The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

  That evening, Irina showed up at my apartment, still dressed for skating. She looked as if she’d been walking since she left me on the steps—her nose red, her body shivering. She pushed her way into my apartment, shedding her boots, her hat, her scarf, her coat. When I told her I’d been sleeping, that I thought I might be coming down with a cold and that she shouldn’t get too close, she pressed her cold hands against my cheeks. “Listen,” she said, but didn’t say anything else. She kissed me, her lips adjusting to mine until they clicked into place. The kiss made me feel like crying; I felt a sense of loss as soon as she removed her mouth. “Listen,” she said again. Her words made me want to look away, but she wouldn’t let me. She stepped closer, her stockinged toes atop mine. Even without heels, she was taller than me by a forehead, and she held on to my face as if inspecting it.

  She kissed me again, then slipped her cold hands into my robe. Her confidence took me aback. Was she pretending to be someone else, or had she actually become someone new and I just hadn’t noticed?

  A tremor moved through my legs, and I sank to my knees on the pink carpet. She followed. My robe now open, she kissed my stomach, and a noise escaped my lips, an embarrassing sound. She laughed, which made me laugh. “Who are you?” I asked. She didn’t answer, concentrating instead on tracing the line of my pelvic bone. Maybe it was the reverse. Maybe I was the one who couldn’t recognize myself. I’d always maintained the upper hand with sex. I’d gauge my partners’ reactions and move, pose, and moan accordingly. This was different. She didn’t expect anything of me. I was powerless.

  I kept thinking we would stop—that she’d come to her senses, that I would come to mine. That she’d back down. When I voiced this, she said it was too late. “No going back.”

  She was right. It was like watching a film in Technicolor for the first time: the world was one way, and then everything changed.

  * * *

  —

  We fell asleep on the carpet, my robe our blanket, my chest her pillow. I stirred with the sounds and smells of the bakery opening downstairs. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face and brush my hair. The morning light coming through the small window above my shower looked harsh, my image in the mirror jarring. I thought of Irina and Teddy—what their wedding would look like, what she would look like walking down the aisle. And my new Technicolor world returned to black-and-white.

  When I emerged, Irina was in the kitchen looking in the refrigerator. She brought out a half carton of eggs and asked how I liked them.

  “How does Teddy like his?”

  She said nothing. When I asked again, she grabbed my hand and told me we’d think of something. When she said she loved me, instead of telling her the truth—that I loved her too—I pulled away and said I wasn’t hungry, that she probably should just go. And she did.

  * * *

  Freezing rain the last night of the year. Standing in my kitchen, I unwrapped a foil package resembling a swan and heated up leftover filet mignon. I opened the window to my fire escape and pulled in the bottle of ’49 Dom Pérignon that Frank had given me for a job mostly well done in Milan.

  I ate my dinner standing in front of the open oven to warm my back, and the champagne was indeed as delicious as Frank had promised.

  Earlier in the day, I’d gone alone to the matinee showing of The Bridge on the River Kwai. But I’d found it difficult to concentrate and left early. The sky was already dark, the rain had started to fall. By the time I got home, our white Christmas had been reduced to brown slush. The snowman some kids had built in the park across the street had turned into solid ice, its carrot nose replaced with a cigarette, its scarf missing. I hated New Year’s.

  To make matters worse, my apartment was freezing—my breath visible in the frigid air, the radiator cold to the touch. I cursed my landlord, a man who owned half the buildings on the block but was too cheap to hire a super.

  I drew a hot bath and sank in, careful not to wet my hair. When the water turned tepid, I turned the faucet back on with my toes, a process I repeated twice before finally getting out. Assaulted by cold air, I wrapped myself in an oversized terry cloth robe. I wanted to just slip into bed and fall asleep listening to Guy Lombardo ring in 1958 on the radio. But I couldn’t. I had to dress, put on my face, and eat something before the black car arrived to shuttle me to the party in an hour. I had to work.

  After Milan, when Frank and I debriefed, he’d looked pleased but distracted, as if he’d already known the details—which he probably had. He didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t gotten closer to Feltrinelli. At first, I thought he might’ve shared my assessment that maybe I should’ve stayed in retirement, that maybe I didn’t have what it takes anymore; but instead of politely sending me on my way, he said there was something else I could help with.

  “I could use another favor.”

  “Anything.”

  * * *

  —

  The rain let up just as my black car arrived. I wrapped myself in my white mohair swing coat, leaving my fur in the closet, as I’d done since Irina had told me fur gave her the creeps. “Poor rabbits,” she’d said, running her hand down my sleeve.

  The driver, his patent-leather-billed cap in one hand, held the car door open for me with the other. “Gal like you doesn’t have a date on New Year’s?”

  I slipped into the backseat.

  The District streamed by, a sliver of moon visible in the fleeting spaces between buildings. I wondered if Irina could see the moon from where she was. She was spending the last night of the year with Teddy and his rich family at their chalet in the Green Mountains. Irina couldn’t even ski. I hoped it was cloudy, that the freezing rain had made its way to Vermont.

