Spy Mom (5 page)

Will travels a lot. He doesn't like it, he says. It's hard for him to be away from us. Plus air travel really kills his carbon footprint. I can't tell you exactly how many trees have been planted in an attempt to make ours a carbon-neutral household, but suffice it to say it's a lot. Sometimes, late at night, I catch him looking at me curiously, like there is something he wants to ask but he can't quite put his finger on it.

Our affair was fast and furious, undertaken with the same lack of respect for consequences that landed me with the Agency in the first place. Will tracked me down in D.C. two weeks after we left Hawaii with promises to see each other again soon, which I'd naturally assumed were false. I'd wanted to believe I could fall in love with this man and he could fall in love with me and we could live happily ever after. But the fact that not a single active USAWMD agent had a personal life was not entirely lost on me. It was a Friday night and Will called my personal cell phone, on which I'd received possibly one call ever, every five minutes until I finally relented and picked up.

“I'm here in your city with no friends and no plans, so I really could use your help,” he said. He claimed the reason for his visit was business, but I'm inclined to believe he made up the business part of it. Something was happening and neither of us could deny it.

I met him for dinner and, after a few cocktails, I couldn't come up with a convincing enough reason not to let him into my apartment. I didn't tell him that he was maybe the second person to step foot through the door. Will wanted to say something nice about my place, but I could see he was shocked by its sparseness. For the first time, I was embarrassed by where I lived, by the bare walls and the dead cactus.

“I travel a lot for work,” I said with a shrug. “I'm, um, not usually home.”

He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “You travel.” He rallied to the cause. “You are a minimalist. Not addicted to the constant acquisition of more stuff. I love it. You are anti-materialistic. So rare.”

Who would have thought my ugly and empty apartment could actually be a turn-on? We spent the next forty-eight hours in bed, ordering out for food and bottles of wine. When Monday rolled around Will went back to California and I got on a plane for London to meet with a contact who swore he had mind-blowing information for me that could only be delivered in person. I didn't want to go. For the first time, my heart wasn't in it. I was doodling Mrs. William Hamilton on my cocktail napkin all the way across the Atlantic. And it didn't help that my source was more interested in shooting me than in giving me valuable information.

“Focus, Sally,” Simon berated me afterward. “Do you want to wake up dead tomorrow? You walked right into his trap like an amateur.”

“But you are the one who set up the meeting,” I pointed out.

“Who cares about the details? You were sloppy.”

I called Will the minute my plane touched the ground back in Washington.

“God, Lucy, I thought you vanished or decided you hated me. Didn't you get any of my messages? I didn't know what to do.”

“I missed you too,” I said and actually meant it. “I really did.”

“Come to California.”

“I might be able to get out there for a few days next week. How does that sound?”

“No, I mean come to California forever. I think I'm in love with you.”

Well, that stopped me dead in my tracks. Saying it out loud made it real. It also made for a fine mess.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes. Lucy, come to California, move into my house, and marry me. If you don't I think I might die.”

“You shouldn't kid around like that. I might take you seriously.”

“I am serious, Lucy,” he said. “I've never been more serious in my life.”

The next day I met Simon Still at yet another crowded coffee shop. I wanted to ask him why not a nice Italian place or maybe sushi? But I didn't think the timing was the best.

“I can't keep doing this forever, can I?” I asked. “At some point I need to have a real life. Maybe this is that time.” Lately it seemed like I spent most of my time dodging bullets. My luck was running out. My karma was compromised. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to die just yet.

“Why not?” Simon asked. “I intend to do it until someone kills me. If I'm old when that happens, great, if not, oh well.”

I sat back with my piping hot coffee and stared at Simon. He looked a little ragged around the edges, tired, but it was hard to remember a time when he didn't look that way. Having the safety of the world in your hands is hard work. Other than the fact that he was born in the West, I knew nothing about him. Did he have parents, siblings, a cat? Did he sleep with men or women or whomever happened to be free when he blew into town? And what town was that, where did he live? Who washed his socks? What did he do for fun? Did he know how to have fun? And I knew suddenly, sitting there, that I didn't want to be Simon Still. I didn't want to find myself twenty years down the road in the same sad empty apartment with no friends, no family, nothing but a history of crazy stories that I could never tell anyone anyway. I took his hands in mine.

