Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (65 page)

As he was pondering that notion,
Domino acted. She stepped between the professor and her aunt as if they were
silly, quarreling children. “Enough,” she announced evenly. “You gentlemen must
leave here at once. This is an official request, and if it is not honored, then
matters will be turned over to our chief of security.” With a nod of her head,
a toss of her glossy brown hair, she indicated the joker on stilts—and it was
then that she and Switters made eye contact for the first time that evening.
Something went leaping between them, something intimate and lively, but also
quizzical, wary, and a wee bit weird.

Acknowledging his role, Switters
bellowed at the men in his rudest Italian. “
Sparisca! Sparisca!
Get
lost!”

As if activated by a switch, Scanlani
sprang. He took five lateral steps with the quickness of an NBA point guard and
thrust out his right leg with the force of a Thai kickboxer. The leather sole
of his expensive Milano-cobbled boot smashed into one of Switters’s stilt
poles. Instantly losing his already precarious balance, Switters tumbled wildly
backward. With a splintering crash, he landed in a jasmine bush. Broken twigs
dug into his back like daggers, but what was left of the shrub served as a
buffer between him and the earth. His feet had not touched. A trickle of blood
ran from a deep scratch on his cheek. “Another damn scar,” he lamented. “I tell
you, the gods are jealous of my good looks.” Two or three fragrant petals were
plastered to the wound. He sniffed. “It smells like the junior prom in here,”
he said.

Scanlani’s generic expression was
unchanged, but Dr. Goncalves laughed derisively. “Your chief of security?” he
asked with a smirk. Pippi and ZuZu made an effort to help Switters out of the
shattered bush, but he waved them off. “Go get my starship,” he whispered to
Pippi. “It’s in the car parked at the gate.”

Domino glared at the professor. “If
he’s injured,” she said, indicating Switters, “you will
never
be given
the prophecy.”

“Oh?” Goncalves raised his eyebrows.
“So you are saying that we may be given it?”

“That depends. Our order will have to
discuss various—”

“Over my dead body!” exclaimed Masked
Beauty.

“Now, aunt, let’s keep an open mind.
At some future date, after certain conditions have been met, certain
concessions granted, it may be in everyone’s best interest to—”

“It is in everyone’s best interest
that you surrender the stolen document immediately,” Goncalves said. His tone
was as threatening as a green sheen on mayonnaise. He shoved Domino aside in
order to confront Masked Beauty directly. “Look at you!” He forced the words
through clenched dentures. “Just look at you. How can the likes of you think to
defy the authority of the Holy Father?” The old abbess blinked. Had she any
lingering worry about still being beautiful, it was all gone now.

“I defy the authority of the Holy
Father!” came a loud cry from the bush. “I defy the authority of the Holy
Authority! I defy the authority of the unholy authority! Fuck authority and the
Polish sausage it rode in on!” Then he added, because his back was being
painfully gouged and because he was on a roll, “Fuck the Dallas Cowboys!”

“Oh, do watch your tongue, Mr.
Switters,” chimed in Maria Deux. “All is lost through sacrilege.”

“Silence that heathen oaf,” commanded
Goncalves. He said it to Masked Beauty, upon whose rococo rhino polyp his beady
eyes remained fixed, but it was Scanlani who moved catlike toward the busted
bush, not walking so much as gliding. The jurist hadn’t gotten far, however,
before three shots rang out in rapid succession.

Mr. Beretta had spoken. Mr. Beretta
had barked at the stars.

Disturbed again, the cuckoos took
flight with a fluttering of feathers and shrieks of protest and alarm. The
sound of scrabbling goat hooves was heard, and from the henhouse a great chorus
of nervous clucking suddenly ensued. Scanlani froze. Switters leveled the gun
at him. He fully expected Scanlani to whisk a pistol of his own from inside his
fine jacket. He imagined the move would be as slick as a magician’s. It would
be pretty to watch. Even his stance—well-shod feet wide apart, both hands on
the gun—would be instinctive and classic. So, Switters was actually
disappointed when Scanlani made no move.

