The Importance of Being Dangerous (30 page)

“I got you, baby!” she screamed after him with all her might. “Don't worry, baby, I'll get you out!
Maricones! Maricones motherfuckers!
”

SIDARRA'S MOTHER HAD A PHRASE
she applied mostly to food storage: “Just to be on the safe side.” Just to be on the safe side, Sidarra had emptied several different accounts she held with different banks into the money market fund with Raquel's name on it earlier in the week. She had closed most accounts that bore her own name and transferred a large amount of cash to a charter school fund she had set up in a small local bank based in California. Sidarra wanted to sell the Mercedes or give it away, but had decided at the last minute to simply pay it off. Now, as she and Griff prepared to leave the condo for a walk in the town before they would have to depart from Belize, she poured the contents of her travel bag onto the desk beside Griff's bulging billfold.

“What's all that?” he asked, pointing to the small pile of gum wrappers, tissues, receipts, lipstick, and plastic.

“Credit cards for the sea,” she smiled. Arrayed before them she spread a half dozen plastic cards from department stores, Ameri
can Express, Visa, and MasterCard, all in the name of her alias, Desiree Galore.

“Is that what you had to go back for when we were leaving?” Griff asked as he buckled his belt.

“Yes, these and a few personal items,” she answered matter-of-factly. She opened the desk drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and methodically sliced each card into many pieces. He turned and walked into the bathroom for something. Sidarra pulled a small black box out from under the pile. She opened it, pulled Michael's radiant diamond from its blue velvet pond, wrapped it in a napkin, and stuck the ring in her jacket pocket. Then she collected the jagged pieces of credit cards, placed them in a paper bag she stuffed into her purse, tossed the rest of the stuff into the trash, and waited for Griff to take her for their stroll.

When Griff was finished with his own preparations, he came back to the desk area and picked up the billfold.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

“Depends what you think, love. I've got something I need to do on our way out.”

When they got downstairs to the marbled lobby, Griff stood with Sidarra under the overhead fans and asked to see the concierge. As they waited, Sidarra looked around and noticed that everyone working there was a deep, luscious brown. The pretty women at the front desk. The straitlaced doormen. The baggage assistants in their bright red uniforms. The janitors clearing cigarette butts from the ashtrays. Even the concierge of this British investment was brown.

“What can I do for you and your lovely wife, sir?” the man asked.

“Is unit number 12D where we stayed still available for sale?” Griff asked.

“Of course, sir. But we have much better for not much more money, American,” the man replied.

“No. I think we like that one just fine. However, we're in a bit of a hurry to return to Chicago. We have a plane to catch.” Griff reached into his slacks, retrieved the hefty grip so the man couldn't miss it, and patted the leather cover with one hand. “Can we do this quickly?”

“Of course,” said the man. “We are quite happy to accommodate you. Let me bring you to the sales office and we can have you out of here in no time at all.”

“I appreciate that.”

Moments later they were seated in a small, plushly decorated room with a huge fish tank behind the sales manager's desk. She too was brown and a little too taken with Griff's hazel eyes for Sidarra's taste. A few lies, twenty-eight minutes, $65,000 in cash, plus a few years of prepaid condo fees later, Griff had an envelope with all the pertinent information and a quitclaim deed in his jacket pocket. On the way out of the lobby doors, he addressed it to a P.O. box, paid for the postage, and dropped it in a mail slot. In Sidarra's pocket was the sales office business card with a number she'd scribbled on the back while Griff was signing papers: Unit 12D.

“My instinct tells me I probably should turn around, go back up there, and move in when we're finished in town,” he told her as they walked arm in arm to a taxi. “But at least I have someplace to come back to one day.”

Sidarra wished she too had thought of such a move. That, in many ways, was the difference between her and Griff, the difference between Griff and Michael, and the person she had been looking for these forty years without knowing who. For a married man, Griff seemed to do so much so well alone, as if he were born to it. He made more peace than he knew. And now there was nothing worse than knowing the peace they had made together, a peace that didn't really rely on dollars and the Cicero Club, was in danger of locking shut.