  The New Year’s Eve party was at the Colony, a French restaurant downtown considered among D.C.’s finest, which wasn’t saying much. Hosted by a Panamanian diplomat, the party was basically an office party sans office. This was an inner-circle, invite-only affair. The whole gang would be there: Frank, Maury, Meyer, the Dulles brothers, the Grahams, one Alsop brother, everyone in the Georgetown set. But I wasn’t there to talk with them. I had other work to attend to.

  The bas-relief statues of mythological figures lining the dining room wall were outfitted with party hats, the lounge with silver streamers and gold tinsel. A net of white balloons ready for the clock to strike twelve hovered above the crowded dance floor. A large banner hung across the main bar: CANNOT WAIT FOR ’58! A brass band with a satin-dressed singer played in front of a giant clock, its movable hands set at ten. As I handed the coat-check girl my wrap, a waitress dressed like a Rockette with a tiny top hat bobby-pinned to the side of her head presented me with a silver tray of noisemakers and hats. I selected a horn with metallic purple fringe but passed on the hat.

  “Where’s your holiday spirit, kid?” Anderson asked from behind me. He was wearing two pointed hats atop his head like devil’s horns, the elastic digging into his double chin. His suit jacket was already off, the back of his tuxedo shirt translucent with sweat.

  “Will Baby New Year be making another appearance tonight?” I asked, referring to the time he’d stripped down to a white sheet wrapped around his crotch, stuck a giant pacifier in his mouth, and clutched a bottle of rum at our New Year’s Eve celebration in Kandy.

  “The night’s still young!”

  “Speaking of holiday spirits, where can a girl get a drink?” My insides were already warm from the three glasses of Dom Pérignon I’d drunk at home, but I wanted to keep the feeling from dissipating; I wanted to keep my thoughts of Irina at bay, at least temporarily.

  Anderson handed me his half-full punch glass. “Ladies first.”

  I downed it, blew my horn at him, then waved to the waiter with a fresh tray of drinks. Anderson asked if I wanted to dance, and I told him maybe later. I’d already spotted the man Frank wanted me to get to know better across the d
ance floor.

  I watched Anderson go back to a table full of people who cheered his return, then turned my attention back to my man. Henry Rennet stood catercorner to the stage, watching the Eartha Kitt knockoff sing “Santa Baby.” I bypassed Anderson’s table, skirted the dance floor, and found a spot opposite the stage from Henry. Then I waited. The band finished the song and the singer sashayed over to the clock to move its hands to ten thirty. The crowd cheered; Henry snickered, but he raised his glass to the last hour and a half of 1957 anyway. Then he looked my way.

  * * *

  —

  What I knew about Henry Rennet: Yale boy. Grew up on Long Island but said “the City” when asked. Just five years and three months into the Agency, his meteoric rise within SR raised suspicions. Lived alone in a one-bedroom walk-up across the bridge in Arlington paid for by his parents. A linguistics man—fluent in Russian, German, and French. Spent the year between Yale and the Agency “backpacking” across Europe—which really meant hopping from one five-star hotel to the next on his parents’ dime. Orange-haired, freckled, and thick-necked, but did better with women than one might suspect. Had dated two members of the typing pool—in the loosest imaginable terms—neither of whom was aware the other had also dated him. Best friends with Teddy Helms, for reasons Irina did not understand. But I understood. Those Ivy League boys always stuck together.

  The other thing about Henry Rennet, and the reason I was at the party, was that Frank thought he might be a mole. Frank had first told me about his suspicions months earlier, shortly after enlisting me for the book mission, and I’d put out a few feelers. When I returned from Italy, he asked that I get to know Henry better.

  See, all Agency men had big egos—but usually flexed them only within their own circles. Henry had the type of ego that could get him into trouble. He was seen as a braggart. That and his known drinking problem were enough to raise a few flags.

  I didn’t bring it up, and I hoped the rumors weren’t true, but I’d heard rumblings that Frank’s mental faculties had recently been called into question—some saying he just wasn’t the same after the failed mission in Hungary, some attributing his obsession with rooting out a Soviet mole to his diminishing competency.

  * * *

  —

  After some chitchat by the stage, a few spins around the dance floor, and two glasses of punch, Henry suggested we go somewhere private to talk. The singer had already moved the hands of the clock to eleven forty-five and the crowd was readying itself with poppers, cranks, and drink refills for the midnight toast. We slipped away, and on our way out, he plucked a bottle of champagne from a silver bucket. “For our own toast,” he said, holding it up like a trophy.

  “Where we headed?”

  Henry didn’t answer, walking two paces in front of me. Normally, I was the one to take the lead, and as I quickened my pace, I tripped on a bump in the carpeting and went down. Henry turned to help me up, and the blood rushed to my head as I stood.

  “Don’t tell me a gal like you can’t hold her booze?”

  “I can hold it just fine, thank you.”

