A Shameless Little Con

by Meli Raine

  * * *

  –waking up from the nightmare, my skin chilled and cheek red.

  Silas, not Mom, is calling my name

  “What? What happened?” I sit up, completely disoriented, swiping at my ankles with my palms over and over as Silas leans back from me, looking deeply confused.

  “You were flailing in your sleep. Kept whispering about blood and being bitten. Were you dreaming about vampires?” Touching my shoulder with a big warm palm, Silas bends into my personal space, his face inches from mine. It’s an intimate act, and his warmth feels like a continuation, not a gesture.

  Did I fall asleep on him?

  “I wish.” I shudder and sit up fully, pulling away. My stomach is sour and I feel like my blood has been thickened by cornstarch. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere over New Mexico? I don’t know. I’m not a pilot.” He gives me a self-effacing smile, as if he’s genuinely embarrassed he can’t fly a plane.

  “Well, I can’t perform heart surgery, so we’re both inadequate,” I say, stretching my arms high as a yawn takes over my body. The only way to get rid of the weird sense of being between reality and dreamland is to shake it off, stretch it out, root myself in the real.

  Silas’s eyes are all over me, an audience of thousands. I can feel him, even when my eyes are closed. This is no performance. I am not a model for a painting.

  I don’t care.

  This is as real as it gets.

  Undefined emotion rushes through my limbs, going where it needs to go, refreshing me enough to shake off the feeling I’m being nibbled to death by sharks and drowning in a river of my own blood.

  Silas puts his eyes back in his head and looks away, shifting his weight in his seat so that there is a clear professional boundary between our body spaces.

  I unclick my seatbelt and find the bar, grabbing a can of soda. I lift it and raise my eyebrows, trying to catch his attention.

  He finally looks at me, shakes his head, and says, “No, thanks.” His phone becomes his new object of attention.

  “How do you have a signal up here?” I ask as I sit down again, popping open my soda and taking a sip. Cool root beer, my favorite, tickles my tongue.

  “Major airlines can do it. You think the government can’t? Your connection will be much better on this aircraft, too.” His voice is steady, distracted. Whatever emotion I thought I was receiving from him has been tucked away somewhere inside him. Silas is in work mode now.

  “I see.” I nod and look out the window, letting the sweet drink distract me. A cool sweat starts to chill on my skin. I reach up and brush my short bangs off my forehead. Damp hair greets my fingertips.

  That dream was so real.

  I sip slowly, looking out the window as dusk turns to darkness. When you’re this high up over the clouds, the sunsets can be unreal. I’ve missed the most spectacular part and now just settle for shades of grey, moonlight making thin sections of cotton clouds glow.

  Silas’s warm fingers brush against my shoulder, one grazing my bare neck. I shiver.

  “Jane?”

  I close my eyes, the tangy taste of sugar on my lips as I lick them. “Yes?”

  “What was your dream about?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

  Tears fill my eyes with a fierce swiftness, as if they’re waiting to swarm. My throat goes tight, the bridge of my nose tingling, and I see it all. A montage of every awful moment of my dream pours through me. With a shaking hand, I set my empty soda can on the end table next to my seat and lean back, sighing.

  And I tell him.

  He nods, looking down at his hands, not from shyness but from the will to listen deeply. When I’m done, he nods slowly.

  “It’s a pretty obvious dream. Tara’s blood, the press nipping at your heels, taking bigger and bigger bites out of you...”

  “What’s the latest? Have I been blamed for the newest North Korean missile crisis?”

  He smiles. “Haven’t you heard? You’re carrying the love child of Elvis and Kim Jong Il.”

  The joke catches me completely off guard and I laugh, then belch.

  Loudly.

  Silas’s face breaks into a beautiful smile, pure laughter pouring out of him, booming all the way to my heart.

  “Excuse me!” I gasp, embarrassed but laughing. “Root beer.”

  “Basic biology. You’re allowed to be human, you know.”

