by Toby Neal
Everything around me is either a target or an obstacle now.
I set the watch timer on my wrist and move off at a run, hitting my first challenge. Using a short length of rope, I scale the sheer trunk of a lodgepole pine whose branches I’ve stripped. Forty feet up I reach the tiny platform I built. I find my first rifle target. It takes me two shots to hit it. I don’t do any better with arrows or sidearm, and I’m irritated by that.
I shinny down the tree. Sprint to the next obstacle, an old wall of barn siding I dragged out and erected. It takes me longer than usual to get over. I crawl under the logs on the other side that I’ve tunneled out. I take shots at the targets with sidearm, rifle, bow and throwing knives—from ground level, knee level, shoulder level, overhead.
Aim is off. It’s been too long.
At the end of one round through the course, I do more stretches. Drink more water. I’m sweating, but just getting warmed up. I’ll do better next time.
I run through it again.
And again.
And again.
It’s getting dark when Whiskey and I finally trot back out of the woods. I feel better, because I got better. Still not up to top times, but close. The call could come any day. I have to be ready.
No, there’s no room in my life for the complications a woman would bring. Especially this particular woman.
But I can’t go into the narrow enclosure of my shower without thinking of her with her legs around my waist, up against the wall. Can’t go to bed without remembering her there, that silver-cream hair everywhere. Can’t look out my door without glancing down the road as if she’s going to appear on her bike like something out of a motorcycle magazine fantasy.
I should never have brought her here.
Chapter 29
Pearl
I’m sitting on a raised haircutting chair in front of a plain black drape. There’s a spot on us, because Chad has decided to do a series of shots that will feature my haircut, and Francine’s beautiful hands cutting it. The whole thing is also being filmed by a man hidden in the shadows. I can see the ruthless eye of that camera, tracking my every gesture and sniffle.
“You ready?” Francine asks. Her smile is kind, her eyes warm. I’m grateful for that.
“Let’s do it.” My voice is perfectly calm. I really am ready. I feel different, harder somehow. I was confused before, hurting from the revelations I’d had about myself, Dad’s death, and my rape, but some part of me was still naive, hoping for love. Hoping to be rescued and healed somehow. By Magnus, if the truth be known.
Now I know that this is all there is. This life on the screen and the page, representing beauty to sell products. What does it matter what I look like doing that? It’s all what others want and decide anyway. At least my hair is going to Locks of Love. Some poor cancer patient will get it and maybe feel better.
Even so, the shearing sound of the first deep snip Francine makes into the cape-like covering of hair gives me a shiver.
The hair falls like silver rain in the spotlight, and I hear the whir and click of the shutters recording the whole thing, and I stare into the dark middle distance and indulge in a memory of my time with Magnus.
Those first, overwhelming moments as I walked up to him. The way our mouths met, and he dropped the chainsaw he was holding. How he looked, stripping out of that lumberjack shirt. How he rose over me, his charcoal eyes on mine as he entered me so deeply we both gasped with the power of it.
It meant something to him, too. It had to. I hope he’s suffering even a tenth as much as I am, the bastard.
I feel my eyes welling with the deep emotion I’m suppressing.
“You okay?” Francine’s got all the hair cut off at my chin line.
“Sure. No problem.” I blink the moisture away, knowing the cameras have caught my feeling and will be misinterpreting it as grief at losing my hair, when I really couldn’t care less about that.
Francine’s true to her word, and after cutting the major length and gathering it for the charity into a two-foot plume tied with a rubber band, she shears the rest of my head down to an even couple of inches. Just as she predicted, soft, silvery curls tighten up into ringlets against my head, freed from the pull of gravity.
Finally, she shakes out the drape, and I stand up.
I’ve dressed all in black to provide contrast with the spot and the white backdrop. I move to a prearranged area a few feet over without speaking, and strike a series of poses Chad and I worked out ahead of time.
The cameras click some more. I feel lighter without the hair, exposed, and the face I show the world is the new, no longer naïve me.
