Zwerfster Chic

by Billie Kelgren

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  Bouchard had mentioned her marriage, but like everything else, gave me no details. Keilani had heard that Mia had married, but found it hard to believe. Not the Mia she knew.

  She shrugs and gives a sentimental smile.

  “We’re in contact.”

  She says she’s going back downstairs, to see if she can help with dinner. She asks if I’m coming and I tell her I’ll be right down, that I want to put on a warmer top — there’s a breeze coming off the water as the sun lingers over the horizon. Her expression is one of understanding as she closes the door behind her.

  Fuck. Fuckfuckityfuck.

  My heart is racing and I have to take a moment before pulling my shirt off and fanning myself under my arms. I wish I had said something other than being too cold but at least the new, heavier top will not be dark with sweat. Did she notice? I couldn’t tell. Mia is always so…self-possessed. Byr was the same way, which was why I was caught so off guard by him. I don’t want it to happen again. Not with Mia.

  I lift my foot and pick up the small memory card. The tall pile of the rug was helpful. It kept it from bouncing when I dropped it to the floor.

  “Where are you?”

  “About a half hour north of Odense, in Bogense, on the coast. The summer home of some friends.”

  It’s good to hear Bouchard’s voice again. I coded through to the messaging service, like usual, but this time he picks up. I try calculating the time in my head, which I’ve never been good at. We’re…six hours ahead? It’s shortly before midnight (and it’s finally dusk), which makes it around six in the evening in Boston. I’m pushing it. A PO will never be in the office this late. Looking around, I expect Mia to appear at any moment. It’s difficult to see in the waning light.

  Bouchard tells me to hold off on snatching the card.

  “Holy shit, what? It’s too late. I have it.”

  “Then put it back,” he says. “It’s been called off.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The client thinks it’s too big of a risk. He doesn’t want to chance you’re being compromised.”

  Shitshitshit.

  “You didn’t clear this with the client before you sent me in?”

  “He was equivocating, so I decided we had to grab it before it’s too late. We don’t know how long she might have it. This could be our only chance.” He sighs, then sounds a little tired. “It’s my decision to make if the client doesn’t give clear direction.”

  Shit, like back in the Bureau. Ask for forgiveness, not for permission.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Damned if I’m going to put it back. Not after all the trouble.

  “Put it back.”

  “Fuck!” I say it in a way that makes it clear that if I were in the position to shout, I would be shouting into the phone. I close my eyes and try to calm myself.

  “I’ve got to go,” I tell him. “It’s too late for Al to still be in the office, so I should be leaving a message.”

  “Okay.”

  His tone hints at his wanting to say something else, but I don’t give Bouchard the chance. I flip the phone closed, on his face.

  I turn and look out over the marina, listening to the water slap the side of boats as their tall, straight masts swing wildly side-to-side, like manic, out-of-sync metronomes. There’s a storm somewhere.

  “Hey, bokkie. I was looking for you,” Mia calls. She comes across the lot to my side. How much did she hear? Am I, at the present moment, fucked?

  “Were you talking to someone?”

  I pull my phone from my pocket, holding it up for her to see.

  What, Mom? I’m just scratching the inside of my thigh.

  “My PO,” I say. “I was leaving him a message. Otherwise, they get to calling.”

  She nods, then sighs as she slips her arm across my shoulders and pulls me close. She’s warm and smells faintly of tandoori — Iben’s using this trip to show off what she learned in a cooking class. It was actually quite good, but she wouldn’t believe any of us when we told her so and became upset because she thought we were having fun at her expense. When I left to make my call, Anna took her older sister aside so she could talk quietly with her. It was odd, seeing Iben fall apart like that.

  I ask Mia about “the girls,” and she snorts. She had referred to the sisters as “the girls” earlier in the evening and Anna grabbed her own chest, bounced her breasts, and informed us that “these are the only girls we speak of.” Iben thought she was being childish, but I admit, I laughed. It was so unexpected and I was toasted on a couple of glasses of Danish wine, a Cabernet Cortis, which wasn’t bad. I didn’t even know the Dutch…no, the Danes make wine, but I’m no wine expert. The cellar in Aliceville was somewhat limited.

