On a Clear Day

  “Sayeed always spreads his people at the foot of a mountain in Morocco,” Drego said. “You get this wide line with the mountains and fog as a backdrop; you never know how many people you’re going to be fighting. I’ve read reports where people started running away just looking at his men from across a field.

  “He moves forward—is this useful to you, Dahlia? But he attacks from the wings.” Drego couldn’t wait.

  “Where’s he in this formation?” Michael.

  “In the rear.” Drego. “He’s coordinating the attack from behind the lines, mostly cell phones, but he makes a show of using falcons and stuff. We think that’s just Hollywood stuff.”

  “No!” I heard myself saying. “We’re not talking about a football game, and Sayeed is not the enemy. C-8 is the enemy!”

  There was silence. Then Michael spoke.

  “Dahlia, we know that C-8 is the enemy. But if they’re going to bring Sayeed into this country, with even a hundred of his people, then he’s the one we’re going to have to fight.”

  “I think I want to go home and think,” I said. “I want to do projections based on what C-8 intends, not just on what Sayeed is doing. Sayeed has to be just another piece of shit to these big corporations. Can’t you see that? They don’t care any more about this man than they care for the Sturmers or the poor slobs trying to scrape a living out of the streets. Sayeed cannot be our focus!

  “We need to rethink this thing as if we’re playing with hard-nosed and damned intelligent professionals, not some brown-skinned cowboy out of North Africa!”

  More silence. I felt suddenly alone. This was not what they wanted to hear.

  “If that’s what you want,” Michael said. His voice was even, flat.

  “Dahlia, what’s your take on this?” Tristan. “Where’s your train going?”

  “For a combat situation, there have to be four components for the aggressor. The first is that the target has to be in their area of influence. Miami is not in Sayeed’s area. Second, he has to see a clear goal. There is no clear goal for a band of Africans in Miami,” I said. “He’s got to be sure he’s going to win. In America? No way! And last, if he’s going to start anything, he’s got to be sure there’s not going to be a kickback he can’t handle. None of this fits Sayeed. All of it fits C-8. The world is their area of influence. The goal is more money for their pockets. They always win. They don’t expect any opposition. No computer projection is going to make Sayeed the problem!”

  Another friggin’ silence. At least they were thinking.

  Michael said that we needed a break and called somebody to get me a lift to the Bronx. I think he was disappointed.

  As I checked my rucksack to make sure I had my chargers, Anja came to my side. She put her arm around my waist.

  “Michael send you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he thinks all the talk of fighting has got you spooked.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I trust you,” Anja said. “You rely on what you have in your head, and you got a lot up there, girl.”

  She smiled.

  “You want to come home with me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I hadn’t expected her to say yes, and my face must have shown it. She asked me if I really wanted her to come. I said yes.

  16

  The car dropped me and Anja off a little after five. The sky was still a cheery blue with little wisps of clouds floating in the distance, but somehow the neighborhood looked different.

  “Are we in the right place?” Anja.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. Then I saw what had changed. There were now rolls of ugly barbed wire in between the houses where I had played as a child and where kids were always running between their backyards and the quiet street. I had been away for a minute, and there were ugly wires coiled angrily between the buildings from ground level to the eaves. Disgusting.

  Mrs. Rosario greeted us, threw her huge arms around Anja, and squeezed her into the warmness of her body.

  “Any friend of Dahlia is my daughter too,” Mrs. Rosario said.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Anja smiled.

  “I am so glad you’re home!” Mrs. Rosario said. Then she said it again in Spanish. “We’ll have a wonderful dinner for you! Do you like stew?”

  She was speaking to Anja, who nodded and gave the thumbs-up sign.

  “One hour—it’s already on,” Mrs. Rosario said. “Dahlia, baby, are you too tired to eat?”

  “Never too tired to eat with you. Mrs. Rosario,” I asked. “What’s with the barbed wire?”

  “A few kids, maybe favelos, maybe not, were wandering around in the yards,” she answered. “Probably looking for something to eat. But you never know.”

