The Sex Sphere (5 page)

“Let’s get dressed and go downstairs, children.”

“Is Daddy downstairs?” Tom asked, looking up from his water-play.

“Yes, I think so.” Her voice grew brittle with sudden anger. “Now, don’t make Mommy do everything. Find your clothes and put them on. You can wear what you had yesterday. I’ll give you new socks and underpants.”

“OK.” Tom jumped up and ran into the bedroom, making a race-car noise at the corner. Ida gave an abandoned squeal of delight. When Sybil came back into the bedroom, both of the children were bouncing on the bed.

“Double Ting!”

“Triple Ting!”

“
Ostrich
Ting!”

That was one of the children’s chants. They were such little
people
, the children, little elves with their own elvish ways. For a moment Sybil wished that their oldest child, Sorrel, the ringleader, were there too. To simplify the trip a bit, Sorrel had been parked in Frankfurt with Sybil’s parents, Lotte and Cortland Burton. Cortland was a big vice-president for Miltech, an international conglomerate of high-tech engineering companies.

Tom threw a pillow and knocked the phone off the bedside table.

“That’s IT!” cried Sybil, springing into action. “You get those clothes on
now
or there’s no breakfast!”

“What’s for breakfast?” Tom asked in a put-on fussy voice.

“Yeah,” Ida cackled, joining in the joke. “What are we eating for breakfast?”

“Fried egg with spinach?”

“Yucky hot milk?”

“Pancake with pig gravy?”

“Broken waggy waggy?”

“Booger pie?”

“Poo and pee?”

“BAAAAOOOOUUUUUU!”

“Gligeeglegleheehegligihee!”

The children were on the bed, snorting and grunting and rolling around. Sybil lunged forward and caught hold of them. “I’VE HAD IT, KIDS!”

As the children began to dress, Sybil harangued them. “I don’t know
why
you two can’t behave
normally
. Here we are in Rome for a lovely
vacation
and you roll around like
animals
. Now let’s go downstairs and find Daddy.”

Alwin was not in the breakfast room, not in the lobby, not to be seen on the street outside. Sybil even walked to the Via Veneto and craned. Pale, empty sunshine. God
damn
him.

Back in the hotel, she approached the desk clerk, a cadaverous man with a horse-face. This was Beppo, the night-clerk, tired and waiting to be relieved.

“Have you seen my husband?”

Beppo smiled broadly. “
Si, si
. I see him go in the night. He no come back. Where you think he go?” The last question was a blend of malice and idle curiosity.

“I don’t know!” Sybil exclaimed, her voice rising. Suddenly she was afraid. “Something must have happened to him! Can you call the police for me?” Her hands were shaking.

Beppo jerked his head and shoulders in an ambiguous gesture…part shrug and part nod. “I will attempt. But perhaps no one there today.
Venerdì santo
.”

“Good Friday,” Sybil translated. “Oh Lord, what a mess. Everything will be closed. Try the hospitals, too.”

Tom and Ida bounced past. They held their forearms together and their hands up under their chins. They were playing Easter rabbit. Poor little orphans. Sybil’s eyes filled with quick tears.

The night-clerk dialed a number, listened briefly, then hung up.

“
Impossibile, Signora Bitter
. I can do nothing.”

Sybil knew better than to take no for an answer. She could see a light in an office behind the clerk. Someone in there would help her. “I would like to speak to the manager.”

The night-clerk glanced longingly at the lobby doors. Where was Guido the day-clerk, that lazy pig of a Tuscan? Beppo’s lips pursed into a thin line of distaste. Perhaps if he ignored this woman she would go away. Find her husband, indeed. “The manager is not here,
signora
. Perhaps you should go to the
carabinieri
in person.”

This was a mistake. Beppo had underestimated Sybil’s determination. Now she began to scream.

“WON’T ANYBODY HELP ME? MY HUSBAND MAY BE DYING! WHAT KIND OF HOTEL IS THIS?”

At the sound of her angry, frightened voice the children came to her side and stood there, wide-eyed and anxious. Some guests looked up from their breakfasts. A porter came over, glaring at Beppo. And then the manager’s door opened.

“Of course,” Beppo began. “Of course I will help.” He fumbled at the telephone.

“WON’T ANYBODY HELP ME FIND MY HUSBAND?” Sybil repeated.

The manager came out of his office, wiping coffee from his mustache. He had a well-worn look, and kind-looking wrinkles on his forehead.

