by Jamie Mason
“Come on. Put up with what? No harm done.”
“You’re not even going to give me the satisfaction of admitting that this is a huge invasion of privacy?”
“My idea of privacy is probably a little bit different from yours.” He looked down at the tabletop. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s really not a big deal. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, they’re all keeping closer tabs on you than we are.”
“This is a little bit different.”
“Yes and no. The world’s a big, tangly place and we’re all just trying to make sense of it and keep it safe. At least we’re not trying to get you to buy anything,” he said.
“Except for the idea that you’re completely harmless. And before you know it, I’m standing barefoot in line at the airport with a sandwich bag full of not enough mouthwash or hair gel, waiting for my dose of body-scan radiation—oh, wait.”
“Hey! That’s not me. You’ll have to tackle that with your vote.”
“Yeah, like you people don’t control all the elections. Pfffft.”
“You’ve got the wrong ‘you people.’ ” As much as I’d enjoyed a flare of bravery, he was enjoying having his chains rattled. His smirk was catching. I felt it mirror in my own cheeks.
“Obviously, there’s no winning this with you,” he continued. “What, with me being me and all. I can only tell you that this is completely routine and you’ll get an A-plus for business as usual on my report. Does that help?”
“Are you going to tell Paul about this little detour?”
“Interesting. Would you prefer that I didn’t?”
“Why is it interesting? I guess I’m more wondering if you’re allowed to.”
“Allowed to what? Whatever else I may be, I’m still a grown man. Paul Rowland doesn’t ‘allow’ me to type whatever I want into my reports. And it’s only interesting because, in fact, Paul Rowland does take the time to bother with reports on team Vess.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised to hear that. He’d been looking into some money that my mother left to me and my brother. I don’t know what he’s up to. Paul’s the original bad penny. Except that he’s my mother’s bad penny, so it’s not fair. It seems like I should be able to shake him. Would you get into trouble if he found out that we had talked and you hadn’t mentioned it?”
“Well, first of all, unless you’re going to be telling him, I can’t think of any way he’d know about it. As far as I’m concerned, it won’t go any farther than this table if you don’t bring it up and—”
“What if they’re watching you, too?”
“Dee. I can call you Dee, right? It’s not like that. There are certainly plots and conspiracies and all sorts of hinky business, just like everybody always hopes there is, but first off, not as much you might think, and secondly, what there is of it generates a hell of a lot of housekeeping. Very straightforward stuff. That’s what I do. It’s not glamorous, but it’s important. And at the end of my report, nobody sends a SWAT team to find out why I wrote what I did or if I left anything out.”
“They just send you back out to the next shopping mall.”
“It’s a job. Mostly very dull—”
“Sorry to have bored you.”
“Not you. You win the Surprise of the Year award. I think my heart rate is right about back down to normal. It’s just that what I do is a far cry from what people would think I do. Especially in the action and intrigue departments.”
“Is this the part where you start complaining about paperwork?”
“I could.”
“Well, let’s don’t and say we did.” The tabletop became suddenly interesting, but mostly because looking down hid my unaccountable blushing.
He didn’t leave me to glow into yet another stretch of awkward silence. “What were you looking for in those computer searches, if I could ask?” he said.
“You shouldn’t ask, because it’s nosy. And it’s invasive. But since you did ask and since we’ve already established that Brian Menary will never mind his own business as long as the government pays him not to, the answer will only disappoint you.”
“Oh, but do go on anyway.”
I sighed. Brian looked interested. Friendly even. And I hadn’t talked about her to anyone new in so long. “I don’t know what I was looking for. See? Boring. I was looking for just anything, really. Nothing specific, anyway. Just something—anything—that I didn’t already know about my mother. I miss her. For all the stuff I didn’t know about what she did all day, I missed her even when she was here. So sometimes I just plug things into the computer to see what comes up. Should I not do that?”
