Hitchcock Blonde

(Vancouver)
Victor:

"Hang on, Lucy."

Blood flowed from her mouth and it was all wrong. Not that she was dying, but that she was dying like this. A stupid accident. Friendly fire.

She couldn't die like this, looking like some suburban housewife in faded jeans. Her sweater had ridden up over her stomach as I caught her; and there on the pavement, it suddenly seemed far more immodest than the most revealing of her leather outfits. I covered her body with my jacket and knelt beside her, listening to her try to breathe through the holes in her chest.

"Lucy..."

"Don't call me Lucy. Victor..." She struggled to sit up. "Marita Kendall...she isn't-" she closed her eyes, as if trying to think of the correct term or phrase and sighed. And then she was gone.

Marita Kendall. I hadn't thought of that name in years, but suddenly I was expecting to see her out of the corner of my eye, smell her perfume, hear her heels clicking on the sidewalk. Sirens overwhelmed the phantom clicking in my head, and then my partners were gently pulling me away.

(San Francisco)
Monica:

When you get down to the bottom of the bottle, as Mama used to say, the problem is that I'm a nice girl and a born sucker.

You grow up Latina in Slidell, Louisiana, and you learn to be a real nice girl. You learn to smile like your mouth is full of Vaseline. Smile till your jaw aches and maybe, just maybe, the lynch mob passes by your house after all. You learn to smile when your softball teammates ask if your mother really reads the future and worships the devil. You give up trying to explain how your mother is not Marie Laveau, and how Santeria isn't Satanism. You learn to adapt. To stay open. To smile and try very hard not to get your ass kicked. Smile to placate, to please. Keep smiling because if you stop, even for a second, you'll start screaming.

I didn't want to think about Mama. I didn't want to think at all. I was trying to drown my memories in Jim Beam and melted ice. Recent horrors contrasted starkly with the opulent marbled columns and Persian carpets.

If you must sulk, you might as well sulk in splendor.

Dead boys and their broken fathers. Dead men and their broken women. I'm not Mama, but sometimes I get a sense of things...just a feeling...little more than good observation. Except that it hurts more. Show me a good empath and I'll show you a twelve - step junkie.

I had been stood up yet again by an acquaintance who was far too hip to be seen north of Market Street anyway; and I was too far gone to care. I was preparing to pay my tab and head back to my room to sulk in private, when I was distracted by beige silk crepe and Chanel Number Five.

"Is it as bad as all that?"

I didn't know what to say. She ran cool fingertips over the back of my hand.

"I'm Marita Freemont."

Freemont? Was she serious? Un-freakin' believable. Or maybe she just had a wonderfully dry sense of humor.

Okay, so I'm a slut. A loose and easy woman. No Pants Reyes, drooling over some ultra-femme she picked up in a hotel bar. Well, I probably have more fun than most government employees. I was a mess and she was exquisite - is there any other excuse?

Victor:

I didn't know what else to do. They had both lost so much. She had become a sort of vicious surrogate mother to them and they seemed too numb, too lost, and I did what she would have done. Shellshock became aphrodisiac; and unshed tears, Spanish Fly. I had been with both of them at different times, and we are nothing if not physical people.

Just as a side note, How to Get Even When Your Fiancée Dumps You, In Three Easy Steps: Sleep with her ex. Stay friends with her in the process. Be so neurotic about it that said ex is driven back into her arms. Repeat as necessary. Damned Continental minds, those two.

As they lay entwined in my arms like naked kittens, I recognized the polite fiction of the situation. They had taken me to bed, not the other way around. I had been ambushed by the Day Boy and the Night Girl. Li Ann would have laughed at the references, that I even knew the analogies. She's smarter than me; they both are.

My fondness for ancient literature began after I followed Mac out a window, four stories up. He hit the trash bags in the dumpster. I took mostly concrete. Our gentle, if slightly deranged Agency librarian took pity on my convalescence and brought me Virgil and Homer in addition to all the Machivelli and Sun Yat-sen. Everyone has an agenda.

My overnight guests began to stir and squirm.

"We have to talk to you."

"Yeah, how long have you known?"

"About what?" I asked.

"Her name was Lucy?"

"And who is Marita Kendall?"

How could they think my loyalties so fragmented? "Lucy was my own name for her. You can't work with someone for years and years and never have something to call them by. Something to curse them by."

"Why Lucy?"

"She was bossy. Like in Charlie Brown, you know. Lucy." They stared at me, blinking. "Say what you will about Western pop culture, but I think Charles Schultz deprivation is just sad."

I found myself pinned to the mattress, ears and neck and chest bathed by warm tongues and breath. I could tell them about Marita later.