They never walked so slowly. The slow town speeded by them as they walked its dusty streets with serene smiles. They dawdled over knickknacks, stopped to watch kids play music on the street, and fed each other snacks from sunlit stands selling God knows what. Their steps matched so perfectly, each leftward stride an elegant march into a hard-won future, each right foot forward a step closer to the gallows of the present.

“I promised myself I would not buy anything,” Sidarra said as they passed a colorful hat stand, “but I think I might need to make just one exception.”

She tried on a wide floppy straw hat with a Diana Ross brim and a red ribbon. It covered half her face, exposed a single sun-glassed eye, and fit her head like a tropical gangster's. Long ago she had gotten her mother in trouble with Aunt Chickie over a hat like that. “Why not?” Griff said. “Keep your promise. I never bought you a birthday present.”

She laughed like a silly schoolgirl again while Griff paid for the hat. Within minutes that street in Belize was a memory and they were in a cab on their way back to the airport.

Each mile under the old taxi's wheels spelled something foreboding. The time was running out. To distract her stomach from the death-defying drive over unbanked mountain curves, Sidarra decided to sing to Griff. She chose another Anita Baker number that had popped into her head, “Sometimes I Wonder Why.” Griff's bones received every note. His spine tingled, and the driver slowed to a crawl as Sidarra lifted her voice and sang:
“This tightrope that I walk/A tightrope without a net below/And if I fall, child I just fall/Because I know/I know/I'll love you till I die…”

Suddenly Sidarra stopped singing. “Driver?” she called out as the car ambled around a seaside cliff. “Please stop for a minute. I just want to get one more look at the water.”

The man pulled the car over to the side of the road, Sidarra indicated to Griff to stay and jumped out of the door. She hurried
across the dirt road in the breeze and stood at the edge of the cliff. The waters swirled in rock jetties way below. Griff watched Sidarra's profile against the sun. She pulled the small bag of credit card cuttings from her purse, opened it to insert a handful of pebbles she found at her feet, and flung the package over the side.

“Goodbye, kind lady,” she whispered into an indifferent breeze.

When she saw it disappear under the white bubbles, she got back in the taxi.

She and Griff sailed through every checkpoint with the ease of man and wife. Smiles greeted them and their backs as they boarded. Griff had managed to seat them together for the first leg of the trip, a flight to Chicago before they had to change planes. As much as they had to say, they kept their shades on, clasped each other's hands as the borders flew by beneath them, and napped ear to ear. The landing in Chicago was bumpy and they woke to the loud bounce of rubber on tarmac.

Griff's face had already changed as they walked to the connecting gate at O'Hare. Sidarra decided not to tell him about that habit of his until they were back in New York. She would have the whole flight to think of things she thought they could change in their relationship. For all his legal calculations, Sidarra had a feeling he was not going anywhere without her.

They waited at the gate to board the final leg. Griff turned to her once the line of first-class passengers began moving forward. They stood together near the window, the nose of the plane just outside the pane. Griff lifted the wide straw brim of her new hat so he could see both her eyes. “I'm afraid we're not sitting together for this flight, Sid.”

She shrugged. “I figured as much. That's okay. It's a short enough flight.”

“I'm in the front. Unfortunately, you're back near the bathrooms.”

“I'll survive,” she said.

“I know you will. Listen, I, uh, want you to know how you've changed my life.”

“C'mon, Griff. There's plenty of time for that.” She squeezed him against her hips and touched his face. Griff let out a little surprised gasp, and his whole body tensed with unexpected delight.

“Sidarra?”

“Yes, baby?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Please don't forget what I told you on the balcony.”

“That I'm loved?”

“Yes.”

“You think just because you say it it's true?”

He smiled. “Yup.” He kissed her slowly and softly. “I'll meet you by the baggage claim.”

They hugged. Her row was called, she blew him one last kiss and walked onto the plane alone.

