“None of your husbands ever stuck around long enough for you to tell. You change marital partners like the rest of us change underwear,” Mary Alice retorted.
Natalie shrugged. She tended to view monogamy as a suggestion rather than an imperative—something she finally realized she ought to share with a prospective husband after divorce number two. By the time she split from the third one, she’d given up entirely on marriage and decided to keep a string of what the kids call fuckbuddies.
Natalie turned to me. “What about you? Will you miss it?”
“I won’t miss the workouts,” I said honestly. “Keeping myself in shape because my life might depend on it is getting a little old. My knees are tired.”
“What will you do with your time?” Helen asked.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe I’ll take up needlepoint or interpretive dance.”
Natalie shook her head. “I can’t imagine you ever not being exactly what you are. We’re all killers, but you’re the Killer Queen,” she said, lifting her glass in a toast.
The others laughed and I even managed to drink, but Natalie’s remark cut a little closer to the bone than I would have liked. Because she said what I’d already started to fear—that without the job, I was nothing.
CHAPTER FOUR
DECEMBER 1978
There are no job fairs for assassins. Recruitment is a delicate business, and Billie Webster has no idea that her number is about to be called. She is sitting in a holding cell in Austin, Texas. She has spent the night propped against the cinder-block wall, listening to the usual sounds of a city jail on a Saturday night. A prostitute has fallen asleep with her head on Billie’s shoulder, and even though she smells like body odor and weed, Billie doesn’t make her move.
She hasn’t made her one phone call because she has just broken up with the second-year law student at UT who usually bails her out and doesn’t know who else to call.
So she waits, letting the prostitute snore on her shoulder until the duty officer comes and barks out a name. “Webster!”
Billie gently moves the prostitute aside and stands. The duty officer jerks his head and opens the cell, cuffing her before taking her arm and leading her down a narrow hall. She is still dressed in the denim flares she wore to the protest, but they are stiff with blood and there are red half-moons caked under her nails. The duty officer takes her through a series of doors until they come to one marked private. He unlocks the cuffs and opens the door, gesturing for her to enter as he reattaches the cuffs to his belt.
Inside is a scarred table and a pair of chairs. A man is sitting in one, reading a newspaper as he smokes a pipe. He is dressed in civilian clothes but something about his posture says he’s spent time in uniform.
The officer jerks his head for Billie to enter. “I will be just outside, sir,” he tells the man, but he looks at Billie when he says it and she knows it’s a warning.
She enters and the door closes behind her. The man looks up and waves her over with an unexpected smile. When she gets closer, she sees that the newspaper is the funnies section.
The man chuckles a little as he folds the newspaper. “Marmaduke,” he says to himself. He watches as she sits, looking her over carefully as she returns the favor. She is dirty, her dark blond hair tangled and in desperate need of a wash. She is wearing a thin sweater and bell-bottomed jeans embroidered with palm trees and rainbows, and there is something oddly touching about the notion of this girl sitting in her dorm room, setting each little stitch. It pleases him to think of her doing something so precise. It means his instincts about this girl are right.
She sees a man on the wrong side of sixty, she guesses, with the wiry muscles of a whippet and tidy, sandy hair mixed with white. His mustache is thin and dapper, and he wears casual clothes—khaki pants and an oxford-cloth shirt—with the air of a suit from Savile Row. Billie has not yet heard of Savile Row. It will be many months later that she learns about custom clothing and realizes that he has been her introduction to proper tailoring.
His features are set in an expression of calm interest and he seems amused by her scrutiny. “Good morning, Miss Webster.”
He looks at her swelling, bloody knuckles and doesn’t attempt to shake her hand. It is considerate, and she likes him for it.
“What’s this all about?” she asks.
He smiles, a patient, good-natured smile. “All in good time, Miss Webster. I hope you are not in too much discomfort from your injuries? That contusion above your lip really ought to be stitched,” he says reproachfully. There is a faint British accent to his words, and she likes him for that too.