Reckless Endangerment by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

T-shirts, forbidden garments that she had shoplifted from stores in downtown Brooklyn. She dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, pulled on socks and her cheap sneakers, and her ugly, knee-length gray tweed coat. The two suitcases her father had provided for the journey were packed with the clothes needed for her new life in Lebanon as the second wife of a fat old man. Choosing the smaller of the two, she spilled out the embroidered gown, the slippers, the headdress, the veil, and put in her scant American wardrobe.
    “What are you doing, Fatyma?”
    Her breath stopped in her throat. Leila, her little sister, was sitting up in bed and watching her. The child’s eyes were wide and confused in the faint gleam from the street. Fatyma sat on her sister’s bed and stroked her hair.
    “It’s late. You have to go back to sleep.”
    “But what are you doing ?” the child insisted.
    “Well, you know I am getting married, right? Well, my new husband is waiting outside for me. I have to climb out the window and meet him, and I have to be very, very quiet, because if anyone hears me, then I can’t get married. That’s why you have to be quiet and go back to sleep.”
    “But why do you?” asked the child.
    “It’s a tradition,” Fatyma said, an answer the child had heard before.
    “Will you come back?”
    “Oh, sure,” Fatyma lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll wear my wedding dress for you, okay?”
    When the child was settled under the covers again, Fatyma put her brother’s knife in the pocket of her coat. She placed in the suitcase a plastic bag containing the lipstick and blusher (also boosted) that her father had not found, some underwear and toilet articles, and two paperback books, both heavily thumbed. One was called Fountain of Desire. These words were printed on the cover in swirling pink letters, over an illustration of a darkly handsome man embracing a woman in an old-fashioned dress. The other book was Norma Jean, a biography of Marilyn Monroe. Fatyma had stolen them from the public library. She believed they contained nearly all of what she needed to know to survive in her new life. Slowly, carefully, she forced up her window and slipped onto the fire escape, clanking faintly. She descended and walked quickly toward the Atlantic Avenue subway station. She stood on the IND platform for what seemed like a long time, with her hand on the knife in her pocket. A D train for Manhattan arrived, and Fatyma boarded it. When the train doors swished shut, she sighed and relaxed somewhat. At last she was bound for America.
    Although El Chivato had never actually been imprisoned, he had visited jails many times, in Nogales, Tucson, and various places in Mexico. Many of his clients were incarcerated and wished still to conduct their businesses or to deal with difficult witnesses. The James A. Thomas Center, one of Rikers Island’s ten facilities, was the largest jail he had ever visited. Passing through visitor clearance, the youth was conscious of a small uneasiness, which stemmed not so much from the precise venue, but from being in a crowd of strangers and unarmed. The guard who passed them in with the other visitors was, for example, staring at him insolently, and he could do nothing about it under the circumstances. This made him cross.
    The guard had seen a good many odd couples pass through his metal detector, but even so, this one stood out. The woman had a big mane of blond hair done in the current Farrah style, or maybe it was a wig, and she had a coarse, lively face, with the eyebrows plucked into fine geometric parabolas and the wide mouth greased a shining reddish purple. She had on a wild jungle-print blouse with the top two buttons open. The guard didn’t mind taking a look, and saw she had a red lace bra on, brim full of tan flesh, on which trembled a petite gold cross. She also wore shiny aquamarine slacks tight enough to show the slice of her vulva, tucked into white boots trimmed with fur, and had