by G M Eppers
“I have?” I suddenly felt as guilty as a child caught stealing cookies before dinner, and found myself looking around the room for suspicious characters, as if whoever had pinged me had to be there.
“Approximately fifteen minutes ago. I want you to hang up immediately and turn that phone off. I’ll be pinging you myself in five minutes, and if I get positive results I’ll be firing you for real. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am. My apologies, Ma’am.” I hung up, then powered down the phone for the first time in about eight years, feeling utterly stupid. The blank screen taunted me, and I felt more isolated and disconnected than ever before. Adrift. Like Tom Hanks on the island in Cast Away. I was surrounded by about 300 people, but I felt alone and vulnerable. Standing in a crowded Karaoke bar with noise all around me, food and drink in abundance, but it was the blank screen in my hand that controlled my feelings. I put it in my pocket and headed back to the booth, determined to finish this mission so I could get back to my life. I had a new goal now. Being able to turn the phone back on. I stopped when I noticed that Butte was also on the phone. I was too far away to hear what he was saying due to the conversations going on around me and a pre-teen performer on stage belting out “Time in a Bottle,” with obviously no understanding at all of the meaning behind the words. Butte gestured a bit, appearing to be a little angry, then he listened, nodded, spoke a few more words, and ended the call, slipping his phone into his shirt pocket.
I nonchalantly approached the booth as if I hadn’t seen any of it, and sat down, resuming my meal. The steak I hadn’t intended to eat was nearly gone. I wanted to suspect Butte of eating it while I was away, but not only was it not done to his liking, there were no condiments of any kind on it. The culprit was me, whether I remembered doing it or not. “No problem,” I explained. “Just wondering when I’m supposed to land in D.C. I told her my flight was delayed.”
Butte began staring at my face. He put down his knife and fork, rested his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together. His head tilted just slightly in that ‘I’m getting into your head’ look that used to make my stomach tremble. Used to?
“What?” I asked. He didn’t answer for a long time. He looked at me like that until I started to blush. “Butte?”
He cleared his throat. “Do you have someplace to stay tonight?”
“No. I was going to sleep at the airport.” I was ad-libbing. I hadn’t at all considered where I was going to sleep. It sounded like a bad idea even as it came out of my mouth.
“I have a better idea.”
Correction. Sleeping at the airport now sounded like an excellent plan. Or getting drunk, making a scene and spending the night in a holding cell. Or crawling into a cardboard box in an alleyway. Or climbing a clock tower and taking out the town. Anything but what Butte was suggesting. “Really?” I heard myself say.
“I have a suite at a five star hotel two blocks away. It’s way too big for just little old me.”
Resistance is the key to a good infiltration. A shame I was losing mine. “I bet it’s a hovel.”
His hands parted so that one of them could reach across the table to hold mine. “Are you seeing anyone?”
My pulse was speeding up and I was suddenly feeling quite warm. “No. You?” I should have pulled my hand away from his. The thought even went through my mind. But my hand stayed where it was, cupped under his and feeling warm.
“No.” Our eyes were locked together, but in my peripheral vision I saw Butte’s other hand rise into the air to signal the waitress with a credit card. “Garçon!” he whispered.
“We’re not in France,” I corrected him.
“Would you like to be?”
I couldn’t breathe. “How far away did you say the hotel was?”
Despite his asking for a waiter in French, the waitress came over and took the credit card he was dangling out of his free hand. Plastic. The universal language. His other hand was still wrapped around mine. A few minutes later, he had signed for the meal. I got up, and he reached into the seat to get my go bag and handed it to me. We stepped out of the restaurant and a limo pulled up. It was a small limo, but still a limo. A driver dressed in a black suit opened the back door for us and I crawled in, followed by Butte, who simply told the driver, “take us home.” After that, he couldn’t say anything, and neither could I because our lips were busy. I hadn’t planned on this. I couldn’t stop myself, but at the same time I both wanted to and didn’t want to. I didn’t know what I wanted. Thought, foresight and self-control had left the building.
