by Julia London
He looked up from his plate, his brown eyes wide. “What?” he asked, incredulous. “You think there was another woman?”
Leah snorted. “Well, it’s better than another man,” she said, and picked up her tuna and took an enormous bite of it. “That would have really bugged me.”
That gave him a moment’s pause, but then he frowned and asked, “How in the hell did you get another woman out of . . . what happened?”
“Are you kidding? How could I not?” she mumbled through the tuna. “Suddenly we’re through, and you’re gone. No warning, no sign there was anything wrong. Quite the contrary, in fact. I thought things were pretty damn good. So what else could it be?”
“Leah,” he said, putting his fork down, “there was not another woman. Ever. I couldn’t have done it—I had no desire to be with another woman when I was with you . . . which apparently is another thing you never knew.” He picked up his fork again.
If it wasn’t another woman, then it didn’t leave too many explanations, did it? Other than perhaps that she’d been so pathetic in her desire to marry him and be with him forever that he’d balked, and as that was not something she really wanted to hear him say out loud, she blurted, “Whatever it was, it’s fine. I mean, I didn’t think that then, but look, if I had settled down back then, I wouldn’t have come to L.A., and look at me now,” she said, lifting her hands, one half a sandwich included.
He looked at her like she wasn’t making sense.
Okay, maybe she didn’t look entirely liberated, but she was. “You know what, Michael? You did me a huge favor,” she said with false levity. “I never would have followed my dreams if you hadn’t . . . you know. Dumped me.”
“Could you please stop saying that?”
“Why? It’s what you did.”
He frowned at his salad. “Well, it’s a relief to know you feel okay about it now, because I don’t. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years.” He stabbed at some lettuce. “Actually. I’ve agonized about the way I left things with you.”
Don’t. Please don’t. “Hey, it’s all good,” she said, flicking her wrist dismissively before taking another bite of her sandwich. Was she kidding herself, or did his eyes sincerely look full of regret? “This is pretty good tuna,” she said through a mouthful. “How’s your salad?”
He glanced at the salad as if he just realized he had it, but quickly looked at her again, his gaze piercing hers. “You’re right about one thing. I . . . I really was afraid of commitment. Deathly afraid of it.” He looked away for a moment and pushed a hand through his hair. “It was almost like a mountain I couldn’t climb. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I guess it has something to do with the fact that I grew up in foster homes and never really learned what commitment was.”
Leah almost spewed her tuna. “Whoa, wait,” she said hoarsely. “Foster homes? Since when? Now you are being an ass, Michael, if you think I’m going to fall for some woe-is-me-I-was-raised-in-a-foster-home schtick.”
He sighed heavily. “It’s no schtick. I’m serious.”
“Oh please!” she exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. “Your parents live in Ohio. Your mom is a homemaker, and your dad has a hardware business, and he called you every Sunday. Don’t you remember? You always had to be home by seven so you could take your dad’s call.”
“No,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “I don’t have any parents. The man who used to call me every Sunday was my boss.”
“Get out,” Leah said with a sardonic laugh. She had to hand it to him; whatever he was trying to pull was at least inventive.
“I wouldn’t lie about this.”
She snorted at that. “Okay, love that we’re going in a new direction here,” she said, wiggling her fingers at the new direction. “But you’re missing a couple of important details. For example, why would your boss call you every Sunday? Why would your boss be asking questions about your brother’s soccer game? And even if it was your boss, which it wasn’t, because it was your dad, why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
“That’s what I need to explain,” he said, and in what was possibly the greatest straight-man role in the history of theater, he leaned forward, his gaze intent. “There was no father, no brother. That was my boss. The talk of a brother was just . . . code.”
“Code.”
He nodded.
Whatever she had thought, she had not expected this, some fantastic tale of foster homes and code-speak and God knew what else, and Leah burst out laughing. Maybe the other guys had put him up to it. Maybe she was being punked. Maybe he had turned schizophrenic in the last few years and actually believed his delusions. But she wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it—he was forgetting that she had been there, every Sunday. That she would answer the phone and his dad would ask how she was doing. That she’d seen pictures of his damn brother.
Michael clasped his hands tightly together. “Damn, but this is really a lot harder than I thought it would be,” he muttered, and glanced up again, looking, oddly, very tired. “I couldn’t tell you the truth about me. I couldn’t tell you that I grew up in foster homes and that I didn’t work for an Austrian company, and that I knew, from the time we started dating, until the time I had to leave, that I would leave, because that was my job. At the time, I was more committed to the job than I was to you, and that, I think, was perhaps the biggest mistake of my life.”
The punch line was coming any minute now. Leah polished off her tuna sandwich, waiting for him to say it, to deliver the big laugh.
But when he didn’t deliver, Leah squinted at him. “So? Are you going to tell me what the big ‘mystery’ job was?” she asked, making invisible quotation marks with her fingers. “I bet I can guess. You were really . . . Bond. James Bond,” she said in her best British accent, and then laughed at her joke.
But Michael didn’t crack a smile, just kept looking at her like his puppy had just died.