Weary soreness seeped though my bones. Soreness for the best possible reasons of course. There are advantages to sleeping with gymnastically inclined ex-thieves, but this was absolutely the last time. Tonight anyway. I was not as young as I used to be. Thrusting into him in long deliberate strokes, I watched his shoulders tremble.

Mac reclined against Li Ann's breasts, eyes squeezed shut, and she cradled him from behind. She held one of his hands, sucking the knuckles, and her other hand worked his cock. She devoted intense concentration to matching my rhythm precisely. She had some strange tantra theory about simultaneous orgasm and spiritual transcendence. Whatever. She was fascinating to watch though, brow furrowed, and then Mac was coming and I was coming and it took everything I had.

"So you never did her?" Trust Mac to get to the point.

"Only once. And not until the end."

"Hey Li Ann, I think we're about to hear yet another helpless chick in distress story."

I spent about six sputtering seconds hating him again. Crass. Childish. "You really never know when to stop, do you?"

"Shut up, Mac. Marita Kendall was in the Director's last thoughts...her last words. We need to now why," said Li Ann.

"The Dir-excuse me, *Lucy's* death was an accident. Not related," he countered.

Actually, I agreed with Mac. "I can't imagine why she said it. Maybe it was just something she carried around with her. Something unresolved."

"You mean like her life was flashing before her eyes, and that's where she ran out of-"

Li Ann shoved him hard enough that he rolled off the bed.

"Sorry." He lay down between us, resting his head on her stomach. "Go on, Vic. I'll behave, I promise."

"There is a building down in New Westminster," I began, "where, when I initially went to work for Lucy, I had my first Agency apartment. Marita lived there too, four doors down. She was out of town a lot, and we didn't meet for a long time. Occasionally, we ran into each other, in the elevator, on the street.

"She always wore sunglasses, dressed in black suits, a distant presence, murmuring into her cell phone. She could have been a model or an actress or something...if it hadn't been an Agency building.

"One time, on a surveillance assignment, some place with redwood paneling and Cuban cigars, I thought I saw her at a baccarat table in a white gown, diamonds at her throat, sparkling in the haze of smoke. She was surrounded by anonymous old men. Another night, she was climbing into a limousine outside the Tunisian Consulate. When I asked the Director, she shook her head. Typical Director - right? Only then, she kissed my cheek and then looked me in the eye and said, 'Please, don't ask.'"

"Weird."

"Definitely weird."

"Right. So eventually, I came home late and found her lying on my couch. It was dark and I couldn't see who it was first. She said, 'I'm unarmed, Mr. Mansfield. I just need to not be at my place for a little while. I'm sorry to disturb you this way.'

'Why me?'

'You...you remind me of someone I knew once.'

"I offered her a beer, thinking it should have been brandy.

"So a fellow agent comes to you for help and you seduce her?" Mac grinned. "Vic, I'm shocked. And appalled. And very proud of you..."

"I thought you said you were going to behave. Anyway, we just talked. Talked all night...about nothing. Old movies, Etta James, and when the sun came up she was still going on about some safe topic - Kansas City Blues verses Bayou Blues maybe. The light seemed refracted though her. She pulled the blanket I gave her up to her chin and my chest contracted...that impossible perfection. I let my eyelids drift shut, listening to the measured vowels and consonants of her speech. At some point, I became aware of her, close to me.

'Poor Alexei,' she whispered. It seemed she was speaking to me, but she was not. 'Where are you?' Her cheek came to rest against my shoulder, a warm damp weight.

"I reached up, see if she was ok, and she pulled back like I had slapped her.

'I'm keeping you awake, Mr. Mansfield. I'll go. It will be all right now.'

"The next day, I found a card inscribed in retro Palmer Method:

'Mr. Mansfield, my humblest thanks for your hospitality Wednesday evening. I won't bother you again. M. Kendall.'

"Harsh. So you didn't-"

"Li Ann, gag him. Please." She scooped up the bowl of frozen grapes we had been playing with earlier that night and began pushing them between Mac's lips until he resembled a chipmunk.

"Continue," she said, popping a grape into her own mouth.

"I wrote on the back of the card: 'Please do. Any time,' and slipped the card back under the door. Apparently she meant what she said though, because I didn't see her around for months. I assumed the Agency had sent her on some long-term gig, and I had my own problems, with the Director's constant tests of faith and loyalty.

"I didn't know she was even back until I heard her screaming. I charged down the hall, and her place was wrecked. Velvet armchairs lay on their sides like vanquished virgins, damask curtains hung, half ripped from the window. Her laptop flickered forlornly amid spilled ferns and shattered lamps. She crouched on the floor, scratching at her bare face and arms, leaving bloody tracks. I stepped on her sunglasses in my haste to get to her, to make her stop hurting herself. I don't think she noticed. I don't think she even saw me first. She moaned, half in Russian. "Alexei, God! God! Nyet..."