Stripped down. Shorn of girlish hopes. Bared to the essence of skin, bone, and flesh.
“Amazing,” Chad finally says. I hear the triumph in his voice that tells me he got the shot. The movie camera moves off me, and Francine claps her hands. The lights come up, and Melissa’s in the back, clapping too.
“Guess that went well,” I say.
Francine hands me a handled mirror. “Check yourself out.”
The makeup artist had done me up in black eyeliner, heavy mascara, a light foundation and scarlet lipstick, knowing a lot of the still photos would be in black and white. My face looks unfamiliar with the short halo of curls around it, but as I turn my face back and forth, I see that my eyes are enormous, my cheekbones sleek and hollow, my mouth a pillowy red promise.
“It’s fine.”
Melissa is smiling with satisfaction. “You were amazing. The whole thing was a performance, and you owned it. This is going to rocket you to the next level, Pearl.”
Heading home on my bike, my helmet looser without all the hair, I wish I had someone to talk to. I forcefully turn my thoughts away from Magnus.
I call my sponsor, Valley, when I get home. It’s past time I caught her up on everything. And when I do, she tells me to let him go. “He can’t handle a girlfriend. Not with his job.”
“I know. I’m trying, Valley.”
Having this confirmed by a woman who’s both my friend and Magnus’s cousin feels like a nail driving into my heart. I’m breathless and broken with the pain of it, and that night I take three sleeping pills so I can’t wake up and remember.
Magnus
The call comes early in the morning. Packing my gear bag, I wonder why it’s always some ungodly hour when they call, but it is.
I phone Mom. “I’m on assignment. Can you take care of Whiskey?”
“Of course. How long?”
“A week or so.”
“Stay safe.” It’s all she ever says. I hang up, and a few minutes later the big black truck arrives. I throw my bag in the back and get in.
Derrick is behind the wheel. He’s in blue camo fatigues, which means it’s somewhere near the water. That’s how I know what kind of assignment it’s going to be: Derrick’s outfit. He serves as my eyes, ears, and support in the field.
“Hey. Why is it always so early when you guys call?”
“We’re no respecter of time zones. You know that.”
“What’s the job?”
“The usual. Got a task file for you.” He hands a folder over and pulls the truck around.
As we head to the private airstrip on the outskirts of Boston, I familiarize myself with the target. He’s a Turkish businessman, five ten and a hundred and seventy pounds, balding, favors bling, white suits, and too-skimpy speedos for sunbathing. His skin is leathery and his grin, bleached.
The preliminary recon site is for his boat, a yacht where he’s currently entertaining guests off the Turkish coast.
One of the pages details the target’s ties to terrorists and how he uses his oil connections to fund training camps. I think management includes that to help me stay motivated, so I feel like I’m justified in doing what I do. The truth is, I no longer bother reading that section. I just need to know what the job is. The less I know, the better I sleep.
We get to the airstrip. The Learjet is already idling and in
moments, we’re in the air.
“You’ll get a bonus on this one,” Derrick says, handing me the blue fatigues that the strategy team decided were the thing to wear. “Anytime the hit’s over water, you get that extra.”
“Whatever.” I don’t bother going to the bathroom to change, just strip down and get into the fatigues.
‘“You seem distracted. Got your head in the game?” Part of Derrick’s job is to monitor me. I know he writes a report to management on my performance, does a risk assessment before and after every job. Our company, Efficiency Solutions, specializes in private-contract black-ops. I got my start as a military sniper and when my tour was up, I had so many kills Efficiency offered me the same job with less hours and quadruple pay. I’ve been working for them ever since.
“I’m fine.” I don’t need Derrick hassling me. The last job was a two-year stretch, and I know he’s been worried about how I was handling it. I was embedded in the jungles of South America, working with the Sandinistas, training them, and taking out strategic targets there. “It’s good to be getting back to work. There are only so many trees I can cut down on the property before Mom starts getting suspicious.”
