Edge

Endgame

WHEN DRIVING ON the job, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of listening to music: too distracting, as I’d told Bill Carter.

But on my own time I always had the radio, a CD or a download playing. I liked old-time music but what I meant by that was the period from the 1930s through the ’60s, nothing before and little after.

Performers like Fats Waller, Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney, Ella, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin… if the lyrics weren’t stupid. Words were important. That was a concept that the Beatles, say, for all their musicality, just didn’t get. Great music but I always thought they would have created transcendent art if only they’d stopped and thought about what they were writing.

Now, as I sped away from the District, I was on the Sinatra channel on Sirius satellite radio, which plays a good mix of artists of that era, not just Frank. The voice coming through the speakers was that of Harry Connick, Jr.

Enjoying the music.

Enjoying the driving too.

I’d left the city behind. I’d left Maree and Joanne behind. Ryan and Amanda.

Henry Loving too.

They were all, in different ways, permanent farewells.

Other people too had ceased to exist for me-only temporarily, of course. Freddy was gone, as were Aaron Ellis and Claire duBois, who I hoped was cooking up a storm just now with Cat Man.

Jason Westerfield had departed earlier from my mental cast and crew as had the woman with the pearls.

A sign flashed past. Fifteen miles to Annapolis, Maryland.

Twenty minutes later I pulled up in front of a modest white colonial house not far from the Chesapeake Bay. The wind was tame tonight but I could still hear the waves-one of the things I liked best about the area here.

I slowed, signaled, though no one was behind me, and turned up a narrow drive, flush with leaves, which bail out earlier here than in the city. I enjoyed raking them-not blowing but raking-and would get to the task tomorrow, the start of my weekend. I braked to a stop, then climbed out, stretched and gathered my computer, gym bag and the shopping bag containing the precious board game.

Juggling these items, I made my way along the serpentine strip of concrete-crunching leaves underneath-to the front door. I started to set the suitcase down to dig in my pocket for the keys but suddenly it burst open.

I blinked in surprise.

Peggy barked a laugh. Small but strong, face dusted with freckles even into her fourth decade, the brunette flung her arms around me and, with the packages, I nearly went over backward. She steadied us both-strong, I was saying-and, her arm hard around my lower back, we walked into our house.

“You’re back early.” She frowned. “Should I tell my lover to get out by the bedroom window?”

“Can he cook?” I said. “Ask him to stay.”

Peggy gigged me in the ribs, laughing again. Setting down the bundles, I gripped her hard. Our lips met and kissed for a lengthy moment.

“So the project finished up early?” I noted that she glanced at herself in the mirror and straightened her dark wiry hair. She hadn’t been expecting me home until tomorrow. She usually got dolled up for my arrival after I’d been away. This was one of the things I loved about her. I hadn’t called because I didn’t want her to go to any trouble and because I liked to surprise her-like this, as well as for birthdays and anniversaries; our fifteenth was coming up in two weeks.

“What happened to your head?”

“I’m a klutz. You know that. Crawling around in a construction site.”

“Hardhat,” she admonished.

“I usually do.” I asked, “Are your mom and dad still coming this weekend?”

“Yep. With Oscar.”

“Who?”

“Their dog.”

“Did I know they got a dog?” I asked. I honestly couldn’t remember.

“They mentioned it.”

“What kind?”

“A pick-a-poo or something. I don’t know. A corga-doodle.”

I looked around. “The boys?”

“Jeremy’s in his room, on the phone with your brother. Sam’s in bed. I’ll make you some supper.”

“A sandwich, maybe. Some wine. A big glass of wine.”

“Come on.” Peggy stowed the luggage in the hallway I’d been meaning to retile, ever since a bathroom pipe committed suicide a month ago. She led me into the kitchen and dug in the refrigerator. Before she started assembling the food she dimmed the lights and lit several candles.

She poured a French Chardonnay, a Côte d’Or, for both of us.

We touched glasses.

“How long you home for?”

“Four days.”

“Really!” She stepped forward, pressed her entire body against mine and kissed me hard, her hand sliding down my back and pausing in the exact spot where my holster had been only a few hours before.