You cannot hear sirens on the ground from a plane approaching a gate, but Sidarra still thought she did when they had landed in New York. She stood with the other passengers in the rear, waiting the interminable wait for the passengers up front to deplane. People all around her sighed hot, irritated breaths in her face, and she had to sit back down. Why Griff wanted to meet by the baggage claim when neither of them had any baggage was another question she would put to his know-it-all ass as soon as she relieved herself of the agitated arms and bodies around her. They waited and waited. the loudspeaker began to cackle overhead.

“I'm sorry, folks, but this is your captain speaking,” it said. “The rest of you are being held up here at the gate while there's a police investigation going on. It should be just another few minutes or so. We appreciate your patience.”

At that point Sidarra almost lost her mind. She immediately began to tremble with fear, and the first face she saw in her head was Raquel's. The panic was overwhelming. She looked around for a way to get out, but there were tightly packed bodies everywhere. She stood in a fret. The second face she saw in her mind was Griff's. Oh no! she almost said aloud, but something made her stop. She quieted herself. She tried to vanish from people's suspicious eyes. A few minutes later, and at last they were all moving again.

“Thank you. Hope to see you again soon,” the captain and flight attendants told her as she deplaned, as if nothing were amiss.

Sidarra stepped cautiously up the ramp into the terminal. She lowered the wide straw brim over her shaded eyes, walked with a slight hunch, and gripped her bag for all it was worth. Once she was well inside the terminal, she sidestepped crowds of reuniting families and curious onlookers. There ahead in the long corridor was Griff, his back to her, his arms spread wide like a bird in flight, a circle of blue-uniformed police officers and airport security surrounding him. She got behind a black family and matched their strides. Sidarra kept her head down as she passed. She heard the steel cuffs snap shut and caught just a glimpse of Griff with his head thrown back and his eyes closed in a rare and powerful silence.

“You have the right to remain…Anything you say may be used against you…”

She quickened her pace once she got a few feet ahead of them. She wanted to run. The youngest kid in the black family launched into a tantrum. His parents tried to pull him away, but he wanted to see what was happening to the man with his arms out.

“Are they gonna shoot him?” the boy asked his father.

Sidarra hustled to a slow jog and disappeared down the corridor. When she got outside to the taxi stand, she cut the line. New
Yorkers cursed her as she handed the man directing cabs a twenty-dollar bill. She hopped in the taxi, slammed the door, and said, “Go! Upper Manhattan. Please go! I gotta go
now
!”

Inside the cab, safe for a minute on the Van Wyck Expressway, she fumbled for her cell phone. Her fingers were trembling so badly she dropped the phone. It wasn't on. She turned it on. It took forever to light up. When it did, the clock read 4:47. She dialed her home number. It rang and rang. Finally Aunt Chickie answered.

“It's me. Has anyone been to the house today?” she asked.

“No. What's the matter, Sidarra? Are you all right?”

“Is Raquel with you?”

“Yeah, she's right here. I'll put her on.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It's Mommy. I'm back. I'm safe. I want you to go to your room. Don't ask me any questions now. It's very important. I want you to pretend we're in a movie.”

“What kind of movie?”

Sidarra was stumped. “Um, a James Bond movie, okay? Now, first I want you to think about everything you got in there that you really, really want to have with you for a while. Get a suitcase and put it all in it. We're gonna take a really cool trip. When you're finished, I want you to sit on the suitcase and think, What have I forgot? Then I want you to go pack that too. But only enough to fit into one big suitcase. You can go into my closet and get one of mine. The Louis Vuitton bags. The biggest one you can find, okay?”

“Cool!”

“Good. Then, when you're finished, I want you to go to the kitchen and get the kennel box, the one we took the cat in when she had to go to the vet. Get it and get her. Put Pussy Galore in the cat box and wait for me. We're gonna take a trip. It's gonna be more fun than you've ever had, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Now, put your aunt back on the phone. And, Raquel, hurry!”

“What are you telling this girl, Sidarra? She's bouncing like a jitterbug.”

“Aunt Chickie, I can't get into it over the phone. There's been a problem. Don't say anything out loud to scare Raquel. There's a guy. He might be stalking the house. We have to get out.”