“Double-Oh-Seven,” she said. “Man of Steel.”
“Man of Steel was Superman,” he solemnly corrected her.
“Oh.”
“But yeah, it was something like Double-Oh-Seven.”
Leah choked on a laugh. “Shut up, Michael, you’re killing me. Come on, what was it really?”
He leaned across the table and said low, “CIA.”
Leah blinked and then burst out laughing. She slapped the table a couple of times in a fit of laughter so loud that several people turned in her direction, and in fact, from the corner of her eye, she could see Trudy’s head crane above the others to look at her. “Oh God, that is hilarious,” she said breathlessly, still giggling. “I don’t know about the game you’re playing—and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a little sick—but my hat is off to you. That has got to be the greatest excuse ever invented by a guy. It’s a classic! I haven’t laughed this hard in five years.”
He did not laugh, did not even smile. He reached across the table and caught her hand. “I could not possibly be more serious,” he said quietly. “I was an operative for fourteen years. When I met you, I had been called back to New York to consult a foreign government.”
He looked completely earnest, but Leah was beginning to wonder if he really was delusional. She quickly withdrew her hand from his. “Stop it,” she said sternly. “Do you need to maybe take a pill or something? Something to help you manage those hallucinations you’re having?”
“At the time, I wanted to tell you,” he said, doggedly continuing his outrageous tale. “But my boss wouldn’t hear of it—it would have blown months and months of work. And then I got sent back out.”
“Oh. And it naturally flows that because you were a CIA guy,” she said, stabbing the air with both hands to emphasize that ridiculous notion, “you couldn’t commit?”
His frown went deeper. “My job wouldn’t have made it very easy, but it wasn’t impossible. I just got cold feet, and it . . . it was a convenient excuse.”
“A convenient and a completely whacked-out excuse, you mean,�
�� she said, no longer smiling. Frankly, she was seething. “So you basically forced me into this lunch, forced me to hear you out, and you hand me this crap?” She pushed aside her plate. “Thanks, Michael,” she said cheerfully. “Thanks for that laugh and clearing everything up for me. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go and run a few errands before the afternoon session.”
She stood up. “Oh, by the way . . . I don’t know if you said all that to try and make yourself feel better, or if you really think I am that gullible, or better yet, that I even give a shit after all this time, but that was the best line I have ever heard. And I can’t wait to share.” She marched off in the direction of Trudy’s table before he could respond.
She could not wait to tell them that her extreme ex-boyfriend claimed to have dumped her because he was a big world spy.
Oh God, what a laugh.
Subject: You will DIE
From: Leah Kleinschmidt
To: Lucy Frederick
Time: 11:01 pm
When you hear this, you will fall out of your chair laughing and David will have to resuscitate you. So Mr. Extreme Bachelor corners me and makes me have lunch with him today to tell me that the big reason he broke up with me was because he was . . . drum roll, please . . . a CIA SPY.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!
Subject: Re: You will DIE
From: Lucy Frederick
To: Leah Kleinschmidt
Time: 7:30 am
NO WAY!!! I don’t believe you! No man is that stupid. Well, except for Dick Dimarco, remember him? Anyway, I am shocked and dismayed. Altho, come to think of it, it might explain why no one ever saw or heard from him again . . . I always did think that was sort of strange. It seems like SOMEone would have run into him or heard from him, but I gotta tell you, I saw Jerry, Joey . . . whatever his name was, the guy that was always hanging out with Michael and that guy Rex? Anyway, I ran into him at a party a couple of years ago, and when I asked him if he ever heard from Michael anymore, he got this really strange look on his face and said no, that no one did, that he was out of commission. What did THAT mean? It’s just weird, that’s all I am saying.
So okay, I decided against puce. I am now looking into gold. Is gold okay? You didn’t seem very excited about puce.
Subject: Favor
From: Michael
To: Jack
Time: 4:00 pm
Do me a favor, will you? I need you to corroborate my time in the agency. No details, just confirm that’s what I did. Would you just find a time and mention it to Yang? No big, but would appreciate.
Chapter Seven
LUNCH really hadn’t gone as Michael had envisioned. But what had he expected, really? That she’d feel sorry for him? No, she just thought he was nuts. Or worse, a sleazy liar.
Unfortunately, Leah could be stubborn at times and refuse to listen to reason . . . but did she really have to tell her pals?
It wasn’t long before everyone in boot camp was making cracks about James Bond, Double-Oh-Seven, and for some real laughs, Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.
If that wasn’t bad enough, some of the production office guys had heard that some of the soccer moms were hot and had started hanging around boot camp. When they started giving him shit—asking if he’d found Dr. Evil, if that was Mini-Me in his pants—Michael had had enough. Every time he walked by Miss Kleinschmidt, she was laughing with about a dozen of her closest friends.
It was time to trot out his corroborator, whether Jack wanted to be trotted out or not.
“Hey, you know it’s a rule that we don’t get involved with any of your women problems,” Jack cheerfully rebuffed him the next morning when Michael demanded his help.
