A Tiger with Bad Manners
Mara
The tiger eats the merchant’s hat, which is a mistake because I have promised the merchant we will not mention his hat.
King Bristle has other plans. He takes the battered felt brim between his wooden teeth, gives it a thoughtful shake, and sneezes so violently that a boy in the front row falls backward laughing. The boy’s grandmother catches him by his collar without looking away from the stage.
“Too salty,” the tiger announces in Serevani.
Behind the little curtain, Sima puts her forehead against my shoulder. Her silent laughter makes the painted moon tremble. We are supposed to be teaching the importance of sharing water. So far we have established that the baker’s brother buys disappointing hats.
I turn the tiger toward the merchant. “He means the soup. He is a very confused animal.”
“I understood him,” the merchant says.
There is more laughter. He makes a show of retrieving the hat, brushes imaginary crumbs from it, and puts a coin in the tin by our stage. Forgiven. Bristle bows so low his left ear catches on the curtain hook.
I free him without letting the audience see my fingers. Years of making small disasters look intentional ought to qualify a person for something better paid.
Beyond the blue awning, the afternoon lies white on the market. Horns quarrel in the next street. A delivery man waits with two sacks balanced across his bicycle, pretending he has stopped for the traffic. The women outside the bakery have brought their chairs into our shade. Someone passes a bag of apricots along the back row, and the smell of warm bread keeps undoing my breakfast.
This is the last city engagement of our tour. Tomorrow we are meant to be packing properly instead of shoving the sun behind the moon and sitting on the costume case until it closes. Oren has already bought sweets for his grandchildren. Sima has bought a saucepan she insists is a professional necessity. I have bought nothing, because I am a responsible company director and also because my satchel contains three small bowls wrapped in yesterday’s program.
At the edge of the awning, a man checks his watch.
He has been doing that for twelve minutes. I know because I have been trying not to look at him for twelve minutes.
Slate shirt. Sand-colored trousers. Dark boots that have been cleaned without becoming new. His hair is cut close enough that there is very little to hide behind, an arrangement his face seems to approve. He watches the outer edge of the crowd more often than the tiger. When a cart blocks the passage beside the bakery, he goes over and says something to its owner. The cart moves.
I lift Bristle higher. “And now,” the tiger says, “the part in which nobody eats a hat.”
The man looks at me.
It is not a look that suggests confidence in my promise.
We finish the story with the moon lending her bucket to the sun. A child tells us the sun cannot carry a bucket because it has no hands. Sima pushes the painted sun forward on its pole and waggles the two hands she attached this morning for precisely this objection. The child considers the evidence, then permits the ending.
Applause rises against the awning. I come out from behind our narrow stage, Bristle still on my hand, and bow with Sima. Oren appears from behind the van to take a bow too. He is our driver, our carpenter, and the only person who can make the folding stage stand level on a street built by someone who distrusted straight lines.
His gray mustache lifts when he smiles.
For one pleased, sweaty moment, everyone I need is where I can see them.
Then the children crowd forward to inspect the tiger’s teeth, and the moment breaks into ordinary work.
“He bites?” a little girl asks me in careful English.
“Only hats.”
She looks at the man in the slate shirt. “He has no hat.”
“A wise precaution.”
“Ms. Vale,” the man says.
“See? He’s already frightened.”
The girl laughs. He does not, although something changes beside his mouth before he looks past me again.
“We need to start loading.”
“We are starting. This is the ceremonial inspection of the teeth.”
“The vehicle at the corner wasn’t there when we arrived.”
I follow his glance. A gray people carrier sits beside the alley where our own van is parked. Its side door is open. Two men stand beside it, one holding a board with ASTER written across it in black letters.
Our company name. There is even a badly drawn flower.
“Oren arranged help with the equipment,” I say. “The hotel has a loading restriction.”
“Did he arrange that vehicle?”
The question is calm. It makes my easy answer seem suddenly insufficient.
I let the little girl close Bristle’s mouth one last time, then hand her back to her grandmother’s waiting attention.
“I’ll ask him.”
“Stay here. I’ll bring him over.”
“He’s my driver, Mr.—”
“Rook. Elias.”
“Mara. If we are going to argue for the rest of the afternoon, we should save time on surnames.”