Derrick barks a laugh.
We settle into our seats for the ride. I spend the time reviewing the job specs, which are put together by a stateside analytic team. They’ve proposed a stealth approach by night. Derrick’s going to get me as close to the yacht as he can, then I’m going to go in in dive gear, get on the boat, find the target, and get off with no one the wiser.
I can think of a million ways this can go wrong, and the analytic team has thought of them, too. I’ve been provided with a dozen scenarios and specialty tools for it to go easier.
I shut the folder and recline my seat to get some shut-eye. But instead of reviewing the possible snags in my job, I find Pearl in my head. Walking up to me in those leathers, with that stomp. Hooking her arm around my neck and pulling me down for a kiss that felt like a detonation.
I end up having to get up and go to the gym area near the tail of the plane to go through a workout before I can finally relax for the few hours left to me before action.
Chapter 30
Pearl
The PR stunt with my hair goes off perfectly. Vogue does a whole story on my transformation, featuring the stills from the haircut that Chad did and a touching follow-up about the cancer victims who get my hair with a picture of them wearing the two wigs made from my famous tresses. Sixty Minutes uses the film documentation shoot to do a short feature on famous people donating their hair for charity, and People Magazine interviews me on my bold move. Suddenly “Pearl” is one of those single names known worldwide.
The calls flood into the Melissa Agency, and all I do is work, work, work. Today I’m doing a runway show in Milan with the Big Six, now the Big Seven. Five of us are here for the show, and we have massive TV and worldwide coverage.
Milan has never been my favorite Italian city. Give me Venice, Rome, or Siena any day, over Milan with its heat and crowded streets. But, it’s the fashion center of the country, and what does it really matter anyway, where I go, what I do, what I wear?
Odile pinches my waist before the show in that way she has. “Don’t get too skinny. You need your tits and butt. That’s what people are looking for from you.” In her French accent, “tits and butt” sounds like “teets and boot” but I get the idea.
“Never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“Never thought I’d have to.” She pinches my cheek this time, an affectionate gesture. I can’t believe we actually like each other after our bumpy start when we met on my first international shoot in Venice.
She’s brought me a mug of thick Italian hot chocolate. “Drink the whole thing.”
I’m sitting on the hairdresser’s chair, and the woman’s messing with my short cap of curls. “Not much to do with this,” she says to Odile, but she’s speaking Italian so I’m not entirely sure that’s what she said.
“That’s fine,” Odile replies. “Finally you get a break with this one, right?” The hairdresser has worked on me before, and it’s always taken hours with my ton of hair.
Neither of them know I’ve been studying Italian, one of my “get over Magnus” side projects. I listen to those Rosetta Stone tapes on my Walkman during my workouts, muttering phrases under my breath. I treasure my little secret, and it’s already come in handy to understand what’s going on around me.
Pretty soon, after a little arranging, patting, spraying and gluing a couple of curls accented with glitter onto my cheeks, I walk toward Makeup, wrapped in the silver robe the design house provides us in between wardrobe changes.
Out in the hall, I spot Brandon Forbes.
He’s standing at the end of the hall, hands in his pockets. I’d forgotten how tall he is, and he’s filled out in the two years since we had our little thing, brief as it was. He looks mature, every inch the young tycoon, and I find myself grinning, trotting down the hall to give him a hug. I’m happy to see him, I realize, and the tingle I feel as he puts his arms around me is so good after the chill I’ve felt in my bones since that morning I left Magnus’s cabin.
“Melissa sent me over on business,” he says, putting his mouth close to my ear but not touching, and careful not to disturb my hair. “I wanted to see the new look myself.”
I pull back, look up into his golden-hazel eyes. “And?”
“I never thought I’d agree, because I loved your hair... But Melissa was right.” He touches my cheek, and his eyes are warm with admiration. “You’re so beautiful that you don’t need it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have to run, but—can we get together after the show?”
He cocks his head. “I thought there was someone else.”
