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where I’ve been and who I came to see.”
    She stepped out, cursing softly that arthritis was finally catching up with her old bones. Walking the half dozen steps to the break in the hedges that led to the house, she stopped and announced, in Tagalog, “You know I’m armed, Pedro. Madame knows I’m armed. And you and she also know I’m not giving it up. So just forget about the search; open the gate, and get out of the way.”
    Aida thought she heard a faint snickering from the other side of the wooden gate slung between the hedges. If so, though, the man on the other side, Pedro, Madame Ayala’s chief bodyguard, showed only his usual iron face as the gate swung wide.
    “She’s expecting you, Aida,” Pedro said, also in Tagalog. He swung his head backwards and over one shoulder indicating that Aida was to proceed on into the house. “She’s also expecting you to be armed. ‘Forget it, Pedro,’ she told me; ‘Aida’s not giving up her pistol.’ ”
    “Thanks, cousin,” Aida said, brushing past Pedro and another man whose face she didn’t know. The other guard carried a submachine gun. That this was strictly illegal bothered Aida not a whit. The old rules, after all, the manmade rules, weren’t working anymore . . . and no one knew it better than she did.
    Though she shouldn’t have been, Aida was surprised to discover there were lights on in the sitting room in which Paloma Ayala awaited her. The surprise wasn’t the daytime light, per se; Aida had grown up in a more civilized time when that was quite normal. No, the surprise was that, since worldwide mandates to stop the manufacture of old style incandescent bulbs had kicked in, most people in her country could no longer afford the green bulbs, a single unit of which cost between three and ten percent of a person’s annual income. Thus, the old incandescents, cheap and reliable, were being hoarded because they could not be replaced.
    Of course the cost of an LED bulb isn’t even pocket change to the likes of the Ayalas, even if it’s beyond the reach of everyday people. Well . . . maybe somebody will actually start making the old bulbs again and to hell with the Eurotrash and Kano greenies. Maybe.
    Aida’s eyes swept past the glowing bulbs. As they did, for a brief moment she felt contempt. That passed away with the thought, We could take all the Ayala’s money and pass it out. Then what? Apart from a couple of years of rampant inflation, the common people still wouldn’t be able to afford the westerners’ feel-good fantasies.
    If the lights surprised her, Aida was positively shocked when her eyes came to rest upon Paloma Ayala’s face. Damn! I didn’t think she had a tear in her entire body, and here she looks like she’s cried rivers of them.
    It was true enough. Madame Ayala, like many an Asian woman, showed her age but barely. And that bare little bit she had covered with expensive makeup by cheap but skilled local labor. The expensive makeup was runnelled and seamed by tear tracks. One false eyelash hung, half off. The woman’s hair was frizzled, as if she had been tearing at it without cease. Her eyes were red and puffy in a way no amount of skill and no expense could fix.
    Tears began to flow again as Paloma cried out, “Oh, Aida, what the hell am I going to do ?”

    It took quite some time—hours, it seemed like, to the policewoman—to calm the stricken Mrs. Ayala down.
    “I can make a phone call,” Aida said. “Our own people won’t get your husband back alive; you know our track record with these things is very mixed. And you have to be prepared that the people who have Lucio are going to do some vile things to pressure you to pay when the time comes.”
    “I couldn’t stand it,” Paloma admitted, then asked, “A phone call to whom?”
    Aida chewed her lower lip, answering, “A former . . . associate. He’s with an . . . organization that specializes in these things. So far their track record is good. But they don’t