The Faithful Spy

“Right. Whatever. Anyway, Britney and I decided there’s really no way to know how. large a man is. Except for one thing.” She shot and missed. “This is distracting.”

“You brought it up,” Wells said. He was surprised to find that his disquiet had faded and he was enjoying himself. Maybe she’d done this a hundred times, flirted in a bar with the promise of more to come. He hadn’t. “Let me guess — height?”

“You wish. No.”

“Really? How about big feet, big hands—” Wells held up his palm and she did the same. They touched palms. Her fingers reached barely to his first knuckle.

She giggled. “I’d like to think that’s a good sign, but nope.”

“Then what?”

“Okay. Well, look, it’s not like I’ve got a ton of experience—”

“Coulda fooled me.”

She folded her arms.

“Kidding,” Wells said. “What was the tell?”

“German blood.”

“What?”

“German ancestry. German men are very. well-equipped.”

“Really?”

“Would I make that up?”

“How much German blood? Do you have to be all German?”

“It’s not like I did a survey, Jesse.” She laughed. Wells wished he could tell her his real name. “So that’s why you like Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“Well, no. I always thought he was hilarious. I mean, you could tell he was in on the joke in those movies. But the German thing added to the intrigue.”

“You know he’s Austrian.”

“Like there’s a difference. Your shot.”

Wells picked up his cue and leaned over the table.

“Why don’t you miss so I can run the table and we can get out of here?”

He did.

t h e y wa l k e d u p the stairs to her apartment, stopping every other step to kiss, Wells running his hands over her hips, pushing up her T-shirt, touching her soft stomach. Outside her door she stepped away from him.

“You can’t stay over. You really can’t.”

He kissed her neck.

“Five, ten minutes. That’s all. And promise me you won’t be upset. It’s kind of a pigsty, at least by girl standards.” She unlocked the door and Wells followed her inside. Clothes were strewn across the couch, glasses piled in the sink.

Wells leafed through a textbook sitting on a coffee table —Intro- duction to Nursing I. “You didn’t say you’re studying nursing.”

“Sit. You’re making me nervous poking around.”

Wells sat. “You want a drink?” she said.

“No thanks.” She clicked on the radio. A syrupy ballad filled the apartment. “Hey, Terminator. This is Ruben Studdard.”

“Where do you go to school?”

She put two glasses of water on the table and sat beside him.

“You got ten minutes. You want to quiz me or kiss me?” He kissed her, put his hands on her face while hers traced his body. He tasted the smoke in her mouth and felt a faint guilt that she wasn’t Exley. But mainly a desire so fierce that it seemed the room had shrunk around them until she was all he could see or feel. He pushed her back on the couch and slid his hands under her shirt—

Rap-Rap-RAP! Three sharp knocks at the door. She pulled away from him.

“Who’s that?”

“Shit,” she said.

RAP! RAP! The knocks came louder.

“I know you’re in there. Slut,” a slurred voice said from outside.

“Open the door.”

“My ex-boyfriend,” she said.

“What’s his name, Heinrich?”

“Not funny. We broke up in July. He didn’t take it well.” RAP!

RAP! “He’s come by a couple of times. It’s just — nobody’s ever been over before.”

Wells could feel his erection fade, his desire curdling into anger.

“Fuck him,” he said. “I’ll get rid of him.”

“I can handle it.”

“Open the door!”

She walked to the door. Wells followed, positioning himself behind the door where the guy couldn’t see him. She shook her head and pointed toward the bedroom, but he put his finger to his lips and didn’t move. She opened the door a notch. “Craig.”

“Nicole—”

“Go home. Please.”

“You can’t cheat on me.” He sounded pathetic to Wells, a whiny little man.

“Craig, we broke up two months ago.”

“I know you got a guy in there.” The door was shoved open a notch.

“I don’t.”

“I saw you from the parking lot.”

Nicole stumbled backward as Craig pushed her. Wells didn’t try to control the fury rising in his chest. He had seen enough. Enough of men treating women like chattel. Enough foolish machismo for a lifetime. He pulled open the door and turned toward Craig. The guy wasn’t so little after all, maybe 210, his face flushed, waves of whiskey rolling off him.

“I knew it.” Somehow Craig managed to look triumphant as he said this, as if Wells’s presence justified his own.

“Go home,” Wells said softly, knowing Craig wouldn’t. “I don’t fight drunks.”

“Fuck off.” Craig swung, a looping roundhouse that Wells easily dodged.

“Please don’t make me hit you,” Wells said. “Go home.” The guy swung again. Again Wells slipped the punch. A red fog clouded his eyes. He could almost smell Craig’s blood. Too much loneliness. Too much desire, unrequited.

“I asked you nicely,” Wells said, pleading for himself as much as Craig.