Free City of Strangers by John Shannon Page A

They pretty much did, but then our generation blew it.” He thought of Marlena again and decided to change the subject. “Do you miss Africa?”
    “It gets into your blood. But I’ve made a life here.”
    He was about to ask about her life here when the inner door opened and a handsome boy with short hair came through.
    “Come in and sit with us, Billy. This is Mr. Liffey, the man who wants to ask you about Fariborz.”
    The boy came across and offered a polite friendly hand. Nothing surly or distant at all, and Jack Liffey wondered if he’d somehow woken in a parallel world that was populated with tidy, obedient, attentive children. The boy sat gently on the edge of the sofa. He was wearing a T-shirt with a big photo of Jim Morrison.
    “Pleased to meet you, sir. Fari was my best friend until all that Persian Mafia stuff. Or whatever you want to call it.”
    Jack Liffey half-wished the mother would leave, to let the boy talk more freely, but the other half found the woman so agreeable to look at that he was glad she was staying. And where was there to go in that tiny cottage, anyway? “How long had you known … you called him ‘Fari’?”
    “Uh-huh. Sometimes he was Frankie, too, until he got hyper-Persian. We met the first week we were at K-W three years ago—we were put in the same rush group when we were freshmen. We both loved old rock from the sixties, like Hendrix and The Doors, and we wrote poetry together. Song lyrics, really. He set them to music with his guitar. A few months ago, he smashed the guitar and burned his copies of the songs. It was Iman’s doing. That little Hitler thought he was some kind of ayatollah, purifying his circle.”
    “Do you have any idea where they went?”
    “No.”
    “Would you tell me if you did?”
    “I wouldn’t protect those creeps for all the tea in China.”
    “Billy.” His mother leaned forward. Apparently, negativity was frowned upon in this household.
    “They are creeps, Mom. I’m sorry, but they are. They made Fari drop me so he couldn’t even speak to me anymore. I could see it hurting him, but he went and did it. He was my only real friend there. The rest of them don’t like poor kids very much.”
    There was something hysterical welling up inside the boy, some emotion that he had long suppressed leaking upward, seeping into his speech patterns and visibly thickening his features. Jack Liffey could see the pain in the mother’s face.
    “It’s not the money, they say.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “No, not at all —it’s just that you don’t share our experiences. You’re not part of our world. You wouldn’t understand so many things that are important to us.”
    His mother covered her eyes, and Jack Liffey tried to change the subject. “What about Becky Auslander? Did she have the same experience you did with the Persians?”
    “Becky,” the boy repeated, and there was an even harder note in his voice. “The one good thing about this whole Persian Mafia was breaking up Fariborz’s relationship with that little bitch.”
    Aneliese de Villiers gasped a little, then covered her mouth to prevent more.
    “She was a money-grubber. Fari was one of the richest boys in the school, and that’s all Becky was after, believe me.”
    Jack Liffey secretly savored this criticism of Auslander’s daughter. “So why did she disappear at the same time the Persian boys did? Do you have any idea?”
    He shrugged elaborately. “Maybe her Gucci watch stopped and she committed suicide.”
    “Billy! Whatever you think of the young woman, you mustn’t joke about suicide.”
    “I’m sorry.” But he wasn’t. “Fari never saw her for what she was. Never. You know, she never split a tab, not once, even for Cokes. It was Iman who made Fari give her up, but for the wrong reasons. Probably because she was an infidel or some such word. I don’t know why I’m so mad at her. She was a climber, but it’s those jerks who snubbed me. Now I don’t have any