Sex as a Second Language

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Kat?” It was her mother, sounding groggy from sleep. “I thought I heard shouting. Is everything all right?”

  Sinking down onto the wood floor, Kat began to cry. “No, Mom,” she said, her voice coming out thin and small and very young. “Magnus was using me. He works for the CIA. All he wanted was to get to my dad.”

  “Oh, honey. Do you want me to come over?”

  Kat looked around the living room, at the chairs he had fixed, the painting he had rehung. “And the worse part is, I think it hurts more than when Logan walked out, because I always sort of knew that Logan was selfish and egocentric.” Her vision blurred with tears. “I thought I’d learned and I’d made a better choice this time.”

  “Kat? Do you want me to come over?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”

  “Then let me make the decision. Open the door, I’m coming over.”

  Too worn out to argue, Kat sat back and let her mother take charge.

  PART THREE

  expressing anger

  and

  resolving conflict

  There are many things that make people angry. Some of these are fairly predictable given the situation. Others are highly personal and idiosyncratic. In this unit, we will outline some of the things that make many Americans angry. You must be cautious when expressing or reacting to anger in a language not your own. If you say the wrong thing, the situation could get worse.

  It is best to try to resolve the issue.

  —SPEAKING NATURALLY:

  COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN AMERICAN ENGLISH

  chapter thirty-two

  f or the first time in his life, Magnus hit the six-mile mark without experiencing any discernible lift in his mood. Slowing to a jog, he stretched his arms behind his head and looked up at the sky, which had finally lost its bruised blue color.

  His cell phone rang. “Yeah?” He stopped in the middle of the empty sidewalk, the sweat on his arms and legs rapidly cooling in the brisk, early-morning air.

  “Magnus, where the fuck are you? I thought you were asleep on the couch.”

  Magnus stretched his right calf, which had just seized up with a cramp. “I needed some air.”

  Fred made an exasperated noise. “Well, get your ass back over here. Your gamble just paid off. Ken Miner showed up on my doorstep five minutes ago, ready to do business.”

  Magnus wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. “That’s great, Fred.” The sky didn’t seem to be getting any lighter; Magnus thought that it might rain.

  “I still say it was a hell of a chance to take, letting him walk off.” This was a lot milder than what his handler had said last night.

  “I’m glad it worked out.”

  “But I still have a little problem. Namely, the fact that the agent in charge of selling this deal to him is missing.”

  “Fred, you told me that my judgment was too poor for me to continue on this or any other case.” After Katherine had kicked him out, Magnus had gone straight to Fred’s apartment and spent hours filling his handler in on the meeting with Ken Miner. Magnus had informed Fred that Ken struck him as bored and depressed, adding that Miner was deeply gratified to learn that the Agency wanted his expertise, not his head. Certain that Miner was going to agree, Magnus had let the old spy go to think things over.

  Fred had been less than impressed with this line of reasoning, calling Magnus a genius of an idiot before slamming the door to his bedroom.

  Figuring it might be better not to be around when Fred woke up, Magnus had gone for a run. He still wasn’t sure how far he’d meant to go, or when he’d meant to come back.

  “Are you even listening to me, Magnus?” Magnus realized his boss was telling him something.

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “Listen, all I’m saying is, you have to learn to take a little healthy criticism. Now, where the hell are you?”

  Magnus looked around him, taking in the uneven cobbled streets, the empty warehouses, the metal garbage cans overflowing with rancid meat. “Downtown somewhere.”

  “So how long will it take you to get back to my apartment?” Fred lived in a one-bedroom on Fifty-fifth and Eighth Avenue, right above a Chinese takeout place. Everything inside was tainted with the smell of garlic sauce, from Fred’s leather sofa to his custom-made Hong Kong suits. Magnus would have paid less for the furnishings and tried for a different location, but Fred had different priorities.

  “Magnus? Is your cell phone fading out? I asked how far are you?”

