Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  It was hours since she’d grabbed a quick apple in lieu of lunch. She was tempted to lunge when a tray of hors d’oeuvres passed her way, but there was a special corollary to Murphy’s Law that went into effect whenever she found herself at one of these embassy receptions—if she grabbed one of the tempting canapés, it was a sure bet that someone would choose that exact moment to stick out a hand to introduce themselves. And then, there was always the risk of ending up wearing the thing when this dull, alcoholic Brit beside her decided to move in and try to get a little cozier, as he inevitably would if she didn’t escape his clutches soon.

  There wasn’t much to eat back at their flat, though. Grocery shopping had been on her list of things to do later that afternoon, before Drum had called and changed her plans. She’d left soup and peanut butter sandwiches for the housekeeper to give Jonah when the van brought him back from his kindergarten class at the American International School, but if Carrie wanted dinner, she was going to have to pick it up on the way home.

  She was just debating how soon she could make her escape when she felt an arm slip around her shoulders and turned to find an old friend at her side.

  “Tom!” she cried, genuinely delighted. “I didn’t know you were coming!’

  She and Tom Bent exchanged kisses on either cheek. “Came to herd the senators,” he said, “though to be honest, it’s a bit like herding cats.” He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear, “I spotted you as soon as I walked in. You look beautiful, Carrie. You also look like you need rescuing, poor thing.”

  “Oh, God, yes,” she whispered back, glancing at her two companions, who had abandoned their pontificating long enough to show an interest in the new arrival.

  The Bostonian obviously knew him. “Tom! I wondered where you’d disappeared to after the ambassadors’ meeting.” He turned to the Brit beside him. “Nigel, this is Tom Bent, the CIA’s Director of Congressional Liaison. He’s the man who decides which secrets those nasty spooks will share with their political masters. Tom, Nigel St. John from the British Foreign Office.”

  “Sin-jin,” the Brit corrected as he held out his hand. “How do you do?”

  “I do wetly, thank you,” Bent said, shaking.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I snuck out for a quick run over to Harrod’s.”

  He retrieved his hand and smoothed down his poker straight hair—unnecessarily, since it was perfectly gelled in place, as always. Despite the fact that Tom was Drum’s age, his hair was still nut brown, only his temples running a little to gray, lending just a hint of mature gravitas. Carrie suspected the color was maintained by an artful stylist, since Tom was very careful about his appearance—and, she suspected, a little vain about his thick head of hair.

  It didn’t detract in the least from her affection for the man. Unlike most of her husband’s old crowd, Tom had welcomed her warmly right from the start after she and Drum had come home from Africa, and he’d always gone out of his way to be kind. Maybe it was because he, too, had come from humbler roots and “married up,” as Drum’s mother like to say. Whatever the reason, Tom was always a ray of sunshine for Carrie, and never more so than on this gloomy day.

  “My wife made me promise to bring her back some Oxford marmalade,” Tom was saying, “orange, extra chunky. Swears only Harrod’s has the real McCoy, so off I went. The senators have such a tight schedule, I didn’t think I’d have another chance if I didn’t do it this afternoon. But Lord, it’s not a fit day for ducks out there!’

  He had a pleasant, always-smiling face, with warm, coffee-colored eyes and an air of scrubbed earnestness, his cheeks flushed and glowing. Carrie knew it was mild rosacea and not the weather that put those blooms there. Regardless of the season, Tom always looked like he’d just come back from taking a brisk autumn constitutional in his impeccable Brooks Brothers finery.

  Tom and Drum had been friends since their days at Yale, although Carrie had the impression that this hardworking West Virginian, a coal-miner’s son on a full scholarship, had never been the hell-raiser her husband was reputed to have been back then.

  “You should have called me,” Carrie said. “I would have picked up whatever you needed.”

  “Well, I would have, darlin’, but to be honest, I needed to get away from all this hot air, even if just for an hour.”

  “Are you traveling with the delegation?” St. John asked.