“
Signora?
”

Sybil drew a breath and gave him a smile. “My name is Sybil Bitter. We are staying in Room 201. Last night my husband went out for a walk, and he has not returned. I am afraid something has happened to him.” She fixed the night-clerk with a hard glance. “And this man…”

Beppo gave a hugely insincere smile and handed the telephone to the manager.

For the next few minutes the manager talked Italian over the phone, frequently asking Sybil or the night-clerk for bits of information: when Alwin had left, how to spell his name, what his passport number was, his physical appearance, what he had been wearing.

“Where’s Daddy?” Tom whispered up at Sybil. “Did he run away?”

“I don’t think he would do that,” Sybil answered softly. Why would he? They’d been having good food and great sex; why would he run away?

“Maybe he got lost,” suggested Ida.

The manager set the telephone down slowly, his forehead corrugated with worry. “Maybe you come into my office, a-Mrs. Bitter.”

“Why? What is it? Just tell me!”

The manager looked around the lobby, then leaned across the counter to speak confidentially. “A note has been a-found at USA Embassy.” His dark, liquid eyes stared at Sybil significantly.

“What kind of note? From my husband?” Had he run away…or, oh God no, killed himself? “What are you trying to tell me?” The children at her sides began to babble questions.

“Please, a-Mrs. Bitter. Do not excite. Beppo now take you to USA Embassy. Is only a-two hundred meter.” The manager spoke rapidly to the night-clerk. The gaunt man stood up and began slowly to shrug himself into his shiny black raincoat.

“What did the note say?” Sybil asked, keeping her voice level.

The manager sighed. “Is a-very bad in Rome this year. Your husband has been-a…” He paused, groping for the word. “Bandits give him a-back for money. Or other things.”

“He’s been
kidnapped!
”

The children burst into tears. They knew all about kidnapping from years of schoolyard warnings. It took Sybil several minutes to calm them.

And then Beppo led them outside. A cloud crossed the sun, the air cooled momentarily. Well-dressed people hurried this way and that, going for coffee, going to church. Sybil wondered if she should have gone back upstairs to get coats for the children.

Ida stopped by a window display of chocolate eggs. They were the huge Italian kind, foil-wrapped and with a toy hidden inside. Alwin had planned to buy two for the kids today.

Sybil signaled the night-clerk to stop rushing ahead, and waited for Ida. The child was just tall enough to see in the store window. From the side, Sybil could see the round little face reflected, no bigger than one of the giant Easter eggs.

“Come on, Ida. We have to find Daddy.”

Still the blond little head stared into the depths of the store window. Was there a tear on her cheek?

“Ida? Don’t cry, honey.”

At this, Ida’s face squeezed up and the fat tears popped out. In an instant her whole face was wet. Alwin had always compared this process to the squeezing of a grapefruit half. “I’m scared of the kidnappers,” Ida sobbed.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Sybil said, picking her up. Such a cuddly, curvy body this little one had.
Rubber popo, you’re the one
. “Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.” Sybil carried Ida to Beppo and Tom, taking comfort from her own words.

“Do you have a gun?” Tom was asking the night-clerk.

“
Subito, signora
,” the skinny man cried to Sybil. “I have hurry.”

They tagged after him as far as the corner, from where he pointed out the US Embassy building, half a block down the other side of the Via Veneto. The daylight shone through the night-clerk’s lank strands of greasy hair, making unpleasant highlights on his scurfy scalp. Sybil was glad to see him go, the heartless prick.

The light changed, and they could have rushed right across the street, but Sybil hesitated. Until she went and talked to some little American official, this was still unreal. Alwin kidnapped? For what? All they had in the world was some furniture, and the money they were saving for a house. Why would a kidnapper grab Alwin in his shabby old sport coat?

Tom and Ida were examining the Italian comic books at the corner newsstand.
Paparino
was Donald, and
Topolino
was Mickey. Up where the children couldn’t see, there were a bunch of the lurid Italian porno comics. Sodomy was the thing these men craved the most…. Sybil could feel it in their stares and pinches. Ugh.

As if called up by the thought, a passing man in a suit and mustache ran his hand over her ass. A bony hand like a sheathed meat-hook. Sybil turned to glare at him, but he was already two paces into the street. She bought a
Topolino
and a
Paparino
to keep the children busy.