  Upstairs to my place. Mrs. Rosario, or someone, had changed the calendar to one that had a painting of St. Cecelia. She was beautiful.

  Anja was looking around the room, and I watched her taking in every detail of the old furniture, every picture stuck around the mirror, every yellowed memento.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Looks like a life,” Anja said. “I like that in a person.”

  “The barbed wire wasn’t here before.”

  “Dahlia, are you discouraged?” Anja asked me.

  “Just a little,” I said. “At this last meeting, after coming back from St. Paul, I felt as if I was in the middle of the ocean in a storm. There’s lightning all around and big waves, and you don’t know what to do next. The guys seem to be latching on to facing Sayeed somewhere, but Sayeed isn’t the big show, Anja. The big show is still C-8.”

  “And they’re as hard to get at as the ocean,” Anja said. “I got you on that. You thinking of saying that we shouldn’t go to Miami?”

  “We have to go to Miami,” I said. “But we need to bring our best minds with us, because we really don’t know what we’re going to be facing. Figure this—somewhere there are two fat guys with double chins doing computer projections for C-8—”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “No, but I want them to be fat guys with double chins,” I said.

  “Oh, okay, and hair growing out of their noses!” Anja added.

  “Right! And they’re entering data about Sayeed and how he’s going to affect things. It’s all show-and-tell, but they have some path or event they want to get over.”

  “Dahlia, Sayeed doesn’t look like any show-and-tell to me.”

  “It’s not important what he looks like to you, or to the guys, Anja,” I said. “What does it look like to C-8? Whatever they’re doing, Sayeed is just another piece of it. Like Ellen was another piece of it. Maybe C-8 had her killed, maybe they didn’t, but they sure had some asshole beat her up in the bathroom!”

  “You think it’s going to get ugly in Florida?”

  “Yeah, Anja, I really do.”

  Anja took the first turn in the shower down the hall. She came back in ten minutes and said that the water was cold and refreshing. I didn’t want to take a cold shower, but I didn’t want to stink up the place, either, so I followed her.

  The water was cold, and I shared the shower with a spider hanging from a long spider thread. That cheered me up a little.

  Down to dinner.

  It was pollo guisado, simple and good. Mrs. Rosario has invited Rafael; Ramón, the old man who lives on the first floor; a woman I don’t know; and Lydia, the young girl.

  “Lydia made the dessert!” Mrs. Rosado said. “Sugar cookies for everybody who cleans their plates!”

  Lydia was wearing jeans and a sequined hoodie. She looked over at Anja and me and gave us a half smile.

  “So what have you been doing?” The old man jumped right in. “You save the world yet? Because I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Ramón, shut up until I introduce our guest. Anja is a friend of Dahlia’s and a friend of mine. Isn’t that right, chica?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “And this old man is Ramón, who died ten years ago but is too st
ubborn to lie down. This is Isobel, a saint. This is Rafael, not a saint. And this is Lydia, an angel. We are lucky in this house to have one saint, one angel, Dahlia, and now you.”

  “I still didn’t hear nothing about the world being saved!” Ramón said.

  “You can’t even hear the television without blasting it all over the house, Ramón.” Mrs. Rosario was ladling out the stew. “If Dahlia saved the world and everybody was talking about it, you would be the last to know!”

  “You can’t save the whole world at once,” I said. “You need to save a little piece at a time. Tonight I’ll try to save the chicken stew.”

  “You need to give the chicken some mouth-to-mouth, but I don’t think it’s going to help him!” Rafael said. “He looks kind of tired to me.”

  “Dahlia, Isobel is Ramón’s niece,” Mrs. Rosario gestured toward the woman, who nodded and smiled at me. “She doesn’t tell stupid jokes, but she has a job working for a car service.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “What do those boys do?” Mrs. Rosario sat down and handed a large slotted spoon to Ramón.

  “First, we have boys and we have girls,” I said. “Like Anja.”

  “Is she smart?” Lydia asked.

  I looked toward her and saw that she had her head down.

  “Anja’s very smart,” I said.

  “¿Habla español?” Head still down.

  “I’m afraid not,” Anja said.