  “Tell that to Monica Bosworth.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Are you? Really? Does that mean you believe me?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Then why would you defend me to Monica, of all people?”

  “Not defending. Explaining.”

  “When everything is black or white, right or wrong, explaining is defending.”

  “Just because other people create standards doesn’t mean I follow them. Or believe them to be valid,” he says, his words laden with meaning.

  “But you believe the media when they say I’m complicit?”

  “I never said I believe the media. I believe Drew.”

  Silas isn’t pulling punches. A part of me feels horrified, but a deeper sense of grudging respect emerges.

  Respect for me.

  If Silas didn’t respect me, he wouldn’t be so blunt. In fact, he wouldn’t talk to me at all.

  Blunt is a form of improvement.

  “Drew doesn’t trust me.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  I’m supposed to say no. I know that. Being polite is ingrained in me.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” I say simply, giving Silas a sad-eyed look.

  “You blame Drew for not trusting you after he went to rescue Lindsay and found her naked, with you in the room, helping her attackers?”

  Air gets trapped in my lungs, not leaving, not staying, suspended like I swallowed a cluster of clouds.

  “Do you know,” I finally whisper, “what Drew found when he came into the room?”

  “Lindsay, nearly being raped by–”

  “No. I’m not talking about Lindsay. She’s important, but–” I choke off my words, realizing I’m racing to line up my evidence to prove to him that I am valid. That I am worth believing.

  That I am lovable.

  “But?”

  “I was next,” I whisper. My body turns to wax, my eyes lowering, my chest rising and falling like a bellows pumps air through it. “What they did to Lindsay, they were about to do to me.”

  “I know. I’ve read the reports. That’s what you say they said. Lindsay–”

  “You do not know,” I say viciously.

  He’s watching me closely, eyes narrowing, mouth staying rigid.

  “You do not know how it felt to have a knife to my throat. You do not know how it smelled in that room, with blood and fear and terror like a demented air freshener from hell. You do not know what it was like to be turned into a human mule, delivering burner phones and messages. You do not know what it was like to pick up Lindsay’s naked, bloody body and help her move, to try to protect myself, to protect her, to live second by second through the kind of agony that makes your mind try to escape any way it can because it knows your body is about to be shredded to the core.”

  A long line of mental images, a movie in horrifying slow motion, ripples through my memory, my skin crawling as if John is still touching me, my nose filled with the scent of so much anticipated pain. Silas doesn’t look away, his face neutral, eyes watching without obvious emotion, but he’s entirely focused on me.

  “You don’t know, so shut the hell up, Silas, about what you think you know about me.”

  The rest of the ride is nothing but tense silence.

  Which is becoming my default.

  * * *

  I stumble off the plane, bleary-eyed. At some point I fell asleep, forehead pressed against one of the small windows. Some nameless driver is on the tarmac with the familiar black SUV. Life feels like d�
�jà vu.

  Because it is.

  “You feeling okay, Miss Borokov?” the driver asks me with genuine concern as he grabs my elbow before I fall. My stumble is a function of flip-flops I’m not familiar with and exhaustion.

  “She’s fine,” Silas snaps.

  “My mouth works,” I snap back.

  “No kidding,” he mutters under his breath.

  “I’m fine,” I say tightly to the driver, just to make a point. Silas rolls his eyes.

  It’s the closest we can get to a truce.

  More tense silence as the driver, whose name I never get, takes us straight to Alice’s studio, where she’s waiting with vodka, lemonade, and an antipasto platter.

  A few bites of cheese and prosciutto-wrapped hearts of palm later, I’m sipping an ungodly ratio of vodka to lemonade and falling asleep in my own plate.

  Silas’s phone rings. He looks at it, stands up abruptly, and walks into the other room, speaking in sotto voce. It must be his mother, I guess. There’s no way he’s that caring with Drew or any other security colleague.

  “You look drunk, Jane,”Alice says bluntly.