He looks at me properly then. Hazel eyes. A pale line across one knuckle. He is older than I am, though I couldn’t tell by how much, and tired in a way that doesn’t seem connected to the heat.
“I’d rather spend it loading,” he says.
“So would my shoulders.”
He goes toward Oren. I turn to Sima, who is folding the moon’s bucket into a crate.
“Is he ours?”
“The serious man? Tess sent the confirmation this morning. Final engagements. A precaution.”
“I like precautions with names.”
“You weren’t answering your phone. The king had swallowed a screw.”
“A difficult morning for the monarchy.”
She smiles, then looks toward the van. “Oren knows the loading men. Or knows their office. He called about help yesterday.”
Her certainty is smaller than her first sentence. I hear it and resist the urge to fill the space for her.
We have made six school visits and two public shows. The embassy cultural office helped arrange the tour, local hosts made us welcome, and Oren has driven us through streets I would have mistaken for dead ends. It is very tempting to believe that an uneventful journey comes with an uneventful last page.
I take out the company phone. There is Tess’s message, the name Elias Rook beneath the arrival details, and a reminder to notify her when we return to the hotel. Nothing about a substitute vehicle.
Elias speaks to Oren beside the van. Oren shakes his head, points to the cases, and holds up his own keys. Elias nods once, then takes out his phone.
That ought to reassure me.
Instead I become aware of the narrowness of the alley, the press of people passing our stage, the way one of the men beside the people carrier has stopped looking at the cases.
He is looking at Sima.
“Let’s leave the sun until last,” I tell her.
It is a ridiculous thing to say. It is the work I have in front of me, so I say it anyway.
She glances at me, catches something, and leaves the painted backdrop clipped to its frame.
The baker’s son brings us a paper parcel. Apricot pastries, still warm enough to leave translucent spots on the wrapper. He says his mother refuses to take payment because the tiger was rude to her brother, which has improved her entire week.
I thank him. My Serevani is good enough for gratitude and gossip, less good for the many varieties of insult the tiger has collected this month. My mother will want to know every one when I call. She will correct my pronunciation while pretending she disapproves.
Elias returns as I put the parcel on top of my satchel.
“Your van stays your van,” he says. “No transfer until dispatch confirms.”
“Oren?”
“Agrees.”
“Good.”
He looks as if he expected an argument. I am briefly annoyed that I want credit for withholding one.
“I’m very fond of my equipment,” I tell him. “And moderately fond of the people who know how to pack it.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“Please don’t. They’ll ask for more money.”
This time the corner of his mouth moves. It is so slight that I might have imagined it, but I don’t think I did.
He reaches past me for the loose stage brace. One of the wooden pins has slipped, leaving the frame crooked. His fingers catch the weight before it drops. I steady the opposite side, and for a moment we stand holding the same ungainly thing.
“That one pulls out,” I say.
“I noticed.”
“You looked like a man considering force.”
“Only briefly.”
He slides the pin into the cloth loop where it belongs. Practical hands. A surprisingly careful movement around the painted edge.
I look away first.
Sima goes to Oren with the crate. The gray vehicle is still at the corner, its men talking to someone out of sight. Elias takes his phone call a few steps away, where he can hear. I can see all three of my people. I make a point of seeing them.
A hand closes around the edge of the awning.
“Excuse me,” a woman says, holding up a sandal. “My son left this behind. Have you seen the other one?”
The boy stands barefoot beside her with an expression of principled innocence. His sister points under our stage.
I crouch, find the sandal wedged beneath the front leg, and pass it out. The woman thanks me. The boy wriggles away before she can put it on him.
Someone shouts in the alley.
I straighten too quickly and strike my shoulder against the stage frame. Sima’s crate falls. Wooden cups scatter across the pavement with the familiar hollow clatter that belongs to our show.
The sound after it does not.
Sharp, flat, close. A lamp over the alley bursts. Glass falls in a glittering sheet.
I cannot tell whether I am hearing another crack or the first one again inside my own head.
Elias is in front of me.
“Mara. Here.”
His hand closes around my upper arm. I try to look past him. The gray vehicle has moved across the alley mouth, and the street is suddenly full of shoulders and bags and faces turned the wrong way.
“Sima—”
“I can’t see her. Move with me.”