  “For my sins, alas, I am. Somebody needs to keep an eye on ’em, you see, make sure they don’t alienate our friends and give comfort to our enemies—and don’t you repeat that to your boss, young Daniel,” he added, shaking a finger at the aid to the senator from Massachusetts.

  Daniel! Daniel Boone? No…Brown, that’s it, Carrie suddenly remembered.

  As she glanced over toward the windows once more, she caught Drum watching them soberly. She gave him the smile he expected, and he cocked an eyebrow. She looped her hand through Tom’s arm.

  “Would you excuse us?” she asked the other two.

  “You’re abandoning us?” St. John asked plaintively.

  “Sorry, Nigel. Duty calls. I think my husband would like to talk to his old friend, Tom, here.”

  “Good to meet you, Nigel,” Tom added. “Dan, catch you later.”

  “I wish I’d known you were coming,” Carrie said as they detached from the others and drifted across the floor.

  “It was a last-minute decision. Things are incredibly hectic back in Washington, what with all the new anti-terrorism legislation on the table and the military situation dicey as it is right now. But the Oval Office wanted somebody along to keep an eye on these cowboys. I got drafted.”

  “How’s Lorraine?”

  Tom had been married for twenty-five years to the daughter of the Right Reverend Arthur Merriam, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, based at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, also known as the National Cathedral.

  “She’s just fine,” Tom said. “Helping her mother most of the time, running one committee or another.”

  “Her mother must be getting on.”

  “She’ll be seventy-six in August, but don’t let her hear you suggest she’s elderly. The women in Lorraine’s family live to a ripe old age. Her grandmother lasted to ninety-one and was still playing bridge three times a week. Liked her gin and tonics right up to the end, too.”

  “Ah, well, that’s the secret ingredient, I guess.”

  Tom rolled his eyes. “Must be. God knows, Lorraine and her mother swear by them.” He stopped and turned to Carrie. “How about you and Drum, darlin’? How are things?”

  “All right. We’re going home this summer, you know.”

  “Yes, I heard. Drum’s being promoted. That’s great.”

  “I guess,” Carrie said.

  “You’re not pleased about it?”

  “I’m happy for him. It’s what he wants. It’s a little tough for Jonah, though. Drum’s hardly around now, and I can only imagine he’ll be even busier once he takes on the Deputy Director’s job. Like you said, these are crazy times. Plus, poor Jonah has to give up the friends he’s made here.”

  “And how is my godson? I mustn’t forget, by the way, Lorraine sent along some little goodies for him. I’ve got them in my suitcase back at the hotel.”

  Carrie smiled. “I hope you get a chance to come over and see him while you’re here, Tom. He’s a great little guy. He’s just bloomed in kindergarten this year. Absolutely loves school. Our flat is covered with his paintings and drawings.”

  “An artist, like his mom. But kindergarten? Already? Seems to me he was just taking his first steps.”

  “I know. I can hardly believe it myself. Come September, my baby’s going to be in first grade.”

  “Big changes. And what about you, Carrie? Are you okay? It’s not easy, I know, being a diplomatic dependant in a strange city.”

  “It’s a great city, though. Impossible to be bored. Mind you, I’m a little tied down by Jonah’s half-day schedule. He’s at school
from one to four each afternoon, and I try to help out there whenever they need an extra pair of hands, so it doesn’t leave a lot of time for gallivanting. Still,” she added brightly, “I have been busy this past winter. I re-registered at Georgetown for a remote study program, and I’ve gone back to the thesis I abandoned after Drum and I got married.”

  “No kidding. That’s great. How’s it going?”

  “Pretty well, I think. I hope. It’s kind of hard to tell. Can’t see the forest for the trees and all that. But I’d already done a good chunk of the first draft, and I had a lot of original research from when I was with the Peace Corps. My advisor seemed to think I’d be able to pull it together.”

  “You were running some kind of a gallery out there in Africa, weren’t you?”

