Forever in Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  “Was he?” Bryce licked a fat glob of whipped cream from the spoon, looked at the cards, front and back, then looked at her again. “Cute,” he said, placing the postcards on the table beside her untouched cappuccino.

  She’d skipped the typical plastic lid on her coffee and as she looked at grinning egg and smiling cup, an unseasonably warm breeze puffed foam from the cappuccino, dusting the postcard’s smiling egg with a milky, cocoa-blemish. She glanced at Bryce, blew the foam away, and the dog lifted his head, tongue licking chops. She looked at the animal’s brown eyes. What was she doing here?

  “Perhaps,” Kitt pulled out a chair and sat beside Bryce, eyebrow arched, “now would be a good time for a holiday. You once mentioned a spa in New Mexico. What was the name?”

  Bryce licked more whipped cream.

  “Ojo Caliente.” Kitt leaned forward, his expression seductive. “That’s it. It’s not just for distinguished gentlemen, and it’s not far from here either. Shall we go there together?”

  Mae shifted her gaze to the Jemez Mountains and Caballo peak, the distant, sloping, patch that was bare of trees and the snow it should have had this time of year.

  Bryce coughed softly. When she looked at him he gave her a fairly sardonic smile. “Tell me again. Explain it to me.”

  “You said the word remains. You said remains had been recovered in a shipping container and analysis verified those remains were Kitt’s. Instead of ruminating on what that meant and facing a Christmas that would have been ours, I thought of myself, or what remained of me. I opened the envelope you gave me, the one with his things inside, and I put on his watch.” She glanced down at her wrist, at the beaten-up Citizen timepiece that had belonged to Kitt, the sturdy leather band darkened by sweat. The crystal had a crack that marred the face and distorted the number 10. “A watch has one purpose. It tells time. Despite what had happened to this watch, how it cracked, it continued to do its job. It continues to do its job. When I realised that, I understood I needed to do what I had always done. I had to work. I had to be productive. I needed to be productive. Productive is my way through grief.” Mae rubbed the dog’s soft ears as he rose and dropped his head into her lap.

  “I said it before. Kitt wouldn’t like it.” Bryce exhaled. “I don’t like it.” His eyes narrowed as he glanced at the postcards, and then at her. “Yet here I am.”

  “Thank you for stopping in town to visit on your trip to Disneyland,” she said.

  “It’s on the way.” He sat back in his chair, blob of whipped cream at the edge of his mouth. Global warming wreaked feckin’ havoc with the seasons. London had been unseasonably cold in October while Los Alamos was positively balmy in late December. The winter sun shone robustly, heating the brick wall behind them, warming their bodies, and accentuating the colour of Bryce’s eyes.

  Bryce had the greenest eyes she had ever come across. With sooty lashes, black hair sprinkled with bits of silver, and those green eyes, he was one of the most handsome men she had ever known—although the cleft in his chin gave his looks a cartoon superhero quality. When the Welshman turned serious, as he just had, Mae pictured him wearing blue spandex and a red cape. She looked back at the shabby, but expensive timepiece. “Perhaps this watch ought to go to Kitt’s next of kin,” she said softly.

  He licked away the cream blob. “Even if he’s dead, information about Kitt is still classified, but I can tell you, you were listed as his next of kin. It usually takes a few months to clear, but you’ll hear from the solicitor with instructions on how to dispose of his estate.”

  Air popped from her lips and Mae shook her head. It was a little late for instructions. “I’ve disposed of some of it already.”

  Bryce exhaled unhappily and laid his big hand over hers. “He asked me to look after you. He loved you, you know.”

  “I know.” The dog moved to stretch out on sun-warmed concrete and Mae’s gaze wandered to the left, to the west, to the highest still-snowless peak of the Jemez. “Five months ago, I spent a lovely two weeks in the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico with you looking after me because Kitt asked you to.”

  “You know my duty didn’t end when that business was over, Mrs Valentine.”

  “Your duty?” She returned her attention back to Bryce.

  “Yes.” Bryce took his hand away and smiled. It made him look Supermanly.

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends, you and I,” he picked up the spoon again, “but Kitt and I served together. He was my commanding officer. I had orders. They still stand.”