“Not anymore.” I swallow down my inner resistance to spending time with any man but Magnus. I have to get over him. I have to.
“In that case, I’ll be in the front row—the guy drooling so bad they have to put a bucket out.”
I laugh, and turn into Makeup with my spirits lifted.
The show goes well. I go to that place, a mysterious half-smile on my face, ignoring the murmuring over the disappearance of my famous hair and the appearance of my cheekbones. Sway and stomp, sway and stomp. Spin. Pause. Spin. Pause. Sway and stomp back. Wardrobe change, hot and hurried in the crowded changing room. Sway and stomp again, spin. Pause. Spin. Pause. Sway and stomp back. And again, and again, until finally all the outfits have been displayed, and then the row of us, five of the Big Seven for this show, get out on stage and, holding hands, bow.
My vision is burned by flashes; my ears ring from applause.
At last I’m creaming the glitter and goo off my face and getting into my black turtleneck and jeans and heading out into the after-party chaos, looking for Brandon.
He finds me, takes my hand, and we duck around the cluster of photographers interviewing the designer and the gaggle of models and journalists around Melissa. Brandon pushes open the side door. Laughing like teenagers, we run down the cobblestoned alley to the brighter main street.
“What do you want to do?” he asks me.
“This reminds me of Venice,” I tell him. “I really liked Venice.”
“I did too.” He bends his head and kisses me.
I let him. I shut my eyes and try to like it.
I’m aware, so aware, that he’s already in love with me. For him, this is the incredible moment that he’s been waiting for. I feel it in the tension of his body, the heavy thudding of his heart against mine, the fervor of his mouth. It scares me, because I’m going to hurt him. I don’t feel the same. I can’t feel the same.
I detach, gently. “I’m sorry, Brandon.”
“Why?” He frowns, and I see the pain dawning. I hate that I’m hurting him.
“This isn’t going to go anywhere. I’m sorry.” I wrench away and hurry back down the alley. I cry for both of us as I go back into the building. He deserves someone who can love him back,
and I wish it could have been me.
Magnus
Derrick and I walk through the airport in Turkey after the op. We’ve mailed the gear bag ahead of time, to avoid declaring the weapons. Even though we have the Learjet, the airport makes us go through the Customs process. I’m wearing the fancy white suit and headdress Derrick gave me for this leg of the op, complete with a fake Rolex and my hair in a ponytail with gold clip, imitating some Middle Eastern sheikh. Derrick is doubling as my driver and general manservant, and I’m not above playing it up a bit.
“Get me something to read,” I say, pausing at a newsstand. My eyes scan the American offerings, and I feel a jolt as I recognize Pearl’s face on the cover of Vogue.
I point to the magazine. “That one. And the sports magazine, too.”
Derrick rolls his eyes but goes in and buys it. He carries the paper bag under his arm as we get through the rigmarole in Customs, and eventually walk across the hot tarmac to the plane. Once inside, he slaps the bag into my chest.
“Vogue, huh?”
I don’t say anything, because what can I say? I slept with the woman on the cover? Who would believe it, and even if he did, I’m sure Derrick and the company would shut us down as a security risk. That’s why I shut it down myself, already.
I go to the back room, change into my usual shirt, jeans, and boots. We take off, sitting in the deep, buttery leather seats. Derrick busies himself with the usual post-op reports, and, settling back, I finally open the Vogue magazine.
“Didn’t know you were a metrosexual,” Derrick says.
“Broadening my horizons.” I thumb to the spread on Pearl.
She got a haircut, and made an event out of it.
I feel a tight sensation in my chest as I look at the stunning photos of the whole process in arty black and white: the black woman’s hands holding the silvery scissors, her hands contrasting like carved ebony against that moonbeam hair as it falls to the ground in great drifting chunks. Pearl’s face is a remote, empty sculpture gazing somewhere and nowhere, her cheekbones stark, eyes enormous, and mouth sad and sexy at the same time.