"I grabbed her arms and held her. She flailed weakly, and at first I thought she had wrapped yellow string around her fingers. But it was hair. Eventually, she seemed to realize where she was. Who I was. As if it explained everything, she said:

'He's afraid of the dark. They left him there in the dark.'

"I figured that she had received bad news via email, and it involved a mission gone wrong, but she wouldn't tell me anything more. I asked the Director again about Marita. If there was anything I could do. It was one of the only times I ever saw her waver. I mean really soften and hesitate. And then she said there was nothing anyone could do. That Marita's problems were universally out of my league. To stay away from her. Instead, I became her friend. Sort of.

"I waited for the times the light was on in her window to show up. She didn't seem to mind. In her remote way, she made me feel welcome. Aside from me, she kept questionable company. I assumed she was working honeypot detail and tried not to think of it too much. I couldn't save her - I couldn't even save myself. Once, when the gray haired man who answered her door reeking of gun powder and stale cigarettes told me she was in the shower, I took great pleasure in throwing him out. He didn't get up off of the floor right away. He had a pinched expression, not so strange since he'd just taken a swift kick in the gut. But he looked at me...as if memorizing my face. Then he got up slowly and pulled a cigarette from his jacket and asked me for a light and there was something very smug in his question. As if he had discovered something dirty about me while he was on the floor. I slammed the door in his face.

"That night she wanted to hear about my childhood, and she spoke of her own. But it was elusive. Nameless. Placeless. An impressionistic recital, not what I expected. A life of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, family and parties...happy. Not her. I called her on it, and she smiled.

'Of course I'm lying, dear. You make such a tragedy out of your childhood, I didn't feel I should compete.'

'Seriously,' I said. 'I want to know.'

'No. You don't, Mr. Mansfield. It's all the mean reds."

'I have a first name, you know. You mean like communists? Or like the blues?'

"She laughed, silvery and unattainable. 'Both, I suppose. You're afraid and you sweat like hell and you're not even sure what you're afraid of. Except that something bad is going to happen, a constant sense of impending doom.'

'Some people call it angst. Comes with the territory in this line of work - don't you think?'

"My insinuated question was out of bounds. I wasn't supposed to acknowledge what we were, what we did. She let me know I had screwed up by rising quickly from her chair.

'I have reports to finish, Mr. Mansfield.'

"I was feeling bold.

'Who was he?'

'The older gentleman?'

'No. My- uh...evil twin. Was he one of ours? A Company man...or KGB maybe?'

'All of the above, among other things. But it doesn't matter anymore-' She stopped, not looking at me. 'I really need to finish those reports. Goodnight.'"

"This is a really depressing story so far, Vic."

"Mac is right. My God, I had no idea. You really cared for her. Did you ever find out what she was involved in?" Li Ann drew her knees up to her chest, resting her hands on her ankles.

"Not exactly. The last night I saw her-"

"You had sex! Finally!"

"Uh, are you going to let me finish, Mac?" I knew he wasn't being deliberately crude. He is young enough that he doesn't yet understand how tact and courtesy can be even more necessary as lubricants between loved ones than between strangers. I counted backwards from twenty, waiting.

Mac rolled onto his back. Li Ann absently reached down to scratch his belly as he stretched. "Yeah. Go for it."

"I was sitting on the edge of her bathtub, watching her get ready to go out. It was a casual thing, on her part anyway. She stood on her tiptoes, in her slip, and leaned over the sink, applying various creams and powders. I was trying to be cool. Trying not to notice the strap slipping down over one pale shoulder.

Our eyes met in the mirror and she dropped a brush in the sink and the clink echoed. There was no other sound in the apartment. Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she reached into a side cabinet and pulled out one of those little pink plastic razors. She hopped onto the counter top. I stood on shaking legs and went to her, and she reached behind her and turned on the tap. She didn't ask permission, I think she knew she didn't need to.

"She dabbed the top of my lip with shaving cream. It was the most intimate thing she could have done. We didn't touch often. She never touched me at all on purpose if she could help it. Her left hand cupped my chin. With her right, she dragged the razor over and over my skin. When I couldn't look into her eyes another second she set the razor down. I couldn't see myself, the mirror was steamed over, but I felt naked. I had worn a mustache from the time I was seventeen. She unfastened my earring and I knew what she was doing. I knew it was wrong, for her and for me."

I memorized the pattern in the sheets as I spoke. Following the path of paisleys with my fingers, knowing if I faltered, even for a moment, I wouldn't be able to tell them.

