when the firemen showed, he pretended to have been asleep.
“Oh, I get that,” she said. “That’s a fear of responsibility. I fantasize about my parents dying at the same time because, as bad off as they are, it’ll be worse if they don’t have each other, and worse for me, too. Which is even more horrible. I mean, I love them, but still.”
And when he didn’t respond, she said, “Is this helping? Do you feel better? You always say that being always happens in a social context. Is this a social context?”
He took her hand in the dark and held it to his chest.
She kept talking until the winter dawn grayed up the walls and bedspread. And so, for Thurlow, another sleepless night. Alone, but not. Ever thus.
ESME RUSHED OUT OF THE METRO. Or walked as fast as possible, given the rubber gams distending her legs, and her chest vest, which weighed a ton. A C-cup bosom that swung low, and a furl of belly fat that D-curved around her waist, not to mention the load of vulcanized ass piled on her rear. Christ, this fat suit. Christ, this life.
Times like these, she wished she and Jim had a more convenient rendezvous point. The Air and Space Museum was in the middle of nowhere. She spotted him at the entrance. She pinched his arm, and when he gave her a confused look, she laughed and said, “Hey, it’s me.”
“My God,” he said. “You are terrifying.”
“Nice to see you, too,” and she pecked him on the cheek.
“Totally unrecognizable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your face all worked up.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she said, and she glanced at her reflection in a window. Today’s prosthetic: a nose brinked on caricature that appeared to have been launched from the putty of her face like a dart. Today’s chin: prognathous. She wore a wig. Sawdust blond, washed out, limp. Bowl cut—a vase, really—that came in at her chin.
“Terrifying,” he said. “And what, like, fifty pounds heavier? You seem shorter, too.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is matronly. I call this look the Lynne Five-Oh. Effective, right?”
He took her arm as they made for the space hangar. Rocket boosters hung from the ceiling like Christmas ornaments. Jim said, “So how’s our boy?”
“Back in Cincinnati in a few days.”
“And you?”
“Fine.”
“Good, because after what happened in North Korea, you’re lucky to be getting another chance.”
“For what? Everything’s status quo, everything’s fine over there.”
He stopped walking. “Are we even talking about the same guy anymore? Do you need a leave of absence?”
“What? No. I’m just saying I don’t know why now is the time to try again. Nothing happened in North Korea. Thurlow never met anyone. He just drove around. I was on him the whole time. I was even in a car with him, face-to-face. Didn’t recognize me at all.”
“In this getup?”
“No. Something even better.”
“Wow.”
“So what more do you want? Should I have made something up?”
He gave her a nasty look and pinched his earlobe, which he did when stressed. He’d been working on this assignment nonstop—his file was huge—but the bureaucracy was worse. Under whose purview did a man like Thurlow Dan even fall? A domestic cult leader with foreign ties sounded like simple Joint Terrorism Task Force fare—the FBI doing its worst—but then the National Counterproliferation Center was not likely to hands-off a guy in chat with North Korea. Of course, it wasn’t like the center actually talked to the JTTF, which was probably for the best, since the JTTF took its lead from the NJTTF, which was just sixty guys stumped even by having to order lunch. Jim was at the Pentagon with Homeland Security—who knew how the job of dismantling the Helix had fallen to him. No one understood how business was run at that level.
What’s the latest, Jim? Don’t screw this up, Jim. You got nothing from North Korea, Jim? The pressure was intense. And he was losing patience. How could Esme have screwed up North Korea? And how many chances was she supposed to get? He’d been told she was the best. And when she did that Kegel thing, he knew she was the best. Also, to her credit, she did produce a lot of information. And she always knew where Thurlow was. So he would be patient. All they needed was a smoking gun.
Esme paused to admire a Corona film return capsule and to read news of its magic: a film bucket dropped from outer space,