’re all right,” the server said.
“Like the wine. A big plate of oysters.” Alessio’s eyes were smaller and harder than she recalled. Topaz eyes, set in dark circles. He smiled regretfully, put on frameless sunglasses with black lenses. Creepier than his eyes.
“Sparkling water,” she added. The server left. “I’ve been thinking about our dinner party.” She chewed dry chalky breadstick. “When we were at dinner, what Fabrizio was saying about imports.”
“Fabrizio is an idiot.”
“He’s an Italian kind of idiot,” she said. “You pay a premium to keep food close-at-hand. Your milk cartons advertise they came from local family farms. Americans wouldn’t care if our milk came from mutant cows eating sewage. Local production and purity are costs you’re willing to bear.” She felt trapped in the deep cushioned armchair.
“That’s too much credit,” Alessio said. “If Fabrizio cared about our food, he wouldn’t lobby for olive oil corporations selling us Moroccan leavings.” He smiled with fury.
“You don’t work in sunglasses, do you?”
The server put a plate of oysters between them. Alessio took a shell, a slice of lemon. “I have an interest in Straightforward,” he said.
“Interest. If I ask our security about your interest? I thought so.” She took a shell, poked the ugly gray flesh with the end of her breadstick. “Why let me into your little club? I’m gone this weekend. What good am I to you?”
“You’re not here for other meetings,” he said. “You haven’t met anyone. You speak magic Italian. A man died at the company you worked with in London.”
She hissed. “Empyrean. What the hell do you want?”
He grabbed her wrist. “Calm down.”
“Don’t touch me!” she yelled. The other tables stared. He let go. Where he had touched her felt venom-cold. She stood. “Thanks for lunch.”
She ran a block, until her wobbly shoes forced her to walk. She glanced behind her. No one followed. She was at a large busy piazza. Honks, squealing tires, men checking her out. She caught her breath, worked the shivers out of her wrist.
A huge yellow turd of a basilica squatted before her, dressed in clashing columns and crests as if scavenged from royal junkyards. Celebrity fashion victim, wearing whatever and too famous to care. Zarabeth hurried across the street. Her Polyglot squirmed in her stomach. Dull ache like a brick on her eye socket. “Suck it up,” she told it.
Outside the basilica, a souvenir vendor blocked her path, holding out a strip of felt with silver coins. “Remember holy city!” he cried in la-la-English. “Mementos of Blessed Virgin!”
“The Virgin was a whore and so is your daughter,” she said in Gypsy. When she walked away, she felt a ghost spitting on her back. She whirled around. “Make the evil eye at me? Fuck off now before I learn the names of your children.” He backed away, waving epileptically.
In the basilica she felt hot steam from her skin. The basilica was dark below and bright above, gold walls hewn and buffed by slaves, commissioned by kings as addled as movie stars. Light lapped around the gold dome like water. If God were everywhere He could be upside down, the dome His golden hot tub. She could just about see Him there, fat filthy old God bathing above His whining worshipers, splashing as He soaped His balls and laughing, just laughing. Hate boiled her guts like microwaves.
She withdrew to a darker alcove with racks of small votary candles. The Polyglot chattered pedantically to relieve its pain (basilica, βασιλική, letters collapsing into neon red waveforms). She idly tried to touch a flame.
It bent away from her hand.
Zarabeth poked flame after flame. Each drew away, as if a little breeze blew from her skin. One doubled over, melting the candle rim, to protect the prayer inside it.
She squealed with delight. It echoed off the walls. She waved her hands above the candles. Flames flared and jumped, ducking out of her way. “Cattivi fiamme,” she cooed. “Bad bad flames. You know which side I’m on.” She scratched out beats in fear and fire. Hiss-hiss-hiss. “Move, clever flames, jump and run, you’re so scared but I’m having fun.” Hiss-hiss-hiss.
She stepped back. Fooling around and not thinking. Soon they’d bring out priests to wave crosses at her. No discipline.
She went outside and texted Magda: Minerva’s pal is Empyrean. Fucker touched me. I ran. What now?
* * *
In the evening Jill sent a ticket. Discount shuttle to Dublin the next morning, puddle-jumper to Aberdeen. She called Jill. “Why Aberdeen?”
“Magda’s en route to an executive retreat. She’s spending the night there. Since you’re nearby, relatively speaking, she wants to do your one-month review on your way home.”
“For fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with a phone call?”
“Sorry. In person.”
Zarabeth ordered carpaccio and salad. When it came she wasn’t hungry.
Minerva called. “I’m sorry,” she said in English. “I told Alessio it was a bad idea.”
“What idea? That you’re part of a corporate espionage scheme or you sent a wacko from Empyrean to tell me?”
“It’s not what you think. Can we talk, face to face? The hotel bar. In an hour?”
“Fine.” Probably a ploy so they could search her room. Let them search. Zarabeth primped and changed clothes. Embroidered jeans, a dark t-shirt, low black heels, striped hairband. She shuffled her cards but didn’t deal them. She ate the meat.
Minerva was waiting when Zarabeth came down. White top, cream skirt and silver mules, sparkling wine. “Ciao, Zarabeth. You look sleek tonight.”
Zarabeth smiled sweetly. “Thanks. Love the skirt.” She ordered rum and chinotto in Italian. Minerva looked pained. “You feel the Polyglot, don’t you?” Zarabeth asked in English. “That’s how you knew.”
“It gives me headaches. Each time is worse. In my day we learned languages.”
“When was this, before mobile phones?”
“Ha. Ours was a cold war. We were us, they were them, there was even a wall. But the Polish Pope freed his people. Meek apparatchiks became media-savvy free-market reformers. There has to be a different approach. Some don’t see that.”
“Are you talking about Straightforward?”
“I’m talking about Italy. The Church, the government, the criminal families. You know when they invade Muslim countries and they have to deal with warlords? It’s like that here. It’s not like America where companies already own everything. My country is a tourist destination, a nation of craftspeople in a mass-produced world. It’s all so old. Without change, the modern economy will never take root. So we work together. Little initiatives. We may be rivals but it’s the same game.”
“You can’t trust them,” Zarabeth said. “They’ll fuck you.”
“Talking to you is pointless. You’re a soldier. What will Crane do?”
It was a good question. “I guess she’ll tell you,” Zarabeth said. “You’re hers now.”
“What is that like?”
“Fun, so far.” The sugary chinotto hurt her teeth. She stirred the ice with her finger. “At the conference this guy was talking about Japan, how the Japanese want machines to act human. Japan has a culture of movement. They bow, they kneel, they sit on tiny chairs, they have dancing video games. It’s their thing. But the guy does cognition and language. He’s Jewish. A lot of the language guys are Jewish.”
“Jews tried bodies,” Minerva said. “Rabbi Loew lost control of his monstrous Golem. They do minds now.”
Zarabeth didn’t know but she could search it later. “That’s the point. Every culture has obsessions. Its own bit of humanity.” Zarabeth finished her drink, winced. “Maybe we won’t make a true artificial being until every culture offers subroutines. Until Japanese teach it to bow, Jews to debate, West Africans to dress. You know what Italians will teach it? Duplicity. Having it both ways. You do it so much that you do it by reflex. Ambivalence is the rut you’re stuck in.”
She kissed Minerva on the cheek. Minerva’s face hot like a new fever. “Ciao bella. Tell your little harem I said goodbye.”