“It’s not a problem for you to look, but I can tell you, there’s nothing readily available on the Internet that you’re likely to find. And also, I’m sorry for your loss. She was a fascinating lady.”
“Did you know her well?” There it was. I thought I’d wanted to know why he was hovering in my zip code, but even more than that, I’d wanted to know what he knew of my mother.
“No, not really. But I know enough about her to be sure that she would have laughed her ass off at you trapping me outside the latrines.”
My phone buzzed on the table, pulling me from the edge of disappointment that Brian Menary hadn’t known my mother well, then over to the edge of another disappointment—that our conversation had to be over. They’d be starting to wonder about me back at work.
“I need to be getting back to my office.” I rose and extended my hand. “Brian Menary, it was something to have met you for real this time. I guess I don’t have to point out that it might have been easier if you had just introduced yourself from the outset and said, ‘Hey, just checking in. You know, making sure you’re not headed to the Dark Side or anything.’ That would have been a lot simpler. Or at least it would have kept that poor man safe from my barging in on him at the urinal.”
Brian laughed and the ghost of the handshake tingled in my palm. “At least he’s got a story to tell—the trials of the businessman’s lunch. And, yeah, I could have come to you and said all that, but we were trying not to disturb you—trying to let you have your priv—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“Nice to meet you, Dee.”
“See you around. I guess you’re always just a Google search away.”
18
I didn’t tell my brother about my confrontation with Brian Menary, much less the almost pleasant chat that it had turned into, even though the next-to-the-last secret I’d kept from Simon (as well as from my husband) had blown up in my face rather spectacularly. I hadn’t revealed the adventure of hurricane Angela either, or my worries over Paul, and I felt alone and adrift without Simon’s company in the drama. And still the list of things I didn’t want to tell him grew.
There was no spiteful little spark in knowing something that Simon didn’t. That wasn’t what kept me from telling him about Special Agent Menary. I didn’t want him to know we were being monitored. I didn’t know how he’d take it, as dedicated as he was to the idea that our mother had been a mere translator. And I didn’t want to wind him up about Paul.
As I’d walked away from the table in the food court, my mind was full of only the steady sound of my heels clacking on the hard rubber tiles and the small, radiant wonder as to whether Brian was watching me leave.
When there was room for more thought in my head, I lined up what I should have been feeling alongside what I actually did feel about the day. I resented the Internet auditing less than I would have expected. I think I’d felt more rattled the first time Amazon had gone sentient, when it had needled me by e-mail, flaunting that it had figured out by our purchases that we were doing a bit of remodeling. I started getting notifications of deals on garage-door openers and lighting fixtures and all sundry necessary bits that fit eerily well with the next phase of our project.
On some level I had always expected it from Mother’s circle. She had warned me in more than one way that they might someda
y come calling. They meaning Paul, but surely Paul’s associates were an extension of the net. There are no secrets with these people, but don’t worry, there isn’t any imagination left in them either. Paul knows stuff because he likes to know stuff, but that’s all the prize he gets for it—the knowing. He’s nosy as hell. Your secrets aren’t safe but they aren’t exactly in danger either, if you take my meaning.
I didn’t want to tell Simon because it would, inevitably, kick off the talk again, the nonconversation we’d had a thousand times about what my mother had or had not done for a living. I didn’t need to have that conversation again. Ever. I was right about it. I’d always been right about it. But I felt no joy at all in possessing the trump. I could shut him down for good with the tale of my afternoon at the mall, but I couldn’t imagine Simon’s face when I did it, which was strange. I could always forecast his reactions to things in advance.
Simon lived in my head as much as he lived twenty minutes from my house. He was with me always and I loved him for it. But for all the times we had spoken of our mother’s work, those were the only times I could remember Simon not seeming quite Simon-like to me. He had a wall around what he felt about her and how he regarded the off-center strangeness of our plain-picture upbringing. My brother’s acting dismissive and disingenuous, when he was never either of those things on any other topic, did nothing for my warring feelings about our mother.
