Natalie threw out her hands in a dramatic gesture. “Thank you. It’s the kick, the constantly measuring yourself against the odds and figuring out how to zig when you expected to zag, balancing on that knife’s edge.”
I knew exactly what she meant. No matter how well you planned, no matter how extensively you prepared, something always went differently than expected. And every job was a chance to prove Darwin’s simple maxim: adapt or die. We adapted; they died.
I turned to Mary Alice. “Are you going to miss it?”
She thought it over for a minute. “Probably not. Akiko and I have a good life, you know? We have our softball league and Akiko will be starting pitcher next year. I’ll be able to join an amateur orchestra finally and dust off my viola. We can travel without always wondering if a job is going to come up and derail everything. I’m down to my last few excuses. I think Akiko is afraid I’m having an affair.”
Her voice was light, but I realized how hard it must be to keep that kind of secret from your partner. The job could make demands of you when you least expected it, assignments cropping up without warning. When the notice came, you grabbed your go bag and left. Sometimes for a few days; sometimes for months. There was no way to know.
Mary Alice went on. “Either I’m having an affair or I’m a spy, I’m pretty sure that’s what she thinks.”
Natalie snorted. “Why would she think you’re a spy?”
“Because I am shit at thinking up excuses as to where I’m going when I suddenly have to disappear. The last time I told her I had an accounting emergency.”
The Museum paid us annually, a retainer so we’d always be available when they needed us. Bonuses came with each job, which meant we weren’t hurting for cash, and being gone for a few months at a time made it hard to hold down regular jobs. But it was easy to get bored and we needed cover stories, so most of us freelanced. Mary Alice had a few accounting clients, Natalie made art that occasionally got shown although she was careful to keep a low profile. Helen was happy playing housewife to Kenneth, while I took translation jobs, usually academic books. If you’re imagining it’s dull work, you’re not wrong. But it kept my languages sharp and gave me something to do with my time.
I turned to Mary Alice. “What the hell is an accounting emergency?”
“Believe me, if I could think of a good one, I’d use it. I usually make up some bullshit about client confidentiality and duck out the door. Or I just say that my mother is poorly.”
“Doesn’t she ever want to go along?” Helen asked.
Mary Alice hesitated slightly. “She knows deep down I’m lying and I think she’s afraid to push because of what she might find out. Besides, you know my family. It wasn’t hard to get Akiko to believe she wouldn’t be welcome.”
I shook my head. “So, for the five years you’ve been married, Akiko has believed your family is too homophobic to welcome your wife into their home? And that you would just go along with this?”
She shrugged. “It’s the best way to keep her safe. The less she knows, the less trouble she can get into.”
Helen pursed her lips. “But she must think you won’t stand up for her, that you are willing to put up with whatever your family chooses to throw at you.”
“Oh, they’ve thrown a lot, including actual dishes. You should have seen the one time I tried to bring Akiko home for Christmas,” Mary Alice said with a sigh. “But maybe someday I’ll be able to tell her the truth, now that it’s finally over.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell her to start with. Kenneth knew what I did,” Helen put in.
“Kenneth was CIA. He had his own baggage,” Mary Alice said. She flushed. “I should have told her. I know I should. But I never found the right time. I mean, it’s not exactly first-date stuff. ‘Well, I’m into chamber music and intarsia knitting, and last week I poisoned the head of a multinational crime syndicate’ doesn’t quite cut it.”
“And there was no chance between first date and your wedding day?” I asked mildly.
She nibbled her thumbnail, looking guilty as hell. “I thought she might leave me. I was afraid, okay? I was worried that if I told her the things I’ve done, she might decide she couldn’t live with that. And I couldn’t live without her.”
“You should have told her,” Helen said firmly.
“I never told any of my husbands,” Natalie said.