Dumbed down and numbed by time and age
Your dreams that catch the world the cage
- I and Love and You/The Avett Brothers
United Nations Headquarters, Manhattan, New York
Office of Dr. Rachel Wallace, translator
Three months later
"Are you going to this thing tomorrow night?" Charlie asked, sprawled in a chair on the other side of her desk.
Rachel sighed, running her fingers through her soft, dark hair and wondering for the thousandth time if she should cut it. It's getting too long, she thought absently.
"I think I have to," she answered. She wasn't pleased at the prospect and she didn't hide her dissatisfaction; she would leave the optimism to Charlie. That had become a sort of running joke between them, she the staid, reserved Englishwoman, and he the relentlessly enthusiastic American. He would tease her, and she would chide him, and all the while each of them wondered whether perhaps there was some more hiding beneath their friendly banter. It wouldn't take much, she knew, to push this tenuous friendship into the realm of the romantic, but that was the last thing she wanted. She'd only just found her feet, only just come to terms with who she was, and she was nowhere near ready to share her bed or her life with anyone else. For his part, Charlie seemed content to flirt, and tease, and bide his time. She wasn't sure if his patience should be a comfort to her or not.
"Oh, come on, Rach, it won't be that bad." His eyes were sparkling at her mischievously; he does have lovely eyes, she thought as she watched him grinning at her. His eyes were soft and brown, and somewhere, in the deep dark recesses of her heart, she knew her fondness for them stemmed not so much from their color as from the way they reminded her of another pair of eyes that used to watch her with a similar amusement, and a similar barely-disguised yearning.
"Standing around with a bunch of stuffy diplomats sipping cocktails and lying to one another for hours on end does not sound like fun to me," she told him in clipped tones. Rachel was known about the office for her almost aggressive resistance to any activity that could be deemed even remotely social; that reticence to engage was a particularly strange trait for someone in her chosen field. It was her job to attend conferences and parties and quiet backroom chats, to stand behind the shoulder of various dignitaries and quietly, efficiently translate in any one of the wide array of languages in which she was fluent. Rachel much preferred translating correspondence to those face-to-face meetings, but needs must.
"You'll get to wear a pretty dress, though," Charlie pointed out.
He had a point there.
Her dress for the upcoming gala was absolutely lovely; it was an earthy sort of mauve, rouched slightly to accentuate her waist, with a daring, sheer lace back. The fabric was soft and floaty, and the overall effect was more delicate and feminine than anything she normally wore. Rachel was quite looking forward to wearing it, and quite looking forward to Charlie's response to it. What she wasn't looking forward to, however, was the guest list.
There was something off about this party tomorrow night, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She hadn't seen the full guest list, just a rundown of the American personnel and the nations that would be represented. There were entirely too many people making the trip up from Langley for her to be entirely comfortable, but there was no way she could beg off now. She couldn't very well say I have connections in the intelligence community and I'm terribly worried that someone might recognize me. Rachel Wallace was a former university professor turned diplomatic translator, not the ghost of a burnt out spook, and there was no reason for her to fret. But in the farthest corner of her mind, in the little cubbyhole where she'd hidden away the person she used to be, she was terrified.
"And hey, free booze." Charlie's words brought her back to the present, and she gave a toss of her head, struggling admirably to focus on him, and to keep from giving voice to her suspicions about the many CIA agents who would be in attendance. He was a linguist, like her, a former academic who had glanced once at the guest list, shrugged his shoulders, and asked her if she wanted to take the Greeks, and leave the French to him. He had seen the names, and he had not registered their significance, and any attempt on her part to explain the situation to him would lead to more questions than answers. So she kept her worries to herself, and chose instead to take a more light-hearted approach.
"You're incorrigible."
He grinned. "You like that about me."
The silence that followed this pronouncement was tight and sharp and stunning in its familiarity. Rachel knew this particular dance very well; he would push the boundaries of their friendship, and she would look away, and neither would acknowledge the tension mounting between them. There was no telling if Charlie knew the steps as well as she; despite their burgeoning camaraderie, neither of them had shared much about their personal lives outside work, and Rachel wasn't about to change that now. She had no idea where to even begin such a task.
"Well, I'll be there, at any rate," Charlie said, taking her lack of a response as his cue to leave and rising from his chair. "I'll see you tomorrow, Rachel."
"Have a good night, Charlie," she answered with a false cheerfulness. He looked at her for a long moment, as if he were about to say something else, but then he thought better of it, and departed in silence.
Oh, Charlie, Rachel thought, leaning back in her chair with a sigh.
It was exhausting sometimes, being Rachel Wallace.
Life as Rachel Wallace was simple, and followed a strict routine. It started in the mornings; every day she upon waking she shuffled down the stairs, and made herself a cup of tea. In the early days of her expatriation she had been alarmed to discover that there were no electric kettles available in any of the stores in her neighborhood; in fact, when she asked after one, she was met with blank, uncomprehending stares. A few determined sales clerks had tried to sell her old fashioned, stovetop kettles, but Rachel was not having it. Online shopping became her dearest friend, after that. Electric kettle, proper tea, her favorite biscuits; all of these came to her courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service.