It was a very short limo ride, then Butte was pulling me by the hand out of the car and leading me into the luxurious lobby of his hotel. Straight to the elevator, which took us up about forty stories, and then through the door into his suite. It was the size of the Everglades, with a view of Prague that could only be duplicated by helicopter. There was a huge sectional sofa in a sunken living room, and a circular bed in front of the floor to ceiling windows. The sheets were silk and the comforter was quilted silk, in a deep two-tone purple. I glanced up but there was no mirror on the ceiling. Prague was not Las Vegas. The carpet was brown and plush. To one side was a kitchenette and bar with four tall stools. A frosted glass panel door led into the bathroom. Butte took the go bag from my limp hands. “Go ahead, take a shower. I took one before I went to the club, but you’ve been busy. Use all the hot water you like. There’s a robe you can use on the hook. Would you like a nightcap?”
“Huh?”
Butte was amused by my wonder. He smiled. Oh. That smile. He guided me to the bathroom door and gently pushed me inside. If the hotel room was the size of the Everglades, the bathroom had to at least be Jamaica. A lot of glass, brass and class. Half an hour later, I came out wrapped in a fluffy white robe, my hair brushed but still damp. Butte was on the bed. Naked.
Between the shower and the luxurious surroundings, I was beginning to come out of the Butte induced waking coma. “Oh, no, wait. This isn’t right. What am I doing?” Needless to say, it had been considerable time since I had…well, you know. Perhaps a cold shower would have been wiser, but he’d suggested hot and I’d gone with it. It had been a long day and it had felt magnificent, and while it sobered me somewhat, it didn’t turn off the hormones.
He pushed himself off the bed and took my hand, pulling me toward him. “If you don’t remember –“ He kissed me. On the lips. Hard. Grabbing my ass through the robe with one hand while slipping something into my gaping mouth.
“Oh,” I said, as a square of dark chocolate melted on my tongue. “Dark chocolate makes me horny.”
“I know.”
The dark chocolate, as it turned out, was rather redundant.
“I missed my flight,” I lied. There was no flight, of course, but I did have the presence of mind to realize that Butte thought there was. I was supposed to report back to D.C., after all. According to the cover story.
“Shame,” he said. “We’ll have to reschedule.”
“Yes. Miss Chiff will be upset.”
“She going to fire you again?”
Then we were on the bed. And it was spinning. My mission was either going extremely well, or horribly wrong.
Chapter Three
The smell and sizzle of frying bacon awoke me from a warm, peaceful slumber. It took a few moments to remember where I was. It helped when I opened my eyes and saw Butte standing at the range in his boxer shorts, with a white dish towel over one bare shoulder, and I saw again the immense, luxurious hotel suite. Realizing I was naked, I grabbed the white fluffy robe at the foot (is it still the foot if the bed is round?) of the bed and wrapped it around myself, tying the belt tightly around my waist. I padded over to the kitchenette, sat at the table, and grabbed a triangle of buttered toast. I don’t know where the porterhouse had gone. It was like I’d eaten nothing last night.
“Good morning!” Butte said. “It’ll still be a few minutes. You can change if you want. I had your clothes cleaned and they’re on a hange
r in the bathroom.” He kissed my forehead, then returned to his frying pan. “I remember how you like to get dressed first thing. Helena the Ready. She is woman. Hear her roar.”
“Thanks, Butte.” How many times had I thanked him? Probably more in the last twelve hours or so than I had in twelve years of marriage. Or at least since Billings arrived. The thought that perhaps the apathy was not entirely on him crossed my mind, but this was not the time to address it. Had I pushed him away after having Billings? I’d never considered that before, and I wasn’t sure.
No more than six minutes later I emerged dressed and ready for the day, only to realize I didn’t really have anything to be ready for. But old habits die hard, as they say. Butte had cooked a full, high-cholesterol breakfast, served with orange juice and skim milk, but only one setting was on the table. “I’ve already eaten,” he explained. “My turn to freshen up. By the way, after you’re done, get your go bag ready. We’re going to Belgium.”
