Loose Lips

by Claire Berlinski

  I liked the way he said things that I’d never thought of myself. I liked the way he’d read every book that I’d ever read, and many that I hadn’t. He had read the Arthashastra, an obscure Gupta-dynasty treatise on espionage that advocates the use of poison girls, as Kautilya termed them. I’d skimmed it before my orals, but even I hadn’t finished it—it was almost unreadable—and I had an excellent reason for reading sacred Hindu texts.

  We discussed it in his room one day. The CIA was just about the only intelligence organization in the world that didn’t use honey traps—beautiful women who seduce a target and coax secrets out of him in moments of passion. Swallows, the Soviets had called them. Stan wondered aloud whether we weren’t crippling ourselves. Espionage was a dirty business, he argued; we needed to use every tool in our box. I agreed in principle, but I wasn’t sure whether the tactic was really that effective. “Your average Iranian rocket engineer isn’t really going to say, ‘Praise Allah, my sweet little raisin,’ and then tell her about that plutonium the North Koreans are sending them in a vat of kimchi. Seems to me that all we’d really be doing is getting the enemy laid, don’t you think?”

  “Women always underestimate the things men will do to get laid,” he said.

  “I’ve had the most extraordinary life,” Stan told me. “I’ve never known hunger or war. I never had to worry there would be a knock on the door in the middle of the night. This is the greatest country on earth, and I want to give something back.”

  I was only half paying attention. I was looking for our exit.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

  I never knew how to answer questions like that. Of course I loved America—who wouldn’t? But I never felt right making speeches about My Great Patriotism; it always came out sounding vapid, as if I were trying to win the Miss Iowa Grainball Pageant. Still, when you work for the CIA, it’s important to talk about your patriotism often and loudly; otherwise people get worried.

  “Well,” I said, searching for the right words, “let’s start with the fact that I’ve never seen an American city reduced to rubble by an earthquake. And it’s not because we don’t have earthquakes in America—of course we do. It’s because in America, we have building-safety codes. And we have local inspectors who ensure that everyone adheres to those codes. State codes, county codes. And those inspectors don’t take bribes. And when you read the papers, you don’t read that an American nuclear reactor melted down yesterday because someone sold the spare parts to pay for a dacha on the Black Sea. And American children don’t die of diarrhea that you could fix with a glass of water mixed with salt and sugar.”

  I looked to see if he was satisfied with that answer, but his expression remained expectant.

  “Stan, my grandparents were refugees from the Nazis. They were incredibly lucky to make it to America. If they hadn’t come here, I wouldn’t exist. In America, they never send Jews to the gas chambers. They never shoot their own intellectuals.” I thought that answer should be more than enough, but he kept looking at me, waiting. What was he waiting for? “Look, I believe deep down that the world would be a safer place if the U.S. just ran it—I mean, fuck all this covert stuff. Just have keen young men and women from Seattle and Kansas City working eighty-hour weeks to administer Rwanda and Uzbekistan. They’d do it in accordance with federal environmental and safety regulations and everyone would be better off, and … oh, shit! Did I just miss the exit?”

  “You can take the next one. I know a shortcut back. How long are you planning to stay in the business?”

  “I don’t know. As long as they’ll let me, I guess. You?”

  “I’m out of here in seven and a half years.”

  “Exactly seven and a half?”

  “Six years on the streets, at least eight recruitments. Then I take an eighteen-month rotation to the NSC. I’m here to punch the intelligence ticket. You need that in Washington. Then I run for Congress. Denny Hastert’s seat, if he vacates it by then. I don’t think you’ll be around much longer than that either. You’re too intellectual for this job. You’ll see. It seems glamorous to you now, but after a few years you’ll find out the glamour’s like the Wizard of Oz—just a little man pulling ropes and a smoke machine.”

  I wondered how he knew that, so early in his career. It had the ring of truth; sooner or later that’s the way most things are. “You might be right,” I answered. “We’ll see.”

