He gave her a weary grin, handed back the coffee, and went to the bathroom. From where he sat on the toilet he could see his face in her low mirror. He was pale, his eyes shot through with red. “Mind if I take a shower?” he called through the closed door.
“I think I’m going to insist,” she called back.
It took a while for the hot water to reach her fourth-floor apartment, and once it did it burned. He stood under the steaming downpour, thinking through the previous night. The memories were disturbingly slow in coming, but they did come, and he remembered laughter and loud voices—mostly his—and the novelist David Malek and later on some friends. He remembered an argument with a Slav, but couldn’t remember what it had been about. Then he had a quick flash of panic—where was the pistol? He hurried through his shower, toweled off, and squatted naked at the foot of the bed, hunting through his pile of clothes. “Looking for your gun?” Maribeth asked from behind. She had dressed in a long white skirt and an open-collared mauve blouse.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Only travel agent I know of who carries heat,” she said. “It’s in the living room. Why don’t you get dressed and have some breakfast?”
He did as she suggested, then found the pistol in its holster on the coffee table. There were still seventeen rounds in the clip, and none in the breech.
Maribeth had cooked up Swiss cheese omelets, ham, and buttered toast, and they ate in her modest dining room—an extension of the kitchen—while through the window came the noise of downtown traffic. The coffee and food began to temper his hangover.
Maribeth spent her work hours approving and more often rejecting visa requests, and each week she collected a handful of stories of colorful characters who believed that simply scrawling marks on a form entitled them to an entry visa. “They always get it wrong,” she said. “We start with the assumption that everyone wants to jump ship and set up a new life in America, and it’s up to them to prove otherwise. But when you tell them this, they act as if you’ve just insulted them. On Wednesday a woman spat at me.”
“She spat on you?” he said, a slice of toast halfway to his mouth.
“At me. Splattered across the divider window. There’s a reason we have those things, you know. She said, But we’re democratic now, just like you! Why would I want to leave?”
“I’m not sure I’d call a military government democracy.”
“People believe what they want,” she said, then nodded at the television behind him. “You hear about that?”
He turned to find a talking head on CNN relating the story of Emmett Kohl, deputy consul in Hungary, who had been shot in a Budapest restaurant. There were, apparently, few clues, and only an unidentified security photo to guide the investigations: a wide face, hairless, with a cut on one cheek. A real bruiser.
“You knew Kohl?” he asked.
“As well as most, I suppose. He thought he was hilarious.”
John was struck by the cynicism in her voice. “You didn’t like him?”
“He was just … you know. One of those bosses who slaps your back and makes a joke and says that we’re all in this together. But when the shit hits the fan you never know where he is. I’ve worked for worse.”
“I’ll bet I have, too.”
She smiled over the rim of her coffee cup and said, “Where have you worked, John? Where did you come from before you magically appeared here?” She took a sip, and when he didn’t answer she said, “Look, I’m not trying to pry, but it’s obvious you don’t schedule flights for people. Jennifer tells me you spend most of your time on the fifth floor, with the spooks.”
“Spooks?”
She reddened. “You know what I mean.”
He did, and so he told her a little about himself. She already knew of the ex-wife and children, so he brushed over his time in the army, skipping mention of his dishonorable discharge. “I kicked around for a while, got married, had some kids. That didn’t work out.”
“Whose fault?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He thought about it, but he needn’t have—the question had haunted him for years. “Both of ours.”
“Both? Is that the answer she’d give, too?”
“Spoken like a real bachelorette.”
“I prefer the word spinster.”
“My point,” he said, trying to ignore her mocking grin, “is that we share the blame, just like we share the kids.” It was a diplomatic answer, which was another way of saying it was untrue. John would always blame himself, for he had been the one who couldn’t hold down a job, who chose to reach for the car keys whenever a fight erupted, who began to feel like his own absent father even though he lived in the same house as his kids. He said, “I remembered how good I’d had it in the army. Lots of order in that kind of life. You know when you’re waking and when you’re going to sleep. You know what you’re supposed to do, and when. The rules are clear—there’s never any ambiguity.”
“Unlike in a family,” she said, her eyes locked on him, no longer taunting.
“Right,” he said, then paused before going on. The lies about his job hadn’t been required—he’d just been asked to avoid advertising his real position at the embassy. She was waiting. “So I applied with Global Security, and a few years later I was sent here.”
“Global Security?” Maribeth placed the coffee cup on the table, her eyes slitted. “You’re a contractor? Like that—that guy in Pakistan?”
He nodded.
“Well, damn,” she said, almost a whisper.
Before she could go on, there was a knock at the door, and as she went to get it John finished his toast, wondering how to escape. He had no idea how this revelation was affecting her, and, given the way he was feeling, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out right now. Then he heard the newcomer’s voice: “My love!” It was Geert Rutte, a Dutch media consultant, another Deals regular. John didn’t feel he had much choice in the matter—he got up and went out to say hello.
Despite being near fifty, Geert dressed like a hipster, with thick-framed black glasses and bowling shoes, and was full of overabundant, meaningless smiles. He also maintained an absolute indifference to the feelings of others—empathy had never been part of his upbringing. “John! What a surprise!”
“Morning, Geert.”
“Is it still morning? Maribeth, is it still morning?”
“I think it’s early afternoon,” she said, smiling at John.
“Yet this is a wonderful coincidence, John, for I have two propositions for you!”
“Do you see my face?” John asked him.
“Yes, John. I do.”
“How does it look?”
“Pale. Well, paler than usual. It’s hard to tell with you people.”
“I’m hungover. So please talk quietly.”
Geert’s eyebrows rose. “Ahh,” he said before lowering to a whisper. “I have two propositions for you, John.” He wandered in, sniffing the air. “Is that coffee?”
“Would you like some?” asked Maribeth.
“Of course.”
They all went to the kitchen, and as she poured another cup, Geert sat in Maribeth’s chair and bit into a slice of her toast. “My propositions.”
“Perhaps you could just spit them out,” said John.
“The first one is an investment opportunity.”
“Do I look like I have money?”
Geert paused, staring in shock. “You don’t?”
“Well, not enough to invest in anything.”
“But you have a job. With the American embassy.”
“I also have an ex-wife and two children.”
“That’s criminal.”