by James Grady
Why choose a lid to be over you?
Sasha drove onto the top parking lot. No other cars were parked there.
He drove into a yellow-striped parking space against a high concrete wall facing the Capitol Dome. From behind his steering wheel, over that wall, he could see the whole dome through the windshield of his Jeep that yearned for blizzards, but when he got out—when he was just a man standing on the cement—the concrete suicide prevention wall only let him see the dome’s curved white marble top beneath the feet of a bronze green, armor-clad, sword-carrying woman named Freedom.
Sasha took the parking ticket with him on the off-chance he’d find some validation.
Put on his black leather cowboy hat.
Took nearly half a minute to walk across the gray concrete parking lot.
Rode the first escalator down.
Rode the second down.
Rode the third down and halfway through that ride, turned to look back over his left shoulder, out through a gap of the parking structure’s pancake levels:
Rows of empty parked trains on dozens of tracks.
Bottom of that third escalator was the Alternate Transport level, where you could catch a whiff of urine bus to Manhattan. Sasha saw backpack-heavy young people and white-haired citizens who he might have gone to high school with in Anywhere, America, except he didn’t.
He walked the length of the bus level to yet another going down escalator, then to a set of motionless concrete steps leading down into Union Station. He pushed through glass doors and was there, in the Station on the red-tiled platform above the main floor with its waiting areas for passengers hoping to catch a train to where they prayed to go.
Saturday is a slow day for train travel out of Union Station, a day when you’re expected to already be there, wherever that is, having left on Friday for Sunday’s or even dawn Monday’s return so you had most of the weekend where you were going to be.
Workweek days at Union Station meant cramped waiting areas and long lines eager for the “ATTENTION PLEASE—NOW BOARDING” loudspeaker announcements to become true. Some students, families, senior citizens, tourists, but the workweek DC/New York trains mainly carry suit-and-tie apparatchiks shuttling between Castle Corridors and Wall Street.
Sasha rode one last escalator down to the station’s main floor.
A lone gray-blue pigeon flapped past his face and swooped over the shuffling crowds.
You’re trapped inside a cavern that your fellow creatures keep leaving, thought Sasha. At least in here, food is dropped on the floor and predators have but two legs and zero wings.
Unless there truly are angels among us.
He walked away from the wall cubicles of coffee sellers—no more, thank you. Past the cards and spearmint gum and candy plus magazines and books and newspapers shop. Past the hole in the wall for what used to be called donuts but now had fancier names borrowed from the French and Cajuns. Past a hamburger shop with billions and billions sold.
Sasha walked past a trio of blue-uniformed, ballistic-vested cops, one holding the leash of a bomb sniffing dog: none of them paid the ruddy-skinned old man wearing a black cowboy hat any mind. He had no threat profile as he strode past with the weird sway he’d never healed from after they broke both his legs as a joke to remind him he couldn’t even escape into the white howling wind outside the prison housing his windowless, fingernails-scarred cinderblock cell with its smooth door of black steel.
A curved dome, gray stone and gold inlaid ceiling five stories tall, caps the vast main hall of Union Station that along its walls hosts restaurants and shops for everything from suitcases to ballpoint pens to sports jackets you hadn’t spilled food on when the train wobbled and the slinky yet tasteful little black dress for tonight’s Congressional reception that you forgot to pack.
On second floor landings and balconies surrounding the main hall stand an army of thirty-six Beaux-Arts, larger than life stone statues of Roman centurions—helmets, armor, swords, and posed in front of them, shields. These gray stone sentinels gaze down on the vast main hall where the black and white tiled floor provides dark mahogany wood benches for the weary, the waiting, the watching. On a round bench sitting all by himself, Sasha spotted a younger but still silver-haired man wearing a black leather jacket that complimented Sasha’s cowboy hat.
Sasha sat down next to the black leather jacket man.
Side by side.
Shoulder to shoulder.