With her tea in hand she would sit by her small table, the kitchen brightened by the early morning sunshine streaming in through a large bay window, and she would scroll through the news sites, looking for anything out of place. Most days she stayed away from the BBC, frightened of how she might react if she saw a familiar face or read a familiar name. The New York Times, CNN, NBC; those were safer choices, and she devoured them all with gusto.
After perusing the news, she would troop upstairs for a shower, dress for work in her usual uniform of dark cardigan and darker trousers, and head out the door. The commute from her brownstone in Brooklyn to her office in Manhattan was long and crowded, but she rather enjoyed it. One never knew what one might find, on the subway in New York. There were buskers aplenty, some of them quite good, and on one particular Friday night, there had even been an impromptu performance in her car, which she enjoyed immensely. She always dropped a few bills in the hats or open guitar cases they kept at their feet, admiring the way they followed their passion. Sometimes there were preachers, gaunt faced men in dirty clothes screaming about the end of days, but her fellow passengers always steadfastly ignored them, focusing instead on phones or books or newspapers until the interruption had passed.
On her days off, if the weather was fine, she inevitably made her way to Prospect Park; she could sit by the water, and watch the pedal-boats, or make her way out to the carousel, and smile at all the happy children. On Sundays she went to the Greenmarket, where she could buy fresh vegetables or flowers or even fish, if she got there early enough. On one memorable occasion she'd even visited the zoo. On cloudy days, when her thoughts turned toward the morose, she went to the Brooklyn Public Library instead, losing herself in the peaceful quiet amongst the endless shelves. Everything about her life was simple. Simple, and elegant, for once.
And through it all, day in and day out, she was completely, utterly alone.
Rachel knew that this was by design, that her isolation was the result of the choices she'd made, the things she'd done. If she didn't share her life with anyone, no one could hurt her, and, conversely, she couldn't hurt anyone else. In her experience, love always ended in blood and death and pain, and she was determined not to visit that horror on anyone else. Her father, her husband, so many of her friends, her dearest love; all of them were gone, ripped away from her by circumstances that were simultaneously beyond her control, and of her own making. It was better, this way, better to be miserable and alone than to visit her misery on someone else.
And, if she didn't open up, didn't share her bed and her thoughts and her hopes with anyone else, she didn't have to explain the nightmares that woke her screaming in the dead of night, the visions of familiar, beloved faces splattered with blood and whispering to her over and over again, it was your turn, Ruth.
She leaned forward in her chair, propping her elbows on her desk and resting her head in hands, trying valiantly to reorient herself, to remember who she was. You aren't Ruth anymore, she told herself firmly, you're Rachel. Just Rachel. For nearly six months now she'd been Rachel, and some days were harder than others.
There were a few superficial differences between Ruth and Rachel; Rachel's hair was longer, and most days she wore glasses, and she never, ever wore skirts to work. Rachel smiled more, and laughed more, and never waxed poetical about ancient philosophers, and never, ever got into arguments with her boss about the moral implications of thermobaric bombs. Rachel didn't ask too many questions, and she always, always knocked before entering a coworker's office. In the beginning, when she was still trying to figure out who Rachel was, she'd worked up a legend, written down all of Rachel's character traits and her family history and bought her a ring to wear on her right hand, a little silver ring set with a blue stone, and made up a story about how it was a gift given to her by a dear friend who passed away suddenly a few years before. Rachel never left the house without that ring.
Surprisingly, the process of becoming Rachel had taught her rather a lot about who Ruth had been. Ruth had been clever and kind, and so, so scared. Scared of everything. Ruth had lived her life in fear that at any moment, every good and beautiful thing in her world could be snatched away, cruelly, inexplicably, irrevocably. Ruth had been so scared of losing happiness that she'd never given it a chance to bloom, had been so sure that love was beyond her grasp that she had never acknowledged it, when it came her way. And oh, how she had loved; she had loved fiercely, deeply, violently. She had loved a man whose voice was a thunderclap, whose heart was a brushfire, whose hands supported the very pillars of the earth. She had loved him enough to die for him, to kill for him, to live and breathe for him. Oh, Ruth had loved, and oh, Ruth had lost.
But Ruth was no more. Ruth had vanished from the face of the earth, disappeared without a trace, and somewhere deep in the heart of the city that never sleeps a woman named Rachel had sprung up to take her place.
There were times, times like this night, when the weight of being Rachel Wallace was almost too much to bear. There were times when Ruth yearned to burst free, to shed this skin she'd been living in and announce herself to the world, consequences be damned. There were times when Rachel's hand would reach for the phone at Ruth's urging, dialing an old familiar number, Ruth's words about to fall from her lips, but always Rachel caught herself just in time. Ruth had had her chance, her moment in the sun, one extraordinary opportunity to wrap her hands around the most precious thing in the world, and Ruth had let it go. Never mind that Ruth had forgiven him, never mind that Ruth had forgiven herself, never mind that those old wounds had scabbed over, healing in the heat of a New York summer; Ruth was no more.
You're Rachel now, you'll go on being Rachel, and let the past stay buried, she told herself, rising at last from her chair to gather her bag and make her way down to the street. Ruth was no more, and Rachel could not mourn for a man she'd never met.