  The other students started gossiping about Stan and me. Kirk, the tobacco-chewing former Marine, was at pains to remind me that “out there in the field, your friend Stan won’t be there to help you.” There was some bad blood between Kirk and Stan. Word had it that Kirk had botched our dead-drop exercises; he had hollowed the underside of a tree stump with immaculate precision, his handiwork so meticulous that the thing was quite indistinguishable from the rest of the ambient pasturage. A team of instructors marched for days up and down the remote bridle path where the stump was said to be but never retrieved the drop. Kirk had left a substantial cash payment inside.

  “Too bad about that stump, buddy,” Stan said to Kirk. “Lot of money to leave lying around in the woods, isn’t it?”

  “At least I can see my dick when I shower, asshole,” Kirk answered, and marched off to the gym to clobber a punching bag.

  Iris warned me that the others were saying Stan was doing my work for me. Jade, especially, was ecstatically broadcasting the word that I was cheating. “She’s not even doing her own work—she’s got that lovesick whale doing it for her!” I tried not to worry about it too much. I figured that with Stan’s help, I might pass. Without it, I wouldn’t. I wanted to pass, whatever people said.

  Stan applied his formidable memory to many things, not just license plates. He knew volumes of poetry and prose by heart. One evening he recited Tennyson’s “Ulysses” for me, his voice soaring when he reached the last lines: “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

  “There,” he said with relish. “That’s how I want to live my life. How about you?”

  “I’ve never really adopted a personal slogan, to tell the truth. Right now all I want to do is get through this and keep my job. Don’t get fired are the words I live by these days, I guess.”

  “Easy to remember. Hey, I want to talk to you, and I don’t want you to be distracted by the road. Let’s stop for a cup of coffee.” I didn’t want coffee, but he insisted. We pulled into an International House of Pancakes and found a table. The waitress’s apron was stained; she had a black eye and an angry cracked lip. Stan ordered blueberry pancakes with whipped cream.

  “You’re really worried, aren’t you?” he said.

  “About passing this class? Of course I am.”

  He looked at me gently, and his face was soft, caring. He said, “What I don’t understand, exactly, is why failing one stupid class caused you to lose all faith in yourself. You’re just an inexperienced driver, that’s all. You’re not dumb and you’re not lazy and you’re not a failure. It’s not a big deal—anyone can learn to drive.” The waitress came back with Stan’s pancakes; I noticed him taking in her sad face.

  “How did you feel when you failed the fitness test?”

  “I realized that I’d kind of let myself get out of shape, but I didn’t think for a second that I couldn’t do this job—I mean, most of this is easy. It’s common sense. So I can’t run fast—what’s the big deal? I know I’m good at the things that are really important. And what’s the big deal if you can’t drive well yet? What’s important is that you’re smart.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, placing his chin in the cup of his hands. He stared at me. His eyes became shiny and moist; his pupils widened, and he was silent for a moment. At last he said quietly, “And what’s not important to this job, but is very important to me, is that you’re also very, very beautiful.”

  I put my coffee down and toyed with a packet of sugar. I didn’t want to look back.


  “Stan,” I said at last, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help, and your kindness. I think you’re the most interesting person here. I can’t talk to anyone else here the way I talk to you. But that spark … it just isn’t there for me.”

  I felt awful. I was about to speak again, but he raised his hand. “Stop. You don’t need to say it. I know.” His voice was dull.

  “God, now you’re making me feel like a shit.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I like being friends. Sometimes friends can be more intimate than lovers, in a way.”

  I reached for my handbag and pulled out a cigarette. The one good thing about Virginia was that all the restaurants still had smoking sections. He lit it for me and I inhaled. I hesitated, then decided to ask. “Stan, maybe it’s not my place to ask this, but have you ever thought of making an effort to lose some weight?”

  “We’ll discuss your great concern for the healthy life when you quit smoking. My girlfriends accept me the way I am. Fat, happy, and oversexed. You’re just superficial.”

