Page 4 of Twice
LaPorta chuckled. “I doubt that will hold up in court.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It will if he helped plan your crimes.”
“My boss is a woman. And she didn’t.”
LaPorta scratched his eyebrow.
“You’re really dying?”
The man nodded.
“Of what?”
“Does it matter? Neurological.”
“Sorry to hear.” LaPorta sat back in his chair. “If I were dying, I sure as hell wouldn’t be writing a farewell note tomyboss, I can tell you that much.”
“Keep reading.”
“You really want this as your alibi?”
“You asked.”
“Is it because of—what’s her name—Gianna Rule?”
The man looked away.
“Well, then, by all means, let’s keep going,” LaPorta said. “But from now on...”
He slid the notebook across the table.
“Youread it. Out loud.”
Then he added, almost mockingly, “Alfie.”
The Composition Book
OK, Boss. Assuming you haven’t thrown this notebook away by now, dismissed it as the ramblings of a longtime employee/friend whose time has come and whose mind has gone a bit cuckoo, I will tell you how I learned of my unique power, and when I first discovered it, by accident, as a child.
It was 1966. A Saturday morning. I was eight years old, and we were living in Kenya, in a small village north of Mombasa. My parents were missionaries. New ones. In their mid-thirties they’d heard the call to spread the Lord’s gospel. At least my mother did. My father went along dutifully, perhaps hoping the Holy Spirit would embrace him at the airport.
We’d been there for a year, living in a thatched-roof cabin with a pull-chain toilet. Before Africa, we had lived just outside Philadelphia. I missed it terribly. I hated the relentless sun of this new continent. There was no television and little for me to do. My mother discovered an old piano in the village church, and she taught me just enough chords to play a few hymns. One Sunday she gathered the local kids in a circle and made me sing “Nearer My God to Thee.” They laughed at my voice. I wanted to disappear.
I made two friends the whole time I was in Africa, one human, one animal. The animal was an elephant named Lallu. She belonged to a nearby rancher, who used her for pulling plows. On Saturdays, he let Lallu rest, and I got to play withher. She would coil her trunk around me and lift me up. It was scary at first, but over time, it felt strangely protective.
Lallu was responsible for my second friend, a wiry girl with piercing green eyes and dark hair cut in pageboy bangs. Her mother was from the Philippines, but her father was American. He had been transferred to Kenya with Del Monte foods, and on Saturdays he would bring his daughter to play with Lallu as well.
We’d take turns being lifted. But we were impatient. You know how kids are. One time, as we jockeyed for position, the elephant picked us both up together. I remember her small body squeezed next to mine, shoulder to shoulder. Our cheeks touched and we both hollered “Whoaaaa!” and when Lallu let us down, we started laughing so hard we couldn’t stop.
That was the first time she told me her name. Princess. I said that’s not a name. She said that’s what everyone in her family called her. I said all right.
The next week, Princess brought me some red mabuyu sweets. The next week I brought her a sliced coconut. The next week she brought a book about butterflies and read it out loud under a tree. The next week, we held hands when Lallu scooped us up. From then on, we did it every time.