I pull against him. Not much. Enough to discover that he isn’t dragging me toward the alley. He is taking me through the bakery door, away from the glass.
“My people are there.”
“I know.”
There is no promise in his answer. I hate him for it for half a second, then somebody hits the awning pole outside and the whole blue roof tilts across the doorway.
He puts me behind the brick wall beside the counter.
The baker’s son is already lifting the little girl from our front row into the back room. Her grandmother follows, gripping the empty sandal. Someone is crying. The smell of hot sugar is so strong that I think, absurdly, that the pastries will burn.
Elias crouches just inside the door. He looks out from the side, not through its center. His right hand has gone beneath his shirt, but he doesn’t bring anything into the crowded room.
“Stay by the wall,” he says. “Call Tess. Tell her the market, Aster company, two staff missing.”
“We don’t know they’re missing.”
He turns his head. “Tell her we can’t find them.”
I can do that. I can say a thing that is true.
My phone is in the satchel at my feet. I don’t remember picking the bag up. Bristle’s striped head protrudes from it, his mouth hanging open at the wrong angle. When I lift the phone, my hand has a red smear on it.
Jam. The pastry wrapper has split.
I stare at it until Elias says my name again.
Tess answers on the second attempt. I tell her where we are. I tell her what I heard, what I didn’t see, and that Oren and Sima were by the van when the people moved. The words fall over each other. I stop trying to make them orderly and repeat the names.
She asks whether I am hurt.
“No. I don’t think so.”
Elias holds out his hand for the phone. I give it to him because my fingers have started doing something I cannot stop.
The baker’s son touches my shoulder. “There is a room behind. You can sit.”
I answer in Serevani, asking whether he saw our driver. He shakes his head. I ask about the woman in the indigo blouse. He looks toward the door, then back at me, and says he was getting the children inside.
“You did right,” I tell him.
He swallows. He is hardly more than a boy himself.
I go into the back room. A rack of cooling loaves fills one wall. A fan turns above us with a soft click on every revolution. The grandmother has settled the little girl on her lap, and the child watches Bristle’s head as if he might explain what happens next.
A puppet can be brave for you, but it cannot lend you its knees.
I sit on an upturned flour tub before mine give way.
Elias comes in with the phone. “Tess is arranging help. The bakery owner has called the local police. We stay here until we can leave safely.”
“Did you see our van?”
“It isn’t at the loading space.”
“Oren wouldn’t leave without me.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Then tell me.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes. Oren has a gray mustache, an opinion about every road in the city, and a habit of leaving the smallest pastry for himself. Those are not the facts that will find him.
“He drives,” I say finally. “Checked shirt. The van has a green dent by the back handle. Sima has silver in her hair. An indigo blouse.”
Elias writes the details on the back of an order slip the baker gives him. He asks permission before taking their photographs from the company phone. It is such a small courtesy that it nearly makes me cry.
I call Oren. Then Sima. The first rings until it stops. The second goes straight to voicemail.
Outside, engines start and move away. Each one feels like a choice I am failing to make.
“We could look,” I say.
“We will. With somebody who knows which streets are clear.”
“You could go without me.”
He folds the order slip carefully. “I could leave you here and run after a vehicle I can’t identify. That wouldn’t help them.”
I want a different answer badly enough to hear the effort in his.
The bakery owner comes through carrying a tray. He is a broad man with flour on the hair of his forearms. He says the street outside is clearing, but there are vehicles blocking the alley. From the upper storeroom we can see the next road without standing at a window facing the market.
Elias asks him two quiet questions. Then he offers me his hand.
“Can you manage stairs?”
I nod. My legs have become available again, though they don’t feel entirely mine.
He goes first. I follow with my satchel and the tiger. At the top he moves a stack of empty boxes aside, checks the little side window, and stands where the wall hides most of him. He lets me look from beside his shoulder.
The road beyond is bright and ordinary. A man pulls a cart of cabbages along the gutter. A motorbike noses around a stopped truck. I search for the green dent on our van and find only other people’s errands.
Then the truck turns.
Something yellow shifts beneath the loose cover on its open bed. A broad painted smile. One orange hand with a thumb Sima says looks like a carrot.
My sun.
The backdrop leans among our cases. I know the split in its lower corner, the repair I made with tape after the second school. Our van is nowhere in sight.