  Before I can explain, she holds up a hand. “That’s not a judgment. I wouldn’t blame you for it.”

  “I’m so tired,” I start to tell her, but instead my words are garbled, turning into salty, blubbering syllables. Awash with emotion, I can’t stop.

  Alice moves closer to me, patting my back gently, making banal comments designed to fill the space so that there isn’t so much pain there.

  “This is your haven,” she says kindly. “Your place to come and relax.”

  I snort.

  “To the extent that you can,” she amends. “I am not trying to be flippant.”

  “Alice, you’re constitutionally incapable of not being flippant,” I say just before a yawn consumes me, making me stretch and groan. My body feels like noodles in warm water.

  “You’re feisty when you’re tired.”

  I can’t argue, conserving my energy for standing back up. Her salt-and-pepper eyebrows drop down, tight over the bridge of her long angular nose. Concerned hazel eyes meet mine.

  I involuntarily touch my own cheek, wondering what it’s like to have such deep wrinkles as Alice has on her face. How many decades have to pass before you feel like you’re old? Or does she still feel twenty inside, trapped in an old woman’s body? Ninety-two is an eternity to me.

  For her, it’s just her reality.

  We move down a quiet tile-floored hallway and both stop suddenly, Alice giving me a light hug and a “shoo!” toward the big bed in my guest room. She’s gone before I know it, leaving me in a pastel room with a lilac coverlet on the bed. It smells like a drawer sachet in here.

  Mumbled words come through the wall. Silas is on the phone, next door to me. I tiptoe to my open door and stand there, pulling the shell of my ear forward, barely making out his words.

  “I know, Mom. I know,” he hisses, the sound low and tortured. This is clearly a well-worn argument. “Tricia’s made another mess we have to clean up, but I won’t take Kelly unless–what? She what? No, Mom, I’m working now. In fact, I shouldn’t be–”

  A very, very loud sound, like a child squealing, comes from his direction.

  And then Silas says, “Hey, baby! How’s my favorite girl?” in a voice you use with small children you love.

  Daughter.

  This must be his daughter.

  My stomach hurts suddenly, like someone grabbed me below the breastbone and started twisting slowly.

  His whole demeanor changes, at least from what I can tell by sound. I’m half charmed, half heartbroken. Tricia must be his wife. Kelly, his daughter.

  And I’m nobody.

  Quietly, I step back into my room and slowly, painstakingly close the door. I kick off my shoes and, fully dressed, let the cool scented sheets form an embrace, enveloping me in the most powerful balm on the planet.

  Sleep.

  * * *

  The absence of a dream is almost as startling as a nightmare.

  Waking up with a black hole in my mind is its own disturbance. Since that fateful day six months ago, when Mom was jailed and my hell continued, I’ve had nightmares–on a spectrum from slightly disturbing to nearly peed in my sleep from terror.

  But to wake up with a blank mind is unheard of.

  And frightening in its own way, too.

  Human beings are wired for flexibility and routine. We need both. Children need roots and wings. Adults need to be grounded and able to fly. I need to be protected and be given freedom.

  It’s a rare person who gets both.

  Muted voices carry from the distance, the distinct sound of Alice laughing. Her cackle carries through the house. A quick look out the window tells me it’s either dusk or dawn, the light maintaining the eerie quality of potentially being night or day.

  My mouth tastes like dry leaves, my neck has a crick in it, and I need to pee.

  The bed is so comfortable, warm and light.

  But the bladder calls.

  Five minutes later I’ve taken care of the basics. I shuffle down the hall to discover it’s early morning. I’ve slept for at least ten hours. My stomach growls at the halfway point to the kitchen. Hunger drives me forward, but then I freeze.

  Silas and Alice are talking.

  “You care about her?” Alice asks him, as if she were interviewing him.

  “I’m starting to.”

  “That’s a weaselly answer.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You think it’s just sex?”