"I didn't stop her...I wanted to, but everything seemed to happen in slow motion. She dropped my earring and we both bent for it at the same time. Our noses bumped, and then she was kissing me. Hard. Violent, and crying too I think. She pulled frantically at my fly and I was sliding black lace up around her waist, the whole time thinking; no, not like this...but it was too late. She pulled me deep into her and she was so hot and so slick and I remember listening to the hiss of the tap instead of her, because even though I never learned Russian, I knew she wasn't speaking to me. Then there was nothing but her arms around me, her mouth on me, her flesh surrounding me..."

They were mercifully silent. Wide-eyed. I had allowed myself to trail off. I was never any good at talking about sex. Through some act of will I didn't know I had, I managed to stop fumbling and make an end of it.

"When it was over, she turned smooth and impassive as marble again.

'I'm sorry. Go home, Mr. Mansfield. For God sakes, go home before you really get hurt!'

"I had been dismissed, and I guess the Director knew because the Agency upgraded me to this place the next day."

Li Ann had gone very still. Her question barely registered above a whisper. "And you never saw her again?"

"No." My voice quavered only a little.

"We should find out what happened. I'm going over that office with a fine tooth comb tomorrow...oh." Li Ann looked up at me. Tentative. "Vic? Um- they offered me her position. I accepted."

"You're the new Director? Our new boss?" Mac sat up.

She ignored him, rushing on. "I know you have seniority, Vic. I'll step aside if you want it, of course. They only came to me because you've been so vocal about wanting to retire."

She seemed genuinely worried about my reaction. Relief washed over me. I felt light. I didn't want the Directorship, but you didn't refuse if you were asked. Li Ann wanted it. Lucy had groomed her for it. Thank God. I took her hand and kissed the inside of her palm. "Congratulations. You've earned this."

"What about me?"

"You've got friends in high places now, Mac. What tropical assignment would you like? What kind of partners? In what flavors?" She stopped, and then in a quieter tone said, "or do you want out, too?"

So I got early retirement. A generous pension. I lay around my apartment for weeks, seeing them intermittently. Sometimes together, sometimes apart. It was always pleasant...friendly faces, familiar bodies. Mac grew tan and returned bursting with tales of action and conquest down south. Li Ann practiced her Directorial dominatrix routine, so that she could write off the time in the manner of her predecessor, but we always ended up on the floor. Laughing.

I told myself I was just trying to figure out my next step. I considered buying the diner down the street. Recruiting waitresses from the local women's' shelter, providing child care and college scholarships. Really doing something to help the community that didn't involve gunfire and mayhem. I was kidding myself. I was waiting for my last assignment from Lucy. I was waiting for the phone to ring. When the call finally came, I knew who it was even before I picked up, and as I heard her cultivated tones and time collapsed in on itself, I remember thinking that the problem with the past is that there's always more where that came from.

(San Francisco)
Monica:

"You seem so sad," she said. "I just want to know you." She cradled my face between her hands and kissed me gently. I sighed and opened my mouth to her and let my fingers run over her collarbone. She pulled back. "We're drawing attention. Are you staying here?"

The swift alchemy in her manner change was jolting. I had the sense of being underwater, and rising too fast. Since when was my life a porn film? At that moment, I didn't care. I pulled her into the polished bronze elevator. Her mouth was soft on mine, smearing reddish lipstick. I felt a rushing in my chest. My legs began to buckle. At the door to my room I dropped the key card twice as her hands roamed over my back.

I got the door shut somehow and backed her against it, grasping her wrists, trying to recover my senses.

"This is crazy. We should stop."

"Mmm. Yes. Immediately," she answered. I was using my thigh to hold her back and she ground against it, impossibly hot.

"I don't know you. You could be anybody."

"That's right." She freed one hand with a quick motion and pulled me into another liquid kiss, fingers caressing the back of my neck in circles. It almost hurt to break away from her.

"How do I know you're not a criminal, dragging me up here for some nefarious purpose?" I turned my head so that her lips fell along my jaw bone. She kissed her way up to my ear, insistent. Inflaming.

My nerve endings were firing wildly and she whispered, "You don't."

Then I had to press my mouth over the silk of her blouse, feeling the fluttering of her heart as I found a nipple with my teeth. I had been trying so hard to forget, but I couldn't keep the edges from peeling back inside me, slicing through skin and bone. I rested my head on her shoulder. "How do I know you're not planning to do something terrible to me right here, tonight?"

Her voice came low. Luxurious. "Shall I?"

"Please do."

The pressure of her form against my own became too much. She was going to kill me after all. Dizzy with arousal, I wanted to ask her what she liked, but I had forgotten how to talk. Silently, I urged her to the bed. She lay back with her legs dangling over the edge, and I knelt, found the zipper of her skirt. All beige. Beige skirt, sheer beige stockings, beige shoes. I stripped off the shoes and stockings, leaving them in a heap beside the skirt.

