Friendly Fire (5 page)

The gate is at the end of the corridor. The door to the runway is locked, and there is no fellow traveler in the small, desolate waiting area. The three hours remaining until takeoff are a dreary and demoralizing prospect. For the first time since she decided to make the long trip to her brother-in-law in Africa, she is annoyed with her husband for not insisting on joining her. True, she knew that his presence would not always fit in with the memorial she planned for her late sister. But now, in the empty room with the locked door, she needs him. She has depended on his presence for so many years that now it is like a soothing drug in her bloodstream. He should never have allowed her to go off alone. Yes, in a few hours she will be welcomed by her brother-in-law, who calls her Little Sister, but on the phone he seemed unclear as to the purpose of the visit she is imposing on him, and she sensed that he may even fear it a little. For her part, she finds his reasons for returning to the continent where his diplomatic job had been eliminated equally vague. Was it really just to save money for his old age? And what exactly does he do there? He is already past seventy, and she knows that her sister, who loved and trusted him, would be happy to know that someone from the family was watching over him.

Out of hunger and fatigue, but even more out of boredom, she eats a whole bar of chocolate, which leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth. She should never have given her airplane breakfast to that young man as if he were her husband. The next flight is not a long one, and they won't be serving a real meal, so she had better return soon to the cafeteria and satisfy her hunger with something hot. Meanwhile she can stretch out on one of the benches facing the locked departure gate. Of course it's not fitting for a mature bourgeois woman to stretch out like a vagrant on an airport bench, but she's alone here, and if her lying down bothers anybody, she'll sense it and sit up.

The bench is hard, and she has nothing to cushion it with. She returns to her novel. Having failed to convey the heroine's internal
anguish, the author resorts, predictably, to her external woes, and begins to complicate the plot. A former secret agent appears suddenly as a standoffish lover, a device that does nothing to revive the reader's flagging interest. Daniela's eyes grow heavy, and she quickly marks her place with the boarding pass and sticks the book in her suitcase, lest it tumble open to the floor as drowsiness overcomes her.

Fatigue ripples through the solitary woman who lounges near the locked gate. Despite the uncomfortable conditions, her sleep is deep and soothing, and the passengers who arrive for the flight preceding hers do not demand that she cut it short. From time to time she hears fragments of warm and pleasant voices speaking European languages and also strange African tongues, but does not open her eyes to ascertain whether the people beside her are white or black. They all wish her well. A soft smile glides over her face. The missing husband is replaced in her sleep by many husbands, utter strangers, but lovable all the same.

F
ROM AFAR
Y
A'ARI
sees his son waiting for him by the closed gate of the construction site, wearing a short military-style jacket similar in color and cut to his own, but made of fabric instead of leather. Knowing that his son has not brought a helmet, he takes two from the trunk of his car, yellow ones, places one on his own head and gives his son the other, teasing him, here you go, it's instead of a reserve-duty helmet. They open the gate and enter the main site, where the frame of the building is still unfinished. The foreman, who has been charged to keep secret the building's ultimate purpose, shakes their hands cordially and steers them into a wobbly yellow cage, operated by a dour Chinese man; it rises slow and screeching toward the gray girders at the top, while they peer through the bars like monkeys at the fine rain that streaks the horizon. You won't be cold up there? the supervisor asks Moran. If my father's not cold, neither am I, says the son, smiling. Ya'ari protests: I'm me and you're you. Then, without warning, the cage stops with a shudder, and they walk out onto a pitted surface covered with building materials and peek into the gray abyss of the elevator shaft, from which sprout iron cables and scraps of scaffolding.

Ya'ari kneels down and inspects the shaft, warning the supervisor about cracks and holes. I've already got my share of trouble from shoddy work on a shaft in an apartment building in the western part of town, and even though I'm responsible for the elevator, not the shaft, the tenants, as you can well imagine, are on my back to deal with every stray wind that happens to get sucked inside.