  “I’m not sure.” Maybe it was the thought of all that garlic, but Magnus found his stomach turning at the thought of returning to Fred’s place.

  “Well, get back here as fast as you can. Miner’s sitting in the kitchen, going over the Oybek file and trying to get up to speed, but he’s going to have some questions.”

  “You can tell him whatever he needs to know.” Magnus watched a brown rat peek its head out of a trash can. “I need to talk to Katherine. She feels that I betrayed her trust.”

  “Unfortunate, but not uncommon.”

  The rat lifted up on its hind legs, sniffing the air. “Fred, I slept with her.”

  “Okay, look, I’m not speaking officially here. But sometimes, when we’re befriending an agent of the opposite sex, certain lines get crossed. As long as you keep your mind on the objective, it’s tacitly accepted.”

  “To be perfectly frank, my mind wasn’t on the goddamn objective, and I don’t really give a shit what the Agency thinks. I just don’t want Katherine to think I was using her to get to her father.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Magnus. That’s exactly what you were doing.”

  Magnus ran his hand over his face. “I mean, I didn’t have sex with her to get to her father.” The rat wrinkled its nose at him as if it, too, was appalled at his behavior.

  “Okay, I get it. You got emotionally involved. Not ideal, but in this case, nobody’s going to raise a big stink over it. But don’t forget, the father has always been our ultimate goal. And it’s him you have to get close to now, Magnus. So come on back here and fill him in on what we know and what we need to know from Oybek before our plane takes off.”

  “Wait a second, are you telling me you’re taking Miner to Kyrgyzstan today?” The worst part about working for an intelligence agency was never knowing whether you hadn’t been cleared to receive important information or whether executive decisions were just being made up as you went along.

  “Miner says Oybek will respect us if we show up in person, and that having us there for the elections will remind him that there are good reasons to turn to Washington instead of Moscow or Damascus. The plane’s departing at fifteen hundred hours.”

  Which meant they were making decisions as they went along. Magnus’s mind was racing. “Has Miner called Katherine yet? Because she was expecting him to come over and meet her son this evening.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. No, he hasn’t called his daughter yet. Unlike you, Ken Miner seems to have a clear sense of priorities. Meeting with Oybek and cementing relations between our countries? Important. Hanging out with the nine-year-old can wait a week or two.” The phone went dead and the rat scampered away, off to find a better class of trash.

  For one long, lovely moment, Magnus was filled with righteous anger—that unfeeling bastard, how could he just use people like that. And then Magnus remembered that it hadn’t been Fred in bed with Katherine. Fred hadn’t been the guy encouraging her to meet with her father, or acting paternal to her fatherless son.

  It wasn’t Fred currently topping Katherine’s list of men who’d betrayed her.

  “You looking for some love, honey?” Magnus turned in surprise. He’d been too preoccupied to hear the sound of someone approaching. “Easy now, big fella.” The speaker was a suspiciously tall redhead with thinly plucked eyebrows and shoulders the size of a lumberjack’s. “You looking for fun?”

  “Sorry,” Magnus said. “I’m just taking a break from running.
”

  “And don’t you look good doing it. But you should be careful, standing around with your head in the clouds. It’s not exactly Disneyfied here yet.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” He gave the giant redhead a brief wave of acknowledgment as she stumbled along the uneven cobblestones in her platform heels and miniskirt.

  Magnus started to run, glad to be moving again. Clearly, not all the rawness had been drained out of the Meatpacking District. By the time he reached Rector Street, he’d acknowledged to himself that he had no intention of going back to Fred until he’d spoken with Katherine again.

  If he needed to be on a plane later today, then fine. Since he’d signed on for this, he’d follow through. But that didn’t mean he had to leave Katherine thinking that everything he’d said and done had all been a big act.

  Magnus glanced at his watch. Just over forty minutes to go before class started, too much time to just stand around doing nothing.