  “Orders. All that time you and I spent together we never talked much about your wife. What does Nari think about your orders and your duty, Sergeant?”

  “My wife is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Italian Army, senior staff to the Italian Military Representative on the NATO Military Committee. She understands duty.” Bryce rubbed his holey chin for a moment and sighed. Then he dug out a fluff of cream and sucked it from the long-handled green plastic spoon. “I’ll check in with you again on my way back from Disneyland, and wish you’d call me Timothy, Mae,” he said.

  She picked up a postcard to stare at the Quando, running a fingertip over a silly Italian word that connected back to a man she loved, waiting for something, for anything other than anger to register. Things might have been different if she had simply said yes instead of agreeing to a very long engagement. Maybe yes would have changed the outcome. Maybe then and there Kitt would have changed his mind about one last assignment, maybe moved into a different area of operation, or maybe quit the job that was his for life, the goddamn job that had taken his life. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Kitt was dead. There was no point in maybe anything—except that maybe she’d gone a little insane.

  Her eyes went to the dog. As instructed, he’d been microchipped this morning, but what was she really doing here? What lunacy had compelled her to agree to do a favour for a man who had once accused her of crimes? She looked at Bryce and his Superman jaw. He said her name again, her brain registered that his lips moved, and for a few seconds, she saw him the day he’d come to Kitt’s flat and told her he was dead. That day, she’d clung to unlaundered clothes that held the scent of a man she’d been eejit enough to love. Hours later, when Bryce had returned with a crew of men to inspect the flat for sensitive material and dispose of some of Kitt’s things, she clung still to unwashed garments that smelled of the man she’d loved, sinking, going down, about to drown in immeasurable grief.

  That day, with Bryce and his fecking gobshite team, was the instant she saw how to save herself. That day, envelope of Kitt’s belongings in his hands, green-eyed Bryce looked at her with a moment of his own grief and distress before his expression shifted to the same practised, calm, detached expression Kitt had often worn. That day, Bryce had never been a superhero, but a flotsam reminder, a buoyant fragment of something she could seize to try to rescue what was left of her own life.

  And today Bryce was the man who was trying to be her friend. She lifted her cup and had a sip of coffee. The foam tasted sour and her expression turned sour.

  Bryce had put down his spoon to gaze at her earnestly. “I know you’re angry, Mae.”

  “Angry? No, I’m not angry. I’m livid. With him. With myself. And I see him. Everywhere. Clear as day. The barista in the café was Kitt. The postman across the street is Kitt. Taittinger shuffling into the kitchen this morning was Kitt. It’s not uncommon. The same thing happened for a year or so after Caspar died. Every man turned into Caspar.”

  “In other words, it’s grief.”

  “Yes.” She shoved the smiling egg and coffee cup postcards aside and raised her burning eyes to Bryce, exhaling a half laugh. “I don’t need you to save me from this, Timothy.”

  “You’re doing that all on your own. And I don’t like it.” Bryce huffed, had another mouthful of whipped cream, and got back to business. “What’s it been like here?”

  “I wrote you all about Taittinger in your Christmas card.”

&
nbsp; “I’m making conversation.” Bryce mined a bit of fluffy whipped cream and spooned it into his mouth. White flecked his top lip.

  Mae chuckled softly. “I’ve spent two months minding a dog and planning family Christmas and a New Year’s Eve party. My employer drinks a lot of wine, talks about wine, art, and car restorations, but says next to nothing about his work at the Lab in Los Alamos.

  “Did you ask him about his experiment on dark matter simulations to constrain the low mass end of the mass function of dark halos?”

  “You read the article about him in Wine Enthusiast.”

  “How do you think I knew about ‘dark matter simulations to constrain the low mass end of the mass function of dark halos’? Does he really collect bottles?”

  “For his mother. When he drinks a bottle of wine, he sets it aside for the sculptures his mother makes. You know Evelyn Taittinger is an artist. She flew back to Florida with three crates of empties this morning and left two in the studio on the estate, for when she’s here in summer. Have you ever seen her work?”

  “Yesterday, at a gallery in Santa Fe. She makes dragons, lizards, birds, small animals out of broken wine bottles. It’s sharp.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You’ve settled in, then?”