Staring out to the world passing by them.
Or is it “passing them by”? wondered Sasha.
The man in the black leather jacket said: “Howdy, Cowboy.”
They laughed.
Kept each other in their peripheral vision as they watched the world swirl.
“Is that what you call me—cowboy?”
“Hell, I never know what to call you. Volkov, your last name—”
“Jesse, he like many in Moscow, he liked to call me Volk. Means wolf.”
“Oh, great! Bad enough you’re Alexander but your friends call you Sasha and your family name is both Volkov and wolf,” said the black leather jacket man. “What bugs me about Russian novels is how everybody’s got at least two names.”
“We can’t help it if you Americans limit yourselves.” The Russian smiled. “Besides, you are a man with two names. You’ve just forgotten one of them.”
“Wish I could.”
“The Relocation Therapists urged me to listen to American music so I could learn your English better. I used the computer to search for songs about spies. Some Johnny Rivers—”
“He had two names, too,” said Condor. “A long, easy to forget Italian family name.”
“He threw away his family name so he could be famous?”
“No,” said Condor. “So he could be heard. So people would remember him, his songs.”
“Ah,” said Sasha. “To be heard, yes, what we all want—as long as it doesn’t get us locked up in prison. Or maybe especially if it does.
“The Johnny Rivers song,” he continued, circling the conversation as old men do, “Secret Agent Man—as if women aren’t on the pavements, too. You know that. Know they are so much more than sparrows. One might even head your CIA someday. The song says people like us, you and me—women, too, yes? Says that they—we all know some they, yes?—song says they give us numbers, take our names.”
They sat side by side in silence, staring out at the world.
Until the Russian said: “So … I am cowboy?”
They chuckled.
“Sure,” said the silver-haired American, “why the fuck not, Cowboy.”
“Why the fuck are we here, Condor?”
Struggling past them came a mother pulling a giant red roller bag piled high with three smaller suitcases, one bag dangling a battered and chewed cloth brown monkey. Mom made her little girl and little boy hold tight to the red roller bag, and nobody would accuse them of easing the weight Mom rolled toward the station door.
After the family had passed, Condor said: “Aren’t we friends anymore?”
“Friends, yes, even though what you did for Jesse and me was insane.”
“You were jammed. I was in town.”
“Paris, oui, but you set the rooftop door to our escape on fire.”
“It was locked. You two were trapped inside that apartment building. GRU goons surrounding the place to bust or bullet you, the unknown mole in the KGB and his CIA handler.”
“Because of fucking right in your CIA Ames. Fucking traitor.”
“Happens,” said Condor. “Look at you.”
“Yes, but I was yours.”
“Still are. That’s why I’m here.”
“Ahh,” said Sasha. “But I thought you weren’t CIA.”
“You told them no,” said Condor.
They sat on a round wooden bench
in the vast main hall of DC’s Union Station.
Two men, one wearing a black cowboy hat, one in a black leather bomber jacket.
Both invisible to all the innocent eyes around them. They were just old men.
Sasha said: “How much did you pay him?”
Condor frowned: “Who?”
“The shopkeeper with the googly eyes on Passage del la Main d’or. We rush in on him from his alley fire escape and you start babbling your terrible French—”
“Hey!”
“—pushing a wad of francs into his hand.” Sasha shook his head: “Ah, francs. I loved the sense of them back then in 1984.”
“Never thought you’d call the Soviet Union era the good old days.”
“Not good days for Mother Russia, but for other places, not so bad.”
Condor said: “We’re here about today.”
“You still haven’t told me,” said Sasha.
“What?”
“How much you paid that shopkeeper. How many francs you shoved into his hand.”
“Enough.”
“What brilliant madness you are,” Sasha told the American sitting beside him. “Out of nowhere, three men burst into the back of his shop. We didn’t even know what it was, but you see, you saw. You stuff him full of francs. And he, he himself paints us up, white faces and that horrible lipstick. Darker red than blood. He even finds black pants that mostly fit, white and black striped shirts—mine was too tight, my muscles.”