  “But she’s been all over the world—Africa, South America, St. Paul—and she does good things,” I said.

  “And the boys?” Mrs. Rosario.

  “Michael is the leader,” I said. “He used to have a rock band. He’s kind of rich, and he’s dedicated to making the world a better place.”

  “All rich people say that!” Ramón had made a circle of rice on his plate and was now filling it with stew. “They want to make it better for themselves.”

  “That’s kind of what we’re doing,” Anja said. “Trying to point out that what’s good for the very rich isn’t always good for everybody else.”

  “So it’s a band? What do you play?” Rafael is having fun with me. Okay.

  “It’s not a band and I don’t play anything,” I said. “I more or less do the math for the group.”

  “Are there any other girls in the group?” Lydia. Still looking down.

  “There’s one other girl. Her name is Mei-Mei,” I said. “She’s very good at chess.”

  “So she’s smart?” Lydia asked.

  “All the people in the group are smart, Lydia,” Mrs. Rosario said. “Dahlia likes to be with smart people.”

  “Mei-Mei’s very smart, too,” Anja said. “Like you.”

  “Lydia is going to make some man a wonderful wife.” The woman Isobel agreed with herself by nodding. “She already cooks well. You’ll taste her cookies tonight. They’re much better than anything you can buy.”

  “When I was a little girl, my grandmother—who was more of a mother to me than my real mother—told me that if a woman can cook and comb her hair, she’ll make a good wife,” Mrs. Rosario said. “They used to say that if a woman came out of her house with a wooden spoon and a comb, she was looking for a husband.”

  “What’s the hardest part about saving the world, Dahlia?” Ramón again. “Because if it’s easy, I may take it up myself. I need a hobby to keep me young.”

  “What do you think, Anja?” I asked.

  “Figuring out who the enemy is,” Anja said. “Sometimes that’s hard.”

  “That’s what the boys do,” Rafael said. “A boy always knows who the enemy is. You look at a man and the man looks at you, and right away you know if he’s a friend or somebody who’s out to kill you.”

  “You could be wrong, Rafael,” Mrs. Rosario said.

  “How do you know if somebody is smart?” Lydia asked. “Do they give you tests?”

  “Smart people kind of recognize other smart people.” Anja smiled as she spoke. “Maybe it’s a kind of radar. What do you think?”

  “Could be.” Lydia. Now she is smiling. I like her more and more.

  “A man just has to open his mouth one time to me and I know if he’s smart or if he’s stupid,” Rafael droned on. “Even if he just says hello, I can tell. You got to feel it.”

  “If you feel sick and you go to a doctor, is he your friend or enemy?” I asked Rafael.

  “If he’s a good doctor he’s your friend.” Rafael was pleased with his answer.

  “And if you can’t afford him?” I asked.

  “Then he’s neutral,” Rafael said. “To you, he’s not a doctor anymore.”

  I didn’t bothering answering. Rafael didn’t get it and maybe never would.

  “This stew is wonderful!” Anja.

  “You look like a girl who eats a lot,” Ramón, the old man, said. “That’s okay in a girl, because you never eat as much as boys do.”

  “How do you sleep when you’re away so much?” Mrs. Rosario asked.

  “Michael has this huge house in Morristown,” I said. “We all have separate rooms, and they’re pretty quiet, so I don’t have trouble sleeping. You put chili peppers in this stew?”

  “Not enough?”

  “I think it’s enough,” I said. “I just wondered. My mother never liked anything too spicy. There’s a lot of flavor in this stew.”

  “It’s the lime juice that brings it out,” Isobel said. “She could be a cook in a fancy restaurant. Easy. I mean the kind they have in the big hotels in New York.”

  “If you could get a job in one of those hotels,” Mrs. Rosario said. “Jobs don’t grow on trees, you know.”

  “Maybe the man who takes away your jobs is your enemy,” I said.

  “Rafael, she has a point,” Mrs. Rosario said. “You have stew on your shirt.”

  Rafael grunted. Perfect answer.

  “If you don’t know who the enemy is, how can you fight them?” Lydia.