After a moment or two, when she stepped back, I said, “Did I mention I’m home for five days?”

“What do I have to do to make it a week?” she whispered, lips against my ear.

I smiled, though even with Peggy I wasn’t the best smiler in the world.

A few more kisses and when she finally escaped from my arms I said, “Look what I found.” I stepped into the hall, grabbed the shopping bag and pulled out the game that had been delivered on Saturday. I unwrapped it and set the box between us.

“Oh, my…” Peggy isn’t the board game aficionado that I am but since there are more games in the house than books she’s become something of an expert by osmosis. “Is that what I think it is?”

“An original.”

We were looking down at a first edition of Candy Land, the simplest and arguably the most popular of all children’s board games. One I had grown up playing with my brothers and our friends. You draw cards and move your pieces around a landscape that includes a chocolate swamp and a gumdrop mountain.

“Jer’s too old, I’d guess. But Sammy’ll like it.”

“No, with you, Jeremy will play.”

I realized she was right.

“Now, go sit and relax,” Peggy told me. Then the smile faded. I was sized up. “You working out or something and not telling me? You’ve lost weight.”

“No good fast food where they sent me.”

“Hm.”

As she pulled open the refrigerator door, I walked into the den. I eased into my wheezing armchair, surrounded by the 121 games on the shelves. A thought occurred to me, a thought directed to one of my recent principals:

You’re more right than you know, Joanne. It’s not impossible to have the two lives. The public, the private. The dark, the light. The madness, the dear sanity.

But that balancing act takes so very much work. Superhuman, it sometimes seems.

You have to force aside every memory and thought of your other life, your life with your loved ones when they pop into your head. If you don’t, the distraction could be fatal.

You have to accept the loneliness of a secret life. Like the one I live four or five days at a time, or more, on the road, in safe houses and in the Alexandria town house, which the government subsidizes so I can be on call, near the office. Even though it’s near my beloved gaming club, even though it’s filled with some of the favorite games in my collection, even though it’s decorated with certificates and commendations I’ve received from the Diplomatic Service and from my present organization, it’s essentially an empty place, smelling of cardboard and paint. It just isn’t home.

And, most difficult of all-if you want to lead this double life-you must deceive.

Peggy knows I work for the government but, because of my degree in math, she thinks it has something to do with scientific analysis of secure federal facilities here and abroad. I’ve told her I can’t say anything more and I assure her it’s not dangerous, just highly classified. A lot of numbers crunching. Boring.

She understands, I think, and accepts that I have to be tight-lipped.

And, conversely, I share little about my home life with my coworkers-all but the closest, like Freddy. Buried deep somewhere in federal government human resource departments, of course, are full records about me and about Peggy, the boys, my mother-she lives in San Diego-and my three older brothers, one an insurance executive and two college professors. Those files will be relevant should benefits and retirement and beneficiary issues arise but like so much else in my life, I’ve done everything I humanly can to make sure facts about me are NTK.

Need-to-know…

To most of the people I come across in my job I’m single, childless, a resident of Old Town Alexandria and probably a widower with a tragic past (the stalker story I told Maree was true, though it didn’t end as dramatically as I suggested when making my point to the young woman). I’m a stiff federal employee who doesn’t tell jokes or smile much. I prefer to be called by the pretentious, one-syllable “Corte.”

Gratefully, I was now drawn from these thoughts by a high-pitched shout of youthful joy from behind me. I rose, turning and smiling.

My youngest, Sammy, had awakened and stood in the doorway. “Daddy, you’re home!” He was in SpongeBob pajamas and his hair was tousled and he looked adorably cute.

I immediately set the wineglass down. I knew the boy was going for a running leap. Greeting me this way had become a recent tradition. And sure enough, bare feet thumping, he sped toward me, ignoring his mother’s laughing plea from the kitchen to be careful.

But I encouraged him. “Sammy, come on, come on!” I called, sounding, I’m sure, as enthusiastic as I felt. And, as he took off into the air, I braced myself firmly and made absolutely certain that my son landed safe and unharmed in my waiting arms.