Zwerfster Chic

by Billie Kelgren

  Fuck. Me.

  I come around the table, on pretext of looking out the windows towards the Port of Hamburg, and The Meeting Among Men breaks up, a few words thrown about so that it appears to be about business.

  I warn myself to not be stupid.

  Éric puts his palm up in front of my face, excusing himself as he passes in front of me so he can return to his chair.

  Don’t be stupid.

  His back is to me.

  Don’t be…!

  Oh, fuck it.

  When all of his weight is on his left leg, I lift my right foot and pop it into the back of his locked knee. His knee snaps forward and since he hasn’t yet shifted his weight, when I set my foot down onto his calf, the rest of him falls forward as well.

  You gasp, you follow, you reach out, you act as if you’re trying to help when, in truth, you’re helping momentum carry them forward.

  Éric folds in half on the edge of the table and then falls backwards to the floor.

  “Julle maaifoedie!” I cry out in feigned surprise. I have this tendency to speak in Afrikaans when I’m truly surprised, I’ve found. Strange, since I never swore when I was nine. “I’m sorry! Are you all right?”

  Éric is a somewhat tall, broad-shouldered man (I would even call him “good-looking” if he wasn’t such an ass), so I didn’t realize Mia had returned until Éric drops beneath the table and I find her standing on the other side, looking quite stunned. I guess she hadn’t seen me either, Éric being so big and me so little.

  Jesus, it’s surprising how easily she can tell me, with just her eyes, that I am in a shitload of trouble.

  At least Hedda claps her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  The elevator stops the next floor down to allow a man on — suit, leather portfolio, graying temples, early fifties — maybe German but there’s something else in his family that gives his skin a light olive tone, Turkish, somewhere on the Mediterranean. He’s surprised by our presence, coming to a halt as he steps through the door, considering us for a moment with a steady gaze. He must realize how awkward this looks because he acknowledges each of us in turn with a firm Guten tag. Mia puts her chin out, narrowing her eyes as she gives a polite though somewhat icy smile and returns the greeting. I’m tucked into the back corner and I won’t smile. I look down at the floor when he looks my way. I doubt he can hear my words.

  He knows that something’s happening. He thinks about stepping back out of the car, before the doors close, but the doors think of that first and he finds himself trapped. He then fumbles about for a moment, trying to decide if he should remain in place, looking at both of us, or turn around and put his back to us. Noticing that there’s enough room to one side, he side-steps, turns, and puts his back to the wall, which is probably safer for him. He then remembers that he has “forgotten something” and makes a show of pushing the button for the next floor while mumbling what I guess are his apologies.

  I can’t decide if this is better, or worse. If he hadn’t gotten on the elevator, Mia would’ve already let into me, but at least the worst would probably be over — the initial shock. As it is, all I experienced was a taste of what’s to come when the elevator doors closed for me and her and she started with I swear to God, bokkie….

  The chime tells us that the elevator stops because it’s otherwise so smooth that you wouldn’t notice.

  “Ich bitte Sie, dich um Verzeihung.”

  The man speaks to Mia, locking eyes with her as he does, pointing needlessly upward as he steps off at the next floor. She shakes her head, smiling faintly to show that she understands and for him to think nothing of it. She holds his gaze until the doors close. He’s transfixed, unable to move on until their connection is broken.

  Then her gaze drifts menacingly over to me. There’s no more smile in those eyes.

  Please, don’t say it. Dontsayitdontsayitdontsayit.

  “If you ever do anything like that again, I will leave you where you stand.”

  No! You bitch!

  “I like Michael Mann films.”

  They are the first words I say, mostly to myself, nearly three hours later as we ride the InterCity in the direction of Cologne, where we will catch another ICE to Brussels. It’s not really true. I mean, I like Michael Mann well enough, but I’ve no particular love for them. The testosterone films were fun at the Academy, but I’m more of a personal drama sort, when I get to watch movies, which is never.