  Mae slid a hand around her coffee cup. She studied Bryce for a moment. “You know, Taittinger has a friend who helps him restore cars. He’s a landscaper and mechanic. You look a bit like Hector, only twenty years younger and without the long hair and Native American ancestry.”

  Bryce chuckled and tipped his chin at Felix. “The dog appears to be well-behaved.” He spooned more whipped cream.

  “Yes, now Felix can sit, stay, and drop, although I have a bit of an issue with breaking one unwanted behaviour.”

  “Which is?”

  “He likes to hump men. I wonder if Llewelyn knew about the humping when he asked me to do him a favour.” She gave a little cough, sipped her coffee. “It’s been two months of dog training, and party planning, and rodent disposal.”

  “Infestation?”

  “Vindictive ex-girlfriend sent a dead rat for Christmas.”

  “A dead rat?”

  “M-hm. It was freeze-dried.”

  Bryce chuckled.

  Mae did not. She drummed fingers on the table. “Have you ever seen the Cary Grant Hitchcock film, the one with Ingrid Bergman, about the wine cellar and uranium sand?”

  “You watch a lot of films, Mae?”

  “I have lately and it’s disappointing. There’s no uranium sand anywhere, not in Taittinger’s wine cellar, not even in the barn where he’s restoring another sports car. One sort of expects espionage at the Los Alamos Lab, nuclear secrets being sold to North Korea, uranium sand, and such, not dog minding, an art-collecting oenophile, and private wine auctions.”

  “Private auctions are similar to home poker games; money changes hands with no taxable income recorded and no money trail to follow. Do you like your new position, Mae?”

  Her lips pursed. No butler worth their salt talked about their employer this way. It grated. She did it anyway. “I admire Taittinger’s social conscience. He donates a good deal of money to charities dealing with refugees—his New Year’s Eve party is a charity event for refugees—but he likes his Xanax and marijuana, and I hate how it smells.” Mae cracked a smile. “Aside from that, the routine has been good for me. The work has helped me manage the...loss. That’s what this is, Timothy, loss management.” She sighed and watched a tall man waiting for traffic to pass on the other side of the street. When it was clear, he crossed, heading for post office. For a few beats of her heart she saw blue-grey eyes that were sometimes cold and hard, a cruel mouth that could blossom into a summer smile, short, dark blond hair the sun turned gingery. Her fingers strayed beneath the pink Hermès scarf Taittinger had given her for Christmas, to the chain where Kitt’s ring hung alongside her reading glasses. She slipped the diamond on and off the tip of her finger.

  “When you see Kitt, does he talk to you?” Bryce said softly. “Or do you talk to him?”

  “I’m not delusional.”

  Bryce smiled. “Well, I don’t know. That man you’re watching looks nothing like Kitt.”

  Chapter 3

  Three hours before sunrise on New Year’s Eve, tucked beneath a shelter of blankets, Mae woke on the sofa, the dog snuggled into the back of her knees. She got up and stretched her arms overhead. Felix hopped off the couch, stretched his long legs forward and yawned. Mae put on water for coffee and organised breakfast for Felix, and scooped coffee into a filter. She watched the dark brew drip into the glass carafe. The routine of arranging coffee and breakfast hadn’t altered since Kitt’s death, except instead of scrambling eggs for a man, she prepared kibble for a dog.

  Felix ate, she reached for the carafe of coffee, poured some into a mug. She’d made enough for two.

  “Coffee, thank Christ. I drove all night to come home to your coffee.” Kitt sat on the edge of the kitchen worktop, swinging bare feet, a bandage covering an injury just below his right clavicle.

  Mae stared at the bandage and gulped too-hot Tanzanian Mondul. The coffee burned all the way down.

  “You’ve lit the very corner of my dark soul and I’ve moved into yours. I’m nothing like you wanted and everything you needed and loved.”

  She coughed, went to the sink, and guzzled a handful of cold water.

  “What are you doing, Mrs Valentine?”

  More water. Yes, what was she doing watching Taittinger, looking after his dog, disposing of dead rats, organising wine tastings, family Christmas gatherings and New Year’s Eve parties?

