True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mae slipped the dressing gown on and walked into the bedroom, over wooden floorboards and a sandy-hued rug that felt like silk beneath the soles of her bathwater-pruned feet. Felix lay in in a ginger curl on the cushioned blue chair beside the desk, his narrow snout upon a beige throw pillow. He lifted his head, looked at her, and yawned before burrowing his nose head beneath the pillow.

  Mae pulled the towel from her hair, dropped it on the bedside table, and climbed into bed. She wished she could sleep or relax as easily as Felix, but she was no more relaxed than before having a warm bath. Sleep was not going to come. Her mind would not stop churning and whirling and thinking about sex shops, broken bodies, stinging tropical plants.

  Irritated, she got out of bed, put on the dressing gown, had a seat at the desk, pulled her tablet from her handbag. She began typing another journal entry, her fingers flying over the little screen as she recounted events, her reaction to them, her thoughts about them, setting out the who, what, and where in vivid etched-into-her-psyche detail that she would never forget because she had an excellent memory, an eye for every tiny detail.

  The journal had become more of a book, an adventure story of sorts, an implausible spy story with a dose of mystery and an unlikely romance between two middle-aged leads. It had become easier to write as a narrative, to step away from the reality that she had lived these experiences and think of them as something unreal enough to be fiction. She wrote and wrote, turning those memories into words, into an intense, sometimes lurid, bloody and violent tale that gave her a chill, the sort that made her shudder slightly and prickled her skin. The room grew cooler, a draft wafting over her bare feet and up her spine.

  “The dog has the right idea,” Kitt said.

  Mae turned with a small start. A breeze billowed rain and sheer curtain around him as he stepped inside, shut the skinny glass door, and shook off rainwater. “You think I’d be used to you suddenly showing up when you’re supposed to be someplace else—or dead. Good thing for you I’m not a screamer,” she said, closing the journal entry she’d send later, shutting the tablet’s cover.

  “You’re not glad to see me?” Raindrops sparkled on his cheeks. He took off his rain-speckled jacket, water droplets making the dark blue even darker, giving it a shake before he dropped it in a chair near the window.

  Mae moved to the bed and sat on the edge. Her hair, still in its French braid, had loosened even more, damp, dark blonde tendrils touched her shoulders. She tossed him the towel on the bedside table.

  Kitt patted his face and moved to stand in front of her, beside the Dutch Colonial-inspired bedside table, sooty marks on the towel.

  “Your shirt is dirty,’ she said.

  He looked at the grime on his sleeves and the dog hopped from a chair and wandered over to stretch up and plant two paws onto his thigh. Kitt gave the dog a scratch.

  “How did you get in here, climb across the balcony next door?”

  “Yes. You’re not happy to see me?”

  She scooted to the very edge of the mattress, setting herself closer to him, her feet on the floor. Then she leaned forward and rested her forehead against his abdomen. “Jaysus, you climbed over the balcony.”

  Absently, Kitt smoothed her messy, slightly damp braid. “It was the best way to bypass Llewelyn’s room.”

  “We’re five storeys up. You could have fallen.”

  “Yes,” he cast a glance over his shoulder, “right into the canal below.”

  “As if that makes a difference from this height,” she said and made a noise, a nasal huff of irritation.

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “No, I sound like your wife.” Softly, Kitt stroked her hair and looked about her room, His accommodation for the night was the sitting room sofa in Llewelyn’s suite. There were two queen beds in Mae’s room. The bed on the right lay untouched, the white coverlet smooth, pillows artfully arranged. The bed she sat upon had its linen folded back on one side, extra pillows and decorative throw cushions from the chair in the room’s corner lined up like a barricade, separating the bed into two tidy sections, leaving the bedclothes on the right side of the pillow fortification pristine, unrumpled.