“Yeah, but it’s different this time.”
“Why?”
“Whaddaya mean, why? Because it is. Because it’s the truth, and because she is making a laughingstock of me all over boot camp.”
“I know,” Jack said with a grin. “It’s hilarious. Cooper thinks we’ve finally got a chance with some of the girls since you’ve been laughed out of commission.”
“Look, I don’t care about the rest of them, but I have my reasons for wanting Leah to know the truth. I just think she might believe me if she hears it from someone else.”
“Man, I don’t know,” Jack said with a playful wince. “That’s really crossing over to the dark side of a soap opera. I’d need a little something more than just you wanting a favor.”
Michael sighed, pulled out his Blackberry. “Okay, Jacko,” he said, and punched a couple of buttons. “Lindsey, the production assistant, right?”
“Right,” Jack said with a grin.
Michael held up his Blackberry. “You tell Leah that what I told her is the truth, and I hit send, and Lindsey’s number will be in your e-mail box before you can take your Blackberry out of your pocket.”
Jack glanced across the dirt lot where the women were running an obstacle course. Leah was sitting in one of a dozen captain’s chairs, talking with great animation. He glanced at Michael from the corner of his eye. “Let me see the number again.”
Michael held up the Blackberry where Lindsey’s name and number were clearly displayed. Jack squinted at it, rubbed his nape, and looked across at Leah and her friends again. “Great. Send me to do your groveling. Dammit, Raney, why can’t you just be a normal guy?” he complained.
But he’d started walking in that direction.
Michael hit send and went back to the office to do some work.
When he returned to the obstacle course a little later, several of the production office guys had taken up the captain’s chairs, and Nicole Redding was right in the middle of them. Why, Michael could not fathom. There was no reason she should be here at this stage of the game, and didn’t big major stars have better things to do with their time than sit around and watch boot camp for the minor actors?
But there she was, in the director’s chair, naturally, beneath the large awning that had been erected to protect the fair skin of those with huge egos. Nicole’s tiny legs were crossed daintily, her red hair hanging in soft layers around her face, as if a stylist had just arranged it. She was accompanied by a couple of Starlets who had already glommed onto her. They were all having a grand time laughing it up with the production boys.
“Michael!” Nicole called out the moment she saw him, waving him over.
Damn damn damn . . . Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “Hey, Nicki.”
“Well look who’s here,” she said, checking him out with a smile of amusement. “The spy who shags me, and I didn’t even know he was an international man of mystery.” Her little Starlet crew squealed with laughter.
Smooth. She’d just given the impression that they were still together. There was a reason she was considered one of the world’s most successful actresses. “I wouldn’t be very mysterious if you knew, would I?” he drawled.
“Oh Michael, you are so funny,” she said, her smile brightening. “Why don’t you sit down?” she asked, looking at the chair next to her that was inhabited by a Starlet, who instantly popped up. “We haven’t had a chance to talk today.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, wincing sorrowfully. “But I’ve got some work that can’t wait. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” And before Queen Nicole on her throne could say a word, he walked on.
In hindsight, he had to admit that dating Nicole, however briefly, was not one of his better moves.
A couple of hours later, he found Jack on the edge of the field, going over the obstacles with his group again. When he sent the girls out to run the course, Jack and Michael stood side by side, their arms crossed over their chests, watching five women hop daintily and very slowly through a roped hopscotch course.
Jack groaned when one of them tripped but then righted herself before she hit the
ground. “This is never going to work. They run like girls. We are never going to get them to look like they know what they’re doing out there. This is going to be the biggest disaster in the history of T.A., man. I feel it in my bones.”
“They’re fine. So . . . did you do it?”
Jack glanced at Michael, then at the women again. “Just who is Leah to you, anyway?”
“Just someone I used to know. Why?”
“Because when I told her you really were an ex-operative, she said, ‘Really?’ like she was surprised by it. And I said, yeah, that you really were, and that I knew you then, because I had done some flying for the Air Force, and that we’d worked together.”
“Great. So now she believes me.”
“Not so fast. She asked if we’d been on any dangerous missions, and I said some of them were dangerous. And then she asked me what you did, exactly, and I said I didn’t really know that much, as we were from different agencies, and it was all covert operations, so strictly on a need-to-know basis. Then she asked where you were stationed, and again, I said I didn’t really know, that you’d sort of show up when it was time to go, and—you get the picture. There were just a lot of questions. Women ask a lot of questions in general. I dated a woman once, and it was six months of one long question. Where are you going, who were you with, when will I see you—”
“So what happened?” Michael asked, cutting Jack off before he could catalogue all his dating woes.
“What happened is that in the end, she said it was all very impressive, and that she was totally blown away, because she couldn’t imagine how we managed, and I asked her, ‘Manage what?’ And she said . . .” Jack paused there, slanted a look at Michael. “And she said it must have been hard to operate with phones in our shoes, but at least our cameras were in our watches, and that was probably more convenient, and then she laughed and trotted over to her friends and apparently said the same to them, because the next thing I know, they are all laughing at me.”