LITMIR.BIZ

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      There, Tucker had carted the box to his sub-basement office. Prying it open with a crowbar, he’d flipped quickly though the moldering files inside before depositing the whole bunch in his heavy steel safe. After a quick call upstairs to confirm his return, he’d slammed the safe door and spun the dial, heading home to catch up on some of the sleep that had eluded him for the two days he’d been gone.

      Now, with a warm summer rain splashing on the windowsill and the damp, earthy scent around him of a world washed clean, he was back in his own wide, empty bed in suburban Alexandria, fully dressed, only his shoes kicked off before he’d crashed on top of the covers.

      How long ago?

      The heavy curtains were drawn tight to shut out the light of day. Tucker glanced at the digital clock next to the bed: 11:33 a.m. He’d slept less than two hours before snapping awake to the sound of his own mournful cry.

      The mattress dipped as he rolled onto his side, feet dropping with a thud to the carpeted floor. He exhaled a long, shuddering sigh, and the blade of his big hands scraped the tears from his cheeks—denying even this familiar room the pathetic sight of a middle-aged man reduced to tears. He had no recollection of the dream that had moved him to this state. All he knew was that it had left him with a profound sense of loss and longing.

      He knew, too, that he was ludicrous—a brooding, barrel-chested hulk whose ferocious, black-eyed scowl had once struck terror in the hearts of fools and his more timid underlings. Now, here he was, reduced to whimpering in his bed like some self-pitying boy with a complaint about the unfairness of life.

      He got to his feet and walked to the window, throwing back the drapes. The cloud-shrouded day cast a gentle light across the back lawn rolling down to the creek at the bottom of his property. The grass, dry and yellowing when he’d left forty-eight hours earlier, had already been transformed to lush green. On the borders of his lot, red hibiscus, white daylilies and blue hydrangeas were all in bloom—a patriotic display in time for the Fourth of July. The long fronds of the big willow by the creek swayed in the summer rainstorm, a slow, easy dance.

      No automobile horns, no loud voices, no pounding jack-hammers. After the noise and bustle of Moscow, the quiet was deafening.

      Tucker passed a hand over his head, feeling stubble on a dome normally shaved bowling-ball smooth. He debated his next move. He was bone-tired, but even if jet lag was insisting it was evening, sleep wasn’t an option. His dreams, obviously, weren’t to be trusted. Anyway, he’d only meant to grab forty winks. If he went back to bed now, he’d be left to struggle with his bleak thoughts through the long, dark night to come.

      He could get moving, he supposed. Shower, shave, see if he had any clean clothes. Drive back into work and tackle those old KGB files.

      But what was the point? Nothing and no one depended on him. Now that he’d gotten his hands on them and spirited them out of Moscow, anyone could take over dissecting the files, for whatever they were worth. From here on in, it would be solitary grunt work, the kind meted out to old operatives who’ve lost the ability or the heart to wade through the secret jungles, waging covert war.

      Tucker knew he’d been written off as a casualty of that war—wounded, though not quite slain. He’d toyed with the idea of early retirement, but at the last minute, he’d backed away from the abyss of empty years stretching before him. He was in disgustingly good health. If statistics were to be believed, he had a third of his life yet ahead of him. What he did with that time mattered to no one but himself.

      His wife had been dead sixteen long years, although there were days when he still half imagined Joanne would be there when he walked in the front door. He’d lost his only son, Stephen, a year and a half earlier. What family he had left needed little from him. His daughter Carol, and her husband, Michael, were a loving couple, hardworking, good parents to their two children. Sufficient unto themselves. All they required from him was that he put in an appearance at the occasional Sunday or holiday dinner.

      Until recently, there’d been a woman in his life, helping to fill the empty hours and days, but that relationship had foundered and run aground like everything else. The extra-curricular involvement with his secretary had started one night a few years back, when Patty had marched into his office after the rest of his section had gone home and demanded he take her to dinner after working her like a slave until all hours. Then she had invited him to her apartment. They’d kept on in a low-key way ever after, and when his son had died, she’d pretty much moved in, nursing Tucker through months of guilt and self-loathing.

      Finally, though, understandably, she’d grown tired of the uneven arrangement, knowing there were prior claims on his heart and mind that she’d never dislodge. As the previous winter had settled in, Patty had announced one evening, with resignation but no rancor, that she was quitting the Company and moving to Florida. Tucker hadn’t been invited to go along.

      “It’s not that I don’t care about you,” she’d said, her voice dusky as she busied herself with packing the suitcase on his bed. “Fact is, I love you. Always will, I guess, fool that I am.”

      Tucker was standing in the doorway, arms hanging stupidly at his sides, watching her and trying to get his mind around the prospect of her absence. “Then why are you leaving?”

      She’d been part of his daily existence for nearly twenty years—at first, just sitting outside his office, running interference, holding back fools and whiners, keeping his expense accounts balanced and his files straight. Lately, he’d grown even more dependent on her.

      She folded a sweater in a couple of brusque movements and laid it across the suitcase. Her hairdresser had taken to putting platinum streaks in Patty’s tawny hair to camouflage the increasing gray, and they sparkled as she moved. Straightening slowly, she turned to face him. “I’m not leaving because I’m mad, Frank. Honest. I just can’t live on a one-way street anymore.”

      He nodded. “I haven’t been there for you. You stood by me these last months. You’ve done for me and done for me—”

      “I was glad to.”

      “I don’t know why.”

      She came over to him, smiling sadly, running a hand up his arm. “I do.”

      He cupped her cheek, thumb tracing the deep lines around her smiling mouth and hazel eyes. Her face was well lived in, but in the soft, forgiving glow of lamplight, he saw the pretty girl she must once have been, full of hopes and dreams that wouldn’t have passed her by, if life were in any way fair. Her body, too, had lost the firmness of youth, but had acquired in its place the warmth and uninhibited generosity that comes to the best of women in middle age. “I haven’t taken care of you,” he said.

      “It’s not that. You take care of me just fine. You remember my birthday. You make me chicken soup when I get a cold. You sit beside me when I watch my stupid shows and never make fun when I blubber. You check the oil in my car, keep my brakes tuned and my tires aligned. There’s not much you wouldn’t do for me, Frank, I know that. Except the one thing I really want, and that’s not your fault. You can’t make yourself be in love with me.”

      He started to reply, but she put her fingers on his lips, saving them both the embarrassment of an empty protest.

      “No, it’s okay. That’s just the way it is. I knew going in how things were with you. I guess I hoped it might change. Or, if not, that what we had would be enough.” She shook her head. “But it’s not. Not for either of us.”

      In his heart, Tucker knew she was right. She needed more than he was capable of giving her, and cutting her losses was probably the best thing for her to do. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier, though.

      She kissed him then, and he wrapped her in his arms, holding on just a little longer. The next thing he knew, they were pushing her suitcase off the bed. And it might very well have been the best lovemaking they’d ever had, but it didn’t change the fact that afterward, Patty had finished her packing, loaded her Toyota and driven away.

      Sighing heavily, now, Tucker stared at the big oak bed.

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