“Do you have that kind of faith?”
“I want that kind of hope.”
“Hope and perseverance and doing exactly what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it is our—your—best chance to make it in this world.”
“And you’re in charge of supposed to.”
Faye nodded.
“I wouldn’t want your job.”
Let’s hope not, thought Faye.
“I knew a woman cop—police officer. We were friends for a few years. She was mostly plainclothes on the Capitol Hill police force—Congress’s force, security guards mostly, one of the what, twenty-some kinds of badges like yours out there in this city. We used to go out for dinner sometimes. Drinks. Check in with each other.”
“Who is she?”
“For nine years she’s been Mrs. Her Boss Finally Retired And Divorced and they moved to Ohio where he’s from.”
“Does she still check on you?”
“Nobody checks on me.” A sad smile signaled some greater truth in the older woman’s words. “Look, I’m scared and nervous and trying to get to know you and this thing … It’s all up to you.”
“Yeah, but it’s all about him.”
“What about him?” said the woman who’d emerged from that bedroom.
“You can probably tell me as much about the man as I can tell you,” said Faye. Kept her tone neutral when she added: “More.”
The teakettle whistled.
“What I can tell you won’t matter to what you gotta do,” said Merle, her yoga grace overriding her years and fears and unfolding her from her chair to walk into the kitchen, turn the fire out under the white teakettle.
Bullshit, thought Faye: You’ve built a bond with him and you’re banking on it.
Her mind’s eye blinked. I hope some of fucking him was for real.
She knew Condor hoped so, too, even knowing what they all knew.
Merle poured steaming water over the coffee beans in the cone atop the glass pot.
Water trickling over ground coffee seemed to cue the older woman. She whirled, stared at Faye standing there wearing a ballistic vest and sidearm, said: “Does your mother know what you do?”
“Does yours,” said Faye.
“Never did.” Merle sighed. “And now I’m never going to get that chance.”
She blinked. Asked Faye: “How crazy is he?”
“Too much,” answered Faye.
“Or not enough.” The aroma of brewing coffee filled the apartment. “He thinks this is all happening because he was starting to lose the crazy that makes him forget.”
“Maybe, but that’s the kind of intel development that only he would know.”
“Or maybe somebody inferred the possibility,” said Merle. “And sometimes, the possibility of what might happen is enough to motivate somebody to act, strike first.”
“I thought you were a mild-mannered librarian,” said Faye as she watched the woman in the kitchen take one, take two, take three cups from the cabinet.
“I watch a lot of movies,” said Merle. “And I worked for a movie called Congress.”
“They need a better script.”
The women shared a smile.
“Speaking of work,” said Faye. “What about your job?”
Merle looked at the practical watch on her wrist. “I can call in sick or—No.”
“No?”
“Better,” said the older woman who’d survived decades in Washington, D.C. “I can call my boss and say I want to save my sick days but take some time off now, and offer to let him count it as me being in that whole ‘sequester’ budget-cutting mess the boys and girls in Congress forced on us. Him furloughing me for a few days will give him an out when the orders come down from our budget director, and they’re gonna come, we’re all just waiting to see if the cuts are going to make us personally bleed. I get credit for taking one for the team and nobody will come asking or looking for me.”
She shrugged. “As if they would anyway.”
Merle lifted the cone filled with dripped-through ground beans off the glass pot now filled with brown liquid she poured into two cups before setting down that pot of scalding brew she could have thrown at Faye’s eyes, asked: “Milk? Sugar?”
“Black,” answered Faye.
“Straight,” said Merle as she passed the cup to her captor. She opened the refrigerator, topped off her own cup from a carton of milk she left on the counter.
Merle took a sip of her coffee, held the innocent cup in both her hands, said: “What else can I do to help?”
“So now you’re on our team?”
“Looks like you two brought back the draft.”
“And you trust us? Believe us?”
“You mean how do I know you are who you say you are?” Merle shrugged. “How do you know anybody is who they say they are?”
She shook her head. “We lie to ourselves about who we see, we lie to ourselves about who we are. Then we buy our own lies and try to spend them as our lives.”
Merle gave Faye a smile both of them knew came from irony not amusement, said: “Guns are the ultimate reality check. You’ve got them, not me. But even without them, the odds of you two both being this particular crazy add up to unlikely, so who you are is probably who you say you are. Mostly.”
“You play the odds?” asked Faye.
“I play what I get,” answered Merle. “Now what else can I do?”
“Let’s talk about that after he joins us.” Faye nodded to the closed bedroom door.
The older woman with damp gray-blond hair smiled as she raised the cup of milk-colored coffee and before she sipped from it said: “Are you sure he’s coming out?”
21
If I could hide, ’neath the wings.
—John Stewart, “Daydream Believer”
Close your eyes.
Lie on this bed.
Pretend you belong here.
That you deserve this.
That no one wants to kill you.