I started eating the pile of flavorful grease. “Why are we going to Belgium?” Even to my ear, it sounded more like “Eye Uh Ing Ooo Um” as I left couth behind and spoke with my mouth full. I’m not sure if he understood my question, or was just going to explain his request anyway.
He ducked into the bathroom, leaving the door open so we could continue talking. I tried to time my swallows and comments around spurts of running water so he could understand me. “Big Uber bust last night,” he said. “WHEY is protesting the arrest of an innocent Belgian citizen.”
“Innocent?” I muttered. Why did he feel the need to exonerate the person before any other detail? The innocent until proven guilty thing wasn’t entirely American, but it certainly was never meant to preclude arrests and detentions.
I didn’t think I’d said it loud enough for him to hear, but I did and he heard me. “Let’s not go there right now, okay? I don’t want to ruin this.”
“Ruin what?”
His head popped out of the doorway, the lower half of his face covered in shaving cream. “Were you too drunk to remember last night? You seemed okay, or I wouldn’t have taken advantage.” He ducked back inside.
“I was okay. I remember everything I did.” I just wasn’t sure why. I blamed it on the alcohol—it was more than my usual—but I didn’t recall really feeling a buzz. It could just as easily have been plain old chemistry. Butte and I had always had a really strong physical attraction. Most of the time, I could keep my wits and be rational about it. He was the one who pushed and I was the one who pushed back. Last night he had only nudged and I didn’t push back at all. Was it being apart for about a decade? Did absence not only make the heart grow fonder but make the brain turn to mush? It was true that being with him brought back more good memories than bad. Maybe because the bad hadn’t been exactly bad. He’d never hit me, he hadn’t cheated, and he hadn’t gotten high. He just took me for granted and failed me at a time when I needed him most. With all this time under the bridge, and with him so close, my perspective was changing. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to. I wasn’t sure it should. I really didn’t think these feelings would get stirred up and it was throwing me off. I had to get a handle on it. As I ate, I tried to internalize and compartmentalize. I was a professional, damn it.
“You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to,” he said. I could hear the swish as he rinsed his razor off in the sink. All this luxury, he never got himself an electric razor? Maybe he enjoyed the process. There was a certain appeal to old-fashioned ablutions. It brought back memories of my Dad, when I was young and I watched him shave. Sometimes he would plop a dollop of shaving cream on my nose, and I’d feign disgust and wipe it off with a towel. I’d watch him wash his severed whiskers down the sink and clean up, leaving the bathroom as clean as when he’d come in. It just seemed like what men should do. An electric razor seemed somewhat careless in comparison. Like one was too busy to do it right. I’d watched Butte shave, too, when we were married, of course. Except he wasn’t as good at the cleaning up part. I was usually the one washing the whiskers down the sink. I wondered if the housekeeper here would have to do it.
“I guess I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“What about your flight back to D.C.? Won’t Miss Chiff be expecting you? Not the same airport, but I’m sure we could arrange something. I can take you right to your gate.” Apparently he wanted to read my expression because his head popped out of the doorway again. The left side of his face had been scraped clean, except for one errant glop hanging from his earlobe. The right side had yet to be done.
“Seems I’ve missed my flight entirely,” I suggested, washing down a mouthful of eggs with a gulp of orange juice. “And the next one is already overbooked.”
He disappeared again to finish his shaving. “Are you spying on me?”
It was said in jest. It had to be, but I choked on a piece of bacon and had to drink some milk before I responded. “How could I spy? I’m not in CURDS anymore.” I started to lift a forkful of eggs toward my mouth, but hesitated, waiting tensely for his response.
He finally emerged, wiping his newly shaven face with a towel and getting the glop off his left ear. “Don’t tell me you like my company.” He leaned over and deftly snatched the eggs off my fork with his mouth.
His face got close enough that I could smell his aftershave. It was not his usual scent, however. “You used to wear Mennen, Butte. What is that?”
“Geo F. Trumper’s Spanish Leather. You like it?”