  She nodded. “We helped local artists set up a cooperative to market their sculptures and paintings to tourists. My thesis dealt with marketing art from the Third World, so I had really good primary source material. It needed to be updated, of course. New trends emerge in seven years. But Oxfam here in London has been promoting developing country art and handicrafts for some time now, and they’ve been really helpful.”

  “So you’ve been able to finish?”

  “Well, you know what they say, a thesis is never really finished, only abandoned. But I’m working up the courage to send it to my advisor. If he thinks it’s ready for prime time, I should be able to defend it when we get back to D.C.”

  “Carrie, that’s great. Drum must be so proud of you.”

  “Oh, I guess so…” She glanced over to the window where Drum stood watching them expectantly. “I think we’re being beckoned.”

  Drum reached out to her as they approached. Senator Watkins, spotting the movement, broke off in mid-sentence, his face opening up into the guileless smile seen in countless election year posters. Drum drew Carrie close into the circle of his free arm. He was just over six feet tall, so that she tucked neatly into his side, as a good accessory should.

  “Sweetheart, I’d like to introduce Senator Paul Watkins. Senator, this is my wife, Carrie. And of course, you know Tom Bent. Tom, we were just about to send out a search party.”

  “Well, it’s a wild, wet day out there, but I can safely report that Harrod’s managed to relieve me of a sizeable chunk of change and my marital shopping obligations have been successfully discharged.”

  Watkins’s huge, fleshy hand swallowed Carrie’s. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs. MacNeil.” His face was flushed, his bald head perspiring. He nodded at Tom, then turned back to give her a long, appraising once-over before shooting a mischievous wink at Drum. “Aren’t you the lucky man, Mr. MacNeil?”

  Tom gave Carrie’s arm a gentle squeeze, and when Carrie risked a glance at him, she saw his eyes roll subtly. She felt better, knowing she had at least one ally here. Tom knew what some people said about her improbable marriage to Drummond MacNeil and he was sympathetic.

  And maybe the senator didn’t mean to imply anything, anyway. Maybe she was just overly sensitive—although, in point of fact, she’d actually heard the words “trophy wife” whispered behind her back on more than one occasion. It was one of the hazards of marrying a much older man. Everyone presumed you were the bimbo he’d dumped his long-suffering first wife for. And Drum had, in fact, been married before, but he’d been widowed two years when Carrie had met him in Africa. It didn’t matter. To anyone who didn’t know her, she was just the young airhead who decorated his arm and who’d given him the heir his first wife hadn’t.

  Nor did it help now that Drum suddenly took it into his head to kiss her far more warmly than their surroundings warranted, letting his gaze linger on her in the kind of long, wistful glance she’d rarely seen since they’d left Africa—and virtually never in the last couple of years. What was that all about?

  Drum turned back to the senator with a sigh and an uncharacteristically silly smile on his face. “You’re right, Senator. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

  Carrie didn’t dare risk glancing over at Tom Bent to see what he made of that.

  It was approaching six when the senators finally began to gather up their coats to return to their hotel and freshen up before the ambassador’s dinner. After Tom Bent had herded them all out to their waiting cars, Drum accompanied Carrie down the elevator to the embassy’s main floor and out through the solid steel door that divided the secure area from the public lobby.

  As he held up her buff-colored Burberry raincoat for her to slip her arms into, the smoked glass lobby windows rattled under an ominous peal of deep, rolling thunder.

  “Are those the shoes you came in?” Drum asked.

  Carrie gave her Manolos a rueful glance. “Yes. I’m an idiot. I’ve been sloshing around for the past two hours.”

  “Well, make sure you grab a cab. Don’t try to walk in this weather.”

  She nodded, tucking her hair inside a dark chocolate-colored beret and slipping her hands into soft brown kid-skin gloves. “Do you know what time you’ll be home?”

  “Pretty late, I imagine. Don’t wait up for me.”

  “The story of my life,” Carrie said, with no real trace of bitterness.

