chapter/six// KICK YOUR GAME

You know that feeling of doubt you got when you saw someone you sort of knew across the room, and he waved, but the direction of his wave was so ambiguous that you didn't know whether he was waving at you or someone behind you? And you were tempted to turn around and verify, but that would make you look stupid (because there was no way of disguising your intent); the safe thing to do was wave back (because in the event that he was waving at someone behind you, you could always pretend you were waving at someone behind him). Or you could just ignore him.

That was how Michael felt about Beavoduer, and the direction of her smiles and seductive looks. He was almost sure they were being presented to him, but how sure was he? Certainly not sure enough to walk over and graciously deliver an acceptance speech. He didn't know what to do; so using the process of elimination, he decided to offer her a return smile (assuming of course that the smile was for him). He didn't want to check behind him, because that would knock down his front of ego and cool. And he didn't want to ignore her, because that certainly wouldn't get him anywhere. His best bet was the delicate, yet visible, return smile: If the initiating smile was indeed for him, then the return smile would be enough to show he was interested, and at the same time maybe even show he was a gentleman; if the initiating smile wasn't for him, then the return smile could always be transformed and interpreted as the initiating smile, and it would be enough to show he was interested, and at the same time maybe even show he was a gentleman. That was good for now, but he didn't know what to do next. He still wasn't sure if Beavoduer was looking at him.

Then Beavoduer stood up, and all doubt was erased from his mind, because she walked right up to his face.

"I saw you looking at me," she said bluntly.

"Yeah."

Yeah? That was all he could come up with. Yeah? He might as well have said "affirmative," such was the nature of his response. He had to say something else other than "yeah." He wanted to say something clever and winning, but too much time had elapsed (why did he always have to pause to think?) and adding a comment would be odd conversational timing. He didn't want to prove himself even more inept.

"Yeah," she finally said. "So... you game?"

"Game for what?"

She pulled at his shirt sleeve, urging him to follow her. He didn't have to think this one through very much—the only thing to do was follow her, even though he didn't know where they were going, or what he was supposed to be game about.

* * * * * *

At first Sydney thought she was making real headway. It was great when she and Nysmith started talking, but now the flirtations and small talk had turned into A Conversation, and it was really draining her resources. She was good at acting—pretending to be innocent when she wasn't, to be helpless when she wasn't, to be a banker when she wasn't, and in this case, to be interested when she wasn't. But Nysmith was really pushing the limits of her acting abilities. How much longer could she keep at this?

"I mean... what happened, what did she want, what went wrong?" Nysmith was saying, referring to his ex-girlfriend, who has been the topic of a very one-sided conversation for about fourteen minutes now.

"Who knows," Sydney offered. She could have offered much more insight, but seeing as she was trying to get along with him, she decided against pointing out his very obvious shortcomings.

"So just like that, she packed up and left. Didn't even tell me..." he continued.

She and Francie used to do this thing when they went out to bars and clubs and stuff, where if one of them was stuck with some asinine fool or some greasy pick-up artist or anyone equally ill-flavored, the other would come to the rescue. (Sydney often wanted to tell Francie the truth about her job, only so they could take advantage of the earpieces and com links.) Sitting here listening to this man babble on about his life (love life, to be precise), Sydney decided that a rescue was exactly what she needed: she wanted Francie to storm through the doors in a frenzy, rush over to the bar, and tell Andrew Nysmith that she was very sorry, but something very terrible had happened, that Sydney's husband was in the hospital, and she needed Sydney to attend to him right away. Except, of course, that wouldn't happen, because Francie wasn't here (there would be a real problem if she was, wouldn't there?) and because, more importantly, she was supposed to see this through.

So she sat there. And he talked. Occasionally, she would interject the concurring "mm-hm" or "uh-huh" or "yeah, I know exactly what you mean"—just to let him know, in case there was any doubt, that she was listening. And every once in a while, she would casually try to sneak a peek at Vaughn. At the moment he appeared to be making more progress than she was—because while Nysmith was blabbering away, Beavoduer was leading Vaughn to the dance floor.

* * * * * *

"What's wrong?" Beavoduer asked him. She had led him to the dance floor, and he was just standing there. She was probably wondering why he was hesitant to shake his groove thang.

Michael used to be confident about his dancing; that is, until Weiss burst his bubble, and kindly reminded him: "Don't forget, you're white." Of course, he couldn't use his idiot best friend as an excuse, so he responded in typical Michael Vaughn fashion.

"Nothing."

She wasn't buying it, and thus ventured a wild, but not altogether invalid, guess: "What, you have a girlfriend?"

Two actually. One can't take a hint and the other just got the hint. "No."

"Then there's no problem."

"None at all."

"But you obviously don't want to dance."

She was sharp, he thought—and not just keen on things, but also direct and to-the-point. (If only the women in his life were like this, things would be so much easier.)

"No."

"Okay then. Come with me."

