Page 12 of Stay Close
“Are all your negotiations this bad?” Returning to her side, I hand her a bottle of water, methodically checking the seal.
She drops her head onto the desk, and I take it from her hands, feeling an unmistakable jolt of attraction when our fingertips brush.
“Here.” I set it next to her rather than risk more contact.
She leans back in the chair and takes a drink. “I interned with a divorce lawyer for a few weeks,” she says, tapping her mouth with the back of her hand. “This isn’t much worse than that.”
“What do you mean ‘not much worse’? Torbald and Kaminski were threatening all-out war.”
“We’re lucky that tanks and rocket launchers are a pain in the neck to ship to the suburbs.” She nods toward the door. “Other than that, it’s exactly like a divorce.”
I hand over a notebook, and she stuffs it into a leather briefcase, crowding it in among her personal things. “Are your parents still married?” I ask, crowding the question in there, too.
I don’t know why I ask. This isn’t part of my job. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her to ignore the question.
“Thirty years. He’s a professor in mathematics, and she’s in English lit.”
“And you’re a lawyer.” None of this is necessary. I can’t seem to help it.
She smiles and swings her coat around her shoulders, the structured collar framing her face. The saleslady knew exactly what she was doing.
“I took the middle road,” she says. “Neither of them are really happy, but Dad is comforted by the fact that I earn real money and Mom likes that she didn’t lose me to theoretical physics. I’m not”—she makes air quotes—“‘telling the story of my soul’. But I am ‘accessing the narratives of our collective consciousness,’ which is close enough.” She picks up the water bottle and grips the briefcase. “You?”
“Me, what?”
“Are your parents married?”
I nod. “Dad’s a sheriff in Texas. Mom sells cookies.”
Her brows notch. I know that look. “Cookies. LikeCastillo Cookies?”
This is when I’m supposed to say, “Something like that,” as though she sells a few batches to a local bakery or farmer’s market, but not everyone’s mom grew a national brand from a single storefront. “NotlikeCastillo Cookies,” I say. “SheisCastillo Cookies.”
Edie laughs. “Really? Her dark molasses cookies got me through studying for the LSAT.”
“Our house smelled for weeks when she was workshopping the recipe. I’ll have to tell her it was worth it.” I grin, pointing at the door. “Are you ready?”
She stands. “What are we doing?”
I hold eye contact to make sure she’s listening to me. She always is. “Whenever we leave this room, we’ll go a different way each time. Your job is to follow my lead and stay close.”
I release the lock and do a quick sweep of the hall, traveling to the right. My pace is brisk as we take the north staircase down two long flights. We make it to the car without incident and I pull from the parking space and onto the street through one of the exits with a feeling of satisfaction. This is how it should always be.
The first week of negotiations is surprisingly rough as the opposing parties find new and inventive ways to suggest that complete annihilation is the consequence of ceding one square meter of ground to the other. Hellfire raining down on the guilty and innocent alike. Streets running with blood. The birth of heroes and the lamentation of women.
At the end of another long day, Edie leans back in her conference chair, rocking slightly as she stares at the screen. The image on it is hardly more than a knob of rock peeking through the calm North Sea.Sove. In English it means The Sleeper, but night after night, the topic has been the subject of news segments and fiery opinion pieces about American meddling and national sovereignty. This stupid rock has become a powder keg.
“What’s that?” I say, pointing to a shadow in the middle.
She grins, and exhaustion seems to shake from my shoulders. “This is the only charming thing you’ll find about this little island. That is a bottle of Kurtzburg.”
“The beer?”
“Yeah. The Sondish navy and the Vorburgian navy monitor the island, claiming it with a bottle of their favorite national beverage from time to time. It’s like playing king of the hill but with a detachment of marines.”
“That’s kind of friendly,” I say, checking the window. As we near the weekend, the number of protestors has grown, aided by the weather, which is cold but clear. Police barricades keep the environmentalists and fishing interest groups separated, but long experience has taught me not to become complacent. Danger can arise from any quarter, even a drum circle.
Edie joins me at the window, and I position myself as her shield. She doesn’t protest but places two hands on my shoulder and goes up on her tiptoes to look out at the crowd. The last week has been safe, by-the-book professionalism. A textbookcase of how to gain a client’s trust and execute her mission. I’m aware of something else, too. She makes me curious. To ask her questions and keep asking them until I’m satisfied.