She had incredible legs, smooth and pale, waxed. I kissed the insides of her thighs, running my tongue over the hairless folds of her sex. This brought an immediate response from her, a sharp intake of breath. I made a hard point with the tip of my tongue and rubbed it across her clit. She swelled under my tongue, and as she neared climax, she rocked, side to side. I sucked at her until the tremors in her body stopped and she pulled at me.

"Come here."

"Oh yeah, my name is Monica." I crawled up on the bed beside her and kissed her, and she pushed me onto my back.

"You're wearing too many clothes, Monica." She straddled me and began working the buttons of my blouse.

It isn't that I don't love men. Men like John Doggett, the proverbial white knight. Good men. Men, women...to love one you have to love them all a little bit. Sometimes I think that, given time and resources, you could love everyone in this world who is good and just. I don't cast love spells like Mama, but I have this probably unhealthy fuck-it-all-better approach to pain management. I lay on my back, waiting for my heart to resume its normal beat, still throbbing. My back stung with sharp cuts from her French manicured nails.

I passed the cigarette to her. "Tell me about him."

"Who?" She asked.

"The guy you're trying to forget. It isn't working, you know. He's sitting here on the bed beside us...or might as well be. So, go ahead and talk about it, you'll feel better. It's okay, I've been a depressed straight girl magnet my whole life. I'm a good sport, you can tell me anything."

She passed the cigarette back. "It isn't that simple."

"Oh. Now I get it. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I picked up Marita's arm, pretending to inspect it.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for the tattoo."

"What?" The planes of her face smoothed out, tranquil expression deliberate. There was a sudden, cold wariness beneath the soft fantasy surface.

"You know, the one that says Fag Hag in big purple letters."

She smiled and it was beautiful. Some people do not appreciate my bluntness.

"Perceptive, but not for the reasons you think. He is obsessed with a man though. A man who died recently."

"What are you doing here then?"

"Hedging my bets probably." She turned her head away. I took one last long drag and pressed the butt in the ashtray on the nightstand.

"I've been there."

She rose and began pulling on her clothes. I wanted to hold her again, to feel her arms and legs wrapped around me, to chase away the night with her. Maybe she preferred to sleep alone. She began to walk towards the door, then turned back to face me.

"I have this recurring dream," she said. "I'm standing at the edge of the Black Sea, in Varna, and a man I don't know comes to me in a great ship with crimson sails. Get in, he says, and you will be prosperous and never suffer again. I want to go with him, but somehow I can't, and the tides carry him away. Then Alex comes to me in a leaking rowboat, and he says, get in and you will regret it. In fact, you will probably die and it will take eons and it will hurt. And you know, I get in that boat every damned time."

She chuckled, a tortured sound that I didn't know how to answer. She turned back to me, and said lightly, "Come with me up the coast tomorrow?"

I waited beside the doorman, awkward, not really expecting her to show. When she did, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or swoon. The roadster was an unlikely shade of sky blue, top down. Italian. Fast. Her buttery white leather jacket matched the interior. I remembered to breathe.

"Aw...damn. Thank you God. Goddess. Whatever."

The corner of her mouth twitched at my reaction. She handed me a pair of sunglasses. Great. What I needed was another shower. A cold one. Even behind the darkened lenses, the bright optimism of that morning blinded me. We rode past Easter egg houses, past old men playing bocce ball in the park, over the bridge, following the highway to the sea. The wind roared in my ears, and as she drove, I caught her occasional side-glance. There was nothing to say. Nothing worthy of breaking the perfection of riding in that sunlight and watching the wind work loose strands of her hair from its tortoise-shell clip. We passed between redwood and eucalyptus trees, whipping around curves, tires screeching. When the needle crossed the 100-mph mark, I closed my eyes.

Lack of evidence never justifies a conclusion, but we would have to drop the pretense soon. Cliffs are not sexy.

"Marita, who is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"The car following us. Your mystery man?" She sped up again and panic tightened in my throat. "Marita, we can end this. We can get a restraining order easily. It didn't come up earlier, but I'm a federal-"

"I know who you are, Agent Reyes."

"Uh...oh." I would have to consider the implications of that later. I went for my handbag. My badge and cell phone. My weapon. I hit the cell pre-set for the New Orleans office. A courteous recording informed me that my account was no longer in service. What the hell?

"He will have gone through the preliminaries by now, Agent Reyes. Erasing you. Isolating you. Your friends and family aren't dead yet, but your credit and bank accounts, your possessions and affiliations, they're mostly gone by now."

"Don't you think that's a little paranoid, Marita?"

"Paranoid is just another word for longevity. In another six hours, you will have vanished entirely. I am sorry. Unfortunately for both of us, it isn't me he wants, it's you. Ready to jump?"

"What?"