Alone & naked & flat on his back, Condor felt soft sheets on the mussed bed where he’d collapsed, his ankles dangling above the floor that led out of this room, this wonderful room smelling of sea and musk, out to the rest of the apartment where she’d gone, where Faye and the guns were, and from there down the green hall to the elevator or stairs, a street of residential Washington, roads that led to the monuments and Capitol and White House and Complex Zed and a mortuary in suburban Virginia with a crematorium that created ashes no one would ever scatter in some garden of the known dead.
Stay here in this sunlit bedroom.
Afterward, both of them naked under the sheets, his head on her pillow, his heart her pillow, a cloud of the lilac shampoo scent from her gray-blond hair floating with the musk of some past perfume and the scent, that scent, that warm sea scent.
Merle’d said: “Was it like you imagined?”
“Better. I was too worried about getting shot to be too nervous.”
“Funny, I was worried about getting shot, too.”
He felt her smile and she said: “Bang.”
The bed trembled with their soft chuckle.
Merle whispered: “What else should I be worried about?”
“Getting shot tops the list. Then everything else until it’s all back to normal.”
“Maybe I’m worried about that, too.” He felt her fingers move on his chest. “Maybe it’s lucky that my normal changed.”
She whispered: “Should I be worried about you?”
“Getting shot?”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
He didn’t, wondered, said: “Whoever I am, it’s too late to change.”
Condor turned on his side so she could see his face even if he knew she knew better than to trust his expression, said: “But none of me wants you hurt. Hurt any way.”
Her eyes dropped from his. Her lips softly kissed his bare chest.
She didn’t look up, said: “What should I do?”
&nbs
p; “Grasp your true reality,” said Condor. “Course, that doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, but then at least you’ve got a chance at taking your shot.”
“Are you saying it all depends on your perspective?”
“Bullets don’t care about your perspective. They only care where you stand.”
He felt the mattress rise and fall with his four breaths.
She said: “So we better stand up.”
Merle swung away from him, a swirl of long gray-blond hair and round flesh and bare feet kissing the floor, her nude spine to him, the yoga-conditioned swell of her hips curving before his eyes and then her hand reached back.
“Come on,” she said. “We need a shower.”
She put Condor under the nozzle spraying hot water into the white porcelain shower-tub, stepped in with him, closed the shower curtain—a gray plastic sheet colored by artwork, a translucent reproduced painting of nineteenth-century Parisians from a moneyed class walking in the park where everything seemed safely controlled.
He soaped and shampooed so as not to bump her, white suds of lather washing down her water-slick chest, sliding over her low-slung full breasts, her slight paunch that age won from exercise, down her loins, her legs that were just the right length of long. He stepped back to let water spray her face, rinse away the lather and scents of yesterday.
Then she stood as far away from him in the shower-tub as the porcelain and walls and plastic shower curtain allowed. Water beat down him, propelled drops flying around his blocking bulk to hit the edges of her naked front as her blue eyes pushed him.
She said: “I know one thing you’re worried about.”
Condor felt his breath deepen, his pulse race.
“Yes,” she said: “You made me have to be here with you.”
Oh so slowly took one barefooted step on the wet porcelain tub toward him, took another until only a breath separated their naked fronts as water beat down.
Merle said: “But I choose to be here like this.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held her bare flesh to his.
How many breaths they’d stayed there, he didn’t know, didn’t count, didn’t think.
Then her hands moved behind him, faucets cranked off and the spray of the water fell to nothing but drips from the showerhead, then silence.
Metal loops screeched on the shower rod as she jerked open the plastic art curtain.
“I’ll get us towels.”
She left him standing there, naked and wet in her white tub.
Pulled three towels off bathroom shelves. Wrapped her hair up in one so the towel became a turban. Wrapped a second towel around her chest so the downy soft white cloth covered her from the top of her breasts to mid-thigh. Tossed the third towel to him and smiled as he surprised himself and caught it.
“We need to do laundry.” She walked back to the bedroom.
Condor stepped from the tub, drying off as he hurried to be with her.
Found her in the bedroom, stacking his clothes on the chair, a pile on the nearby table from his black jeans pockets of the money and stray receipts and his handkerchief.
Merle rambled: “I don’t know about your thermal underwear, but I’ll wash them, too. Supposed to be like a real April spring for the next couple days. I don’t have men’s shirts, but your blue shirt should wash out okay enough, brown stains on the collar, weird, but we’ll see. I’m not much for ironing, but if it’s too wrinkled, there’s a ratty black sweater in the Lost & Found box that might fit you or over it and…”
She realized he was standing there.
Staring at her.
Or at least … toward her.
“What?” she said. Smiled.
Frowned: “Vin? Are you … here? Are you okay?”
“You don’t have to do my laundry. Our laundry. You’re not…”
“I’m not going to make it if they can smell you coming,” she said.
“Whoever they are,” he told her.
“That’s your end.”
She turned from the laundry pile in the chair and faced Condor. Unwound the towel turban, rubbed her gray-blond wet hair dry, squeezed its long locks with the towel she then dropped onto the laundry pile.