Moran takes out a metal tape measure and extends it along the top of the shaft. Be careful there, his father calls out, don't get too close to the edge. A flash of sweet memory takes him back thirty years, to the night of passion when he sired this boy. What was that "real passion" line she tossed his way when they parted at the airport? Was it just the delusion of a woman no longer young, or a veiled challenge to the man who had not fought hard enough for love in the days before her trip?

Moran pulls out more of the tape. He is checking to make sure that the shaft's actual dimensions match those that were planned in the office, before they begin to deal with the new request that occasioned this visit: to add a fifth elevator, a private one for top-level agents whose identities cannot be exposed.

Ya'ari warns the foreman: "Even if we succeed in installing an extra elevator at the expense of the other four, it'll be very cramped, with room for only one person, preferably not a fat one."

But the size of the fifth elevator is unimportant to the supervisor as long as it works.

A tear in the clouds sends a shaft of light onto the shaved head of Moran, who is not happy with the measurements. You've already clipped four centimeters from the width we requested, he tells the
foreman, and if you keep building the shaft at the same angle, in the end we'll be fifteen centimeters short. So how can you demand an additional elevator?

He loudly zips the metal tape back into its case, replaces it in his pocket, and shakes the construction dust from his hands. The missing centimeters do not worry Ya'ari. We'll manage, he reassures his son, and signals to the Chinese, who is mesmerized by the sea, to open the yellow cage and take them down to ground level. And as he looks around at the ever-growing city, he thinks of the distant traveler. Yes, she is surely exhausted and irritable from the long wait in the transit area that he has imposed on her, but he has no doubt that her smiling eyes will enchant everyone who comes near her.

A
ND INDEED,
as the swift equatorial dusk darkens the narrow windows, she is cheered by the new passengers who are gathering for her flight. A steward writes the name of the airline and the flight number and destination in chalk on a small blackboard and hangs it by the exit door. Daniela evaluates the human qualities of her fellow passengers, black and white, making note of who might be approachable for support should anything go wrong en route, or should her brother-in-law be late picking her up in Morogoro.

She goes to the rest room and methodically applies her makeup, looking with approval at her reflection in the less than clean mirror. When boarding is announced she does not wait, as she usually does, till the line shortens or disappears, but rather gets up quickly to be among the first. And when the steward asks to see her passport, she presents it readily. But her boarding pass is missing.

The line is held up while everyone waits patiently for the smiling woman to find the pass in her bag; when she doesn't, she is asked courteously to step aside and hunt more thoroughly. Is it really necessary? she inquires in her precise English. Can't one do without it?
After all, the return ticket is proof enough. But it turns out that the actual piece of paper is required, for even though this gate has no machine that swallows the passes and then ejects them—but only a human hand, soft and delicate—the pass is still the sole guarantee that she has in fact boarded the flight and not disappeared.

A few minutes more of futile searching go by, until an airline employee in an orange uniform, which goes nicely with her dark skin, gently moves her away from the lengthening queue and suggests that she look in her suitcase. It will turn up, she assures the mortified passenger. It's bound to turn up.

Daniela smiles in agreement with the amiable woman, even as she feels embarrassed and desperate, as well as furious at her husband. This was predictable. He did warn her to keep all the documents together, and now he might even be pleased that his anxiety was justified and that he cannot rely on her, and thus it is his duty and mission to paralyze her with his ministrations, anesthetize her, cushion her very being as if she were a princess.

But she does remember it well, that rectangular boarding pass. She had it, she saw it, she didn't disrespect or neglect it, she remembers what it looked like, its color, so why is it betraying her now, disappearing and leaving her bereft in a transit lounge?

Travelers pass by her, a European family with children, gaily boarding the short evening flight to the game preserve of their dreams. The bus that is to take them to the plane turns on its lights and starts its engine. Has your suitcase already been loaded onto the plane? they ask her. No, she assures them, it's only a week-long trip, to visit a relative; her wheeled carry-on is all she has. For a moment she considers adding that her host was until a few years ago a chargé d'affaires in the region; perhaps, owing to his high status, they might forgive her the boarding pass, but on second thought such credentials strike her as useless, so she says nothing.