"I have to crash the car. Alex will know better, he taught me the trick himself, but his colleagues will be diverted for a while. It's always better to avoid them if possible. At the count of three, I'm going to put on the emergency brake. Try to go out at an angle and don't forget to tuck your chin and roll on impact-ok? One-"

"Marita!"

"Two..." She unbuckled her seatbelt and then reached over and unbuckled mine. Her manner was hard, matter of fact. She could have been discussing an order of office supplies.

Fuck.

The car began to skid.

"Three."

Nothing was broken and I had blackberry brambles to thank for that, but I didn't want to move. Everything hurt.

"Agent Reyes...Monica?"

"You are *so* under arrest."

"Are you injured?"

"Yes. Get away from me."

"We need to get moving. Come on."

"You have the right to remain silent...where's the car?"

"Down on the rocks. Come on, we can be seen here."

"I don't think so."

She leaned down and said, "If you want to retain any room for negotiation at all, shut up and follow me." I shrunk from that coldness, dazed and stung by the abrupt shift. Her hand closed over my arm, urgent. I caught a flash of her again from the night before, taut body yielding to me, mysterious. Sensuous.

"Marita?" She swallowed, pain flooded into her features like a beam of light, distorting her expression. Only gradually did she go blank again, calm and beautiful and distant.

"Marita?" I said again. Instead of answering, she released me and began making her way down the slope. I should have climbed back up to the road. Found help. But I followed her.

In a more mundane context I would have loved that beach house, its rough-hewn wood beams, the stone fireplace, the canopied beds and the feather quilts. I gulped my sherry, watching the mist float over the beach. Beads of it had collected in her hair like silver pearls after our hike. She had begun interpreting the events of the past few hours and how they related to John's case. The dead agent in Montana had made some unusual enemies and allies. Somehow, after I had cooled down, I felt worse for her than for me.

"This cloak and dagger thing, you can't just get out, Marita?"

"There is no out."

"And it never gets easier?"

"No. It never gets easier." She seemed so tired, a scorched shell on the inside. I wanted to reach out to her, to brush her hair out of her face with my hands, but I didn't dare.

"At least tell me the good parts."

"Alex is a mercurial man, unfaithful, violent, manipulative. He uses people."

"I said the good parts."

"Those are the good parts."

Leave it to me to get seduced by the inamorata of an unbalanced black ops man.

"And he thinks I'm Jeremiah Smith? Or that Smith is impersonating me?"

"Not anymore. I determined you were Monica Reyes and not Jeremiah Smith last night. I told him as much this morning, but in the mean time he found out about your mother."

"What about my mother? My mother was a disreputable old alcoholic."

"And she was a respected vaudun priestess. Look, Alex gets kind of crazy sometimes. Somehow he's gotten it into his head that you could-"

"No."

The ceiling swam around me, spinning to meet the floor. So that was what they wanted. Funny in any other context. "I don't do that, Marita. That stuff my mother did was mostly fraud anyway. Even if I could, I wouldn't, it affects both medium and spirit irreversibly. I don't care what Alex wants, he didn't have to watch that poor woman screaming for her partner!"

"Actually, he did, and it's part of the reason he's so intent on somehow...I don't know. I won't let him force you; we have enough blood on our hands. The irony is, he will think I have betrayed him, but everything I have done has been to keep him as clean as possible. Spiritually speaking."

Damn. She loved him. I crushed my fourth cigarette into a chipped Waterford crystal ashtray. The gum was in my purse. In the car. Fish food now. He used people, hurt people, and she loved him. And I had fallen for her. The thing reeked of screwball comedy. Or Greek tragedy.

"You're his Jiminy Cricket. So what do we do? Keep running? Hope he doesn't catch up and attempt to force some kind of séance at gunpoint? What will he do when nothing happens? What would he do if something did happen, if the ghost of Fox Mulder possessed me and beat the shit out of him? Look, this is California, surely we can find some sort of conflict resolution consultant..."

"I already called one."

"You mean you called someone bigger and badder than Alex to *persuade* him not to put a bullet in my head when I refuse his request?"

"Not exactly. I wouldn't allow anyone to harm him if I could help it. The key to dealing with Alex's various fixations is distraction. Years ago, I found the perfect distraction and managed to keep it hidden. Held it back like the ace you play only when you have to."

Marita did not look as smug or proud as someone who had found the perfect solution to a difficult problem should look. Her eyelids had dropped to half-mast. As the sky darkened, she chewed her lower lip. She looked guilty as hell.

"Couldn't you please elaborate, Marita? I need to have some idea of what to expect. I think you owe me that much." I crawled back into official business mode as fast as sanity would allow.

"His name is Victor Mansfield," she said. "You'll understand when you see him."

Victor:

I hate California. The veggie burgers at the drive-through. The self-actualized yuppies in their Saabs and Beemers.