Switters’s position was awkward and
uncomfortable, laid out as he was on a bed of organic nails, but he held the
9-mm steady. His intent was to try to shoot the gun out of Scanlani’s hand
without hitting him. He’d accomplished that feat once in Kuwait City, blasting
a Czech-made CZ-85 apart in the fist of a double agent. Particles of metal had
flown off it like cold black sparks. Dropping what was left of the pistol, the
man had whimpered. He’d held up his vibrating hands to watch their hue redden,
his fingers already swelling like microwaved frankfurters. But, as they say,
“That was then and this is now.” (What would Today Is Tomorrow make of such a
maxim?) Switters was not at all convinced he could duplicate the marksmanship,
even if he was on his feet. He steadied the barrel and waited. For whatever
reason, Scanlani failed to act.

“Throw down your gun,” Switters
ordered. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten it right in Italian, so he repeated the
command in French and English. Scanlani shrugged, a big arrogant Neapolitan
shrug. “Okay, pal, have it your way,” said Switters. “Remove your jacket.” The
alleged attorney understood, for he slipped out of his suit coat, folded it
carefully, and placed it on the ground. The shoulder holster Switters had
expected to be exposed was nowhere in sight. “Damn!” he swore. He couldn’t lie
in that position much longer.

Waving the Beretta, he had Scanlani
remove his shirt and twirl like a fashion model. There was no handgun stuck in
his waistband, front or back. “Okay, clever boy, take off your pants.” The man
refused. For the first time, he displayed emotion, and the emotion was outrage
and disgust. Switters’s back felt like the time clock in an anthill. This was
becoming unbearable. “Remove your damn pants!” he repeated vexatiously. Dr.
Goncalves and the sisters looked dumbfounded.

Again, Scanlani refused to comply.
Switters squeezed off a volley of shots at the dirt alongside the handsome
calfskin boots. Everyone shrieked. Scanlani hastened to unbuckle his belt. And
several moments passed before Switters realized three things:

1. Scanlani was unarmed.

2. Inadvertently, he had asked the
fellow not to remove his trousers but, rather, to pull down his panties, a
linguistic gaffe that could be traced to certain nights in Taormina and Venice,
when he’d desired a clearer view of what the Italians, speaking clinically,
referred to as
la vagina
(the same as in America), but informally (and
sweetly) tended to call
la pesca
(the peach) or
la fica
(the
fig).

3. One of the bullets fired at
Scanlani’s feet had ricocheted off a rock and struck Masked Beauty in the face.

“It was an honest mistake,” said
Switters, referring to the gunpoint disrobing of Scanlani: he hadn’t yet
noticed that Masked Beauty was bleeding. “I gave you credit for being something
more than just another scumbag lawyer. Please accept my apology. And my
condolences.” Domino, who likewise was oblivious to her aunt’s wound, rushed
over to add her apologies. Switters’s heart seemed to liquefy when he witnessed
the characteristic and irrepressible compassion in her concern. Nevertheless,
he called out, “Keep your distance, sister love. The man may be unarmed, but
his manners are deplorable.”

He thought he heard her mutter, “No
worse than your own,” but he couldn’t be sure, for about that time Pippi had
barged onto the scene, pushing his wheelchair. Toufic was with her. Together,
they lifted him out of the tangle of twigs (it resembled an oversize cuckoo’s
nest) and onto the “contour plus” cushion that still adorned the “drop-hook,
solid-folding” seat. Continuing to brandish the automatic pistol, he waved it
at the rapidly dressing Scanlani and at Goncalves, who was one big eel-mouthed
gash of petulance. “Toufic, ol’ buddy, our guests were just saying their
good-byes. You’re supposed to chauffeur them to Deir ez-Zur for their overnight
lodging, as I recall. In the dark, no road, a good sixty kilometers as the
camel flies: I suggest that you organize an expeditious departure.” It was then
that he—and Domino—had noticed the Pachomians huddled around the abbess.

Once it was ascertained that Masked
Beauty was not gravely injured, he ushered the Italian and the Portuguese to
the gate. The former was mutely furious, the latter loudly vocal with
accusations and threats. As Switters was removing his belongings from the car,
Domino rushed up and insisted that he give the Vatican delegation his satellite
phone number and e-mail address. She told them she was sorry that things had
gotten out of hand—both sides were at fault, she said—and she urged them to
contact her and the abbess when tempers had cooled. Perhaps, she said,
something could be worked out.

When the Audi pulled away, she glared
at Switters, and not because she’d overheard him lobbying a somewhat bewildered
Toufic to include a pinch of hashish in his next scheduled delivery to the
convent. “You reckless maniac,” she scolded. “Your irresponsible macho gunplay
has disfigured my aunt.”