After the night she’d left, when I was thirteen and Simon was eight, it took an obstacle course over common sense to come to any conclusion other than that she was definitely into some sort of bigger game than translating memos. But Simon swung that course like an orangutan. He made it look effortless. And for all that he was reasonable about in life, he was also stubborn. He would not waver from his conclusions about her, would never entertain the obvious—that she had been a fully equipped and valuable field operative.
After leaving Brian at the table in the mall, and for the rest of the day, I felt hollowed out. Whatever I’d wedged into my nature to avoid confrontation—with my husband or with a cashier who couldn’t count or with a driver whose time was obviously far more important than my safety—whatever blocked the font of daring in me, it had taken up more space in my everyday mood than I had ever realized. After having it out with Brian Menary, the void hadn’t as yet been refilled. I was empty, and not unpleasantly so. I felt light and resonant, a bell waiting to be rung.
The shift wasn’t lost on Patrick. “You look like you had a good day.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. Did you have a three-martini lunch or something?”
“I had a regular lunch.” Under no circumstances did I want to say anything more about lunch. “But I finally got all that big-project stuff put together and launched the whole mess of it off my desk. I dumped it right in the legal department’s lap, where it belongs. So I guess I’m just relieved.”
“Well, you wear it well, which is good. Thank God it’s Friday,” he crowed, very un-Patrick-like. “We’re taking this good mood on the road, because I told Eric and Camilla that we’d be over to their place in a little while. They’re having some people over for a housewarming party and I said we’d join them.”
“What? We are? You can’t stand Camilla.”
“She’s okay. She’s all right. I can handle her. And Eric’s been a huge help to me lately. He’s asked me every day this week if we were coming. They really want to show off their new place. Besides”—Patrick watched himself in the mirror running the deodorant stick up under his shirt. He smoothed the wrinkles out of the fabric, eyes on his own in the glass, never once looking for a reaction from me—“we need to get out. We need to see and be seen, before even we forget we exist.”
Eric and Camilla had just moved into a step-up-from-starter, but-not-yet dream home. Their enthusiasm bubbled up for their recent advance in the game of life. It frothed over right alongside the midpriced champagne that flowed from the moment we crossed the welcome mat that still wafted a vague plastic-and-dye smell. Popping corks punctuated the background chatter at intervals all night.
It felt good to be there with happy people. Good and unfamiliar, and a wide step away from what I was usually doing on a Friday evening. All of which was in perfect congruence with the second half of the day I’d already had, hours and hours full of nothing usual. I took a third refill of champagne, skipping the responsible math that usually came with the rare decision to have just one more.
A hand silked across my back and around my waist, goosing a startled gasp from me. I drew in some of the champagne along with the air and doubled over, coughing. Patrick swooped down and righted me before I was ready. He crushed me against him and smiled down on me through the last of my fit. We’d drawn an audience. He dove in for a kiss, to everyone’s delight, before I’d caught my breath.
In the pause that our lips were pressed together, I felt heat coming off his body, fever warm, but his hands were cold through the fabric of my waistband. I smelled his cologne and the champagne he’d had. As much as I needed to take a breath, I didn’t want to let him go. What was it with this day? Again, unfamiliar equaled good as my mildly affectionate husband heated up in my arms—in front of a crowd, no less. I slid my hand over the back of his neck. Someone in the group hooted approval. I smiled against Patrick’s mouth. Things could be better after tonight. I knew it. Finally. Something was still there, a solid safe place for us to get back to. We could make it past this. We could get back to norm—
Patrick’s icy hand slipped around my waist, trailing the cold through my middle as he pulled away. I heaved in a breath, looking up at him, smiling into eyes that weren’t smiling back.
His opaque gaze slid off mine. He pointedly didn’t see me. He let me go and tapped his metal watchband against his glass. “Everyone! I have a little announcement to make,” Patrick called.