  “We haven’t–” He laughs softly. “If I thought that, I’d never tell you, Ms. Mogrett.”

  “Good response. That’s all I need to know.”

  “I didn’t answer your question.”

  “Oh, my dear boy, you certainly did.” She pauses. “The love of my life was one of my security detail, you know.”

  “Really?” He doesn’t sound surprised.

  “Milt Sigmundsson. Hot Scandinavian hero. Six foot six, a wall of a man. Born and raised in Minnesota. Served in WWII and came to DC as an agent during my father’s term in office.”

  “I don’t recall his name in your biography.”

  “Blame my father for that.”

  “I see.”

  “No, Silas. You don’t. My father sent Milt away from me, forever. Had him stationed in Vietnam in the early stages.”

  “Did he die there?” Silas’s blunt question makes me blink hard. Most men would pussyfoot around the issue.

  Not Silas.

  “Yes. In my mind, my father killed him. I know it’s not technically true, but...”

  Silas makes a sympathetic sound.

  “War is hell, Alice. I’m sorry he died. Lots of good men and women go to war who don’t deserve to die. I’ve done more tours than most and it’s sheer luck that kept me from being one of the dead.”

  My stomach ties itself into a knot at those words.

  “Milt’s death isn’t the point, though. It’s that we spent seven years together. He was assigned to shadow me. You spend that much time with someone, it’s hard not to get intimate.”

  Silas stays silent.

  “And I don’t mean sexual,” she adds in a gravelly voice. “Intimate.”

  “I know the difference,” he says.

  “Glad to hear it. Most men in your position don’t.”

  “My position?”

  “You’re a decorated war hero. You compartmentalize. You close off your feelings in the line of duty. It’s why you’re so good at what you do. But it doesn’t translate well to relationships.”

  “Now you’re my therapist?”

  “Once you’re ninety-two, son, you’re everyone’s therapist, whether they like it or not.”

  I hear him chuckle, then he asks, “What made you start the nudes with Jane?”

  “Boredom.”

  “Come on, Alice. Seriously.”

  “Because Jane doesn’t know how
beautiful she really is. Her innate goodness shines through her skin into the light, like energy. I’ve never met a person like that since Milt.”

  “Jane reminds you of him?”

  “No. But she reminds me of who I was when I was with him, and that’s even more precious.”

  Silas stays silent.

  “You don’t believe that hogwash about Jane being part of the conspiracy to hurt Lindsay Bosworth, do you?” It’s clear from her tone of voice how Alice feels.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.” Her voice is caustic now, pure acid. “Why won’t you let yourself act like it?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Life is always simpler than we think. We say it’s complicated, but that’s just because we don’t have the guts to do what we need to do.”

  “Hmm,” he says, non-committal.

  “It’s like sex.”

  “Oh, brother,” he says under his breath.

  I smile.

  “You either go for it or you don’t. And if you do, it’s all about courage.”

  “Sex is about courage?”

  “For us women, yes. Always. It takes tremendous bravery to bare yourself in every way possible.”

  “Jane does that for your paintings.”

  “If you think that’s Jane baring herself in full, you’re in for a treat when you finally get your shit together and make a move, young man.”

  A long sigh escapes him, then shuffling sounds. “I have calls I need to make.”

  “You have emotions you need to avoid.”

  “In my line of work, it’s the same thing, ma’am.”

  “You need a new line of work.”

  “Maybe I’ll take up painting.”

  “Hah!” But I can tell she’s genuinely amused. And impressed.

  Silas held his own against her.

  My stomach growls again and I take one step forward, knowing they heard that. If I step toward them, then maybe they won’t realize I’ve been eavesdropping. Silas quickly looks at me, then away.

  Alice points to the kitchen. “We saved some dinner for you. The cook put it in a container you can reheat.”

  That answers that. It’s dinner. I slept most of a day.

  “I slept that long?”

  “You were tired,” she says with a laugh.