  He raised the bottle again. “Good.” He looked at his watch. “Seven minutes till midnight.” He put his arm around my waist, his thumb digging into the small of my back, and guided us toward the exit.

  “I don’t have my coat,” I told him.

  “Oh, we’re not leaving.”

  We passed the doorman slouched on his stool, looking as though he’d indulged in a nip or two himself. Henry took my hand and danced us into a corner. His breath smelled like a bar floor, and I knew he was perhaps drunk enough to be loose-lipped. I straightened his tie—a narrow, ugly thing—and looked toward the doorman, who was pretending not to watch us. “I thought we were going somewhere quiet to talk?”

  He reached behind me, and the wall turned into a door. “Well, what do you know?” he said, backing me into an unused coat-check room. The tiny room was empty except for a few white uniforms on wire hangers, a broken chair, and an old vacuum cleaner.

  “Not exactly the cozy spot I had in mind.”

  “I know a girl like you is used to”—he pointed the champagne bottle toward the broken chair—“more ambiance and all that. But it’s quiet, right?” He popped the cork, which landed in an empty hat cubby, and took a swig. “And private.”

  He offered me the bottle but I declined, feeling I was already just one drink away from losing the upper hand. “Maybe a sip at midnight.”

  He looked at his watch again and tapped its face. “Three more minutes.”

  “Any New Year’s resolutions?” I asked.

  “Just this.” He put his sweaty hand against my cheek and leaned in to kiss me. I took a step back, my head brushing the closet rod behind me.

  “Tell me something first,” I said.

  “You’re beautiful.” He moved in again.

  I pushed him away with my index finger. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  He snickered in a way that made me cringe. “I like that. I like a challenge.”

  “Tell me something…interesting.” I held his gaze, an old trick to get people to talk.

  “Me? I’m an open book.” He looked at the ceiling and exhaled. “I think you’re the one with secrets.”

  “Every woman has her secrets.”

  “True, but I happen to know yours.”

  My mouth felt dry, my tongue heavy as a sandbag. “And what’s that?”

  “You want me to say it?”

  “Say it.”

  “You don’t think I know why you chatted me up?” he said. “You just happened to take a sudden interest in a man, what, a decade younger than you? You think I don’t know what you are? I know you’ve been asking questions about me. About my loyalties.”

  I eyed the door.

  “What you don’t know is that I have more friends here than you do.”

  I’d stepped right into it, too distracted and drunk to see it. I moved to leave, but he blocked me. “I’ll scream.”

  “Good. They’ll just think you’re doing a job well done.”

  I pushed him away, and he pushed back. My head hit the closet’s metal rod with surprising force. Before I could move, he crushed his body into mine and pressed his mouth to my lips so hard I tasted blood when he pulled away. I tried to push him off me but he did it again, forcing his tongue into my mouth. When I tried to knee him, he swept my legs out from under me. I went to the floor. He followed. I tried to get up but he forced my hands over my head and held them in one of his. I screamed but was drowned out by the crowd on the other side of the door beginning its countdown to midnight. Thirty! I could hear the side of my gown rip. “This is what you do, isn’t it? How they use you?” Twenty-three! I spat at him and he wiped my spit from his face with a smirk I wished I could take a brick to. He pressed his forehead to mine. Fourteen! “So the other rumors are true, then?” His breath was hot and sour. “You’re some kind of queer? Shame if that got out.” Three! Two! One!

  The crowd roared “Happy New Year!” and the band began playing “Auld Lang Syne.” I closed my eyes and thought of the L-Pills from our survival kits back in Kandy—white and oval, in a thin glass vial encased in brown rubber. If need be, we were to bite down, crushing the glass and releasing the poison. When the poison is released, the heartbeat stops within minutes; death is fast and supposedly painless. It never crossed my mind that I might be captured so far from the battlefield.

  * * *

  —

  He left me in the closet. I didn’t think about getting up. I didn’t think about crawling out. I didn’t think about getting help. I didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to sleep.

  He returned with my coat and helped me to my feet. Anderson and his wife were leaving as we exited the coatroom—Henry first, me staggering a few steps behind him. But Anderson didn’t approach
, didn’t call out “Happy New Year,” didn’t say anything. He looked at my smeared makeup, my torn dress, and he didn’t say a word.

  Henry was right. I was nothing to them. Even Anderson couldn’t look at me. I wasn’t their colleague, their peer. I certainly wasn’t their friend. They’d all used me. The whole time, they’d been using me. Frank, Anderson, Henry, all of them. And I was certain they’d continue to use me until the honey dried up.

  Henry put me in a car, kissed my cheek like a gentleman, and told the driver to drive carefully.

  The driver escorted me to my door, and I walked up the steps to my apartment clinging to the railing. I could still feel him. I could still smell him.

  The apartment was still cold. The half bottle of Dom Pérignon still sat on my glass coffee table next to the empty foil swan. The pair of heels I’d tried on with my gown but hadn’t worn still sat at the foot of my floor-length mirror. The Christmas card Irina had mailed me still sat alone on my mantel.