  The waitress came back with the check. Stan reached into his billfold and left a twenty-dollar bill on the table, then glanced at the waitress in her stained uniform and added a little more.

  But the next day, at lunch in the cafeteria, he ordered a salad with sunflower seeds, and that evening, he went to the gym, the poor fat thing. I was there to do yoga, and I saw him come in. He hefted his bulk around the weight machines like a bear clumsily performing circus tricks, pausing to pant for air. I was sorry for him, and moved.

  “What kind of man do you like?” Stan asked a week later. We were sitting on his concrete balcony at twilight, watching a large winter bird, a hawk maybe, swoop and glide against a gunmetal sky. We had spent almost every evening together since our conversation in the pancake house, driving through the countryside and talking.

  “I don’t think I really have a type,” I replied, vague. “I’ve dated lots of different kinds of men. Why, what about you? Do you have a type?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’ve always been with a certain kind of woman. Submissive. Kinky.”

  “Submissive?”

  “Yeah, there’s something about my personality—I’m pretty domineering, so I attract women who need that. I get women who need father figures, someone to take care of them. I get women who like to be tied up and spanked.”

  Despite myself, I was curious. “And you like tying them up and spanking them?”

  “That and much, much more. You’d be surprised to know, Selena, that every single one of them considered me the best lover she had ever had. But of course you can’t consider that, because you’re too obsessed with superficial appearances.”

  “Stan, let me let you in on a little secret about women—we tell every man he’s the best lover we ever had.” Stan raised an eyebrow. “So what happened to all those relationships?” I asked.

  “They ended. My last girlfriend didn’t want me to join the CIA.”

  “Why not?”

  “A lot of reasons. She was jealous—she didn’t want me to have a career that took me away from her so much, didn’t want me to do things that I couldn’t tell her about, didn’t like the fact that she wouldn’t know where I was. Or who I was with.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I couldn’t. I don’t really understand jealousy. That used to bother her. She wanted me to be jealous—she even tried to make me jealous. But I just don’t work that way. She thought that meant I didn’t really love her.”

  “Well, she must have been right, since you joined the CIA anyway.”

  He looked puzzled, as if this logic had never occurred to him. “I’ve always felt that the right woman wouldn’t stand between me and what I need to do. I need someone who can really be by my side, because I have big goals.”

  “What are your goals?”

  “I’m going to be the president of the United States.” His voice was perfectly even, and his expression didn’t change. His eyes stayed on the hawk, which flapped and plunged and shrieked and then rose again.

  I stared at him with my mouth open. “Well,” I said finally. “I guess that is a big goal.”

  “Like I told you—seven and a half years here, then the NSC, then Congress.”

  “What makes you want to be president?” I didn’t laugh at him. This was America.

  “I’m not a religious man, but I believe in destiny … do you believe in destiny?” I had the feeling it was important to him that I believe in destiny. I thought of the phone call that had rescued me from Mongeheela State, and I nodded. He said, “It’s my destiny to lead this nation. I want to make us proud to be Americans again.”

  “I’d never noticed we weren’t proud to be Americans, actually.”

  He stopped watching the bird and looked at me intently. He straightened himself in his chair and drew a lungful of cold air into his chest. “Our generation …” he said, and paused. “Our generation is so goddamned lucky. My grandfather fought at Okinawa. He lost his leg below the knee. The pitcher, the catcher, and the left fielder on the varsity ball team didn’t come home. Grandpa doesn’t talk about the war much, but every morning when he wakes up—he’s almost ninety now—the first thing he does is raise the flag in front of the schoolhouse, even if it’s a thousand degrees below zero outside. Once when I was little I asked him why, and he told me it was for the guys on his baseball team. They died so he could go hunting in the winter and fishing in the summer and call himself an American and a free man. That’s all he ever said about it, but it was enough. That’s the patriotism I want to bring back to the White House. That’s the dignity.”