  Dividing the bed was a curious custom Mae had developed when she slept alone in a large bed. For sixteen years she’d slept in a single bed, a habit that stretched back to when she’d lost her first husband. After Caspar had died in a multi-vehicle smash one foggy morning on the Autostrada outside Padua, Mae found sleeping alone in a double, queen, or king-sized bed a painful reminder of her loss. Kitt remembered the day that had changed. Last summer, when homicidal bankers and the Mafia had tried to kill her, they’d begun to share a bed; then, just before Christmas, she’d fallen back into her single bed habit because his remains had been found in a shipping container in Singapore. He’d been pronounced dead, and she faced another painful reminder of love lost.

  Love lost. Kitt had come to understand her reasoning about the bed. Love lost, love found, love…it was a strange thing to find flattering, but there was something gratifying, something immensely ego-stroking to know she hated sleeping without him—as much as he hated sleeping without her. Love. It was love, love alive, love present, love simple and necessary and entire. “I see you’ve made yourself a peapod to sleep in,” he chuckled.

  “Yes,” she said, not at all amused. “I’m ready to climb into my peapod, except you climbed over the balcony. What do you want?”

  He smiled softly, remorsefully. “I want to apologise about the girl.”

  Maw sniffed and shrugged. “You did ask for permission.”

  “I thought I’d be done by now, but the girl is sick, like Llewelyn. I suspect food poisoning. We all ate the same food, but the level of bacteria ingested varies person by person. I don’t feel queasy at all.”

  “You look like you feel queasy.”

  “Only because I climbed across a dirty balcony five storeys above a canal for you.”

  “I’d better notify the hotel manager food from the restaurant has made two people ill,” she said, still unamused, but made no effort to reach for the phone beside the bed. “How old is Ms Goedenacht anyway, twenty-two, twenty-three?”

  “Ah, there it is. You’re angry, and it’s justified. You know it means nothing, Mae, it was nothing, it’s the ac—”

  Mae waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, it’s all right.”

  “All right?”

  She shrugged. “I know you’re working. It’s part of your job. It’s all for queen and country. It’s whatever means necessary to gain a source’s trust and spies sleep with an asset to gather information an—”

  “I keep telling you, you read too many spy novels.”

  Her sudden, high-pitched and breathy laugh was full of resignation. “I knew what I was getting into. It’s all right.” She mashed her face into his stomach, shuddering with a sudden, noisy sob.

  He stared down at her, aghast. Love was never what he expected. She was never what he expected, which made him love her all the more, and he did love her, wildly, wholly, the way sappy songs and poetry and every worn-out cliché known to humankind exalted. His feelings for her were uproarious and profound, and his heart, the thing he’d once thought had been solidified into something diamond hard, damned him. Could she really believe that he’d go to bed with Tanja? Yes, yes, she could, and did, believe. Christ.

  Kitt exhaled harshly. “All right? It’s not all right. I know your previous husband was a polygamist and that might colour your thinking, and my history combined with that, well, my history is just that, history, not current practice.”

  “Current…p-practice?” She gasped for air, juddering, her shoulders shaking.

  He watched her shake and gasp. Wrong. This was wrong. All so Goddamned wrong in a multitude of ways, everything about this moment was off, and the fault was entirely his. He had misread her, had neglected to see what was really happening. Kitt swore under his breath. He’d become wrapped up in emo
tion. He’d been wrapped up in concern. He’d been thinking like a husband, which was a good, yet thoroughly horrifying thing because it made him overlook possibilities, miss cues, misread body language, and it made him look foolish, but foolishness was the only part of missing the small clues embedded in her body language that he didn’t mind. He was appropriately, and simultaneously, impressed and mortified with himself, but he was doubly impressed and mortified by her and how she’d fooled him. The bloody woman was playing him and doing a remarkable job. Mae wasn’t clutching at him and blubbing. She was laughing at him.

  He swore again, loudly this time, a long, drawn-out, harsh-sounding word hissing though his teeth that drew the dog’s attention. Felix hopped off the chair and came to sniff at his legs, jump up on the bed, and mess up all her carefully laid pillows, and then Kitt laughed.

  Mae’s head came away and she wiped tears of mirth from her eyes. “It’s farcical,” she sniffled and giggled, “pathetic, to watch a man flirt with a woman more than half his age.”