She had to have known I would figure it out, and she had trusted that I would keep my mouth shut. For her. Until she needed me. Her Alex had finally gone out of control and I was supposed to fix it. Non-fatally. Show up and play bait and switch. Humiliating, but there I was, crammed into an economy rental, crawling down Highway One towards Bodega, riding to the rescue. Pathetic.

The mailbox at the end of the driveway was inscribed, M. Daniels. Ha. Marauding sea gulls would have been an improvement. Lucy had left me quite an inheritance, a safe full of documentation on Marita Kendall. Daniels. Covarrubias. She was at least a triple; spent a lot of time in ugly places, doing ugly things. She spent a lot of time with someone named Alex Krycek.

I knew my target immediately. Even in the twilight. Even at a distance. Had to be him, he was wearing my skin. The reports had prepared me somewhat. No solid explanations to how or why, of course. Like so much that came from Lucy, it just *was*.

He hadn't known. From the way his hand shook as he sighted down his arm at me, his back to the door. No one bothered to brief him. Poor asshole. Then again, Marita had called me in as damage control for him. Fuck sympathy. I understood why she did it though, even as I pointed my own gun carefully between his eyebrows. It was disturbing.

Behind him, Marita opened the door. It took a conscious effort not to look at her too long. Not to register shock. The years had taken a toll on her, or maybe it was just the night. I was glad Lucy's reports had been so vague, I didn't want to know.

"Miss me much, lyubov maya?" His jaw barely moved as he spoke.

"Alex, I-"

"You said Smith wasn't here."

"That isn't Smith. But he's human." Nice of her to remember.

"Nice timing, Marita. Care to go into detail?"

"If you put the gun down." She spoke slowly, as if he were a young child.

"Sorry. I don't have that much time." His fingers twitched on the trigger.

"Alex, the technology was available, you know that. I didn't tell you because...oh damn it, he was safe..."

"He was safe from me, you mean- never mind," he shook his head, "it's irrelevant now. Let me in."

She pushed the door open wider and he backed in.

He didn't really look so much like me. An inch, maybe and inch and a half shorter. Wiry, more compact. He held himself as if constantly aware of his own balance. I know cleaners. Never could relate. It wasn't the killing; it was killing someone who wouldn't kill you first if they could. That kind of precise distance. I looked at Alex Krycek and saw a guy that could do that. Squeeze the trigger and walk away and sleep just fine at night.

I looked at Marita, and saw that she would stand by him until the awful end. The dark woman beside Marita paled as he brushed past her, and I wondered how she had been drawn into their vortex, if she too had dropped everything for a satin plea over a phone line. His semi-auto probably held a modified clip, eighteen bullets. I had to buy time. Distract him. Do the job and go home.

"What is it you want, Alex? Why are we here?" I asked.

"Agent Reyes is going to do me a favor."

Agent Reyes. That explained the woman's relative composure. Marita hadn't mentioned that part. Reyes swallowed and, strangely enough, smiled. She must have been terrified, but she contained it behind walls of careful construction.

"You kidnapped a federal agent, Marita?" I asked. I had hated being her doomsday weapon. I had wanted to sit Marita down and make long speeches on how angry I was with her for doing what she had done. The anger drained away. I wasn't sure if she had diplomatic immunity in this situation or not. Maybe we would live long enough to find out.

"I can't do what you want, Alex. Have some compassion, the man is dead. Leave him in peace," Reyes said, her voice small like a child's.

Alex faced her. "I just need to talk to him, ask him some things...I have to...it's not so much, is it?"

She looked like she might cry. "It's wrong. Unconscionable. The Invisible World sucks you in, and when you call the spirit, you bind it to you. It becomes trapped between planes. We don't have the right to do that to him!"

His humanity slid away, and in a blur of motion he had her. He pressed the barrel of the gun into her ribs. The situation was escalating.

"Reyes," I said, desperate, "I'm counting two guns in the room here, his and mine. If all he wants is some table rapping, don't you think you could just go with it? Play along? Hell, make it up if you have to!"

Monica:

The two men glided like dancers, circling each other, energy and grace waiting to explode into violence. I had lost my weapon at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, hadn't been ready when Alex grabbed me. His hand was hard on my arm, the creak of his leather jacket vaguely obscene. I let go of a breath, defeated. Marita was in trouble and I would help her if I could. Simple. Complicated. My own trouble seemed secondary. In a surge of adrenaline clarity, I knew I would do it. Not because Alex was terrorizing me, but because he was broken and she needed him whole and I could do it. I would call the Guede, the spirit of Fox Mulder. Talk to it. Let it talk through me.

"Alex, I won't allow this!" Marita started towards him, hesitant.

"How badly do you want to die, lyubov maya?"