  This was his stump speech. I imagined him at a podium, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a loosened tie, stirring up the crowds at 4-H clubs across America. I saw the sage, approving nods from the retirees in old-age homes, the public halls filled with uncertain voters waiting to be convinced of something. I could see the pulse throbbing in his temples. Then his eyes narrowed. “Now we’ve got some lying piece of shit in the White House. The guy gets blow jobs from a fat, spoiled bimbo young enough to be his daughter while he sends American boys into combat. Is that proud enough? Is that what my grandfather deserves?”

  “I see. So if you were president, you wouldn’t allow me to service you under the desk in the Oval Office?” I smiled, but he didn’t.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “That is the people’s house.”

  Stan had brought a television and a VCR down to the Farm; one slow night we watched Basic Instinct together. When Sharon Stone took off her shirt, Stan said, “Your breasts are much better than hers.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Believe me, I can tell.”

  “Pig!” I said, and threw a pillow at his head, but he must have seen that I smiled.

  After the movie, I told Stan I had to leave to prepare for the next day’s classes. “Okay,” he said. “Come back later, when you’re done, and flirt with me some more.”

  “I’m not flirting with you, Stan.”

  “Of course you are. When are you going to admit that you’re attracted to me?”

  “I’m not. I never will be.”

  “For God’s sake, Selena, cut the crap. You’re attracted to a fat guy, and it’s making you nuts. You can’t stand the thought of what people will think of you if you date someone who looks like me. I’m an insult to your vanity.”

  “I am not attracted to you and I’m not thinking that!”

  “Then why are you here all the time?

  “Because you’re my friend. Because I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Iris is your friend too. I don’t see you in her room at eleven at night every night, do I?”

  “Stan, back off. It isn’t going to happen.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” he answered.

  I walked out of his room, vexed but also impressed by his nerve. Was he right? Yes, perhaps, I admitted to myself. Maybe I was a little bit attracted to him. But did
that mean anything? The place was a hothouse, the environment so intense that any kind of unlikely passion could ignite. There were persistent rumors of affairs between the married men and the single women. Illicit couples were often caught sneaking off to the laundry room or the utility closet for a quarrel or a quickie. I thought about it as I went to bed, and when I fell asleep, I dreamt that Stan was holding me. I woke up full of inchoate longing.

  CHAPTER 5

  I sat next to Iris at lunch the next day. She was wearing stiletto heels, a pencil-slim black skirt, and a very tight sheer-silk turtleneck. I told her she looked terrific and asked her if she was planning to seduce her instructor.

  “No, I’m planning to seduce my boyfriend, remember?”

  I had forgotten that Brad was coming down to the Farm to attend a two-day conference for security officers. I asked when he would be there. She told me he’d be there any minute and looked around the room. I asked her how things were going with him. “The man’s a puppy dog,” she said. When I asked her what that meant, she changed the subject and asked me what was up with Stan. “He’s stuck to you like white on rice these days.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know that I wanted to discuss Stan with Iris; I wasn’t sure what I felt and I didn’t know if there was anything to discuss. Finally I said, “It’s horribly shallow to write someone off because he’s fat, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “That’s bullshit. Ever notice how the people who say beauty is only skin deep are always the ugly ones? If he’s so deep, why isn’t he interested in an ugly girl?” She pulled a slender ivory compact from her handbag and sketched cocoa lip liner around the contours of her mouth, then filled the outline with a slightly lighter shade, using a tiny sable brush. She blotted her lips delicately with a paper napkin. “You’re just lonely, so you’re looking for the nearest thing around. And it’s not the right thing. And why doesn’t he lose weight, anyway? Why should he feel entitled to attract women even if he’s a pig? You know I’d never get a date in a million years if I was that fat. I mean, for the love of God, I haven’t eaten anything today but a cup of oatmeal with skimmed milk and two Sweet ’n Lows. I’m hungry enough to eat the south end off a northbound skunk, and—”