The Embassy was housed in an enormous old dwelling, practically a palace. Freshly mimeographed sheets of paper were blowing up and down the sidewalk. Some kind of message in Italian. The guards let Sybil in after she showed her US passport. They were black marines with country accents.

“My husband’s been kidnapped,” she told them.

“We’re doing what we can, ma’am. Just go on ahead in.”

Inside, there was an enormous marble entrance hall with a single silver-haired lady behind a metal desk. DOT HOOK, said the plastic nameplate. DOT HOOK, RECEPTION. She looked alertly at Sybil and the two children.

“My husband has been kidnapped,” repeated Sybil. “What can we do?”

“Oh, so you’re the
wife
.” Dot Hook paused to savor the information. “Mrs….”

“Bitter. Sybil Bitter. Did you get a note?”

“That’s right, Sybil, there was a note
nailed
to our front door. With a
stiletto
. Do you want to see it?”

This felt viciously unreal. “Yes,” Sybil said. “Of course. What do they want?”

“Well, I think you’d better have a little talk with our Mr.
Membrane
about all this. He’s our vice-consul in charge of vice. Room 36G.” She pushed a button on her special Dot Hook intercom. Zzuuzzz. A voice crackled back.

“What is it?”

“The wife is here, Mr. Membrane.
Syllable
Bitter.”

“Send her…up.”

“Ten-four, Mark.” Dot Hook glared provokingly at Sybil. “Can we find our own
way?
”

“What are you talking about?”

“To 36G.”

“She talked to that box,” Ida stated questioningly.

“It’s a walkie-talkie,” Tom explained.

“Bill-
leee!
” bawled Dot Hook. “Take Mrs. Bitter up to 36G.”

The taller of the marines marched snappily over. Sybil and the children followed him up a flight of marble stairs.

“Don’t say
thanks
or anything,” Dot Hook called after.

“What’s wrong with that woman?” Sybil asked the marine.

“I don’t rightly know,” he said, with a sunny smile. “Women is
all
crazy.”

Sybil smiled. The music was nice, even if the words were wrong. “Did you see the kidnappers’ note?”

“I guess I did. It was stuck on a knife in the door. Just like being at the movies. This Rome is a hell of a town.”

“Are kidnappings common?”

“Well…they ain’t
unusual
. There’s been four Americans already this year.”

Hearing this made Sybil feel a little better. The situation was bad, but not unheard of. No worse than losing your wallet, really. Alwin the wallet. Sometimes he said that’s all he was.
No
, Sybil would say,
that’s not all. You’re my fat cock, too
.

They were walking down a long Americanized hall. Green carpeting on the floor, air conditioners plugged into the windows. But the heavily ornate moldings above the windows, the fat scrolls hanging there like iced curls of butter…the moldings said, “Italy.” Italian architecture made Sybil think of food. Especially right now. They’d rushed out of the hotel without breakfast.
Cappuccino
, butter curls and shiny Italian rolls, a soft-boiled egg. The children must be getting hungry, too.

Just then the marine stopped at one of the doors. 36G. M. MEMBRANE, VICE-CONSUL. “He in here, the man you got to see.”

“Thank you.”

“And seein’ is believin’.”

“Goodbye.”

“I’m leavin’.”

“Back to duty?”

“You know it!”

“Well…”

“…hell. Right on there, ma’am. You need any help, just rattle my cage. Bill Buttwhumper. Pleased and pleasin’.” He held out a large, dark hand. Sybil laid hers in it. A gentle pressure.

The door to room 36G swung open. Buttwhumper saluted, turned sharply on his heel and strutted off down the hall.

“Do you miss your Daddy, sweetums?” Mark Membrane, vice-consul, was kneeling on the green carpeting, cozying up to Ida. His attention turned to Tom. “Do you like football?”

The children hung back, unpleasantly surprised. Membrane looked up at Sybil. He was a skinny, rawboned man with a boyish face and a heavy shock of blonde hair. He wore a blue cord suit. “Mrs…Bitter?”

He rose smoothly to his feet and took her hand. “It’s a terrible thing…terrible.”

“I’m sure it is,” Sybil said, stepping into the room and finding herself a chair near the desk. “But nobody has yet explained to me what’s actually happened. Can I see the note?”

“It’s partly…in Italian,” Membrane said, closing the office door. He beamed down at the children, looking like a pale stork, like Ichabod Crane. “Would you two like some Coca-Cola
^®
?” You could hear the trademark.