All Greek To Me

not to.” She grabbed one of the two backpacks at his feet and kept moving, flinging open the door to the hallway and making tracks for the elevator. John shouldered the second backpack, pausing only to make sure the door was locked and the lock thoroughly jammed before following swiftly in her footsteps.

  “I was supposed to listen. I’m your backup.” It was a long hallway, with many darkened, silent, and empty offices, given the lateness of the hour.

  “And I was supposed to be seductive, that was the pitch.” Jane reached the elevator and pushed the ‘up’ button.

  John cast a furtive, proprietary glance at her sweet leather-bound ass. “Worked for me. Damn it.”

  “For him, maybe not so much,” Jane speculated, watching the indicator lights above the elevator, which were not moving. “More Flytrap than Venus in there. Your snarky little friend may be right. I’m getting too old for this game.”

  “Yeah, I’m guessing she has a crush on you. Women are so insecure,” John said, condescendingly.

  “And who do we have to thank for that?” Jane said, glaring at him pointedly.

  John immediately saw the wisdom of changing the subject. “The truth is we’re just not used to this. Whole new ball game. Let’s face it. It’s so much easier just to pop ‘em.”

  Jane waxed nostalgic for a moment. “In and out. No fuss, no muss. Just boom - and done.”

  “Things ain’t what they used to be,” John lamented.

  Jane glanced at him sideways and crossed her arms over her stomach. “Baby, you have no idea.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he interrupted her.

  “Speaking of boom and done,” John said, “have you noticed the elevator isn’t moving?”

  “I have,” Jane said, glad of yet another reprieve. “And I’ve been standing here thinking we might have a problem.”

  “Silent alarm?” John asked.

  “Silent alarm,” Jane repeated. Immediately they turned and surveyed the hall of doors.

  “Pick a door, any door,” John said. “World Bank? World Health Organization?”

  “French Consulate,” Jane pointed.

  “Tres bien,” John said. “If the passkey works. They missed the alarm system. Damn!” The passkey went in all right, but then it just sat in the lock. Like a politician elected to office who goes back on all his promises.

  “Hairpin, stiletto.” Jane held the implements at the ready. “Excusez moi.”

  “Is this the time to mention that the elevator is moving again?”

  “Shh,” Jane said, eyes closed, listening to the tumblers click. “Eh, voilà!” The doorknob turned, the office was theirs.

  And none too soon. They whisked inside and shut the door behind them just as the elevator chimed. They stood like mannikins, listening, barely breathing. There was movement in the hallway, a lot of it, but no talking. It sounded as though a security detail of four or five passed by. As soon as they were out of earshot, John and Jane abandoned the Louis XV reception area, with its mirrors and gilt-edged everything, for the back office. The suite had a few private rooms, but most of the functional workspace was communal, in keeping with the prevailing urban plantation system, with its reliance upon administrative overseers and cube slaves. John and Jane had no need to pry further into individual offices; the small kitchen area had just what they needed - two tall windows separated by a thin pillar of building. Just right for anchoring the odd rappel rope or two. John got to work on the windows. Jane got out of her clothes.

  “Whoa,” John said, affixing vacuum cups to each window, “Do we have time for a floor show?”

  “I’d like to see you shimmy down 26 floors with your knees glued together.” The blazer peeled off like the skin of an onion. The skirt, however, was fighting back. John spritzed the corners of both windows with compressed CO2 and fished for his window punch. Bra-less but not exactly panty-less, Jane stepped into a black jumpsuit like John’s.

  “Is that what I think it is?” John stood to one side and the window punch did its work with a muted pow. Pow. A spider web of cracks spread across the face of the glass. John grasped the vacuum cups and began peeling the window back.

  “If what you think is that I’m rocking a tummy-taming, super-flattering, body-shaping thong,” Jane’s voice was more than a touch defensive, “then yes.” She zipped the jumpsuit and sat down to pull on some running shoes.

  “You know, I noticed you were getting a little -“ John stopped himself mid-sentence and hastily punched two more holes in the second window. “Pot bellies are sexy.”

  Jane strapped on one tactical rappel belt and tossed another to John. Hard.