“Sure. Your muscles.”
“Black berets, like we are commandos, mais no: you made us into fucking mimes.”
“Got us out of there.”
“But you make us do the ridiculous! The mimes! Fire engines—wee—ooo, wee-ooo.”
“The GRU goons busted into the burning safe house. Found out you were gone.”
“Wee-ooo, wee-ooo.” The black cowboy hat shook from side to side. “Goons everywhere. We can’t run even if the goons can’t tell who we are because we’re mimes. Remember that brick wall by the outdoor café? We see two of those French policemen—”
“Gendarmes.”
“And you put your white-gloved hands straight out, fall against the brick wall like you’ve been ordered to be searched by the cops! Jesse, he knew, he falls in line right beside you, hands on the wall and what was I supposed to do?”
“You knew what to do.” Condor smiled. “I wanted to yell, ‘Up against the wall, motherfucker!’ But, you know: my terrible French. English would have blown our cover.”
“We were mimes! We could not talk! Three mimes, spread eagled against the bricks. The streets full of GRU goons looking for us.”
“Those two the CIA got pictures of later, they stalked right behind us, remember?”
“You peel off the wall. Do the mime waving the hands shuffle behind Jesse and me. Then go up against the wall, motherfucker a-gain! Right beside me. Jesse, he knows to do it next, and I’m number three. All the way down the cobblestone street, we go like that. Jesse called it leapfrogging. The corner and three mimes turn and go down the next street.”
Sasha shook his black cowboy hat. “That taxi driver didn’t want to be in our circus.”
“But he still took the last of my francs. Got us to the safe house.”
“You left us there. With phone for CIA scoop up team to get Jesse safe. Get me to where trusted KGB officer is supposed to be so I can still be your spy. Until.”
“Wasn’t my Op. I was just in town. You were in a jam.”
“Now tell me,” said Sasha. “Last year—week after Jesse’s funeral. You show up unannounced. Nobody else. We drink the good Scotch you brought, but you only have one.”
“The rest belonged to you and him.”
“I drink it still. One small sip on nights when.”
Sasha said: “You never told me what happened when you left us. Tell me now.”
“Not your Op.”
“Is my life. Names or numbers, is what we’ve got. My life. I paid for it. Tell me.”
Condor said: “I got lost.”
“What?”
“I’m a mime in the streets of Paris with terrible French and no more francs. And I’m lost. And it’s getting dark.”
Condor shook his head.
“Took me almost an hour of bad miming to earn enough to ride the subway. Cars packed with people leaving work, museums. To cafés to meet people they love. Homes where children laugh. Trains whoosh through tunnels under the city. I’m a mime sitting alone in a subway car. And I can’t say anything. Ask anybody for directions. Because I’m a deep cover spy and don’t dare cause a scene. Because I’m a mime. Because my French is terrible and when they hear that, they’ll think I’m an American making fun of their culture.
“Must have spent an hour crisscrossing Paris underground, hoping to realize I’m in a station I know with time to jump off the train.”
“How?” said Sasha.
“Not how,” said Condor. “Her.”
A fashionably dressed, gray bouffant hair, stout but shapely woman wearing sturdy low heels that still gave that certain sway clicked her way over Union Station’s black andwhite tiles, strode past a wooden bench where two men from her (real) age demographic sat, but a glance told her they were too much trouble and too damaged to be on any train she wanted to ride. She had no more time to waste on obvious disasters.
“Paris subway. I’m lost and alone and trapped as a fucking mime. Pull into an underground station. Doors ding. People get off …
“Et voila: she pops into the car. The perfect woman mime. Wild eyes and white glove gestures. That dark red lipstick we’re wearing, hers is not even smeared. Her white face makeup is smooth, black beret on her chestnut hair.”