  He stepped back, her arms sliding away. “Farcical, is that how you saw me when you worked for me?”

  “You were my employer. It was never my place to judge you for your endless string of usually married young women,” she chuckled, hands in her lap.

  “For which you openly mocked me.”

  “I mocked you, but I never judged you.”

  “Because you saw me as farcical.”

  She touched the tip of her tongue to her top lip and cut her eyes to the ceiling. “Next time, I’ll excuse myself so I won’t have to watch the farce.”

  “I didn’t sleep with her, and there won’t be a next time.”

  “You mean there will be no next time until Llewelyn finds another way to extort me into working for The Consortium and minding our dog?” She glanced at Felix in a tiny pillow fortress.

  “This will never happen again. I’ll find a way.”

  “Whether you find a way or not, we both know you, and now I, will never be able to retire or walk away from this work. The positions are ours for life; it’s a different, strange sort of secret marriage, a different death us do part.”

  “Cynic.”

  “You’re the romantic one here.”

  “Hell or high water I will find a way.”

  She looked across to the desk for a moment, to where her iPad lay, and back at him. “What if I find a way? What if I have a way? Why is it up to you to find a way?”

  “Because I got you into this the day I rented your flat and you showed up at my door with Chelsea buns and then made me scrambled eggs. This will not happen again.”

  “Ah, memories.” She smiled. “So, Tanja’s quite an actor, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s very good. But so am I. So are you.”

  Mae tucked a lock of hair behind an ear. “I’ve found the key to keeping sane in this is to fake it, pretend everything is normal and just get on with it. Speaking of getting on with it, how did you get out of sleeping with her?”

  “I told her I had herpes.”

  Mae snorted. “And how did that go over”

  “She vomited on my shoes.”

  This time Mae laughed. “And what did you do?”

  “We had a little talk. I told her I’d get her some ice chips and an electrolyte drink, then I came here. She thought we were doing a little role playing, but realised otherwise after she got sick and I kept on asking questions. And I left no doubt that I was serious when I locked her in the bathroom.”

  “Why did you lock her in the bathroom?”

  “It was kinder option than tying her to the toilet and threatening to give her a thump.”

  “I would have given her a thump.”

  “Yes, I know you would have. I’m far too tender-hearted these days to smack someone about. You, on the other hand, would punch a kitten.” Kitt slid his hand into his right pocket, feeling for the wedding band mixed in with the coins. “You were right. Tanja’s blackmailing Vlaming. He’s been raiding his Aunt Polly’s jewellery, having pieces authenticated, then replacing the gems with manufactured stones, and selling the genuine. Mae,” he took his hand from his pocket, “Tanja mentioned the name Aurelio Martini.”

  “Aurelio Martini? The dead banker from last summer in Sicily, the man who half drowned you in a tank with a fish named Shirley Bassey?”

  “Yes. Apparently, he and Vlaming’s Uncle Peter, his Aunt Polly’s husband, were old friends, served as board members for the UN Credit Union.”

  Mae shook her head in disbelief. “Giacomo Negroni and Ruby Bleuville, what does this have to do with them?”

  “That’s not quite clear yet. Tanja’s been communicating with a man downstairs in the bar. His name’s Bianco. I think he may have been in the vegetable delivery van we saw in front of Erotica. I read through all the messages they sent each other—all in Italian with, I’m guessing, a little Sicilian tossed in, but it was something about Negroni, and someone named Picciridda. Tanja planned on taking me to the country greenhouse and seeing Vlaming later.”

  “What does this have to do with the sex shop?

  “We didn’t get very far into those intricacies.”

  “Then you need to get back to her then and find out. Picciridda, by the way, is Sicilian for little girl.”

  “Yes, I’ll get back to Tanja,” he said, and didn’t move. “Hell or high water, Mae, I will find a way. This will not happen again.”

  “All right. Find a way.” She grabbed the flanks of his shirt, pulled him forward, set her chin into his diaphragm and looked up at him, her eyes positively aglow with warmth. “But first, do what you’ve come here to do, Hamish. Say goodnight and feck off.”