A murmur of interest faded to expectant quiet. “Speech!” called a substantially drunk Eric.
Camilla squealed her guess. “You’re pregnant!”
Patrick scowled down his front. “Uh-oh, does this shirt make me look pregnant?” He collected his due giggles. I could still feel the cold ring around my waist where Pat’s hands had been. The chill worked inward. None of this show was anything I’d ever look for from Patrick. This unfamiliar turn dimmed the affection I’d been feeling for the strangeness of the day and reminded me why I was such a fan of the routine.
“Nah, we’re not pregnant,” he said. “No offense to all the parents here, all those poor souls who are, even as we speak, paying ten dollars an hour for a babysitter, but who wants babies? Isn’t that right, honey?” He pulled me in, a nudge for a private joke. An unfunny, tremendously private joke. “Babies! Bah!”
I forced a smile.
Patrick kept going. “I have a present for my beautiful wife. Something she’s always wanted. A dream come true to share with our best friends.”
Beautiful wife? Best friends? We knew exactly four people in the room. I couldn’t imagine where this was going. The guests shifted uneasily. Marital gift giving was hardly a spectator sport.
“Dee has been wanting to travel. She wants to get away. It’s a wish she’s had for a long time. So, I say, ‘Let’s travel!’ ” There was booze in his voice, and an edge that rang like good cheer painted over something much harder. “Today I booked the dream trip—a thirteen-day Rhine and Danube cruise. Baby, we’re going to Budapest!”
There was a smattering of dutiful cheering and hesitant clapping. I patted his shoulder and planted a theatrical kiss on his cheek, but Patrick had effectively ended the party.
I tried to let it rest, but Patrick’s newfound quirks and general moodiness scattered the sand from around my head faster than I could bury it over.
“Okay, what was that all about?” I said in the car twenty minutes later. “First off, that crack about babies was really obnoxious. And who announces their vacations at a party? What the hell? I thought you didn’t want to go anywhere.”
>
Patrick was unperturbed. “You know, I kind of thought there was going to be no winning you over, Dee. Even with this. And isn’t that just like you? Just like us? I knew there was always going to be a problem if it was my idea. You want to spring a plan on me? Great. But if I want to take the initiative, if I skip putting an idea through committee, then, no, then it’s all What the hell, Patrick? I figured as much, so, I thought I’d have a little bit of fun with it. The people at the party enjoyed it, even if you didn’t.”
“They didn’t, Pat. No one enjoyed that.”
“So you don’t want to go? Say the word and I’ll cancel the tickets.”
The whir of the tires on the wet road played loudly into our silence.
“Why do you want to take this trip, Pat?”
“Probably for the same reason you wanted to book a spa weekend.”
It was an impossibly loaded answer, but whether that was engineered or organic, I could hardly ask.
“Don’t worry about it, Dee. I’ll just cancel it.”
“No, don’t. That’s not what I’m saying. It would be good for us, I think. It’s an amazing present, Pat. It could be a wonderful trip, if we make it that way.”
“Well, you just think about it and let me know if you change your mind.”
• • •
The conversation looped in my head for days, stuck there like a snippet of song that has jammed its jingly way in without permission. It managed to erase every quiet moment.
I replayed our argument and couldn’t find a hook to hang my preoccupation on. Patrick’s trip was certainly more real than my little white lie of a spa-weekend getaway. But new money or no new money, Patrick wouldn’t drop thousands of dollars to make a point that he’d caught me in a fib.
The folder from the travel agency was real enough—glossy and bulking with brochures for side excursions: history tours into Prague and castle-discovery rides through the Viennese countryside. There were travel advisories and pamphlets of packing tips, and our names and details bold-printed in every blank on the pages and pages of endless fine print. At the end of it all was Patrick’s bold, left-slanting signature beneath an impressive dollar amount cheerfully stamped PAID IN FULL.