07.4 Mazzikin

Marina woke up to find that woman in bed, thin pair of legs wrapped around a pillow. She left food in the dinette. Marina washed up and sat by the table with two chairs placed in front of a full-height patio door with glass panels facing the garden. That moment a pocket radio on the bedside cube began to beep.

Madeleine flung an arm and switched it off. Two in the afternoon.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, I did,” returned Marina in a blink of an eye and tried to keep focused out at the garden as Madeleine approached without a bodice.

Madeleine sat down to eat and ate a lot. In five minutes, the dishes were clean. “We’ll pack now. Pick some stuff from the closet that you can wear. I go collect your passport and some cash. I can’t use my credit card.”

“Why not?” asked Marina.

“Somebody will be tracing us. If they find out I am with you, my card will track us wherever we go. They will find us anyway but not before I take you there.”

“Where are you taking me, Riva?”

“Patagonia,” said the thin woman, “it is a long way from here.”

Marina could wear practically anything from Madeleine’s stock of attires; knitted tops and elastic-fitted shorts, skirts and pants.

Two hours later, Madeleine came with a darkish-red passport and a half-fold identity card.

“Burgundy!” cried Marina.

“Not actually. This is Bordeaux red with the French national emblem.”

“Who is Eva Lowell?”

“My twin sister,” said Madeleine, “Now it’s you. My sister won’t need it. She’s very rich and lives in Venice married to a rich guy. She’s my non-identical twin sister. She’s blonde. You know, she is the other me, the happy me, she’s all that I’m not. A complete opposite.”

“Lowell! You aren’t Mazzikin!”

“Oh no,” she cried throwing an arm and cackling, “My name is Madeleine. You can call me Maddy or Mad. And I’m Jewish.”

“I can see my shirt wet form my hair in the photograph.”

Madeleine took a peep, “They replaced the photograph and laminated over. Nothing is changed here. A well-travelled passport and two years to expire. You find entry and visa to Argentina.

“And this identity card…now they have plastics introduced in eighty-eight but some still have not renewed. Neither did I.”

On this card, the small photograph was attached with two metal rivets.

“Are we flying?”

“No,” Madeleine explained, “this is not entirely good for travel purpose. In case you need an identity, use them.”

“I get it.”

“If you used it to check in at a hotel or at a check point, we use it to check out. When I come back, I bring these with me and I make sure you are checked out. That means you no longer exist. You disappeared.”

“I like that,” said Marina, “Where are we going?”

“We don’t have to use them much. Most of the way there is free movement where we’re going. We are going to cross the crossroads of the world.”

“Crossroads!” quizzed Marina.

“Come on! It’s getting late. We must try to drive out of the city before light goes off.”

Marina took a brown felt hat and wore on her head.

“Do you like it?” Madeleine asked.

Marina nodded.

Madeleine picked a black one and wore on her hair too, “You look beautiful!” She took a black overcoat in her hand.

Five-thirty, they climbed the Toyota at the brown gate on a grey wall outside La Casa. Interior seating of grey cloth surfaces, leather wrapped steering wheel and a V6 engine that could do a 100 miles per hour. After few turns, they were crawling through the traffic in peak hour.

This vehicle was fixed with new wheels, suspension and long-range radio among other modifications.

An hour later, they took the turn of life – the big turn on Avenida General Paz, flowing through the traffic and accelerating. “Here we go!” cried Madeleine, “This is the General Paz intersection, broad roads snaking in that way and this way, by all means the busiest route in the continent, high rate of traffic flow. Do you like it, Eva?”

Marina smiled caught in a caprice.

“I like calling you Eva,” said Madeleine rolling her eyes, “This is where it begins, We’re now on Panamericana, the longest highway on earth, and I’m not going to stop until we reach there in less than four hours.”

“Where is there?” asked Marina.

“Rosario.”