The Faithful Spy

“Sure, only Ruben’s fat and black and sings ballads. Come on, you never heard of any of them? You’re messing with me.”

“I stopped caring about music about the time that Kurt Cobain died.”

He hadn’t exactly stopped caring, he thought. But rock didn’t get a lot of play in the places where he’d been. Wells couldn’t claim sophisticated musical tastes; in high school he had adored Springsteen and Zeppelin as well as slightly cooler stuff like Prince. Then in college he’d gotten into grunge and alternative, like everybody else. In Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier he had missed music more than he’d expected he would, though he had burned a few dozen songs into his head before he left and could still conjure them on occasion.

“Where have you been?” Nicole said. “The moon?”

“Worse. Canada.”

“Maybe I been stuck in Georgia my whole life, but I know they have TVs in Canada.” She gave him a long look, then shook her head. “Canada it is then.”

“Hey, Nicole,” a guy called from the other side of the bar. “Can a man get a drink, or you gonna spend the whole night flirting?”

“What man? Oh, you mean you,” she said.

“You’re not as cute as you think,” the guy said.

“Yes she is,” Wells called out. He was on his second beer and already feeling lightheaded.

“Coming, Freddie.” She leaned into Wells and said, “I’d let him pour it himself but he’d suck down the whole bottle.”

“I heard that—”

“Then you know it’s true,” she said over her shoulder to Freddie. And winked at Wells and walked away. Wells sipped his beer and tried not to stare at her ass. He failed.

four hours later, Wells turned his Ford into the parking lot of a storefront pool hall down the highway from the Rusty Nail where the illegals watched Mexican soccer and drank two-dollar Buds. He checked his mirror. Sure enough, her Toyota pickup was making the same turn.

He knew that he was making a mistake, that getting involved with this woman — even for one night — would cause complications that he didn’t need. He knew too that Nicole, whatever her charms, was a poor substitute for Exley. But at the moment he didn’t much care. He needed a woman, and the hard truth was that he might never see Exley again. He flicked at his shoulder, envisioning an angel on it disappearing in a puff of smoke. The guy behind the counter gave them a half-friendly nod when they walked in. Aside from the occasional movie, playing pool was Wells’s only entertainment; he had been here twice before.

“We close in a hour, man.”

“That doesn’t give me much time to kick your butt,” Nicole said.

“Let’s go.”

to his surprise, she wasn’t joking. She started cold and lost the first game but won the next two and would have taken a third straight if she hadn’t scratched on the eight ball. “Should have known a bartender could play,” he said, watching her smoothly stroke a ball into a side pocket.

“Hate to get beat by a girl?”

“You haven’t beat me yet. It’s two — two.”

She narrowly missed a double bank shot and walked around the table to him. Even after a few drinks she moved easily. “You’re funny,” she said. “You pretend you don’t care but you hate to lose.”

Wells shrugged. “That’s true,” he said.

“And you’re always watching. You never stop watching. What are you looking at, Jesse?”

Even after all these years alone Wells knew the right answer to that one. “You.”

She laughed. “That took way too long. You’re like a robot that’s almost human but not quite. The Terminator.”

Wells suddenly felt as though he’d gone to a five-dollar storefront psychic and been told not just that he would die, but exactly when, where, and how. She didn’t know how right she was. To cover his discomfort he laughed awkwardly. “That’s not nice,” he said. He leaned over the table to line up his shot. She slid behind him and put her arms on his. Wells could smell her, whiskey and cigarettes. He turned to kiss her but she pulled her mouth away. For a moment he forgot her entirely and thought of Exley, lying on the table in a dirty basement in Oakland. Then he was back.

“No, I’m helping you. Get closer to the table,” she said. “Concentrate. Watch the angle.” She laughed again. “I hate it when guys pull that shit, grab me at the table. That’s why I always lose the first game, to see if they will.”

“Kiss me,” Wells said.

“Make this shot and I will.”

He missed, badly. “I never should have had that fifth beer.”

“That’s no way to be a Terminator,” she said.

“I’m not the Terminator,” Wells said. “I’m the good guy. Trying to stop him. What was his name?”

She picked up her cue and sighted her shot. “Too bad. I always had a thing for Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. well, I was talking to Britney — my best girlfriend — a couple years back, about men, you know? Their equipment.”

“Their penises,” Wells said. “Just say it.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“And?”

She flushed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“As long as it’s not about how you lost your virginity,” Wells said.

“What?”

“Inside joke. Between me and myself.”