"It's okay, Marita. I'm going to do it."

"You can-"

"I know the ritual, that's all. I've only seen it done...never wanted to try."

Once, when I was about ten, I found a gris gris on Mama's altar in the attic. It was made from bone and black bird feathers, and when I held it in my hand, it seemed to grow and pulse. I held it with every hair on my body tingling, my heart thudding in my throat, until Mama found me and took it away. I release a breath, feeling it hiss between my teeth.

"I won't make any promises, Alex. I remember the divination rite- that's all-okay? I will try to petition the Loa. We will need something that belonged to Agent Mulder."

Alex pushed me against the table and reached into his jacket. He pressed the balled up cloth into my hand and I almost dropped it. Boxers. I'm usually not a squeamish woman, but god.

Marita flinched. It must have been an old pain...but still raw.

Alex must have been too young to have all those things I saw etched in his face. Regret. Sadness, cut wide and deep. It was a horrifically private thing to witness, lacking both accusation and explanation.

I recoiled from the damage they inflicted on one another, standing there, but even in conflict the seemed to draw something from each other, feed each other. The air almost sparked with overcharged ions. I was never a jealous lover, and I couldn't begrudge that adoration. That fierce light. What happens to us inside when we love that which is dark? Does it eat us? Destroy us? Heat spiked around them. Whatever hurt-games they played out, they belonged to each other. I didn't want to see anymore. Anything to make it stop.

"Did you also bring-" I began.

"In the car. Marita, will you bring the rest of the things?" She slipped from the room in absolute allegiance.

Victor asked, "Isn't there supposed to be a full moon or something?"

"No, that's strictly Hollywood, those graveyard extravaganzas...those deserted crossroads. Works just as well on the kitchen table...if it works at all."

I thought of Mama in her red shantung housecoat, the smell of chicory coffee and old blood in my nostrils...Mama saying, "You're over the line, girl, headed straight to hell."

"Right behind you, Mama," I whispered under my breath, and waited for Marita to return.

The chicken squawked and I swayed on my feet. "I just can't do this, Alex, I'm sorry." I was supposed to offer the sacrifice, the ebo, to Mama's gods: Eleggua, Obutala, Yemalla, Shango...except that I couldn't kill the poor chicken. Ridiculous. I was hardly vegetarian. Chicken Caesar salad was my favorite Tuesday lunch. But the creature was alive and warm and I was a hypocrite. Alex sighed, then picked up the bird and snapped its neck, calm, without hesitation. I shuddered, because I knew somehow it could have been my neck just as easily.

The rite seemed to progress well at first. I couldn't believe I remembered the words, couldn't believe the truth of the rolling power in my gut, Mama's daughter after all.

"What's wrong now?" Alex demanded sharply.

"It isn't going to work." Emotion swept over me. Confusion. Denial. Fox Mulder had been dead...but when I called the Guede, no one came. There was no spirit to come, because he wasn't dead. "Look." I pointed to the blood beading backwards over the cloth and herbs in the Pyrex bowl.

"We did everything right," Alex protested. "I read the texts..."

"I can't call dead that aren't dead."

"What?" I wondered if he would kill me. Kill us all. He seemed capable, black gloved hands held too stiffly at his sides.

"I don't know what else to tell you...I saw the body. Marita said you saw the body." I felt numb. If Alex decided to take my life, I probably wouldn't even notice.

His voice went raspy. "I've got to get back there."

Marita lingered only long enough to whisper, "Thank you," and followed him out into the night. Victor leaned back against the stove and watched her go, gun still clutched. I don't know what he thought he was going to do with it. He finally set it down on the table and massaged one hand with the other, tension draining out of him. His eyes were cool and gray, with swirling flecks of green. Soulful eyes, sympathetic eyes. She had called and he came to her, another white knight. I saw what she had done to him, how she used him. Monstrous.

My head was splitting.

Victor:

We collapsed together on the porch steps, exhausted beyond grasping at formalities.

"I have a friend who can fix your identity theft problem. She might ask you for some information in return...only because of me...the Alex thing...but her intentions are honorable. Data you give her will never hurt anyone."

She smiled, fatigued. Vulnerable. "Kinder, gentler treason?" Some of the color had returned to her cheeks.

"You'll get your life back, Agent Reyes."

"I don't know if I want it back."

"They'll need you for the investigation."

Monica seemed to hide behind the dark halo of her hair, bent forward, rubbing the back of her neck. Rather than push her, I closed my eyes, listening to the ocean. After a while, I got up, leaving her with her own thoughts long enough to rummage in the refrigerator.

She had not moved when I returned, and she accepted the beer I offered her without comment. After several long swigs, she rested her head against her knees, resigned.

"Alright, Victor Mansfield, whoever you are...this is what I know."