Chapter 39
THE SEMINAR RAN FROM NINE a.m. to noon, but at a quarter after ten, we were given a generous break—long enough to walk around the corner to a bar Angela recommended and get a coffee.
I followed Laura, Siobhan, and a few of the other women down the stairs and out onto the street, and as soon as we were out of Angela’s earshot, a woman named Barb said, “What’s her deal? ”
“Whose?” said Laura.
“Angela’s.”
“She’s a piece of work,” said Maureen, who had been quiet ever since Siobhan suggested she might be pregnant.
“She told me she grew up in Naples,” said Laura. “That’s where she met her husband.”
“I heard that the Bornemanns came over here in ’72 as part of a package deal,” said a woman named Beverly Bamford, who was probably a decade older than I was. She and her husband, Tim, had two sons, and while she hadn’t written Tim’s job title in sky letters for me, I had deduced he was an officer.
“Angela’s in the navy?” Barb asked.
Beverly shook her head. “Government. Maybe GS-9 or GS-10?”
We had reached the bar, and Beverly held the door for us as we made our way inside. “I’m getting all this thirdhand,” she said, “but at some point, her husband did a stint in Sicily, at Sigonella, and Angela made a real name for herself, helping him with all this outreach to the locals.”
We ordered cappuccinos, except for Siobhan, who said she couldn’t handle all the foam, and Maureen, who said she’d take a pear juice.
Beverly translated for her. “Vuole il succo di pera.”
“How’s your Italian so good if you just got here?” I asked her.
“Oh, we did two years in Sorrento.”
“I see,” I said, and wondered if maybe one day that’d be me—showing up in Sorrento, speaking perfect Italian, and explaining how it was all because of the two years I spent in La Maddalena. I got a little charge thinking about it.
While we waited on our coffees, I prodded Beverly to finish her story.
“Where was I?” she asked.
“Angela Bornemann was good with the locals in Sicily.”
“Oh, right. Well, she was really good. Like served-as-a-go-between-with-the-Santapaola-family good.”
“You’re talking, like, the Mafia?” said Laura.
“That’s what I heard,” said Beverly. “And it doesn’t really surprise me, now that I’ve met her.”
“She’s a ballbuster for sure,” Barb said.
“Anyway, when the navy decided they were going to moor a submarine tender on a rock, smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean, they called up Daniel Bornemann, who was working some dead-end job at the Pentagon, and they told him they wanted to talk to his wife. I guess the thought was that they needed someone to explain what they were doing to the locals. And not just explain it but get them on board.”
“Like a fixer,” said Laura.
“More like a finesser,” I said.
Beverly nodded enthusiastically. “They brought Angela in, and who knows what they said to her, but next thing you know, she’s got her gig, and Daniel’s been made a public affairs officer, which I didn’t realize until recently was even a real job.”
“Do we not like Daniel?” Barb asked.
“He’s fine. He’s got a very pretty face. Just not a lot between the ears.”