IV
The frisson of early morning lifted once they were in motion. They had acted; it was getting done. They were silent.
"I don't even know your name!" she suddenly exclaimed and they looked at each other in shock and then dissolved in laughter.
“Nor I yours! My name is David.”
"What do you do, David?“
"Oh, a leettle of zis and a little of zat,” he said playfully. “Seriously, my family are bankers, originally from Geneva..."
"...Swiss bankers, huh?”, and she laughed.
"Actually yes, stereotypical as that is. But we're not the hush-hush Swiss bank of stereotype. Truth is, I guess we were at one time. Pardon my sacrilege, but we have more money than God and it got to be embarrassing for my father and in his generation we morphed into a bank-cum-philanthropic foundation. Even the purest stream can source at a fetid muck oozing out of the ground.”
“I see”, she smiled at the metaphor. "You have a slight accent but I can't place it."
"Sacre bleu, mademoiselle! I do not know which accent you may be picking up on. Multilingualism is de rigueur in Switzerland--and in banking--and the emphasis was kept by my family when we immigrated to the States. I speak French, German, English and Spanish.."
"Your surname?”
"Ranc".
"How do you spell that, R-A-N-K?"
"Non, Mme, R-A-N-C. French. Actually, it was R-A-N-C-K, Germanized, at one time. We were Huguenots in Paris. Ran the country--French Protestants to this day run France financially--But then..."
"I know, the Massacre."
"Oui. Oui. Are you?..."
"Catholic."
"Oh, so your people ran my people out of Paris--out of the whole country!--and here I am giving you a lift to South Bend."
“…And Barnesboro."
"And Barnesboro." (He took that as a very good sign.)
“And your name?”
“Maeve.”
"Like my accent, I cannot place that name."
"Irish."
"Ah, Irish.
She did not answer.
"Your last name?"
“Ryan. And on whom does your Swiss bank ooze its philanthropic muck, Monsieur Ranc?"
"At the present time we are devoted to poor Irish immigrant girls in America."