  Mia looks at me and smiles, cooing as she leans over and kisses the top of my head. She had been trying to get me to say something — anything — since the moment she realized that she had said the wrong thing to me, but I wouldn’t let it go.

  Jesus, of all the things you can say!

  After her threat in the elevator, neither of us spoke for the rest of the way to the ground floor. She was still angry with me, but she was wishing that she had handled it differently. We walked to the hotel, the Park Hyatt a couple of blocks away, in silence. I let her go half a step ahead of me because I didn’t like how she kept glancing in my direction. She was no longer angry, but I was. My hurt defensively morphed in a bitterness that was somewhat irrational, but what did I care. Anger is supposed to be irrational, ain’t it?

  The first words between us were on the lift up to our suite. I guess that should’ve meant something but I didn’t know what. Symmetry of Life, blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t even think of the word for it, but I tried to because I was trying to focus myself on something — anything — except the current situation.

  She said we might as well leave, catch the late train to Cologne and head on over to Brussels.

  After that, she tried speaking normally, casually, as if everything were fine between us again, but there was still a caution in her words. I remained rather pigheaded, not really caring if she would be sending me home. I was hurt on the inside — surprisingly, utterly in pain. It was frightening, because it seemed to want to push all other thoughts aside and take over my body, making my chest tight and my head throb. I don’t know how long I had been doing it, but I finally noticed, during the walk from the hotel to the Hauptbahnhof, that I was scratching at my left arm. My scars itch when I’m under a lot of stress. The psychs in L.A. wanted me on anxiety meds because they worried I would end up shredding a limb.

  I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

  That’s all there was, bouncing around the inside my head, echoing off the sides of my skull so that it grew in intensity and then faded again, over and over until even the ABBA song could no longer penetrate. Only this echo, this reverberation, went on and on for hours until it finally wore me out.

  I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home so I could get away from her, I hated her that much.

  I hate you, Mia. I hate you, Mia. Just say it and get it over with. Just say it. I hate you, Mia.

  It comes out as I like Michael Mann films.

  And then she kisses the top of my head, coos as she does, and tells me she’s sorry, and slowly, things become quiet again.

  Don’t ever say you will leave me.

  And then someone clicks that song back on again.

  Shit! My brain hates me.

  The passing countryside fades from view, replaced by our own reflections on the glass of the window. Cities and towns become nothing more than flickering streams of light. Mia tells me that she knew about Éric, what he was saying about her. She’s known Éric for going on two years and thinks he’s one of the biggest pricks she’s ever met, but that meant that she feels okay about what she’s doing to him.

  “Problem is, I can’t use him anymore,” she says. “Not after what you did. He won’t trust me, and once that’s gone, there’s nothing more you can do.”

  I tell her that the man doesn’t trust her anyway, or like her, or respect her, so what difference does it make.

  “Yes, actually, he did trust me. He trusted that I was weak and easily persuaded, and would agree to anything he said. He was perfect.”

  Okay, I ca
n see what’s coming up next. I’m about to feel stupid. I can sense it. I have experience.

  “The day after tomorrow, his bosses will be asking Éric how he managed to lose nearly a quarter of a billion euros.”

  “A quarter of a billion?”

  I look around quickly, having said it much too loudly. I lower my voice.

  “You made a quarter of a billion euros?”

  “That would be nice, but, no.” She seems amused that I’d even think such a thing. “If I made that much off one play, I would have retired fifteen…twenty years ago. And I’d be in prison.”

  “Then where does all that money go?”

  Boy, I wish I listened better during the Money training. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to ask such stupid questions. But Counterintelligence, Organized Crime, undercover — these are kick-ass. Money? Boring.

  “Off into the intangible non-reality of valuation,” she says with a wave of the hand through the air. She then drops the hand back onto her lap. “I’ll probably get somewhere close to a million out of this, if I’m lucky. It was supposed to be more, but that’s over now.”

