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Authors: Thomas Mullen
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exhaustion, but she looks content. I remember that look.
“None of them.”
I’m still watching the kids, this quotidian scene of marvels tiny and huge, and it takes a second for me to realize the mistake I’ve made. She’s staring at me and her body is rigid.
“I used to live here, with my wife and daughter,” I lie. But I mix in some truth: “They had an accident.”
I’m too consumed by my own past to look back at her. I just stare at a little girl, maybe four years old, who reminds me of my lost jewel. Little pink and white baubles bounce at the ends of her braids as she darts across the playground, an autumn sprite spreading joy without even realizing it. I scan the adult faces, looking for one with a genetic similarity to the child’s, wonder whose she is.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman says.
I shouldn’t be here, revealing myself to so many contemps. And I certainly shouldn’t be sharing memorable stories, horrors that will haunt this young mother as she puts her child down for a nap.
So I try to hold the past inside me. I mix in more lies, cushioning my vulnerabilities in them. “I live in Philly now, but my company sends me here a lot. I can’t help dropping by the old playground sometimes, watching the memories dance around me for a few minutes.”
I look at the kids again, staring at a world that has no place for me. The woman’s eyes stay on mine.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” I say. “I’ll go.”
I don’t look back at her as I walk away. I bend to unlatch the childproof fence, swinging it closed behind me to lock the children in and keep them safe.
4.
L eo Hastings’s employer, Targeted Executive Solutions, was not terribly executive, and it did not always offer solutions. But the work did involve targets.
TES occupied a building in one of the many nondescript office parks that sprouted from the Northern Virginia asphalt thanks to heavy watering from the government’s defense budget. Also in the building were the offices of a dentist, an accountant, and a real estate firm. Across the pedestrian-unfriendly street was a Chick-fil-A, and faintly in the background was I-395’s constant arterial hum of personnel and dollars into and out of the capital. TES’s office had no windows. Anyone curious enough to Google it discovered a slick though merely three-page Web site offering bland assurances about the company’s commitment to its clients’ success. The listed phone number led to a voice-mail box that an employee checked once a week. Clients used a different number.
This was where Leo had beached himself after being thrown from the Agency’s boat, a mere half a mile away. Some of his ex-colleagues had encouraged him to think of it as a sort of promotion. Plenty of people were leaving the Agency, which was still being blamed for 9/11, for failing to predict the future, for not having a crystal ball, for not being perfect. And being blamed for everything it was doing to prevent another one. Talent was leaching from the government side to the contractor side, but it wasn’t really going anywhere, his ex-colleagues explained. Hell, you’ll get to do basically the same thing, and for more money. Spooks and analysts were trading in their blue government ID tags for green contractor ID tags, patrolling the same halls at Langley, only this time as consultants in better suits.
But Leo was hardly doing the same thing for TES that he’d done for the Agency. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to do the same thing anymore.
How he had become involved in this sort of work was a complicated tale, one he himself didn’t always understand. Part of the problem was that he couldn’t tell anyone. And isn’t that how we learn things, how we commit them to memory and make them a part of ourselves, by telling other people, wrapping our experiences into tidy stories? Sitting at a bar having drinks with old friends: Hey, let me tell you how I was recruited by the Agency. Or lying in bed
“None of them.”
I’m still watching the kids, this quotidian scene of marvels tiny and huge, and it takes a second for me to realize the mistake I’ve made. She’s staring at me and her body is rigid.
“I used to live here, with my wife and daughter,” I lie. But I mix in some truth: “They had an accident.”
I’m too consumed by my own past to look back at her. I just stare at a little girl, maybe four years old, who reminds me of my lost jewel. Little pink and white baubles bounce at the ends of her braids as she darts across the playground, an autumn sprite spreading joy without even realizing it. I scan the adult faces, looking for one with a genetic similarity to the child’s, wonder whose she is.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman says.
I shouldn’t be here, revealing myself to so many contemps. And I certainly shouldn’t be sharing memorable stories, horrors that will haunt this young mother as she puts her child down for a nap.
So I try to hold the past inside me. I mix in more lies, cushioning my vulnerabilities in them. “I live in Philly now, but my company sends me here a lot. I can’t help dropping by the old playground sometimes, watching the memories dance around me for a few minutes.”
I look at the kids again, staring at a world that has no place for me. The woman’s eyes stay on mine.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” I say. “I’ll go.”
I don’t look back at her as I walk away. I bend to unlatch the childproof fence, swinging it closed behind me to lock the children in and keep them safe.
4.
L eo Hastings’s employer, Targeted Executive Solutions, was not terribly executive, and it did not always offer solutions. But the work did involve targets.
TES occupied a building in one of the many nondescript office parks that sprouted from the Northern Virginia asphalt thanks to heavy watering from the government’s defense budget. Also in the building were the offices of a dentist, an accountant, and a real estate firm. Across the pedestrian-unfriendly street was a Chick-fil-A, and faintly in the background was I-395’s constant arterial hum of personnel and dollars into and out of the capital. TES’s office had no windows. Anyone curious enough to Google it discovered a slick though merely three-page Web site offering bland assurances about the company’s commitment to its clients’ success. The listed phone number led to a voice-mail box that an employee checked once a week. Clients used a different number.
This was where Leo had beached himself after being thrown from the Agency’s boat, a mere half a mile away. Some of his ex-colleagues had encouraged him to think of it as a sort of promotion. Plenty of people were leaving the Agency, which was still being blamed for 9/11, for failing to predict the future, for not having a crystal ball, for not being perfect. And being blamed for everything it was doing to prevent another one. Talent was leaching from the government side to the contractor side, but it wasn’t really going anywhere, his ex-colleagues explained. Hell, you’ll get to do basically the same thing, and for more money. Spooks and analysts were trading in their blue government ID tags for green contractor ID tags, patrolling the same halls at Langley, only this time as consultants in better suits.
But Leo was hardly doing the same thing for TES that he’d done for the Agency. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to do the same thing anymore.
How he had become involved in this sort of work was a complicated tale, one he himself didn’t always understand. Part of the problem was that he couldn’t tell anyone. And isn’t that how we learn things, how we commit them to memory and make them a part of ourselves, by telling other people, wrapping our experiences into tidy stories? Sitting at a bar having drinks with old friends: Hey, let me tell you how I was recruited by the Agency. Or lying in bed
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