“It’s . . . not you, Butte.” I’d heard of the Trumper brand and it was very expensive. Nothing I’d seen so far was Butte-like, and it was worrying me. All this opulence didn’t sit right--and shouldn’t have sat right with the Butte I remembered. If he’d been bought by WHEY or by the Krochedy Brothers, there was no telling how far it could go. Billings was right about that. He’d seen the way it was with just a few moments at a Starbucks. I’d gotten into this reasonably sure that I would clear Butte’s name and go back to my team ready to patch up the holes. Now I wasn’t so sure. I felt even less safe about coming right out and asking, as I’d considered while I waited for his return call in the playground. The aftershave was only the least of it. “It’s not bad. It’s just. . . “
“You’ll get used to it.” I was hoping not to hang around him long enough for that. It seemed I was successfully pulling in the reins on my emotions. It must have been the alcohol after all, and the closeness, and the, uh, nudity. “I’m just going to throw on some old clothes and throw some newer ones in a bag and I’ll be right out.” He vanished into another room. With the bedroom more or less in the living room, I wasn’t sure where he went. Maybe a second bedroom?
I finished eating and took my dishes to the sink. I had to go to Belgium with him, that much was clear. The distance between me and my team was growing exponentially. I wondered what they were doing and if they had found the Meatball Bomber yet. Suppose they had? Suppose my mission with Butte was no longer necessary? How would I know? I didn’t dare turn on my phone to find out. On the other hand, even if the Meatball Bomber was in custody, that didn’t necessarily clear either Butte or WHEY from culpability. I was going to have to see this through.
Which is why I accompanied Butte to the airport where we boarded AirWHEY, a converted AirBus A750 which is half again as big as CURDS1. On the side of the fuselage ‘AirWHEY’ was painted in fancy script, partially surrounded by uneven parallel lines to indicate speed. There was no locker room or showers or cat kennel, and it had seats for about a hundred people. Butte led me to his private cabin which resembled a cabin on a passenger train with two bench seats facing each other, accessed by a sliding door. I could hear a crowd of others boarding the plane behind us. People were discussing the Uber bust and I got snatches of conversation as they passed before Butte closed the door, but couldn’t really piece the story together. As soon as we were alone, I asked him. “So what about this bust? What are we, um, protesting, exactly?”
“Do you really want to know?
”
“Sure. I’ve never seen you work before. I mean, for WHEY. I’ll admit, other than carrying signs and chanting, I have no idea what your job is about.” I tucked my go bag under the bench and buckled my seatbelt as Butte took his seat across from me. I wondered how much he would tell me. Would the details be classified? Was I suspect? Did he trust me, or was WHEY as innocent as it seemed and such trust was totally unnecessary? “I can’t imagine they overpay you, so you must do more than that. The hotel room, this private cabin, the limo. It’s earned, right?” I let my voice imply that the power of it all was sexy. I was finding it nauseating, but I let him think I was turned on. In truth, I was sober now. My belly was full, I was well-rested, and I was in full control of my inner thespian. The plane began to taxi away from the terminal and I looked out the window to watch my favorite view, with part of my brain ready to hang on every word of his answer.
Butte also buckled in. “Late last night a ship docked at Ostend and off-loaded about three tons of cargo. Customs confiscated most of it, as it turned out. There were a couple dozen containers of contraband weaponry, for one. Speculation is that it was deliberate to distract the authorities from the Uber Jarlsberg hidden in a shipment of gourmet cold cuts from Norway.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that if Uber were legal they wouldn’t have had to smuggle weapons as a distraction and the streets of Belgium would be safer. Relatively speaking.”
“But the guns were never intended to make it into Belgium. They could have been carved from soap with the same results. No. They arrested a dock worker who they claim falsified the ship’s manifest.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
The plane picked up speed rapidly and lifted off the ground. The roar of the jet engines seemed especially loud and my ears ached. The AirWHEY didn’t have the Automatic Pressure Equalizer that the CURDS1 had. I worked my jaw to ease the pressure as I watched Prague fall away. “So what’s WHEY’s take on the whole thing? Just so I can try to compose an appropriate chant before we get there.”