  Four blocks from the Persky Institute, Magnus found a small Cuban cafe. As the radio wailed something in Spanish about amor loco, he ordered a coffee and an egg and ham sandwich and tried to rinse himself off in the tiny bathroom. In the oxidized mirror, he discovered that he looked as bad as he felt—half-lidded eyes, stubbled chin, hair that was standing up in all directions.

  For some reason, the sharp-faced waitress kept smiling flirtatiously as she served him his coffee. Trying to smooth his hair down with his hand, Magnus wondered if he was ever going to understand women, although he wasn’t exactly sure the tall redhead counted as a woman. After a moment’s reflection, he decided she did. There was a fine line between pretending to be something and becoming it, and Magnus didn’t think he was in any position to judge where a person fell on the spectrum.

  Perched on the counter, he took a bite of his egg sandwich. The roll was saturated with butter and the ham was fatty, a heart attack on a plate. But he felt marginally better after eating. I’m getting too damn old to function without sleep, he thought. His cell phone rang, and after a moment’s consideration, Magnus answered it. “Fred, I’m going to class.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “Look, you are perfectly equipped to tell Miner whatever he needs to know. I can join you after I’ve had a chance to speak to Katherine.”

  “Magnus, you know damn well that it’s not that simple. Miner feels you’ve earned his trust.” Fred paused, and Magnus sensed that he was editing himself, choosing what to reveal and what to keep hidden. “He says he’s willing to work with you, but not with me.”

  Ah. “So I’ll meet you both at the plane. Just explain to him that I needed to straighten things out with his daughter. He should be able to accept that.”

  “Magnus, the man is not thinking about his daughter right now. He’s thinking about walking into a highly volatile situation in a country he hasn’t set foot in for over thirty years. And he’s worried that we’re going to treat him as disposable.” Fred sighed. “Come on, Magnus, get it together. There’s time to sort things out with Katherine Miner when you get back.”

  “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll try to speak to Katherine before class.” Magnus ended the call without waiting for a reply. His head felt like it weighed a ton, and he spent a moment propping it up with his hands.

  “More coffee?”

  Magnus looked up and found the waitress smiling at him again, coffeepot in hand. Despite the fact that she was probably no older than he was, she had a disconcertingly cronelike appearance. “Excuse me?”

  “Coffee?” It was her face, Magnus decided. Underneath the short, hennaed hair, she had the kind of face that belonged in a different century, wearing a black kerchief and a scowl.

  “Sure, thanks.” He held out his cup. In the background, a man on the radio said something about muy rápido in an excited tone of voice. Without understanding any other words, Magnus knew he was selling something. Funny what you could tell without actually speaking a language.

  The waitress pointed at his empty plate. “You want something else? Sandwich? Pastry?”

  “That would be nice.” Now the voice on the radio was female, saying something in a tone of voice that suggested a desire to lick the listener’s body from the toes on up. Magnus figured she was selling something, too. He wondered if she’d had to convince herself that what she was selling was any good, or if she just felt comfortable lying.

  Looking out the window at the overcast sky, Magnus felt an inexplicable wave of nostalgia for Iceland. He imagined what it might be like to take Katherine there.

  Now, that was one thing they hadn’t mentioned in spy school—the fact that sexual intimacy could be a double-edged sword.

  Although maybe he was overreacting. There was always the possibility that Katherine might forgive him for lying and manipulating her and her son in order to get to her father. Okay, so it wasn’t the best basis for beginning a relationship, but neither was blind romantic illusion.

  The waitress returned with a plate of something glazed and sticky. Magnus thanked her and realized that he had completely lost his appetite. Twenty more minutes before class. What the hell was he going to say to her?

  His cell phone rang again.

  “Fred?”

  “Magnus, how long have you and I been friends? Four years? Five?” Fred sounded tired.

  “That sounds about right.”

  “What is it, you’re in love with this woman? Is that what’s going on?”

  “That’s not the point, Fred.”