I touch Elias’s sleeve. “There. The truck. Those are ours.”
He looks, then gives the description and direction into the phone without taking his eyes off the road. He doesn’t tell me to stop looking. The truck passes the old cinema sign at the far junction and disappears beyond the buildings.
The sun I painted goes down the street without us.
The Door They Know
Elias
The hotel manager wants to know whether we need two rooms. Mara looks at him as if he has asked her to choose flowers for a funeral.
“A sitting room first,” I say. “Somewhere away from the front.”
He leads us past reception to a small lounge overlooking the laundry courtyard. The chairs have curved wooden arms and seats too low for a man to get up from gracefully. I choose the one nearest the door anyway.
Mara stands by the window. Downstairs, white sheets rise through the steam as a woman pulls them from a basket. A boy carries an empty crate across the tiles, calls something through an open door, and gets an answer that makes him laugh.
Mara flinches at the sound. Then she looks ashamed of having done it.
I put a glass of water on the table beside her. She doesn’t reach for it.
“Tess is on her way.”
“You said she was arranging help.”
“She’s doing both.”
The answer comes out too flat. She has been quiet since we left the bakery, which ought to make my work easier and does not. I preferred her commentary on the tiger’s teeth. At least then I could tell what she wanted from me.
My phone vibrates. Anton Bale.
I step just outside the door, keeping her in view.
“Rook.”
“What happened? I’m getting calls.”
“Two Aster staff unaccounted for. Equipment seen leaving in a separate truck. Market incident. I’ve sent the details to Calder.”
“I meant with the transfer.”
I look at the wall opposite me. Damp has raised a blister beneath the paint.
“It wasn’t confirmed. I didn’t authorize it.”
“Loading assistance was booked. There may have been a misunderstanding.”
“Then find the men and clear it up.”
“Don’t get difficult. I’ve got people working on it. Your remit was the principal, not freight.”
Through the doorway, Mara takes the tiger from her satchel. She studies the loose jaw. Her thumb presses beneath its chin, raising its mouth in a slow, appalling smile.
“The principal has lost her colleagues,” I say. “Call me when you have something useful.”
I end the call before he can remind me what he pays.
He has supplied work twice before. A dull residence detail and a visiting engineer who wanted to photograph things that were better left unphotographed. Both finished uneventfully. There is no virtue in pretending I mistrusted him all along. I accepted this assignment because the confirmation was ordinary, the rate reasonable, and I was tired of waiting in my rented room for the next name on a phone.
Now a woman in red shoes is touching a puppet as if it might tell her where her people went.
I go back inside.
“Can you show me where Oren was standing when you went under the stage?”
She blinks. “I already told—”
“On paper. It might help the officer.”
She takes the hotel stationery I offer. A moment later the stage is a neat rectangle, the bakery a square, the alley a narrow line down the side. Her pen stops above the van.
“Here. Sima came toward him with the crate.”
“And you were facing this way?”
She draws an arrow. Her breathing begins to settle. Not calm. Doing something with an edge and an end.
“I didn’t see them get in,” she says.
“Put that too.”
She writes it in the margin. Then she takes the water.
Tess arrives with her glasses sliding down her nose and the expression of a woman who has been promised a quiet afternoon by someone she intends to find later. I know her by sight from the security briefing that morning. She gives Mara her name anyway, then asks whether she wants a minute before more questions.
Mara shakes her head.
“Ask.”
The officer with Tess is in a dark civilian jacket. His name is Adem Kori. He shows identification, which Mara studies because I ask her to, not because a badge can explain everything. Tess confirms she contacted him through the local police liaison. He has already spoken to the bakery owner.
He sits where Mara doesn’t have to look up at him.
“Tell me about your staff,” he says.
She gives him photographs, names, the van registration from a saved document. She explains how the equipment is packed. She remembers a gouge in the moon’s paint and the blue cord around Sima’s tool roll. When he asks whether either colleague has family in the city, her pen slides out of her hand.
“Oren has grandchildren,” she says. “Sima’s sister lives outside the city. We were taking her saucepan back.”
Adem waits.
“I don’t know why I told you that.”
“Because you remembered it. That’s all right.”
