Page 107 of Identity Unknown

He begins to ramble about maybe coming to on the floor, trying to stop the bleeding, not knowing where he is or what happened.

“Then you walked in, Doc, and I couldn’t believe it. Where’d you go?” he goes on drowsily. “I thought, oh no! She’s been beamed up the same way Sal Giordano was. And I’ve been left behind…”

TEN DAYS LATER

Sal used to say that in a perfect world no one would say goodbye on a Sunday. The subject came up our first weekend together that summer in Rome. It wasn’t practical for me to spend the night with him when I had an early lecture at the university every Monday morning.

But I did it anyway, making my getaway in the dark, throwing caution to the wind. I stayed up late, got up early, gave my lectures, and throughout it all I never left him on a Sunday. Today will be the first time, and at least the weather is good, church bells tolling in Old Town, a lot of people visiting graves and strolling the winding lanes in Ivy Hill Cemetery.

A small group of us have gathered, the dogwoods profusions of pink and white. Butterflies alight on tombstones, birds chirping from branches as if there’s nothing sad going on. It’s just Benton, Dorothy, Marino, Lucy, Tron and me. Cemetery workers are stationed nearby, ready to cover the grave with the Italian pottery urn inside it.

We’re having our own private remembrance, and are filming it for Sal’s sister, Sabina. She couldn’t come. It was too sad, she told me over the phone. But she’ll see us next time we’re inRome, very soon she hopes. The plot I chose is appropriately close to where the father of the U.S. space program Wernher von Braun is buried. I know Sal would like that.

I can’t say for sure what he would choose as an epitaph on his simple marble headstone, and it was left to me to pick what made sense.Continua a guardare in alto,I can hear him saying.Keep looking up. Pointing to the stars.

“I know he wouldn’t want a big fuss made. But if anybody deserved one it was him.” I’m standing by the open grave, everybody gathered around it. “Most of all he would want to be among his friends.”

Nearby on a stone bench is the small shovel I bought at Walmart the other day. Each of us takes turn sprinkling soil, and it clinks against porcelain at first. Then the dirt is quiet as more is layered. When I add the last shovelful, I can’t hear the dirt at all or see the colorful ceramic urn I found for Sal online.

“When I’d get bogged down in all the messes of this world, he would point up,” I tell everyone. “He’d say never forget what we come from…”

Dorothy is teary-eyed in a low-cut black dress and sweeping black hat. She’s hanging on to Marino’s arm as if she’s lost her closest friend, and leave it to my sister to make everything a drama. The angry red scar on the back of Marino’s head is something he’s quite proud of now. He’ll be telling that war story the rest of his days.

He still doesn’t remember being shot. More important, he doesn’t remember that he forgot to take off his pistol’s safety. Knowing him, he would have fired a first round and that would have been the end of Norm Duffy, sparing us the trauma andthe trouble of what happened next. Marino simply thinks that we got ambushed and I ran for cover, hiding inside the cave where I stabbed Duffy to death.

I won’t let Marino know or think that maybe what happened inside that hangar wasn’t his finest moment. As it stands, he’s feeling quite pumped up about himself. I can’t remember the last time I saw him in a suit, this one black with a black shirt and tie. His Ray-Bans are fixed on me as I continue remembering Sal.

“He always reminded me of what’s important, most of all what we’re capable of…,” I’m saying to my family.

Lucy plays a recording of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, a favorite of Sal’s. We used to listen to it on his rooftop in Rome when we’d look up at the night sky and he’d tell me that the moon is the gateway to all that’s beyond.

“Which is why we can only hope that his telescope is built up there one day, and appropriately named for him.” I’m saying this to Benton later when we’re walking through the cemetery, returning to our cars.

“I hope that’s what happens,” he says. “And some huge tech company doesn’t steal his idea. Which is the more likely scenario.”

“The Russians are my worry.”

“They’ll try to beat us building anything up there.” Benton pulls out his phone, looking at it.

“Really? You have to do that this very second?” I put my arm around him. “You can’t keep in it your pocket for longer than ten minutes?”

“That sounds dirty.” He kisses me.

“We’re in a cemetery, Benton.” I resist the urge to laugh uncontrollably. Then I feel like crying again.

“I used to make out with my dates in cemeteries,” he says.

“You never did with me, and I’m feeling a little jealous.”

We climb inside his car as everyone else returns to theirs. We’re headed to the house, where I’ve planned a simple meal that Sal would approve of and no doubt help me prepare. Ravioli filled with ricotta and covered in a spicy gravy that’s heavy on the fresh basil. I’m making a rustic Italian bread, and an antipasto with the cheeses and olives he loved.

We’ll drink toasts and celebrate his life while feeling at least some peace knowing that Carrie is behind bars. The cheetah she stole and transported to Poland has been rescued and placed in an appropriate habitat. Eventually, it will be returned to the wildlife institute in Virginia where Carrie stole it from.

Apparently, the cat followed Carrie like a shadow, suggesting that she was inside the theme park at the same time we were working the scene. She was in the Witch’s Castle while Marino and I were there, explaining the noises we heard. When we checked out the rooftop, the cat may have been hiding and watching. Carrie was gone, having clipped herself to the zipline, streaking away in the fog.

She may have been close by when the cheetah stopped us on the Yellow Brick Road. At any time, Carrie could have taken out all of us. But she didn’t. Benton believes that we’re the only family she’s got, and I can’t stomach hearing it. She gets a rush from being close to us, watching, calculating, feeding off our emotions, vicariously feeling what we feel. And it’s all I can do to listen to comments like that.

“… The Sal Giordano Lunar Telescope. I like the sound of that,” my husband is saying as we pass a monument with white roses climbing over it. “I think we should get the word out to some of our colleagues, such as the director of NASA.”

“When his massive disk is built up there from moon dust, we’ll be able to see as far back as far back goes. All the way back to the Big Bang, and we’ll watch it happening.” I reach for Benton’s hand. “We’ll finally see for ourselves how we were made.”