  I tell her I’m sorry, but it comes out rather reluctantly because why am I feeling like shit for causing someone else to get only close to a million?

  She looks off beyond our reflections, as the train comes around so that the setting sun gives us a shadow of the world outside. People living ordinary lives, passing by at tremendous speed. A hissing change in pitch to us.

  “It wasn’t the point anyway,” she says finally.

  “What?”

  She looks at me again, as if suddenly realizing I’m there.

  “It wasn’t the point anyway — the money.”

  “What was the point then?”

  “The point is that it’s going to cause them to panic, and do things that they would not do otherwise.”

  She plays with my hair, fixing it.

  “Things I need them to do.”

  “Elise?”

  “Al?”

  Mia’s watching me as I cautiously hold the phone to my ear as if I’m afraid I’ll receive a shock. I try not to look worried or confused, but this is the first time it’s rung on the trip and it made me jump. When I mouth My PO to Mia, she becomes concerned as well.

  Holy shit, am I fucked?

  “It’s your father.”

  Whatwhatwhat? Nonononono! God, Dad, no! No! No! No! I won’t allow it!

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  10

  Brussels — Keflavík — Hanscom Field — Elizabeth Islands

  Mia tells me that she’s concerned about me. She tells me this during the train ride from Cologne to Brussels, after I had gotten the call from Al, so I’m really not listening. I assume she’s talking about how much the thought of Dad lying in a hospital worries me, which I already know. I want to be left alone with my thoughts, so I can drive myself crazy with the idea that he might die before I make it back.

  “Have you ever gone to see someone?” she asks, which is a strange question under the circumstances. It doesn’t even make sense. “After what happened to you, did you go talk to someone?”

  What?

  Apparently, she’s been watching me the entire trip and has become alarmed by how often I’m in tears. She says this as though I’m crying all the time, which I’m not, so I don’t get the point that she’s trying to make. I mean, she didn’t even know me before. Maybe I’ve always been weepy. How the hell would she know? Of course, I was an FBI Special Agent and I worked undercover — those two things kind of preclude the predilection for weepiness, so I guess she could’ve assumed.

  I tell her that I’m all right, but from her expression, the look in her eyes, she’s not buying it. Great! Now Mia is going to get all judgmental on me. I tell her again that I have no problems, that I’m a little tired, is all, and maybe if she’s unhappy with me, she should tell me so and send me back home.

  Fucking bitch.

  Her eyes tell me that I had just said that last bit out loud and I reflexively slap my hand over my mouth. Holy shit, I don’t know how she’ll respond, and I don’t know how to take it all back before she does, before she tells me to not even bother returning after seeing Dad. This is it. This is how it will end, with my big mouth going off again, my talking too much.

  Jesus, I talk too much. Talktoomuchtalktoomuchtalktoomuch. I am stupid, stupid, stupid! Why can’t I ever shut the hell up?

  I don’t even realize that I’m crying until Mia is shushing me again, holding my head as she rocks me. People are watching, the people across the aisle, and they’re embarrassed, for themselves and for me, the crybaby.

  Cry, cry, cry. Why am I always crying?

  She waits with me as I shuffle through the security checkpoint of the Brussels airport, not much being said between us since the scene on the train. I’m waiting for her to tell me that, while it’s been fun traveling with me, I should go ahead and stay in the States once I land there. I mean, she didn’t even buy me a round-trip ticket, so what else is she going to say? I don’t know what to think. I can only look up at her on occasion, hoping to catch a passing thought, an expression, some kind of clue so I can prepare myself, but then Mia will never do that. She would make a professional poker player scream in aggravation, she’s so indecipherable.

  When we come to the point where she has to turn back, she takes me in her arms and gives me a long, firm embrace as she sighs. This is it, so I wrap my arms around her and hang on so she won’t be able to pull away. Don’t do this, I want to tell her. Please don’t do this. Of course, it’s times like this when my big mouth doesn’t work so well.

  Then, she sniffs.