Sasha said: “Chest-nut?”
“Dark brown, but richer.
“She spots me. Makes her eyes go wide. Claps her white gloves to her face.
“What I could I do? I clap my hands to my cheeks.
“The subway doors close. The train surges forward. She bats her eyes. Swirls her head to look away so everyone sees she’s totally watching me.
“The other passengers on the subway love it—or at least give us a grudging humph. Figure it’s our act. Two lost souls meeting on a train beneath the heart of the city.
“She swirls around a subway pole. I swoop up—”
“You?” said Sasha with a cock of his black cowboy hat. “Swooping?”
“Hey! You’d just run across the rooftops of Paris with me and Jesse. Back then, I was in my thirties. Swooping happened.
“My big move? I glide past her in the subway car aisle. Sidle up to an older—Jesus, remember when people in their fifties were older? Older woman, bouquet of flowers in her hand. I do an elaborate feint so the crowd sees. Pluck a flower from the bouquet like I’m stealing it.”
“You were stealing it.”
“Yeah, but for … for art. For love. Or at least love’s pantomime.
“I swoop, motherfucker, I sway. I sidle up to where she’s batting her black makeup eyes pretending to pretend she’s not enthralled. Present the flower.
“She takes it. Oh so shy eyes-batting thrilled. Trails the flower over my chest. Over my heart. Swoops back to bouquet lady. Like a fencer, slips that flower back into the bouquet. Doesn’t knock off a petal. Mimes merci. Flutters down the aisle backwards toward me—
“—whirls around and suddenly, she’s the vixen mime. Slow stalking. Sly smiling. One. Long. Leg. Step. After. Another. She’s at the pole where I’m holding on …
“The subway pulls into a station. The doors ding open.
“Her white gloves beckon me as she walks backwards off the train. I’m swaying and coming with her like a lucky fish on a line.
“Over the platform. Through the crowd. Riding the up escalator. Never breaking character. Getting
it—getting each other. Knowing what the other person means and making what you mean into motion. Creating the script. She flirts. I glide closer. She turns away coy. Turns back come on. Dances like she’s in a ballet.
“On the sidewalk. A Paris night. There’s the Eiffel Tower. A curved bridge over the Seine. People are out strolling and it’s like they’d expected us. Mimes. Two people hiding behind white makeup, caught up in their own drama for you to see or walk on by.
“We do the mime flutter. The chase. The come-together. Standing there. Smiling for real under our makeup. She is who she is and she’s who she wants to be. Thirty-something. Like me. She’s seen and been and done and kept going. Like me. And we haven’t, we don’t touch.
“She does this grand gesture to a sidewalk café. Strings of colored lights and clatters. Soft yellow glow. Outdoor tables. Her brow furrows. She smiles the ask.
“And I realize—oh man do I realize—I’m starving.”
Sasha smiled. “Starving, yes? Not just hungry.”
Condor said: “I frown. Sad. Shrug. Pull out the empty pockets of my black pants.
“Her white gloves press her cheeks in shock. She shakes her finger at me, scolding—then turns it into a beckoning come with me.
“Mime. The whole time we mime. The maître de. Unflappable. Works with our miming like of course, why not. Seats us. The waiter shows up. Nobody bats an eye. The mime who saved me takes a menu. Shows it to me—like I can read French! I shrug with both my white gloves up and out—but smile. She points to this, points to that. A carafe of red wine. The waiter pours. We dramatically toast. Drink.
“We left the same smear of red lipstick on our glasses.
“Not a word. She mimes that she’s some kind of actress. I lie, mime that I’m a writer. That red lipstick is all smiles on us. Two strangers in the same greasepaint.”
“Any couple, anytime, anywhere.”
“But we were two mimes sitting in a sidewalk café, at night, in Paris.
“Dinner was beyond belief. Some kind of chicken in wine sauce. I don’t remember eating. I’ll never forget how delicious.