This makes it easier for the airline staff. No need to delay the flight and hunt for a suitcase on the plane. They can simply leave
the flustered passenger here and send the plane on its way. It occurs to her that if she'd had another bag, they might have had to forget about the boarding pass and let her travel with her suitcase, but no, Yirmi had advised her not to bring too many clothes; the weather is pleasant, he'd said, and if it gets cold, I still have your sister's sweater and windbreaker.

She is on the verge of tears. Suddenly the disappearance of her boarding pass merges with the death of her sister.

But she
will
remember where she put that damned pass. She will summon all her strengths, she will wake up. It is not just her husband who put her in this stupor, but also her sister's death. She must snap out of it, otherwise there's no point in this trip to far-off Africa that was meant to prevent the pain of her loss from diminishing. If she doesn't wake up, how will she be able to revive memories of her forgotten childhood? Her brother-in-law can't do the work for her. Deep down she knows that he has reservations about her visit, even if it's only for seven days. He doesn't understand its purpose and is also wary of her criticism, open or implicit. He fears having her dig into his affairs. And if she arrives in a scatterbrained, stupefied state, then he, like her husband, will anesthetize her, cushion her very being, and increase her dependency, just as he had done with her sister.

Which is why she must find that boarding pass. She will not degrade herself and go like a naughty schoolgirl to the transit counter and ask that her flight be rescheduled for the next day. She will pull herself together, she will not allow the love lavished upon her to demolish her independence. She needs a dash of misery, genuine anger at herself, like that masochistic heroine in the novel that so far she doesn't care for very much.

Suddenly she knows. No, the pass is not lost, it is in the book, in the suitcase, marking the place where she left off, where the heroine had exhausted her capacity for empathy.

Wait, wait, she calls to the steward, who is about to shut the door on her. She gets down on her knees and opens the suitcase,
and beside the package of newspapers she finds the novel, and the boarding pass protrudes from it, safe and sound. She pulls it out, making a mental note of the page number before closing the book.

"We've been looking for someone to take care of you," the ticket taker says, tearing the stub from the card, "but I see you've taken care of yourself."

Since she is the last passenger, he rolls her bag to the bus, though now it seems to roll happily by itself. Once there, she is welcomed with enthusiasm, people getting up to offer her a seat, and she smiles and sits down, taking care to insert into her passport, as her husband had instructed, the remaining portion of the boarding pass, even though in a few minutes she will have to take it out again and present it to the stewardess at the door of the plane.

T
HE SUNSET, DIMLY
visible between the heavy clouds, casts gray shadows in Ya'ari's office. But he does not turn on the light, tilting back instead in his comfortable desk chair, closing his eyes in a moment of contemplation before fulfilling the final obligation of a day that began before dawn. His father is eating dinner now, but because it is hard for Ya'ari to watch Francisco's wife, Kinzie, feeding him with a small spoon, he prefers to arrive at the end of the meal, when his father's bib has been removed and his face washed clean.

It's quiet in the office. Because of the holiday, the women finished their workday at lunchtime, and not all the men who went out for lunch made it back to their desks, either. A few years ago, after his father could no longer conceal the trembling in his extremities and finally retired, Ya'ari did away with the time clock, expecting that hours missed would be stamped upon the individual conscience of each employee. He was right. Sometimes at night, when he and Daniela are on their way home from a concert or a movie, he will detour past the office to show her the bright flicker of busy computers in the windows.

"Listen, Ya'ari," says Gottlieb, the elevator manufacturer, on the telephone. "I see that the wind is up again, and as I told you this morning, even if our work is not to blame, I'm willing, if only for the personal and professional peace of mind of a friend who trusted us, to send my expert there right now, but on the condition that you, or someone from your office, will go with her."