“You shouldn’t brag,” Denise’s mother said out-of-the-blue while she was washing dishes.
“Where’s this coming from? I haven’t been bragging,” Denise mumbled.
“That’s probably true, but it’s easy to do. You may not even be aware of it.”
“Then you must brag also, Mom. It’s so easy to do.”
“Probably. Once, while I was in the hospital, a nurse pointed at me and said to another nurse, ‘Doesn’t she look just like Jackie 0?’ You know, Kennedy’s wife.”
He reached the island from the north, walking barefoot and unarmed out of Somalia’s interior, somehow surviving the trek through hostile terrain, among fortified warlords and rival clans, a grisgris bound against his heart, a talisman sewn into a snakeskin pouch and lashed to him with a leather thong by a shaman deep in the Ogaden. On a moonless night he slipped across the frontier at Dif, a dark-eyed Somali woman in tow: Malika, a beauty the color of a brandy Alexander, bathed in the cool hauteur of a princess of the blood.
“Hold on, buddy.” The old Impala weaved through traffic like some oversized yacht cutting between skiffs, leaving them in its wake. “Just a bit longer.” At the wheel, Joe looked like he might burst into laughter. “Almost home.”
I crouched out of the wind in the backseat to avoid any possible splatter from Frank. Frank, all six feet of his lanky frame, rode shotgun in front, half-curled against the door, head lolling out of the open window, moaning like he could upchuck at any moment. Someone blew a horn, and Joe slipped between two slower cars and down the exit ramp to W Street. We headed west to Myrtle Grove.
Bu Yu was standing right in front of the most dangerous place in town: the Public Security Bureau lockup. His legs had seized up at the knees and would convey him no further; so he began to try to pass the time of day with the People's Liberation Army men at the gate, hoping small talk would somehow allay their suspicions as to his motives for loitering in such a sensitive spot.