  “Did you carry a gun? When you were with the Eff-Bee-Eye?”

  Anna says each of the letters distinctly, as though she can’t seriously believe she’s saying them in context of a serious, though somewhat inebriated, conversation. I know what she’s thinking. You’re not really FBI, because that’s just some shit they have in the movies. Movies with serial killers. People don’t seem to grasp the concept of our just being cops. Well, not me. Not anymore.

  Of course, I tell her. A standard-issue sidearm when I was wearing a suit. I also carried when I was undercover, but it was a weapon provided to me by Byrone — a little Sig P232. Not much for firepower, but he wasn’t expecting me to be getting into any really serious trouble. It’s only to get someone’s attention, he told me.

  On my last day, he asked for it back, telling me that someone “in the unit” (his phrase) had run into some trouble with this particular model, so he didn’t want me getting myself fucked up with it. He promised me a replacement by the end of the day, but for that afternoon, I wouldn’t need it. I was going to collect from Angel’s crew, and he knew I had no trouble with Angel, so I didn’t think much about it.

  “Are you packing now?” Anna asks. She’s hoping I am.

  I laugh.

  “Do you mean, am I strapped?”

  Boy, that sounds perverse. She laughs as well.

  “You are such a cutie,” she says, bumping me with her elbow. Anna apparently gets flirty when she’s lit.

  “Thanks,” I say, shrugging off the strangeness of the situation. “No. I can’t legally hold a firearm anymore. I was charged with a felony.”

  “For murder?”

  Anna says the words as though this is the most exciting thing to happen to her — ever — standing around in her kitchen, sharing a bottle of wine with an American rampage killer.

  “No. Those were justifiable homicide,” I tell her.

  This is true, according to the courts. In reality, not so true, but I don’t want her asking me any more about it. “Do you know where Mia went?”

  “Noooo. Pleeeeze. Stay with me.”

  Holy shit, you’d think I just told her that she’s the ugliest girl at the party.

  Untrue, obviously, as long as I’m in the room.

  The visit following the “misunderstanding,” Dad came alone. It didn’t bother me because Mom had to attend some conference down in D.C. concerning the disproportionate number of “women of color” that were in U.S. prisons. Ha! Even Dad pointed out the irony. We wondered if Mom mentioned to anyone that she was missing visitation with her incarcerated daughter because she had to attend this damned meeting.

  After our fun, he said he wanted to have a serious talk with me.

  There are some things that Dad has a hard time speaking to us about because, you know, he’s a man. Sex, of course, which was bad enough to hear about from Mom. I mean, Mom left nothing to the imagination. We could teach a class in human reproduction once she was through with us, including lectures on gender socialization, social bias, and a dissertation on how society has unfairly portrayed women since Neolithic times, with specific focus on the Vedic period of India, post-Roman Gaul, and Sub-Saharan Africa during the time of Europ
ean colonialism after the Berlin Conference. That’s what growing up with a professorial mother is like.

  Dad and I, though, share a special history on some subjects that makes it even more difficult for him to speak with me. He feels that I always held it against him, his not being there when I was growing up with Ma. I don’t, of course, because neither of us knew about the other. But it did lead to some conversations with me that he never had to have with Tonya and Naddie.

  Dad talked about Ma before I left for college. Mom doesn’t know because he asked me not to mention it to her. It was still a difficult subject between them. He told me that when he graduated, even he was aware of what an anachronism he was — a black man who became an engineer. Apparently most dropped out their freshman year, so he was determined to do everything he could to make a name for himself, so that one day his son (sorry, Dad) would have an easier time than he did. It’s the reason he didn’t hesitate when they asked him to travel to South Africa, because what the hell did he know about South Africa anyway.

