Free Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass by Emily Kimelman

over at me and a smile crept onto his face.
    Anita
sat back and licked her swollen lips. She looked almost worse this morning. The
bruises on her face had all puffed in the night. The bottle of whisky we’d
shared probably hadn’t helped. “Can I write about it?” she asked.
    I shook
my head. “Absolutely not.” She frowned. I sat back. “I can’t
imagine what your objection is here. The guy
tried to have you raped and murdered, he’s buying children to rape them. What’s
your issue?”
    She
glowered across the table at me. “I don’t think it’s as simple as you make
it sound. How are you just going to ‘grab him?’”
    “At
the Kite Festival.”
    “You’re
going to try to kidnap him at the Kite Festival in front of how many hundreds
of people?”
    “If
he can keep a dozen kids hidden what makes you think we can’t get him out of
there?”
    “He
has security.”
    “Which
I’m hoping you can tell me how to evade.”
    She bit
her lip and then winced. “Shit,” she muttered.
    “Want
some Advil?” Dan asked.
    She
shook her head. “I just don’t understand.”
    “What?”
    “Why
would you do this?”
    Dan
laughed and we both turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said,
shaking his hand.
    “After
you take him to France what will become of the children?” Anita asked.
    “Sounds
like a line from a Simpsons episode,” Dan said.
    “What
do you propose we do with them?” I asked Anita.
    “Don’t
you understand that as soon as you take away Shah you have an entire
organization, an entire bureaucracy, the entire city, everyone who is in charge
will want those children dead. They are the key, the evidence that will bring
them all down.”
    “So
I guess we get them out,” Dan said. “I don’t think we should not do
this because we don’t know what to do with a bunch of kids. There must be NGO’s
that will take them. I’ll find somewhere.”
    “Right,
then, that’s settled,” I said. God he was sweet and cute. Saving children.
Jesus, what was wrong with me? Why didn’t I just fall into this man’s arms
madly, insanely, stupidly in love?
    Anita’s
tongue came out and touched the swelling on her top lip. “I’ve never done
anything like this before,” she said. “I guess it could work,”
she continued. “But, I want to write about it.”
    “Unacceptable,”
I said.
    Anita
opened her mouth to say something, but
Monica arrived with her pomegranate. Then
the Swedish couple showed up and sat at the table next to us.
    “Finish
your breakfast,” I told Anita. “We
can talk after.”
    Anita
agreed and once our dishes were cleared I asked her if she’d like to take a
walk with me. When I picked up one of the walking sticks Monica had left by the
gate, Blue pranced in anticipation. Lulu came and howled at us, hoping for an
invitation. “Monica!” I called.
    “Yes!”
came her muffled reply from deep inside the house.
    “Want
me to take Lulu on our walk?”
    “Thank
you!”
    Lulu
sprinted halfway up the road and then turned back in a cloud of dust charging
us at full speed, her ears pinned to her head, her mouth open in a toothy grin.
Blue stayed by my side until I said it was OK and
then he dashed to meet her. They circled each other and us, jumping up in the
air and grabbing at one another’s legs.
    I
started off down the road on my usual route. The lazy
river wound through green fields of neatly planted crops. I pointed out a
temple, pink and blue, framed by palm trees. A man wheeled slowly by us on his
bicycle, which was piled high with plastic buckets and jugs. He rang a bell and
called out his wares.
    I waved
to a neighbor who hung laundry in her yard. Lulu chased a chicken out of the
road and a rooster swooped down and chased Lulu back. “I’m afraid,”
Anita said, then paused for a couple more steps.
“What I really want to do right now,” she continued, “is just
fly back to France. But at the same time I can’t just abandon those children,
this story. I have sources