Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [64]
“So how’s your beau these days?” Dennis asked in a chipper voice.
“He’s fine.”
“What’s he say about the embargo?”
“It’s bad for business.”
Dennis laughed. “Duh, Jill. But good for the country. Hopefully.”
“He doesn’t deny it.”
“You know the U.N.’s set up checkpoints on all the roads out of Kono. And anybody flying in from the interior is basically subject to a strip search.”
“It’s still a joke, there’s no way they can stop it. You can hide a million dollars’ worth of stones in a tube of toothpaste and still have room for most of the toothpaste.”
“Well, I guess you’d be the expert now.”
“That’s just common sense, Dennis, it doesn’t take any expertise.”
He flashed her a vicious look, out of all proportion to what she’d said. She had to check an impulse to apologize.
“Christ, Jill, what do you see in this guy? I’m saying this as a friend—”
She turned away.
“—somebody who really cares about you. These are not good people you’re hanging around with, okay? They’re into a lot of nasty stuff, they’re basically bleeding the country dry and that’s against everything we’re working for. It just makes me wonder where your head is at.”
Jill was calm; she felt as if she was floating above the argument. “So who do you want me to hang around?”
“Look, all I’m saying is I’m worried about you. It doesn’t fit, you and this guy, every time I try to picture it I come up blank. I just think you being with him is a symptom of something.”
“Well, yes. Sex is usually a symptom of something.”
Dennis winced. “All right, okay, I’ll shut up now. I know I’m way out of line.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Not that anything I’ve said matters anyway.”
Jill acknowledged this with a half-smile; she realized that Dennis mostly made her sad these days.
“You know,” he said, “as long as you’ve got this guy wrapped around your little finger, you might hit him up for a contribution to the co-op.”
“Nope. It just doesn’t work that way.”
“Has anything come through?”
“Handicap International turned us down last week—I guess they don’t believe there’s such a thing as one-armed seamstresses. CRS said no, Global Relief, everybody. They’re sending all their money to Kosovo now.”
“Well, Kosovo’s hot these days. And a lot of people have pretty much written off Salone.” He stretched a leg, gingerly popped the knee. “How much longer can you keep it going?”
“A couple of weeks. Maybe a month if we really string it out.”
“If you give me the numbers I’ll try to get something for you. Enough to keep it going till some real money comes through.”
“Aisha’s got the books,” Jill said, rising at once. “Come on.”
The co-op was housed in a narrow concrete building with barred windows along one side and rough wooden tables arranged in rows. Wicker baskets full of country cloth and gara were placed at each row, and the women worked in teams of two, one woman stitching while the other held the cloth; in a matter of weeks they’d grown so proficient that each team could sew as fast as any able-bodied seamstress. On a good day the co-op turned out over two hundred garments, but the stuff sold too slowly piecemeal, and the Lebanese traders wouldn’t buy in bulk until they were satisfied the peace was going to hold.
Jill always felt a kind of compression when she stepped into the co-op, a crowding of awareness that made her hushed and anxious while at the same time