  Kitt wore a wry grin. “You know the heart of intelligence consists of gathering information. Most intelligence work is not exciting or even necessarily life-threatening. It’s mostly drinking, networking, socialising, more drinking, managing to stay upright with all that alcohol, and paperwork. There’s an incredible amount of paperwork. Paperwork needs to be done to ensure that everything was properly cleared and authorised. All that information gathered leads to paperwork. I hate paperwork. Who’s doing your paperwork, Mae?”

  Mae watched Kitt’s feet swing, followed the motion of his legs, the rippling of muscle along his bared thighs, to the black terry-towelling dressing gown tied at the waist and open at the chest. She snorted. The wound he’d sustained last August, when he’d found Mafiosa Godmother Vivi Gallia, had been on the left side, not the right.

  Kitt’s mouth quirked. “I’m a mirror image, Mrs Valentine.”

  She set the coffee carafe on the cooktop. She’d loved one dead man for sixteen years and she’d go on with the rest of her life loving another dead man. Tongue scalded, she snorted again in irritation, and spent the next forty-five minutes running on the treadmill in the corner until her throat was raw, she was soaked with sweat, and the feet-swinging, smirking apparition disappeared.

  Morning progressed in preparation for the evening’s party. She moved from one task to another until it was time to exercise Felix. She took him outside. A front the previous evening had finally brought snow. Seven or eight centimetres had accumulated, sticking to piñon and ponderosa pine boughs, covering the front walkway, the driveway, the garden that turned rocky and dropped away to a canyon. Felix sniffed the white stuff cautiously. Suddenly, he took off like a shot, biting at the snow, spinning, bounding through drifts, his winter jacket a blur of blue against white. He leapt over the low wall along the driveway and shot left, zigzagged, biting at the snow-covered ground half a metre from Mae’s feet. He gave a bark, turned tail and took off, all four legs off the ground at once. He disappeared into a ridge of snow-laden trees, reappearing and vanishing again, only to appear again at the top of the driveway. In a flash, he was off toward the barn, streaking toward Evelyn Taittinger’s art studio.

  Jaysus, he was fast and she’d forgotten his yellow ball. She knew better than to give chase; it would only turn things into a game, make Felix run faster and farther away. She s
at on the cold ground. Snowflakes fell on her face, soft as the brush of Kitt’s mouth on her cheek.

  Snow. Kitt said it had been snowing in Switzerland the morning he came home with a Christmas tree. Did he like snow? She’d never asked him. He’d liked vintage china patterns, scrambled eggs and coffee and bourbon and kissing the centre of her palm and her honesty and... Damn him.

  God damn him.

  He was a bleedin’ spy, heartache hovered above him, and she loved him anyway. How was it a surprise that his profession had taken his life when she’d known it would all along? She should have had the good sense to walk away from him before all the heartache came crashing down. Instead, she’d ignored intelligent thinking, ignored his certain fate, ignored the impending catastrophe of a man with a condensed lifespan for love. Eejit. Fool.

  Kitt stood in ankle-deep snow, in front of a gas cooker, spatula in his hand. “You want me...to cook breakfast?”

  The look on his face, the words he said, they were the same as when she’d confessed that she loved him. That morning had been the only time she’d ever seen him flustered, and that moment’s tousle of his confidence had only made her love him more. Eejit. Fool.

  “You’d prefer to go on as we are,” he said softly.

  Eejit. Fool. Love was undeniable. Leaving him would never have lessened how much she loved him any more than his dying did. Plainly, she excelled at two things in life: being professional and loving dead men, and as she lay there in the snow, flurries drifting down into her face, she raged at the two men she had loved. One more secretive than the other. Both just as dead.

  Felix licked her ear, nosed into her neck, tickling. She took hold of him and cuddled him close. “Good boy, good little man,” she murmured. Then she slid on his collar and lead and rose. She wiped cold snow from her arse and furious hot tears from her cheeks. She’d fry her own damn eggs for the rest of her life and not cry about it.

  Focus on work. Be professional. Professional, productive, that was the way through this, it was how she’d survived after Caspar. She’d done it before and—God damn Kitt—she’d bloody well do it again.