  “Hey!” he objected. There was a little more commotion in the hall now. Voices as well as feet.

  “It’s been a little hard to get to the gym recently,” she reminded him, running the anchor end of her rappel rope around the piece of wall between the two windows and clipping it. She slung her backpack on and dropped backward out of the window, palpably miffed. Hearing the sudden crackle and blare of a cop radio outside the consulate door, John was right behind her. Head first.

  “Sometimes you make me so crazy, I don’t know which end is up,” he joshed, dangling just out of reach.

  “You know what I’m starting to think? I’m starting to think that maybe we just need an open marriage. Mr. Hot Dog.” At that point, they were already halfway down.

  “Maybe you just need to stop talking trash, Ms. Buns,” John said sternly, swatting hers as he slid past. “The good news is - after this, it’s two weeks to London on a luxury yacht. Breakfast in bed, five star cuisine, the works. There’ll be plenty of time to hit the gym,” John said, flipping himself upright as they both touched down on the sidewalk. “Among other things.” He bent over to kiss her, but she just glared at him and turned away.

  “Right,” Jane said, dropping her harness and flagging down a pedicab. John was puzzled by the sarcasm dripping from her every word. “I can hardly wait.”

  19 A Mansion and a Yacht

  “Wait. What?” John sat up in bed abruptly, looking like a surprised baby chick.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Jane chided, setting a breakfast tray on the nightstand and pouring him a steaming cup of joe. “I have a feeling the proper phrasing would be - “I beg your pardon, but may I ask you to repeat that?”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, way beyond way. We’re talking super-way. You didn’t read the brochure did you?”

  “It was a travel brochure with a boat on it.”

  “It was a training brochure with a contract in it.

  “A contract contract? For a hit?”

  “A contract that requires us to spend the next two weeks learning the ins and outs of indentured servitude. PS - you already missed the icebreaker session: ‘Starting the Day with the Perfect Tray.’ I’d love to stand here filling you in on the finer points, but Orientation begins in - um - ten minutes.” John was out of bed and hunting frantically for his clothes, which seemed to have vanished. “Your uniform is hanging in the closet. See you on the upper deck.”

  He grabbed deck shoes, a white button down shirt, a slurp of coffee, and a sweetroll before stumbling out the door, zipping the fly of a pair of black Bermuda shorts as he went. Jane’s pert derriere, in a short black shirt, was just twitching out of sight around a corner. Hopping on one foot, then the other, sweetroll clenched in his teeth, John followed her as best he could up one curving flight of stairs, along another hallway, and onto a posh, glass-enclosed observation deck. The floors were inlaid, the furniture covered in French silk, the windows retractable in season. At the moment both the churning Atlantic Ocean and the brisk April breezes were held comfortably at bay while at the same time remaining vividly present on the other side of the crystalline wall.

  John was still buttoning his shirt when he scrambled into line beside Jane and seven or eight other warm bodies, Jen’s among them. He glowered at her
, guessing her to be the author of his current travail, which included, yet again, Jane’s all too palpable displeasure. Jen, for her part, stuck out a saucy tongue.

  “How good of you to join us, Mr. Brown. We missed you at breakfast. I trust you are well rested?” The speaker was a steely-eyed matron in a severe pants-suit and no-nonsense hair who had entered the salon behind John and who now strode forward to take up a position in front of the group, which she appraised with keen dispassion, making no effort to hide the fact that she found them individually and collectively wanting. Conspicuously so.

  “I am. Yes. Thank you. Ma’am.” John cast back to his military training for the appropriate mode of address. Came up short.

  “Due to the lateness of your arrival last evening, I fear you were shown to the wrong accommodations. That error is being rectified as we speak. No doubt Mrs. Brown will update you as time permits.” She looked inquiringly at Jane.

  “Indeed, madam,” Jane replied, right on cue.

  “Excellent. Then without further delay we can proceed with the program at hand. My name is Mrs. Stevens. I am a training director for Envy, Inc., a bespoke lifestyle management and concierge service. In plain English, we are in business to make rich people happy. You are here because you have signed up and paid good money to learn a small part of what we know and do. Specifically, over the next two weeks you will be schooled in how to be not merely a good or even an