  “Well, what is the point? Explain the point to me, so I can understand and figure out what to tell Ken who keeps asking me when you’re going to arrive!” Fred lowered his voice. “Magnus, if you don’t show up soon, I think he’s going to walk.”

  Magnus rubbed his forehead. “Did you tell him that I just want to speak to his daughter? How hard can that be to understand?”

  “Hey, I’m your friend, and I don’t understand it. This isn’t a Hollywood movie where you have to tell the girl you love her before the plane takes off or else you lose her forever. It’s real life. You call her in a week or so, you guys will work it out. But Ken Miner here has got a case of galloping conspiracy theory, and the only person he trusts is you. He says you’re different, you don’t operate like a typical asshole government agent. That was a direct quote, by the way. If you don’t walk through that door in the next few minutes, Ken Miner says he’s going to walk out of it.”

  There was a burning sensation in Magnus’s stomach. “Fine. Tell him I’ll be there by nine-thirty.” Magnus figured that gave him just enough time catch Katherine before class began and at least tell her that he was going away. As long as he caught a subway or a cab back to Fred’s apartment, he should make it before Miner’s nerves got the better of him.

  “That’s way too late—” Fred began, but Magnus was already switching off his cell phone.

  If I hadn’t agreed to work with the man, Magnus thought, I might still be under the impression that we were friends. But friends weren’t prepared to drop you the minute you messed up. That was what case officers did. They smiled at you like friends, and they went fishing with you like friends, and they drank beer with you like friends. They even offered advice and gave you a nifty job. But when the relationship no longer served their interests, case officers cut you loose and closed your file.

  No wonder Dashiell wants a dog. Magnus thought he might want a dog, too.

  “You don’t like the pastry?” The waitress was leaning over the counter, displaying either her gold cross or her cleavage, or possibly both.

  “No, it’s great.” Magnus hoped he’d have time to pick up some antacid before heading off to Kyrgyzstan.

  “You want anything else?” The waitress looked hopeful.

  “Not right now.” I’ll leave her a generous tip, thought Magnus. He reached behind him and discovered that he’d forgotten to take his wallet, which was kind of funny, since part of his homework assignment had been to rate apologies from the more formal
to highly informal. “I owe you an apology,” he said, picking a phrase from the middle of the stack. “I seem to have left my money at home, but I’ll be back here tomorrow.”

  The scowl he had sensed behind all the waitresses’ smiles finally made its appearance.

  “Fine,” she said, giving him a look that said, Men have been disappointing me from the time I was a young girl.

  Without money for transportation, he was out of options. As it was, he’d have to run the whole way back to Midtown on a full stomach. Shit. Magnus took a deep breath of air that tasted like cold rain. As he picked up his pace, a garbage truck rattled past, splashing him with foul-smelling mud.

  Magnus wiped his face on the front of his T-shirt without breaking stride. Was he doing the right thing? He had no idea, but it didn’t seem right to put his personal happiness ahead of matters of state. Jesus, his stomach hurt. Not that he was complaining. All things considered, Magnus thought he deserved a case of heartburn.

  chapter thirty-three

  f ive minutes late, Kat thought, I am only five minutes late. Not so awful by American standards, certainly not even close to insult time. She would have been even later had she listened to her mother, who’d kept insisting that everyone at the institute would understand that she’d just been through a terrible emotional upset.

  Sure, Kat had responded. I’ll just say that the student I was sleeping with turned out to be a spy. The administration is sure to be filled with compassion over that one. Besides, she’d realized that she actually wanted to go to work. For three hours, at least, she wouldn’t be thinking about the perfidy of men. And she was actually quite curious to see whether anyone had completed her soap opera assignment. Maybe she could write little scripts for her students, and let them act out various scenarios. Going for job interviews. Settling arguments. Handling awkward social situations.

  Kat walked into her classroom and found Marcy standing in front of her class, wearing a hideous purple sweater dress and an expression of extreme consternation.