  He was apologetic when he admitted that he had known Ma for only a short time — two hours. And most of that, he said, he was kind of hazy about because he had been drinking at the party where they met. He had grown up with a rather strict religious upbringing, and no alcohol. (Speaking of anachronisms, his becoming an engineer paled to the fact that his family are Catholics, because all Catholics are either white or Hispanic. Or Italian. Or Filipino. Anyway, they are never black. And no alcohol? What kind of Catholic is that? Mormon?)

  So, what he was trying to tell me was that, if I weren’t careful, a couple of hours of drunken snoogling with a foreign guy could possibly lead to something like me.

  It’s okay, Dad. I understood what you meant.

  “Your mother noticed you looking at the young Hispanic woman at the next table the last time we were here,” Dad said, leaning towards me so that he could lower his voice. They read that it was “common” for some women to become someone else’s “wife” during their stay in prison, and they wanted me to know that they were — Mom was — okay with it, as long as I was happy and secure.

  Okay, first, who says I have to be the wife? Jesus, I’ve killed people!

  Second, by the way he appeared uncertain with the words he was saying, it was obvious that Mom had put him up to this. This had to do with that time — the thing Dad knew nothing about. That, and the fact that Luzi was Hispanic.

  What, Mom? Did you think I would see this as some sort of an apology?

  I looked at him for a moment, stunned, and then I tried to laugh, but my throat tightened up. It felt as though I was going to choke. Dad became immediately flustered, trying to calm me, telling me that I didn’t have to say anything if I didn’t want to. It was none of his or Mom’s business anyway, he said. I tried to laugh again as I swept at my nose, getting snot on the cuff of my uniform.

  “Daddy,…”

  I pulled my left sleeve up to my elbow and stood my forearm before him. It was heartbreaking, having to see the look on his face. I was his beautiful child, after all. We all were. I wanted to keep it hidden from him.

  “No one’s going to want me. Ever.”

  9

  Copenhagen — Hamburg — Cologne

  I thought Angel liked me, and that was the problem because either he did, in which case how the hell could he do what he did, or he didn’t, and I’m the world’s biggest idiot. He lied, or he was evil, and I lied, but that’s what I did for a living. You can understand why I have so little faith in what people tell me.

  “Iben and I want to adopt you,” Anna tells me. We’re in the back seat, Mia in the front again because Anna “claimed” back seat for the two of us so that she can hold my hand and talk quietly into my ear as though we’re twelve years old. Is she like this with everyone she meets? “You’re our new little sister.”

  “Okay,” is all I can think to say. “But doesn’t adopting me make you my parents?”

  Anna is taken aback by this statement. She looks to her sister and Iben is looking at her in the mirror. Anna smiles a wicked sister’s smile and begins to giggle, calling Iben Papa.

  Iben tells her to Grow up.

  Spinster.

  Cow.

  Bitch.

  This is what’s missing between me and my sisters — communication.

  At the train station, before we board the InterCity to Hamburg, Anna gives me what she calls my adoption gift — a scarf she and Iben had picked out shortly after we returned to Lund from Bogense. It’s vibrant and colorful — something you’d expect from artists — and I put it on for them to see, replacing the more subdued, professional scarf Mia had bought for me in Amsterdam. I find that I like wearing scarves, the way they hide my scars. I wish I had thought of it before but, you know, Americans just aren’t the scarf-wearers that Europeans are.

  Anna then hugs me and it’s somewhat awkward because she holds me tight as she kisses the top of my head with my face smashed into her boobs, which she can easily exchange for ten of mine. I don’t dare move and I start to worry but then Iben pushes her aside to give me a more polite embrace, telling me to call them if I’m ever in the area.

  “You don’t even need to drag this one along either,” she says, gesturing to Mia. “She can be such a burden sometimes.”

  They both then step back to look at me and damn if I don’t start crying. (I swear, I am not a crier. This is really starting to bother me.) This gets Anna to crying and she feels that she has to hug me again and Iben mocks us, the two weepy girls, though she’s swiping at her eyes with her fingertips. Mia remains her usual self, smiling faintly but freakishly composed.

