The rain-washed square. Of course, a car came around the corner. The girls stiffened when the light from its headlights washed over the wet cobblestones, but Rocky staggered on, laughing, and singing some song in French.
Rocky (rather harshly, under his breath): “Sing! Don’t try to be furtive! Sing!”
I (whispering directly into the ear of Margot): “He has to speak harshly like that because it’s for their own good.”
Margot: “Be quiet.”
Rocky: “Laugh. Come on, laugh.”
The car bore down on them. Sharp strokes on the cello strings. Ominous orchestral thumpings. And then the car pulled to a stop across their path, as we had all known it must.
Lola: “Ah, mon Dieu. C’est fini.”
Rocky: “Play your part. You can do it. I know you can do it.”
From the car, a Citroën playing the part of a Mercedes, a narrow beam of painfully bright light flared, sudden and sharp and crisp as a gunshot, making Lola flinch.
First Fascist Goon (laughing nastily): “What’s this I see? Beautiful nightingales?”
Second Fascist Goon (also laughing): “And one drunken rooster.”
Third Fascist Goon (not laughing): “Where are your papers, beautiful nightingales?”
Lulu (trying to sound as if she were engaging in lighthearted banter): “Go away, will you? Leave us to our work. Do you want to frighten him away?”
Lola (with a hand on her hip, complaining): “We haven’t plucked a single rooster all day.”
Third Fascist Goon: “Why bother with a rooster? Here are three eagles for you.”
Lulu: “I tell you what, my feathered friends. Let us get our few crumbs from this old rooster, and then we’ll all enjoy ourselves. You return here in half an hour, and these two nightingales will ruffle your feathers. What do you say?”
First Fascist Goon: “Half an hour, my little nightingales. Don’t be late. When eagles are kept waiting, they get annoyed, and when they are annoyed, they have a way of swooping down and tearing smaller birds to shreds.”
The car drove off, and the trio hotfooted it to the other shadowy doorway, diagonally across the square from the shadowy doorway where they had started. They stood there a moment in silence, breathing heavily.
Margot, Martha, and I let our breath out, and the girls relaxed the tight grip each of them had kept on my leg, just above the knee.
I (whispering into Martha’s ear): “You can learn a lot from foreign movies—”
Martha: “Shh.”
I: “—I mean, I never knew that people used bird names for one another—”
Martha: “Shh.”
I: “—in other countries.”
Martha: “Shut up.”
The second shadowy doorway.
Lola (to Rocky, speaking simply, wearily): “Thank you.”
Rocky (in the aw-shucks manner of a big lug): “We’re all in this together, kid.”
Rocky tried the door and found it unlocked. He put a finger to his lips to signal silence, opened the door slowly, and led the women into the hallway of the building. Moving carefully and quietly, they made their way up the stairs. They paused at apartment doors to listen and, hearing occupants, moved on, until they came to the top floor. We heard the front door opening, then the sound of heavy boots on the stairs.
Lola (weak, desperate, faint): “Oh, Rocky, they’re coming.”
Rocky (suddenly at a loss): “What now?”
Lulu (suddenly confident, as if she had a plan): “Up to the roof. From there we can get anywhere. They will never catch us.”
They began scrambling up an even narrower set of stairs, through dark, threatening shadows, to the roof. They paused briefly to pant and clutch one another, then were on their way again. The moon shone through scudding clouds. They made their way from rooftop to rooftop, leaping, dashing, limping, stumbling. Lulu suddenly held her hand out, signaling Rocky to stop. She worked a tricky little catch on a tiny window in a tiny gable, got the window open and slipped through. Lola followed, and Rocky followed her.
[to be continued]
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