  “We know what they do, and we can fight against that,” I said. “If you go to a doctor and you can’t afford to pay to be treated, you can fight against the high fees.”

  “You’re too young to get sick, Lydia,” Mrs. Rosario said. “And Dahlia and her friend—Anna?”

  “Anja.”

  “What kind of a name is that?” Ramón asked. “Is that Jewish? I don’t have anything against Jewish people.”

  “It’s Czech,” Anja said.

  “He’s got nothing against the Czech people, either,” Isobel said. “The only people he doesn’t like are Germans, Haitians, French because he thinks they’re white Haitians, Canadians, Italians, and everybody from the Middle East.”

  “I don’t like Japanese people, either,” Ramón added proudly.

  “Dahlia, do you have sex with the boys?” Lydia.

  “Lydia! Oh, my God!” Mrs. Rosario slapped the back of Lydia’s head. “You never ask that kind of question.… Dahlia, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Rosario,” I said. “No, honey, we don’t have sex with the boys.”

  “We don’t kiss them or anything,” Anja said. “We’re all very serious. There are a lot of bad things going on, and we don’t have a lot of time to fool around.”

  “She doesn’t mean anything, but today’s children are too bold,” Isobel said. “When I was a child, we didn’t say anything at the dinner table. We didn’t even ask for another serving.”

  “You lived in Brooklyn, Isobel,” Ramón said. “When you were young—which wasn’t yesterday—things were different. Who can afford to live in Brooklyn now?”

  “Dahlia, does Anja like black beans? She’s not eating them.”

  “I’ll get to them,” Anja answered.

  “So how much are they paying you?” Mrs. Rosario asked.

  “They’re paying our expenses,” I said. “It’s like volunteer work.”

  “Are you actually going to fight somebody?” Lydia asked. “You’re going to hit them?”

  “Ladies don’t fight, child.”
Isobel.

  “We might fight when we go to Florida,” I said.

  “You’re going to Florida?” Mrs. Rosario asked.

  “I don’t like Cubans, either,” Ramón said.

  “You don’t mean real fighting—she doesn’t mean real fighting, Lydia,” Mrs. Rosario said. “She means like a debate. Isn’t that right, Dahlia?”

  “No, the people we’ll fight against in Miami have guns,” I said. “And we’ll have guns.”

  “Oh, my God!” Isobel. “Oh, my dear sweet God!”

  “You don’t have to go to no Florida,” Rafael said. “You can stay right here. No man lets his woman go fight with guns. That’s stupid. You stay right here. Why do you have to go fighting and shooting for some rock star? You tell me that! There’s no sense to it. You can stay here and get a husband who’ll take care of you. Why do you have to go with this stupid shit?”

  “We’ll take care of each other,” Anja started, but Rafael cut her off.

  “What do you know?” Rafael was getting angry. He had his head turned toward me, and I could see the vein in his neck bulging. “You’re a white girl and you’ll go back to being a white girl when the fighting is over. We’re Dominicans. With us it’s different.”

  I listened for a while as Mrs. Rosario told me that it would be all right not to go, as once she had told me that it was all right to go.

  I didn’t think Rafael, or for that matter any of them, would fully understand what I had to say, but I had to try.

  “Rafael, when I came home this time, I saw the barbed wire piled between the buildings. It was as if the strands of wire were a kind of crazy evilness that had replaced the laughter of the kids who used to play there. It told me things were getting worse for our little neighborhood, and for everybody like us. Either I fight against this, in any way I can, and for any reason I can bring myself to, or I just give up. I feel powerless, and when we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way. I know that. You know that.

  “The group I’m with is still trying to find that better way. We have our reasons, and sometimes they’re not the same reasons, but we each have something we want, and we’re ready to fight for what we want.”

  “What do you want?” Rafael.

  “I think I want to wake up on a clear day and see a world full of hope. I want everybody to have their own little cup of hope that they take care of and cherish and sip from. If their hopes and dreams don’t come true, I want them to be able to pick up another cup and start all over again. It’s not a lot to ask, Rafael. It’s not a lot to look forward to, but it’s more than we have right now.