  “That’s Mamma Mia for you,” Anna said several times during our stay.

  It appears that Mia is almost as much an enigma to them as she is to me. At one point, after we finished a couple of bottles in Bogense, Anna broadcast the song to the speakers from her phone, setting it to repeat and then hiding the device until Iben threatened to tickle it out of her. Anna is extremely sensitive to tickling, like I used to be. I no longer am. Not even along my right side — my okay side.

  Now I’m crying. Why am I crying?

  Because they actually like me?

  Of course they don’t. This is all an act. It’s always an act. No one really likes you.

  Shut up! Stop trying to fuck this up!

  Now that damned song pops back into my head.

  Serves you right, you stupid fucking brain.

  “You are such a cutie,” Anna whispers in my ear before kissing it and finally letting me go.

  Mia tells me that she doesn’t travel with men. I asked her about it when we’re somewhere in northern Germany, shortly after the train was carried by ferry across the Baltic. Her answer implies that I’m not the first person she’s taken on one of her trips. Does Bouchard know anything about the others?

  “I don’t want to find myself in the middle of a Michael Mann film,” she adds.

  I laugh. We watched some of the big Mann films at the Academy, along with other classics like The Silence of the Lambs, Reservoir Dogs, Point Break, and, of course, Lone Wolf McQuaid. (The question, at the end of an Academy day, was Did you drive your Bronco out of the grave today?) We called them our “training films.”

  I understand what she’s saying. I mean, how often do you read about a violent confrontation that involves only women? Never. There’s always a man, mostly men, and at some point, some guy’s going to pull a gun.

  And God help you if you’re the lone female at that scene, because you will be the one made to pay.

  It’s The Meeting Among Men, and their laughter sets my teeth on edge. It reminds me of when I was a private, assigned to the Training Support Center at Ft. Huachuca. We spent much of our time out in the field, as the red team, and almost twice as much time cleaning our gear and equipment. My squad leader was a fuckwad buck sergeant named Williams. (Not SSgt. Williams of Copenhagen. This was a white Williams, from South Carolina. I’ve met nearly six or se
ven Sergeants Williams during my time.) He would put porn into the VCR to play while we cleaned. He thought that since no one complained it must be okay — there’re two split-tails in the squad and they didn’t say nothing. Of course, he didn’t seem to consider the fact that he wrote our EERs had anything to do with our acquiescence.

  There is always that one guy who makes a whole collection of guys into an embarrassment for their mothers. Today it’s Éric. Éric pronounced the French way because though he appears only vaguely Polynesian, he’s a French citizen by Tahitian birth, now living in Hong Kong. He thinks he’s the most fucking brilliant person in the room. (Yes, that’s how he introduced himself to me, as the most fucking brilliant person in the room.) He’s probably the most fucking brilliant person he’s ever met.

  As Mia is out of the conference room, making a call, and the only other women present — myself and a German named Hedda — are behind the wall that conceals a table of coffee, tea, and pastries, Éric decides to kick things up a bit and pantomimes the bending of someone over the conference table and energetically pumps his groin between his two widely spaced hands. The other three men laugh, though the guy who speaks German is clearly uncomfortable. Still, he doesn’t have the nerve to walk away, or say anything.

  After two hours of multiple languages being tossed across the table, it’s obvious to everyone that Éric is the one who holds all the cards. Mia didn’t get flustered, but she remained rather subdued as Éric explained things in French, then complaisant as Éric reported on what had been decided in English for the benefit of rest of us. She then excused herself, saying she had to make a call, and that left me and an uneasy Hedda lingering behind the wall, slowly fixing our coffee while listening to the testosterone-drenched banter on the other side

  One of the men, the one I caught flexing his tricep in the reflection of the windows and admiring how it tightened the sleeve of his coat, says something I don’t understand but the words make Éric cackle. As I come from behind the wall, Éric moves his hands further apart and resumes his humping. He stops, with a grin, when he notices me.