Merle closed her eyes. Shook her head from side to side, her long wet locks whipping out this way & that way flinging water drops from her hair like commanded rain. Her spinning loosed the towel around her body so it fell, a revelation of swaying breasts and belly and water-wet lap. She caught the towel with her right hand. Stopped shaking her head. Her eyes opened and saw her nakedness fill his stare.
As he stood there.
Towel over his shoulder.
By the edge of the bed where.
Her smile came long and slow and sweet as she saw what she saw of him.
“Well,” she said. “That’s a surprise.”
can’t talk can’t move can’t think can I can I …
She let the towel she held fall to the floor. Shook her head. Brushed damp hair off her face and over her shoulders to hang down her naked back as she smiled at him. As she stepped across the room toward him, saying: “But we’ve already showered.”
Her arms circled his neck like snakes.
The wet warmth of her flesh pressed to him.
The crown of her damp head came to his chin and he kissed her there, smelled her blond-gray lilac shampoo tangle as his hands trembled and ached to move from his bare sides, to touch her. He kissed the side of her head, tried to turn her lips up to his with the gentle push of his cheek but her face burrowed against his chest.
She whispered: “We don’t have time.”
Then turned her face up to their kiss.
And his hands cupped the round surrender of her hips as he pulled her closer.
Her arms tightened around his neck as his hands slid up her sides and filled with the stiffening weight of her breasts.
She broke their kiss, nuzzled his chest, pressed her lips to his neck. Her hands cupped his hips as she kissed his heart, as she bent into him, her own hips brushed the edge of the bed and she said: “Make time.”
Kissing him, pulling him closer as she sat on the bed and he stood there, saw her, felt and saw what she did, what she was doing and oh, oh when that moment came he could not kill his scream.
Again afterward, she lay with him on the bed, but only for a few moments. Left him there for the bathroom. He heard her brushing her teeth. She came back, crawled onto the bed, said: “Use my razor on the edge of the tub. And your toothbrush.”
Smiled. “When you’re ready.”
She dressed in a blur, wore a black bra and matching panties under her loose jeans and blue shirt. Toweled her hair again though it still hung damp. Picked the laundry out of the chair. Told him: “I’m going to make coffee.”
“Knock before you touch the doorknob.”
“But it’s my apartment.”
“Not anymore.”
Merle said: “What’s a girl gotta do to have her own life?”
But smiled.
Shifted the laundry in her arms and knocked on her own bedroom door.
Waited, knocked again.
Through that closed door, Merle and Condor heard Faye say: “Just a minute.”
Less than a minute, judged Condor, then Faye called out: “Okay.”
Merle opened the door, stepped outside the bedroom and closed the door behind her exit all without Condor seeing his de facto mission partner.
The blue disposable razor was well past its prime as he scraped his soaped face smooth in the bathroom sink’s mirror. Her toothpaste gave his mouth a minty-fresh taste.
He walked into the bedroom looking for the lost & found scavenged clothes—
Felt himself falling, plopping his butt on the bed, collapsing flat on his back with his eyes full of the solid ceiling pressing down on where he lay.
Stay here. John Stewart’s song. Calculations of what he had to do and couldn’t do. Dreams of staying right here, right now then maybe ??
?
“Maybes drive you mad.”
He didn’t turn his eyes from the ceiling to see the who or what of that ghost.
Said: “Too late, I’m there now.”
“Make time.”
Those words, thought Condor: She’s not dead. She’s just in the other room.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure I want what I now know I can have.”
“Grasp your true reality.”
“Fuck you,” Condor told the parroting ghost.
But without conviction.
And the ghost knew that.
I can’t let her get killed.
Killed too, he added before the ghosts could get to him.
Merle’s smile. The curving open of her lips. The perfect words she found. What he thought she knew. The way she let him hold her. How she’d held him back. That was enough, or almost enough, or at least far better than he had a right to expect. Is she my last her? He let that thought go as … unworthy.
Get Merle to her new normal, safe, alive.
Everything else …
“You already know everything else.”
But he said that. Not some ghost.
Condor sat up, naked, his feet flat on the floor and his mind saved from illusions that he could hide.
He said out loud: “Are you satisfied now?”
Got no answer.
No answer from any ghosts.
Odd.
Aromas of coffee beckoned him.
He got off the bed. Dressed. Walked to the door he had.
22
Stuff happens.
—U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
The bedroom door opened.
Faye blinked when she saw who stepped out to join her and Merle in the kitchen.
Said: “You look…”
“Nowhere near as good as any of us want.”
The man whose life Faye protected with her own wore gray sweatpants that were too small and a black college sweatshirt that was too big, bare feet, and a wry smile.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I fake it better after coffee. Besides, it’s barely nine A.M.”
Merle said: “If you want me to make that call, this is when it should happen.”
Faye chose the landline for Merle’s call, put the exchange between the gray-blonde archivist and her Library of Congress boss on speaker. Watched Condor get it as the telephone transaction played out like Merle’d predicted.