  His hand came out of his pocket and Kitt crouched slightly, cupping her face as he kissed her slowly, thoroughly, savouring the feel of her mouth, the taste of her mixed with toothpaste and the same lavender and verbena bath gel she’d tried to use in hospital a day ago. Had that only been yesterday? He drew away. “Good night, my love.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “That was heaven.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “I was trying to be romantic.”

  “With the dog watching us,” he cut his eyes to Felix half-hidden by a nest of pillows, “and Llewelyn on the other side of that door?”

  “Yes,” she slid her calves about him, locked her ankles around his arse, and lay back on the bed, drawing him forward, his kneecaps hitting the edge of the mattress, “he’s right out there in the sitting room—or puking in his bathroom.” She unlocked her legs, slipped them down until he stood between her thighs.

  “My love,” he said gently, “we have no time for this.”

  Her you-are-so-full-of-shite expression appeared. “All spies have time for this. There’s always a scene where the spy hero beds the heroine who sighs, ‘Oh, hero’s name’. It’s always after a car chase, a fight on a moving train, or being half-drowned in a tank with a shark or a fish named after singing Dames of the British Empire. The lull in the action calls for it.”

  “And you think this is a lull in the action?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m the hero?”

  “A role I know you like enormously.”

  “You watch too many spy films.”

  “You’re right. I do. Go tend to Tanja Goedenacht. Maybe she’d like more of Llewelyn’s tea. The ginger in it may soothe her stomach.” Mae drew up her knees, tucking the dressing gown to preserve her modesty.

  Kitt spat out a filthy word.

  Mae laughed, shaking her head. “Stop looking and start thinking.”

  “I am thinking.” Kitt leaned over her and untied the sash of her dressing gown, flipping the nubby fabric aside, pulling apart the lapels, exposing her nakedness, smiling, pleased with himself, pleased that she wasn’t wearing those ghastly big cotton knickers she favoured. “It’s like unwrapping a Christmas present when I was a podgy little boy.” His hands were filthy from climbing, but he ran roughened fingertips from her lips, down her
chin and throat, between her breasts, over her abdomen and navel and watched her shiver.

  “Did you receive many naked women as Christmas presents when you were a fat little boy?”

  “There was the year Simon gave me a stack of girlie magazines.”

  “For educational purposes?”

  “Of course.”

  “And what did your sister give you that year?”

  “A fat lip. And why are we talking about Kate?”

  “Would you rather talk about Charmaine and Miles?”

  “The mention of my parents sucks the sexiness right out of this moment.”

  “My parents had children late in life. I was nineteen when my father died, twenty when my mother died. Sometimes I miss having a mother. My friend Fiorella is the closest thing I have to a mother.”

  “Mentioning Fiorella also dampens the mood—and she cheats at Monopoly.”

  “I’m a little envious.”

  “Of Fiorella’s Monopoly cheating skills?”

  “No, that you still have your parents, that I want to know about them so I can know you better. You can’t blame me for being curious about every facet of you.”

  “As long as you stay curious about me and my…facet.”

  “That’s dreadful,” she said, and he looked down at her, at pale-pinkish bare flesh, at the puckered scar a bullet had made in her shoulder, at the slight scar at the left corner of her lip where she’d had stitches after being mugged, at tiny reddish splash-burns made by chemicals exploding from an airbag, at a purplish bruise and blue stitches half-hidden by her hairline, at green-flecked hazel eyes. And at once he was overwhelmed by the bottomless depth of a singular emotion, at a loss for words until she laughed, and then he stood still, so still, looking at her. “Christ, I love you,” he said.

  “Yes, isn’t it glorious?” She sat up, scooted to the edge of the mattress and pulled the front of his shirt from his trousers, undoing the line of buttons until she’d reached the ones already unbuttoned at the top of the pale blue fabric. She moved on to his belt and the waistband, tugged trousers and boxer briefs down his thighs, leaning forward to kiss his chest, to kiss the burn mark a cattle prod had left at his waist, setting her chin into his breastbone, looking up at him, dressing gown slipping off one shoulder.