He asks for the sister’s number. Mara finds it. She has the look of someone trying to carry a full tray through a crowd without letting anybody see how badly it shakes.
The company phone rings on the table.
Everyone stops moving.
Oren’s name fills the screen.
Mara reaches for it, and I put my hand beside hers, not on it. “Speaker, if you can.”
She answers. “Oren?”
For a second there is only a scrape and somebody breathing near the microphone. Then a man’s voice, low and impatient.
“You have two people who belong to you.”
Mara’s eyes lift to mine.
“They don’t belong to me. Where are they?”
“Listen carefully. Twenty thousand dollars. You bring it, they go home.”
Adem raises a finger, indicating she should keep him talking. I keep my hands flat. If I reach for the phone now, she will have one more person taking something from her.
“I need to speak to them,” she says.
“You’ll see them.”
“I need to hear them.”
The man’s breath roughens. There is a muffled exchange in Serevani too far from the phone for me to follow. Mara tilts her head, straining.
“Mara?” A woman’s voice. “We’re here. Don’t—”
The sound cuts off. Mara’s hand closes around the edge of the table.
“Sima. Let her finish. Please.”
“You have seen enough.”
“I haven’t seen anything.”
“Then look.”
He disconnects.
An image arrives almost at once. Sima sits on a low case, the painted moon leaning against the wall behind her. Her blouse is torn at one shoulder. Her hands are visible on her knees. A man’s leg fills the edge of the frame, blocking whatever lies beyond.
I have stood in rooms after things like this. I have listened to families searching an image for injuries, lies, hope. It never gets easier to watch the exact moment a person understands that a familiar face is being used against them.
Mara enlarges the photograph.
“She hates sitting on that case,” she says. “The lid catches your skirt.”
Tess kneels beside her. “Mara. Is it Sima?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell where she is?”
Mara looks at the moon, the plaster behind it, the cropped man’s leg. Then she shakes her head.
“No. I want to. But no.”
Adem asks permission to take a copy for the investigation. She gives it, then asks how fast money can be arranged. Tess says they will discuss every option with the people handling the threat, and makes no promise of a suitcase appearing from embassy stores.
“I heard the name Dren,” Mara says suddenly.
“When?” Adem asks.
“In the background. Somebody said it. I think. Vasko Dren.”
Adem’s expression changes, but he doesn’t turn her uncertainty into a positive identification. He asks her to repeat exactly what she heard, then steps outside to make a call.
I would like five minutes alone with the voice on that phone. The wish is clean and simple, which is how I know it isn’t a plan.
Mara turns to me. “You know what to do.”
“I know what not to rush.”
Her face closes. “That’s very useful for everyone who isn’t waiting.”
Tess looks up, but I shake my head a fraction. Mara has earned more than one sharp sentence.
“I can’t promise you we get them back by paying,” I say. “I can’t promise that refusing pays off either. We need help from people who know this man.”
“They’re people. Not cases I can replace when the tour ends.”
“I heard you.”
“Did you?”
I lean forward, the low chair creaking under me. “I put your baker on the phone with the officer because he saw things I didn’t. I kept their names on the call when Bale wanted to talk about freight. I’m listening, Mara. I haven’t got the answer yet.”
She looks down. Her thumb passes over the jam dried beside her nail.
“I haven’t either,” she says.
Tess offers her a clean damp cloth. Mara takes it, and I have to look away while she scrubs her hand.
Adem comes back. He has a witness who saw our described truck enter a service yard near the old cinema. The site has been used for storage. He knows the name Dren, but he is going to check who is actually there before sending anyone into it.
“My officers are speaking to nearby businesses,” he says. “Your people may have been moved. A truck is not a person.”
Mara nods as if the distinction hurts.
Tess arranges a room upstairs where Mara can wash her face while they work. A hotel employee walks us up. I check the room, then wait outside while Mara uses the bathroom, its door left open a little at her request. Running water covers the conversation below.
My phone lights again.
BALE.
“I’m sending a replacement,” he says when I answer. “You’ve been on since morning.”
“So has she.”
“She goes with the transfer. You stand down.”
“Calder confirms, I’ll discuss it with her.”
“This isn’t her contract. It’s mine.”
Water stops inside the room.
I keep my voice low. “Then your contract has a problem. I’m not leaving her with an unverified driver after an unverified loading crew took her staff.”
