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want?”
    “Well, I think you’d better have a little talk with our Mr. Membrane about all this. He’s our vice-consul in charge of vice. Room 36G.” She pushed a button on her special Dot Hook intercom. Zzuuzzz. A voice crackled back.
    “What is it?”
    “The wife is here, Mr. Membrane. Syllable Bitter.”
    “Send her…up.”
    “Ten-four, Mark.” Dot Hook glared provokingly at Sybil. “Can we find our own way? ”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “To 36G.”
    “She talked to that box,” Ida stated questioningly.
    “It’s a walkie-talkie,” Tom explained.
    “Bill- leee! ” bawled Dot Hook. “Take Mrs. Bitter up to 36G.”
    The taller of the marines marched snappily over. Sybil and the children followed him up a flight of marble stairs.
    “Don’t say thanks or anything,” Dot Hook called after.
    “What’s wrong with that woman?” Sybil asked the marine.
    “I don’t rightly know,” he said, with a sunny smile. “Women is all crazy.”
    Sybil smiled. The music was nice, even if the words were wrong. “Did you see the kidnappers’ note?”
    “I guess I did. It was stuck on a knife in the door. Just like being at the movies. This Rome is a hell of a town.”
    “Are kidnappings common?”
    “Well…they ain’t unusual . There’s been four Americans already this year.”
    Hearing this made Sybil feel a little better. The situation was bad, but not unheard of. No worse than losing your wallet, really. Alwin the wallet. Sometimes he said that’s all he was. No , Sybil would say, that’s not all. You’re my fat cock, too .
    They were walking down a long Americanized hall. Green carpeting on the floor, air conditioners plugged into the windows. But the heavily ornate moldings above the windows, the fat scrolls hanging there like iced curls of butter…the moldings said, “Italy.” Italian architecture made Sybil think of food. Especially right now. They’d rushed out of the hotel without breakfast. Cappuccino , butter curls and shiny Italian rolls, a soft-boiled egg. The children must be getting hungry, too.
    Just then the marine stopped at one of the doors. 36G. M. MEMBRANE, VICE-CONSUL. “He in here, the man you got to see.”
    “Thank you.”
    “And seein’ is believin’.”
    “Goodbye.”
    “I’m leavin’.”
    “Back to duty?”
    “You know it!”
    “Well…”
    “…hell. Right on there, ma’am. You need any help, just rattle my cage. Bill Buttwhumper. Pleased and pleasin’.” He held out a large, dark hand. Sybil laid hers in it. A gentle pressure.
    The door to room 36G swung open. Buttwhumper saluted, turned sharply on his heel and strutted off down the hall.
    “Do you miss your Daddy, sweetums?” Mark Membrane, vice-consul, was kneeling on the green carpeting, cozying up to Ida. His attention turned to Tom. “Do you like football?”
    The children hung back, unpleasantly surprised. Membrane looked up at Sybil. He was a skinny, rawboned man with a boyish face and a heavy shock of blonde hair. He wore a blue cord suit. “Mrs…Bitter?”
    He rose smoothly to his feet and took her hand. “It’s a terrible thing…terrible.”
    “I’m sure it is,” Sybil said, stepping into the room and finding herself a chair near the desk. “But nobody has yet explained to me what’s actually happened. Can I see the note?”
    “It’s partly…in Italian,” Membrane said, closing the office door. He beamed down at the children, looking like a pale stork, like Ichabod Crane. “Would you two like some Coca-Cola ® ?” You could hear the trademark.
    “Yay!”
    “I’ll…get some.” Membrane had the habit of pausing dramatically in the middle of some sentences, as if to accumulate the necessary charge of sincerity to finish his…message.
    He extracted two cans of Coke from the icebox under his plastic bar, a squat affair stamped in parquet repetitions. He gazed pleasantly at Sybil. “…Something for you?”
    “Tomato juice?”
    “V……8 ® ?”
    “That will be