“I feel like I've known you forever,” I said, “so I think you'll understand that I'm serious when I say this. I want out.”

He pulled his hands back as if I had burned him, put on his sunglasses, and pushed back from the table.

“The one thing you never understood,” he said, “is that in order to save humanity, you cannot be a part of it. Consider yourself out.” Then he stood up and walked away without even a glance back.

And it was almost that easy. When your job doesn't exist, quitting it is not that complicated. I met with two men I'd never seen before and they gave me the ground rules for being an ex-USAWMD agent.

1. You were never here.
   
2. We were never here.
   
3. We're still not here.
   
4. During this period you worked for USAWMD Analyst Bureau. There are tax records, etc., to back up your story, if you should need them.
   
5. Hand in your passports, all of them. You will be given a clean U.S. passport with whatever name you intend to use printed on it. We recommend you don't return to the one you started with.
   
6. Watch your back. You never know when someone might recognize you.
   

But they weren't done yet. There was a number seven, kind of quietly added on at the end. We reserve the right to call on you if your expertise is required. And if we do, you must call back. I agreed. It wasn't as if any of this was really up for debate.

So Theo is tossing his car off the table and I'm standing at the sink rinsing out dish towels covered in applesauce. It makes a sticky, paste-like substance that has now migrated up my forearms. My hair hangs in my face, but I don't dare tuck it behind my ears. Adding the applesauce slop to it would surely not improve my situation.

And just like that, the phone rings. Not my cell phone or any of Will's three work lines. Not the fax machine. But the regular old landline. It is not my natural inclination to answer it because no one I know actually ever calls me on that phone. I'm not even sure why we have it. But now it is ringing. On this beautiful San Francisco morning, my house phone is ringing.

“Hello,” I say, “Hamilton residence.”

“Hello there, Sally,” comes down the line. I'm not exactly surprised to hear Simon Still on the other end. But that doesn't mean I don't almost choke at the sound of his voice.

“Hello, Simon,” I say. “Where are you? Have you been in my backyard recently?”

“I can't say, you know that.”

“Of course,” I say, remembering the long list of things a USAWMD agent can't do.

“How can I help you?” I ask.

“Coffee, three o'clock, that place you always go to in your neighborhood.”

You see? I'm not paranoid. They really are watching me.

“I can't. I have the baby.”

“He's not a baby anymore, Lucy. He's three,” Simon says impatiently. “Bring him.”

“What is this about?” I ask.

“A simple chat,” he answers and hangs up on me with no further details.

I hold the phone in my hand. It feels a little hot, but that is probably because I am sweating. Theo clings to my jeans. I fight the urge to swat him away like a mosquito.

“Mommy,” he says, “pick me up, pick me up, pick me up.” I hoist him up and he wraps his arms around my neck, buries his face in my hair, and starts chewing. Theo likes to chew on my hair. When I ask him why, he rolls his eyes and gives me a long “Mommy.” It's my hair. How could I possibly not know?

“Who was on the phone? Daddy?”

Definitely not Daddy. If Daddy knew who was on the phone, he'd blow a fuse.

“No. It was an old friend of Mommy's,” I say. The idea of Simon Still and Theo occupying the same space for even the length of a cup of coffee makes my mouth dry.

In the beginning, I thought about filling Will full of martinis and confessing all. I would tell him about Sally Sin and the long nights I spent in the Cambodian jungle, stepping carefully between land mines, hoping like hell not to make a mistake. I'd tell him about Budapest and a man I almost fell in love with who turned out to be oh so very bad. I'd tell him about train rides through Vietnam that seemed to last forever, the lonely endless days traveling from place to place to place, blending in and disappearing, pretending I didn't exist. I'd tell him about the fear that each day might very well be my last. I had a keen sense of wanting to stay alive even if I had no idea what for. I might even tell him about Ian Blackford.