He swears. A door closes somewhere behind him.
“You want to lose the work, that’s your choice.”
“Tell the replacement to call Tess.”
He hangs up.
I stand with the dead phone against my ear for a moment longer than I need to. There goes next month’s rent, perhaps. Perhaps only an angry man trying to regain control of his afternoon. Neither possibility changes the corridor in front of me.
Mara opens the bathroom door. Her braid is coming loose. Water darkens the collar of her ocher shirt.
“Trouble?”
“Work.”
She looks at the phone. “Isn’t that what we are?”
I could tell her yes. It would be accurate and safe and insufficient.
“You are the person I’m staying with,” I say.
Her eyes remain on mine. She is thirty, according to the briefing. I am thirty-seven. We are far too old for me to be disconcerted by a woman holding a washcloth, yet here I am wondering how her voice would sound if she were saying my name for a reason that didn’t involve fear.
A knock comes from the far end of the corridor.
Two men have stopped beside the stair door. One wears a pale hotel badge clipped to his pocket. The other holds keys. Neither is the employee who brought us up.
“Ms. Vale? Transfer.”
I move between Mara and the corridor.
“Who sent you?”
“Mr. Bale. Vehicle downstairs.”
“Your name.”
The man with the badge looks irritated. He gives me one. I ask for the destination. He names a guesthouse I don’t know.
“Wait here.”
“We are on time.”
“Then keep being on time for another minute.”
I call Tess. She is downstairs with Adem, and she has not requested a transfer. She tells us to stay where we are while the manager checks the men.
One of them steps forward.
“She stays with me until her security liaison confirms the transfer,” I say.
He stops. Behind me, Mara has gone completely still.
The room’s door is open at my back. I turn enough to tell her to step inside, then put it between us and the corridor without slamming it. There is no pleasure in frightening her further. The lock catches.
Footsteps pass. Pause. The handle moves downward.
Mara watches it.
I hear a key touch the lock.
“Come away from there,” I tell her quietly.
She does. No argument. I miss her arguments so sharply that it feels like anger.
Tess is still on the phone. I give her what is happening. The manager’s voice sounds below, then another, louder. The key stops turning. I don’t open the door to find out why.
The hotel employee who brought us upstairs calls from the adjoining service door. Tess confirms through the phone that the manager sent her. She is in the small connecting linen room, with the staff stair behind it. I check before I move Mara through.
Heat and damp cloth close around us. The woman points down the narrow steps. At the bottom, a light shines on wet tiles, and I ask her to go slowly.
Mara grips the rail. Her shoe slips on the second step. I offer my hand, and this time she takes it before I can finish asking.
Her fingers are cold.
I can stand between her and a door; I cannot stand between her and every loss.
We come out in the laundry courtyard, where the boy with the crate stares at us and his mother draws him gently behind her. Adem waits at the gate with an officer. Beyond him, my navy vehicle stands where the manager directed it when we arrived.
“They left,” Tess says, coming through the laundry. “When the manager challenged them.”
“Did he get names?”
“One name that doesn’t match any employee. We’re checking.”
Adem says the bakery witness has identified the truck at the cinema yard. He has a nearby business whose owner will let his officers watch the loading entrance, and a secure room away from the street where Mara can answer an identification question if they find her colleagues. We are moving under his escort, not going to knock on Dren’s door.
I ask about the room, the route, who will be with her. He answers without taking offense. I wish the entire evening had contained more people like him.
Mara stands close enough that her sleeve brushes mine.
“My bag,” she says.
I lift it from my other shoulder. I took it when we left the room. She checks the company phone, then the tiger’s head. His jaw shifts crookedly against the canvas.
“Still with us,” she whispers to him.
For the first time since the market, I want something beyond getting through the next hour. I want to hear her make that ridiculous voice again when nobody is crying.
I open the vehicle door. Mara climbs in, holds the satchel on her lap and fastens the belt. Through the courtyard gate, the street lights are coming on. A sheet moves on the line above us, white, empty, innocent of anything that happened beneath it.
I have not told Bale this hotel. The booking came through Tess after the bakery. I replay the conversations in my head, checking who could have heard what, and dislike every incomplete answer.
Somebody has given them the door we were behind.
