“Wait,” Gen said softly in English, trying to make the one word sound as benign as possible. Wait, after all, did not mean that she would never go, only that her leaving would be delayed.
She took the word in, thought about it for a moment. She still doubted that’s what he had meant even when she heard it in English. As a child she had waited. She had waited at school in line for auditions. But the truth was that in the last several years no one had asked her to wait at all. People waited for her. She did not wait. And all of this, the birthday party, the ridiculous country, the guns, the danger, the waiting involved in all of it was a mockery. She pulled her arm back sharply and the jolt caused the General’s glasses to slip from his nose. “Look,” she said to General Hector, no longer willing to tolerate his hand on her skin. “Enough is enough.” Gen opened his mouth to translate and then thought better of it. Besides, she was still speaking. “I came here to do a job, to sing for a party, and I did that. I was told to sleep on the floor with all of these people you have some reason to keep, and I did that, too. But now it’s over.” She pointed towards the chair where her accompanist sat hunched over. “He’s sick. I have to be with him,” she said, though it came off as the least convincing of her arguments. Slumped forward in his chair, his arms hanging from his sides like flags on an especially windless day, the accompanist looked more dead than sick. He did not raise his head when she spoke. The line had stopped moving, even the women who were free to go now stopped to watch her, regardless of whether or not they had any idea of what she was saying. It was in this moment of uncertainty, the inevitable pause that comes before the translation, that Roxane Coss saw the moment of her exit. She made a clean move towards the front door, which was open, waiting. General Hector reached up to catch her and, missing her arm, took her firmly by the hair. Such hair made a woman an easy target. It was like being attached to several long soft ropes.
Three things happened in close succession: first, Roxane Coss, lyric soprano, made a clear, high-pitched sound that came from what appeared to be some combination of surprise and actual pain as the tug caused her neck to snap backwards; second, every guest invited to the party （with the exception of her accompanist） stepped forward, making it clear that this was the moment for insurrection; third, every terrorist, ranging from the ages of fourteen to forty-one, cocked the weapon he had been holding and the great metallic click stilled them all like a film spliced into one single frame. And there the room waited, time suspended, until Roxane Coss, without so much as smoothing her dress or touching her hair, turned to go and stand beside a painting that was, in all honesty, a minor work.
After that the Generals began arguing quietly among themselves and even the foot soldiers, the little bandits, were leaning in, trying to hear. Their voices blurred together. The word woman was heard and then the words never and agreement. And then one of them said in a voice that was low and confused, “She could sing.” With their heads together there was no telling who said it. It may well have been all of them, all of us.
There were worse reasons to keep a person hostage. You keep someone always for what he or she is worth to you, for what you can trade her for, money or freedom or somebody else you want more. Any person can be a kind of trading chip when you find a way to hold her. So to hold someone for song, because the thing longed for was the sound of her voice, wasn’t it all the same? The terrorists, having no chance to get what they came for, decided to take something else instead, something that they never in their lives knew that they wanted until they crouched in the low, dark shaft of the air-conditioning vents: opera. They decided to take that very thing for which Mr. Hosokawa lived.
Roxane waited alone against the wall near the bright, tumbling fruit and cried from frustration. The Generals began to raise their voices while the rest of the women and then the servants filed out. The men glowered and the young terrorists kept their weapons raised. The accompanist, who had momentarily fallen asleep in his chair, roused himself enough to stand and walked out of the room with the help of the kitchen staff, never having realized that his companion was now behind him.
“This is better,” General Benjamin said, walking a wide circle on the floor that had previously been covered in hostages. “Now a man can breathe.”
From inside they could hear the extraneous hostages being met with great applause and celebration. The bright pop of camera flashes raised up over the other side of the garden wall. In the midst of the confusion, the accompanist walked right back in the front door, which no one had bothered to lock. He threw it open with such force that it slammed back against the wall, the doorknob leaving a mark in the wood. They would have shot him but they knew him. “Roxane Coss is not outside,” he said in Swedish. His voice was thick, his consonants catching between his teeth. “She is not outside!”
So slurred was the accompanist’s speech that it took even Gen a minute to recognize the language. The Swedish he knew was mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of subjects. “She’s here,” Gen said.
The accompanist’s health seemed temporarily revived by his fury and for a moment the blood rushed back into his gray cheeks. “All women are released!” He shook his hands in the air as if he were trying to rush crows from a cornfield, his quickly blueing lips were bright with the foam of his spit. Gen relayed the information in Spanish.
“Christopf, here,” Roxane said, and gave a small wave as if they had only been briefly separated at a party.
“Take me instead,” the accompanist howled, his knees swaying dangerously towards another buckle. It was a delightfully old-fashioned offer, though every person in the room knew that no one wanted him and everyone wanted her.
“Put him outside,” General Alfredo said.
Two of the boys stepped forward, but the accompanist, who no one thought was capable of escape in his state of rapid and mysterious deterioration, darted past them and sat down hard on the floor beside Roxane Coss. One of the boys pointed his gun towards the center of his big blond head.
“Don’t shoot her accidentally,” General Alfredo said.
“What is he saying!” Roxane Coss wailed.
Reluctantly, Gen told her.
Accidentally. That was how people got shot at these things. No real malice, just a bullet a few inches out of place. Roxane Coss cursed every last person in the room as she held her breath. To die because an underskilled terrorist had poor aim was hardly how she had meant to go. The accompanist’s breathing was insanely rapid and thin. He closed his eyes and put his head against her leg. His final burst of passion had been enough for him. Just that quickly he was asleep.
“For the sake of God,” said General Benjamin, making one of the largest mistakes in a takeover that had been nothing but a series of mistakes, “just leave him there.”
As soon as the words were spoken, the accompanist fell forward and vomited up a mouthful of pale yellow foam. Roxane was trying to straighten his legs out again, this time with no one to help her. “At least drag him back outside,” she said viciously. “Can’t you see there’s something wrong with him?” Anyone could see there was something terribly, terribly wrong with him. His skin was wet and cold, the color of the inner flesh of fish gone bad.