  She was long past questioning his late nights, and complaining was a waste of time. Drum said it was a hazard of his profession. Generally speaking, that was probably true. Generally, but not always. At this point, Carrie had given up trying to reconcile his work with the lingering scents that sometimes accompanied him when he slipped into bed late at night—scents of passion Carrie hadn’t shared and perfume she didn’t own, scents a shower couldn’t quite mask. Lately, he’d been gone more and more, caught up in crisis after crisis as terrorist threats continued to mount. He could make Carrie feel positively un-American for questioning anything he did. She no longer bothered.

  She reached up to offer the kind of perfunctory peck on the cheek that was habitual by now, but he held her close, once again giving her a more lingering kiss than a public venue and seven years of marriage normally inspired. His arms stayed around her as he studied her.

  “What?” she asked, resisting the urge to squirm out of his grasp.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to look at you. You’re really something, you know that?”

  She frowned. “Drum, are you all right?”

  He smiled and kissed her once more, lightly, then released her. “I’m fine. I’d better get back upstairs and get a little work done before I have to go baby-sit those visiting clowns. I’ll see you at home.”

  “Right. See you later.”

  Carrie watched him walk back to the heavy steel door, where he slipped his hand under the keypad cover and entered the four-digit security combination. The lock clicked and he wrenched the handle open, pausing briefly to give her a last look and a wave before disappearing back into the secure womb of the building.

  Exhaling wearily, she slipped her handbag over her arm and headed for the front doors, but before she’d gone a few steps on the marble tile, a muffled voice called her name. Carrie looked around for the source of the hail and saw a familiar figure waving her over to the reception window.

  At this hour, with the embassy closed for the day, the civilian receptionist had left and the Gunny was alone on duty behind the bullet-proof glass. A Marine corporal stood by the front doors, opening them and then re-locking them behind staff leaving the building.

  The last public straggler was still at the window with the Gunny. A young woman, she was hunched over at the counter, madly writing on a white file card. Her wet umbrella was propped against the wall, while her coat dripped water on the gold-streaked marble tiles.

  “Hey, Gunny,” Carrie said, smiling as she walked gingerly over to the booth, taking care to avoid the death-trap puddles on the slippery floor. “What’s up?”

  His voice crackled back at her through the speaker set into the glass. “I heard you were going to be in the building, but I was on the phone when you came in. I been working on the team rosters for the kids’ so
ftball league. Is Jonah gonna go out for Pee Wees?” The Gunny’s son Connor was Jonah’s best buddy and the two boys often slept over at each other’s flats.

  “He wants to,” Carrie said, “but you know we’re going home this summer?”

  “Yeah. Connor’s really bummed about that.”

  She sighed. “That’s the worst thing about this life, isn’t it? The poor kids have to keep making new friends.”

  People who married into the business knew what they were getting into, Carrie thought—theoretically, at least. But the kids had no choice in the matter. Drum had been an Army brat himself, but he was philosophical about it. The tough ones survived it just fine, he always said, and the weaklings were going to stumble whether or not they stayed in one place all their lives. Carrie wasn’t sure about that, but she had noticed that relationships in Drum’s life all seemed vaguely disposable. Was it the impermanence of his childhood friendships that made him always seem to be holding something back even now?

  The Gunny held up a finger for her to wait while he dealt with the girl at the window. She’d straightened and seemed to have finished what she was writing. Carrie peeked over her shoulder. It looked like a consular registration form.

  “All done?” the Gunny asked.

  “I think so,” the girl said, sliding the white card into the metal drawer under the triple-paned window that separated her from the Marine.

  The Gunny pulled a lever and the drawer slid back to his side of the glass. “Looks good,” he said, picking out the form. “I’ll leave it for the consular section to file tomorrow. They’re all gone for the day now.”

  “Thanks a lot for letting me in.” The girl slipped her pen back into the bag slung over her shoulder. “It took me longer to get over here than I thought it would, but I promised my parents I’d do this.”

  “No problem. We wouldn’t want you to have to tramp back over here again tomorrow.”

  “Is it supposed to rain again?” she asked, buttoning up her tan raincoat.