part0015

DiAngelo knew she was playing it up for the camera that floated to her left, but he could not tamp down his genuine enthusiasm. “It is divine. A minor work by Puccini, but a minor work by Puccini is a triumph of our civilization.”

They sat in his darkened box at the Metropolitan Opera. On stage an old man sang his final will and testament to a priest. The family that stood around him recoiled in horror from the unfolding betrayal. An English translation streamed along the arch over the stage, but DiAngelo fastidiously ignored it, forcing himself to concentrate on the Italian.

“Now,” his wife whispered “explain it to me again.”

Here goes, DiAngelo thought. I get to explain to the viewers in Oklahoma a little bit of culture.

“The people standing are all relatives of the miserly old Donati. Donati died, but no one outside the family knows it. They hired the clever peasant Gianni Schicchi, who’s laying in the bed, to pretend he’s Donati. They want him to trick the notary—there sitting on the edge of the bed—and dictate a will in which the dead relative leaves all his wealth to them. Instead, Schicchi is dictating a will in which all the wealth is left to Gianni Schicchi.”

His wife smiled and clapped her hands softly. “Their comeuppance!”

They listened to the finale. The curtain dropped, and though the audience clapped enthusiastically, the applause died quickly, and a second bow did not follow. As the lights glow brighter, a soft roar of voices rose from the seats below. The opera had been a single act, and another single act opera would follow in twenty minutes.

“Oh, be a dear,” Victoria said, shuffling her program, looking for the title page of the libretto. “How do you say it again?”

“Gianni Schicchi.”

“And that was the man in the bed?”

“Oh, it was so beautiful. The music!”

The cameraman had not taken the hint and sat up in the distant bleachers, where DiAngelo had purchased a seat that trembled on the steep balcony as if it might tumble down to the seats of the great. Instead, the kid leaned against the wall in their box, his faded black jeans annoyingly vulgar in this sea of tuxedos. He chewed gum with slow boredom as he drilled the lens in on DiAngelo’s face. The hovering camera—the damn galactic camera, DiAngelo called it in his own head—buzzed close to him. Too close. He pushed his seat back and rose abruptly.

“I’m going to the men’s room.”

“Bring me a white wine, be a dear,” Victoria said.

He pushed past Bobby the cameraman, resisting for the thousandth time the urge to shove the fat boy over, and slipped out into the hall. In a few seconds he was moving with the crowd down the stairs that led to the cafe. A thick crowd pressed up to the shining marble surface of the bar, ordering drinks and hovering around and blocking the way after they received them.

He sighed. He’d walk the lobby a moment, till the crowd thinned, and then just buy a few glasses of wine, and return only after the music started. His wife could not drag him into a televised discussion once the music had started.

“A very clever man, that Gianni Schicchi,” a woman said, so close to his ear that he felt the breath on his skin.

He turned. For a moment he just stared at the woman standing before him. She wore a sleeveless red dress with a long split down each side, and a high neckline like a collar. Her hair was put up, but she wore no make-up, a strangely provocative sight in this room of preened women.

He glared, then walked to an empty and dim corner of the room. He knew she would follow. When he got there, he turned and said, “What the fuck do you think you are doing here?”

The woman had high cheekbones and dark eyes, and she was very pretty, although her nose had clearly been broken, perhaps several times, and never quite reset properly. There was a scar over one eye that had healed to leave a white line of skin through her eyebrow.

“Enjoying the opera,” she said, flatly. She betrayed not the slightest fear at his sharp tone. Her accent still eluded him. Something Eastern European but then filtered through England.

She shrugged. “I watched the livefeed episodes of Wealthy Housewives of the Upper East Side . Great show that. Tells me everything you fascinating people are doing, and when you’re doing it. But you come off a little dour.”

“Talk,” DiAngelo said. “I am not to be toyed with.”

“But you are toying with us. You’re not keeping up your side of the bargain, DiAngelo. And you don’t answer our calls.”

He leaned close. “I had Predators visit my office a few days ago. This is not a time to be handing over cash to the Terran Liberation Front. Nor is it a time for you to be seen with me.”

“Wrong. This is the time. We need it now. We strike next week. Without the money, we can’t make it happen.”

DiAngelo gripped her arm tightly. He meant to squeeze her bicep painfully hard, but instead his fingers closed down on unyielding muscle. This woman had once had a bit of fame, fighting in the cage-match circuit. He had suspected cage matches were mostly fake, but looking at her it did not much seem like they were. “You listen to me. You do not give me orders.”

“Didn’t you pay attention to the opera?” she said. “The family cannot threaten Gianni Schicchi when he betrays them, because then they would be exposed. You can’t threaten me. Not in any way.” She flexed her arm, and the bulging muscle forced his fingers apart and broke his grip on her expanding bicep. “You do what you promised, or we will see that you’re first to go down if we get caught.”

“I’ve given you plenty of money.”

“People have died doing this work. We destroyed two factories in India last month. Kirt factories. The Galactic Alliance is ready to kick Earth right out of the arrangement, cancel the application for citizenship, if we just make it a little more clear that they’re not wanted here. But it costs money. And it costs lives. We have people dying while you go to the goddamned opera.”

DiAngelo squinted. “I’ll deliver the money tomorrow. The usual place.”

“Double,” she said.

“I’m not shaking you down,” she said. “We lost our man who had access to the Enforcer Headquarters. We have another mole, but she is going to cost. A lot.”

“That will take time.”

“No, it won’t,” she said. She stepped forward, until her breasts pushed against his tuxedo, and leaned her head forward to whisper in his ear. “And someday, when we’re not in public, please try to strong hand me again. I’ll beat you till you piss blood.”

She stepped back and turned away. The back of her dress dipped down to the bottom of the small of her back. Muscles rippled across shoulders as she took hard, broad strides across the room to one of the exits leading out to the lobby. DiAngelo noticed men around the room swivel their heads to admire her athletic grace.

Only then did DiAngelo notice the autonomous camera from Wealthy Wives of the Upper East Side hovering in the corner of the room, pointed at him like a gun. He couldn’t help but sneer at it.