Alisa Kwitney

by Sex as a Second Language (lit)

  Kat walked over to Magnus and smoothed his hair down where he’d left it standing up. And then she did remember something: a sense memory of Magnus moving inside her. A feeling of abandon and safety and joy.

  “You know what?” She lifted Magnus’s chin up. “You’ll just have to refresh my memory.”

  “All right, well, to begin with—What are you doing?”

  “Taking my shirt off.” Kat laughed when she saw his reaction. “When I said refresh my memory, I didn’t mean with words.”

  But as the moment dragged on and Magnus still didn’t make a move toward her, Kat began to feel uncomfortably exposed. His expression was maddeningly unreadable. Maybe he thinks I’m being inappropriate. Maybe, despite his assurances, he really felt that she ought to be rushing off to the hospital immediately. It was what she would have done if her mother were even a little sick.

  But my father didn’t raise me, Kat thought, and this isn’t a made-for-TV movie, where everyone winds up reconciling and the final scene is shot through a gauze filter. This is who I am, and if he’s disappointed that I’m not more forgiving, it’s better I find out now.

  Magnus met her eyes. “First, I have to ask. Is there any possibility that you are still under the influence of a drug?”

  Kat began to smile. “None whatsoever.”

  “In that case…” He was just reaching for her when the house phone rang.

  Kat made a sympathetic face at Magnus as she answered it. “Pedro, is it a delivery? If so, you can leave it downstairs.”

  “People coming up.”

  Kat looked at Magnus, puzzled. “Which people?”

  “Wait a minute, I get names.” Pedro sounded disgusted. “Galina, Cheeto—sorry, Chieko, Nabil, Maria, and wait, here comes another one. What’s your name? Luc.”

  Kat hung up and pulled her shirt back over her head. “It seems that the rest of your class has decided to show up on my doorstep.”

  Magnus’s smile seemed a little forced. “That’s…very nice.”

  Kat leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, giddy at the prospect of all these new possibilities. “You know something? For a spy, you don’t lie very well.”

  “I’m not a spy anymore, remember? I quit.”

  Well, Kat thought, that makes us the perfect unemployed couple. Unless, of course, he did this for me and then spends the next ten years regretting it.

  “Don’t look so worried. I have a friend who works in the business sector, doing competitive intelligence for various companies. I can find another job. But for the time being, I thought I’d try my hand at carpentry. I figure I can start with your apartment as a demonstration of my abilities.”

  Kat smiled. “I can’t pay you.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll take it out in trade.”

  “Excuse me?” Kat raised her eyebrows.

  “I mean, you can rent me out the maid’s room. The deal we had before?” He held out his right hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Kat took it.

  But of course the deal was more complicated now, because sex had the power to tear down old connections and build up new ones. Magnus might be offering to fix things in exchange for room and board, but the way his hand felt on hers told Kat that he was really talking about creating a home.

  The doorbell rang and Kat went to answer it. As she opened the door, she thought that forty felt like the beginning of a very good decade.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book could not have been written without the daily (sometimes more) calls to and from Joanna Novins, my critique partner, dog training consultant, and friend. Meg Ruley, my agent, gave me encouragement and feedback whenever I needed it, for which I am eternally grateful. I want to thank Greer Kessell Hendricks, my editor, for being quick to spot problem areas and then for being so patient and supportive while waiting for the finished product. Thanks also to Greer’s associate editor, Suzanne O’Neill, for sweating the small stuff (and sometimes the medium-to-large stuff as well). Anna Adams provided wonderfully peculiar details about life on the NATO military base in Iceland, the kind folks at New York City’s Berlitz Language Center and Fordham University’s Institute of American Language and Culture allowed me to sit in on classes, and Courtney Clark Schiff supplied me with some background information on the fine line between diplomacy and espionage. Neil Gaiman encouraged me, Alexandra Grant gave me a place to write in Manhattan, and my husband, Mark, and children, Matthew and Ellie, kept me grounded in this year of change. My half-sister Anya should have had her name here a whole book ago, while our father, science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, kept reminding me that life is infinitely stranger than fiction. Last but not least, thanks to my mother, Ziva, who told me not to get an enormous Chinook puppy right after moving house, but wound up letting Magnus drag her around the park so that I could finish this book.