  She kisses the top of my head, holds me back so she can see my face, and her big, brown eyes are wet. Sparkling!

  “Call me as soon as you can, bokkie. And come back to me,” she says at almost a whisper, her voice about gone.

  A woman in line, in her twenties, smiles at the scene. She’s thinking I wish that was me. She’s wishing to be me! Me, me, me!

  I love you, Mia. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

  Mia coughs a laugh, clearing her tightened throat.

  “I love you too, bokkie.”

  Shit!

  Until Angel, I had a problem only once during my collection runs. Raffie was a Panamanian and a closeted bigot. He hated Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Costa Ricans, Columbians, Venezuelans, Brazilians, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, blacks, and Greeks. There was probably more but he could only fit so many in the closet, I guess. He liked Austrians, though. Not Australians — he hated them — but Austrians. From Austria. He was an amateur bodybuilder, so it probably had something to do with Schwarzenegger.

  Prejudice is such a personal thing.

  Anyway, I always knew he was set at a low simmer since Byrone took control of what Raffie thought was rightfully Latino territory, not that he would be any happier with anyone not from Panama. Many crews thought Byr should move “back” to the East Coast — none of them knew that he grew up in Oakland. He seemed to come out of nowhere because he spent his early adult life in the Army overseas. He came to L.A., he told me, for the weather, and because the Mexican cartels understood the value of a military background.

  Raffie thought I was hooked up with Byrone, that it was how I earned my position. Along with being prejudiced against race and nationality, he was also a standard misogynist, believing women should be in the home, making the dinner, taking care of the babies, and keeping the beer cold for the man’s return at the end of the day. You might wonder why Byr would be sending me to someone like Raffie, but Raf was smart enough to keep this highly-devolved belief system to himself, so he was always coolly polite with me. You can think what you want, but in the end, money is money and it’s what most people really want.

  Back in those days, during the summer, I sometimes wore above-the-knee dresses. Not short, but comfortable on the more blistering afternoons. I wasn’t stupid — I knew to
maintain a certain level of decorum around the all-male, testosterone-fueled business of the drug trade. But it helped to show a little bit of leg sometimes, and I had some pretty tight little legs. I kept in shape while I was in the Bureau.

  On one of my visits to Raffie, though, I made the mistake of thoughtlessly bending over at the waist and almost immediately a hand slid up the back of my thigh. I stood up, backed away, and the glassy glaze of his eyes told me that Raffie was lit. I later found out that his long-time girlfriend had left him the night before, but only after she told Raffie’s mamá, his common-law wife and mother to two of his children, all about their involvement. None of that excused him, though, now that he told me how he fantasized about making me his puta negra.

  I kept cool, because he was in no state to catch me if he tried. He was barely able to stand.

  The next time I went to collect from Raffie, Kel hopped into my car beside me and told me that Byrone wanted me to take him along, to assess the situation. I had to tell Byr about Raf, because he would not stand for antipathy within the unit, or anyone hiding it from him. He didn’t like being surprised.

  “We muppets gotta watch out for one other, baby girl,” Kel said with enthusiasm. He had a harsh, almost grating voice, as though he had eaten a bowl full of gravel, so it was sometimes hard to understand what he was saying when he became excited. Byr told me that it had been what was left of Kel’s voice after an operation on his vocal cords, after he took a machete to the throat during the Rwandan Civil War. I had wondered about the scar on his neck.

  Raffie didn’t like seeing that I was accompanied by Kel when we came into the small sewing machine and vacuum repair shop that he used as a headquarters. There was never anything being repaired, only some busted-up old Singers and Hoovers taken apart and displayed on the tables. He didn’t even wait. He immediately scrambled for a weapon he had tucked up under one of the machines, but once again, he was stoned, which made him slow and sloppy. Before he could even touch the gun, Kel swept it aside and had Raffie’s head under his arm. He led the Panamanian out from behind the counter and around to the back. He was saying something to Raffie in that low, ragged voice of his, then told me to lock the front door.