Fiction by Jason Edwards
She’s a spy and he doesn’t even know it. They sleep together and he tells her secrets, but her favorite part are these walks in this little park, tucked between his office building and hers and a few others. A secret park, something for top-floor executives to look at while they execute orders for, well, let’s face it, execution. The spy game is a dirty game, it’s all about money, and sex, and occasionally killing people.
She’s not afraid of any of that, and if her bosses told her to kill him she would, because it’s her job and she’s good at her job. But there’s nothing wrong with taking a few moments to walk through a park on a nice day with a nice guy and talk about nice things like a new pair of shoes she’s going to buy, about a sale they’re having, about the dress they’ll go with and the lipstick she’ll put on, just for him. He’s married, so they can’t go out, of course, he can’t take her someplace fancy, but then she doesn’t need fancy, she just needs those secrets. So she can do her job and get paid and buy shoes.
It’s way more complicated than that, of course, and she’s not some stereotypical floozy who gets hot and bothered over a pair of marked-down pumps. Except she is. Obviously, she’s not, she’s a spy, a good one, on the fast track to promotion and maybe even a shop command or, if the wind blows just right, a spot in the leadership, a policy maker. But speaking of wind, there’s a delicious breeze coming over that small green hill, there’s a shady spot underneath the tree as the path turns, making her shiver, there’s that old woman on a park bench, knitting something for her great-grand kids. Steel blue knitting needles, winking in the sunlight.
This small park nestled between tall buildings, this is the only time of day it gets any sunlight.
***
He’s a spy and she doesn’t even know it. Seducing her was easy, mostly because she was probably told to let him, and now he feeds her bad intel so his bosses can play games with her bosses. But this part he doesn’t like, listening to her drone on and on about shoes or lipstick or something, these stupid walks in this shitty little park where no one goes. He likes the sex even though she isn’t very good at it, but then neither is he. It’s just that, after sex, he sleeps better, and normally, he doesn’t sleep very well.
Mostly because he’s killed so many people. It really gets to him. Other guys, and gals, in his shop, they seem to deal with it so well. Get a job, get close, make the hit, move on. Sometimes they even sleep with the future-deceased, just to get their guard down. How can they do that. Do they imagine walking in the park with them, day after day, so mind-numbingly bored that it’s either kill or commit suicide?
This is why they took him off hits, put him on counter-counter, not exactly a chump’s game, but not nearly as exciting as executions. But oh well. It has its perks. She thinks he’s married, thinks she tricking him with the pillow talk, lets him do things to her that a lot of women wouldn’t. So he’s conflicted. Which is why, when they turn the corner, and there’s the old woman, but this time her knitting needles are blue, a small tear falls from his eye.
Blue is the signal for assassination. He’s just not sure if its sadness or relief that makes him cry.
***
She’s an old woman, but everyone thinks she’s a spy. Ha. She’s just an old woman, nestled in that sweet spot where she’s got enough income to stretch out her final years, but not enough to worry about politics. Men in suits and cold office buildings dictate world policy, a million peasants in some back water die, the minimum wage goes up and down, and she just wakes up and goes to the park and does some knitting, waiting for the mid-day sun. Feels good, deep in her bones.
She’s had a life. She’s gone from innocent to informed to impassioned to jaded to indifferent to philosophical to, well, there’s no word for the final stage. Zen, if you believe in that Buddhist crap. But she’s not going to slap on a pair of tight pants, squat down on a shiny purple mat and make her joints go pop for the entertainment of the universe. She’ll just wake up, have her tea, open her mail, and walk down to the park.
They think she’s a spy because she’s here almost every day. A bunch of office buildings filled to bursting with agents, special agents, double agents, assassins, operatives, provocateurs, and analysts. And so my bureau men. So many executives, so many suits. She’s seen more dead drops than Carter’s got pills. It was entertaining once, now it’s just background noise. She sits and knits. Her grandson, sweet kid, he sends her picture of her great-grand daughter, requests for more booties. He even sends her knitting needles.
But she can’t find the ones he sent her last week, so today, she’ll use an old blue pair. Use to be her favorites.