Horrified that he might have caused
Masked Beauty permanent harm, he rolled himself rapidly to the infirmary, where
his guilt and sorrow subsided slightly after he learned the extent of the so-called
disfiguration. It seemed that the ricocheting bullet had grazed the old woman’s
nose, neatly slicing off at the base the tiny Chinese mountain of horn flesh,
the violet viral cauliflowerette, the double-dipped God-wart that for many
decades had been protuberating there.

Nobody at the oasis got much sleep
that night. Even the animals were restless and jumpy. The sisterhood was
atwitter with agitation, and Masked Beauty, although surprisingly free of pain,
was in a state of shock following her abrupt and artless amputation. “You’ll
just have to get used to being desirable again,” Switters told the abbess. “Is
it not a fine thing to be rebeautified on a planet that’s being systematically
trashed? You know, my mother always wanted me to become a plastic surgeon. It
would have saved her a fortune in lifts and tucks.”

For her part, even as she swabbed his
own scratched cheek with iodine, Domino remained in a huff. True, she and her
sisters had not merely accepted but actively solicited his protection, yet she
found it brutal and anti-Pachomian that he would assault an official party from
the Vatican (no matter that the party was belligerently authoritarian) with a
deadly weapon. He replied that “assault” was a bit of an exaggeration. And then
he told her a story.

The story had been passed on to him
by Bobby Case, who had learned it from one of his “wise ol’ boys.” It seemed
that long ago, a holy man, a bodhisattva, was walking through the Indian
countryside when he came upon a band of poor, troubled herdsmen and their
emaciated flock. The herdsmen were moaning and gnashing and wringing their
hands, and when the bodhisattva asked them what was the matter, they pointed to
a range of nearby mountains. To drive their flock to fresh green pasture on the
other side of the hills, they had to traverse a narrow pass. In the pass,
however, a huge cobra had established a den, and each time they went by it, the
snake attacked, stabbing its long venomous fangs into animals and humans alike.
“We can’t get through the pass,” the herders complained, “and as a result, our
cattle and goats are starving, and so are we.”

“Worry not,” said the bodhisattva, “I
will take care of it.” He then proceeded to climb up to the pass, where he
rapped on the entrance to the den with his staff and gave the cobra a lecture
it would not soon forget. Thoroughly shamed and chastised, the big serpent
promised that it would never, ever bite the herders or their charges again. The
holy man thanked it. “I believe you when you vow that in the future you will
refrain from the biting of any passerby,” he said, and went on his way.

About a year later, Bodhisattva came
that way again. From a distance, he saw the herdsmen. They appeared content,
their animals hardy and fat. Bodhisattva decided to look in on the cobra and
compliment it on its good behavior, but although he repeatedly rapped his staff
on the rocks, he received no response.
Perhaps it moved away,
thought
Bodhi, and he made to leave. Just then, however, he heard a weak groan from
deep inside the cave. Bodhi crawled inside, where he found the snake in pitiful
condition. Skinny as a drawstring and battered as a tow rope, it lay on its
side, fairly close to death.

“What on earth is the matter?” asked
the guru, moved nearly to tears.

“Well,” said the cobra in a barely
audible voice, “you made me promise not to bite anyone. So, now, everybody who
comes over the pass hits me with sticks and throws stones at me. My body is cut
and bruised, and I can no longer leave the den to find food or water. I’m miserable
and sick, but, alas, there is nothing to be done to protect myself, because you
proclaimed that I shouldn’t bite.”

Bodhisattva patted the poor
creature’s head. “Yes,” he agreed. “But I didn’t say you couldn’t
hiss.”

The meaning of the story was not
lost on Domino. She soon forgave Switters for his hissing. She continued to
believe that he had hissed excessively and had taken an unseemly amount of
pleasure in hissing, but she was not one to linger in the stale cellars of
resentment. Nevertheless, her attitude toward him had changed. While he could
have attributed the change to his cavalier gunplay or to the accidental
shearing off of Masked Beauty’s growth (if he could divest the abbess of the
shield behind which she’d taken refuge—her supernatural wart—mightn’t he
likewise flush Domino from behind the convenient cover of her supernatural
hymen?), he realized that she had seemed different, somehow, even before the
shooting started. Thus, he was not entirely surprised when she announced that
their tower-room petting sessions were at an end.