But as time slipped by, the possibility of confessing my multitude of sins became more remote. And here I was four years later, and telling him was no longer an option. I couldn't risk ruining Theo's life for secrets I could silently continue to keep.

Simon Still calling me on the house phone, however, made things more complicated. I put Theo back on the floor, with a mouthful of my hair.

“I want to go on the swing in the park on the hill. I want to go fast. I want to go high,” he chants, bouncing up and down.

I want to run away. I want to go fast. I want to go far.

“Okay, playground it is,” I say, distracted. “Let's get ready.”

Theo tears down the hallway. Getting ready for him means collecting about one hundred of his favorite toys and dragging them all into the car and to the park. For me, it includes sippy cups of juice, snack packs of crackers, blueberry yogurt, bananas, napkins, water, jackets, sunscreen, hats, wipes, extra kid shirt and pants, cell phone, wallet, car keys, stroller, and finally travel coffee mug, full. This is all to go two miles down the road to play in the sand and swing on the swings. I used to travel for twelve months at a stretch with nothing more than a toothbrush and a change of underwear.

Theo comes toward me hauling today's spoils. We have tractors, sticker books, a bucket, two shovels, a stuffed pumpkin, and the puzzle people, as we call them, which are really the set of beautifully crafted Matryoshka dolls that I was using as a weapon earlier. The littlest doll in this set has a small rattle inside that Theo adores. I shake the big doll and hear the rattle inside.

“Are you sure you want to bring these? I don't want you to lose them and be sad about it.”

“I
have
to bring them. They go on top of the sand mountain.” How is it a person this small can sound exasperated? The dolls go into the bag.

We load everything into the car, a Toyota Prius that any self-respecting spy would have exactly nothing to do with. It appeared one day in my garage, replacing my 350 horsepower silver Audi S6, the one indulgence I'd allowed myself post-agency. I kind of loved that car. After I drove it from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco I couldn't resist cruising over the Bay Bridge and right into an aftermarket outfitter in Oakland. Used to servicing the hip-hop community, they couldn't understand why I'd want Kevlar Second Chance panels in the doors and Chroma-Flex bullet resistant film in the windows.

“Someone trying to kill you, lady?” the mechanic asked.

“You never know,” I said, handing over my cash.

“What do you think?” Will asked, stroking the wee car parked in my spot.

“About what?” I asked, ignoring the obvious.

“Listen, I wasn't feeling right about your car. It's a gas guzzler, killing the planet. This one gets fifty miles to the gallon! Can you believe that?”

“What … did … you … do … with … my … car?” I thought seriously for a moment about beating him senseless. But that wouldn't bring my car back.

“You're mad, aren't you? Okay, so I probably should have asked you before I traded it in, but this was the last one on the lot. Isn't that great? A small fuel-efficient car that is actually flying out of the dealerships. I am so excited about this, Lucy. You have no idea.”

I tried to calm down. I counted backward from one hundred. I rolled my neck, popping out the kinks. I cracked all of my fingers, one by one.

“I liked my car,” I said slowly, deliberately.

“I know. It's hard. But we all need to sacrifice for the good of the future, right?”

“No! Who cares about the future?” I kicked the wheel of the little car for emphasis. Will gasped.

“Lucy, no need to take out your anger like that. You might hurt it.”

“It's a car, Will. It doesn't have feelings.” I kicked it again to prove my point.

And the look on his face, one of sheer horror at my inability to grasp how important this was for the greater good, made me start to giggle. And once I started, I couldn't stop. And neither could he. And then he did some things to me on the hood of that car that made me glad it couldn't talk.

We head to the park. It's a nice park, as parks go, with a playground funded by the local people who are all very rich. So the equipment is new and innovative and clever and you can be fairly confident that the swings aren't going to suddenly detach from their chains and send your kid orbiting into outer space.