She took his hand, and led him away from the dance floor. There weren't any other options, really, so he went with it. They were moving towards the back of the club—and since Beavoduer was in front, he had the opportunity to look over his shoulder at Sydney. At that precise moment, she had caught a glimpse of him, and that was the first eye contact they had made all night. Unlike before, he didn't mind that now she was aware of his progress, that now she was witnessing a beautiful model dragging him to some undisclosed area in the back. If he was not mistaken, there was a trace of concern in her eyes, and maybe even a spot of jealousy. Forgive him, but he liked it. Was that so wrong?

* * * * * *

Sydney couldn't believe it: she was engaged in a boring, if somewhat peculiar, discussion about Nysmith's past relationship crisis, and Vaughn was trotting off to be alone with Beavoduer. She had to scoot this along.

"I'm just confused. And I'm hurt... that's all."

"Yeah." Sydney hoped her "yeah" sounded like a conclusive period, rather than a prompt for further elaboration. It appeared as if Nysmith's vituperation of his ex-girlfriend (he got a little harsh as the commentary wore on) was coming to a close, and she wanted to seal it for good.

"I mean, I remember when..." he continued.

This was ridiculous. She wanted to shake some sense into the guy. She wanted to throw her drink in his face and scream: "Look fool. You have this woman in front of you, wearing a teeny weeny black dress, and she wants nothing but to get you horizontal. And all you can do is go on and on about your ex? Come on!" She'd had enough of this, and interrupted him mid-sentence.

"Look."

He stopped immediately.

"I don't know about you, but I wanna get out of here."

"Well... I mean, my shift ends in an hour."

"No."

"No?"

"You're shift ends now."

"Oh, does it?" His tone was playful. Sydney thought it sounded inappropriately smug, as if he truly believed that their conversation had driven her wild with desire, and she couldn't contain herself anymore. She didn't mind though. Smug was better than stupid. And she needed to move things along anyway.

Nysmith called out for another bartender to take over for him.

"Okay, where should we go?" he asked Sydney.

"Somewhere where we can be alone."

"I'm staying at the hotel next door, La Tour," he said proudly, obviously trying to hint at the magnificence of what he could afford.

Now he was smug and stupid, Sydney thought. The seasoned spy she was, she knew you were never supposed to admit you were staying at a hotel when you had just said you had lived in the city for years. Add to that the fact that the hotel was the ritzy, extravagant kind, and you were posing as a banker/bartender... Oh well. This was what she needed him to do, and now he was doing it. Sydney didn't want to complain.

* * * * * *

Beavoduer had taken him to an empty room (as in no people) in the back: There were some things stored on the shelves, and the crates were full of supplies, but Michael supposed that people made use of the tables in other ways.

"Okay. Let's do it," she said.

"What?" He wasn't asking "what" as in "let's do what?" It was merely a reactionary response to momentary confusion. He was pretty sure he knew what she meant by "let's do it." "It" meant it, right?

"You wanna fuck, no?"

Guess so. "It" meant it. Apparently Beavoduer took his unwillingness to dance as a sign that he wanted to go straight for the nookie. (But this wasn't possible, Michael thought. How could it be this easy? Surely this routine wouldn't work with Sydney: "Hey Syd, I don't want to dance." "Okay, then strip down to your skivvies and hop in bed, big boy.") Anyway, the mission was to get into Beavoduer's computer, not her panties. He had to fend her off for the moment.

"No... I mean. Yeah. But..."

"But what?"

Yeah. But what? That was a good question. If he were to tell the twenty-five year old Michael that in a few years time a model with a name like Trishelle Beavoduer would be presenting him with the opportunity for a quick fuck, and he would be trying to talk her out of it, the younger version of himself would have laughed in his face. Michael didn't know what to say. So he didn't say anything.

"Look. I think you're cute. And you seem like a nice guy. But it's obvious what we both want. So let's skip the bullshit and get right to it."

"I understand, but don't you think we should—" Just then she jumped at him, and before he knew it, he was lying on his back, on the floor, with a gung-ho model straddling his middle region. He choked out the rest of his sentence. "... don't you think we should, you know... we should do it properly?"

"What are you, an after-school special?" She began kissing his neck.

"No. But I was just thinking that maybe, you know, we could go some place else. I mean, how long can we stay here? And how comfortable could you possibly be on the floor?"

"Who said I was going to be on the floor?"

He looked up at her. She smiled down at him.

"Okay. I see," she said. "You're sensitive. The romantic type. That's fine. I'm staying at La Tour. We can go there."

"That sounds good," he breathed. It was back to the mission.

"Good. And I assume you want to use a condom. No problem. They have a gift shop on the first floor."

She dismounted him and proceeded to the door. Michael once again followed.

* * * * * *

So the first part was a little harder than it should have been, Sydney thought. But it wasn't important now: she had retrieved the codes, and Nysmith was lying unconscious (but comfortably) on his bed. Never mind that it took twenty-nine torturous minutes of conversation (yes, she counted) to get into his suite, and never mind that when she finally did get into his suite, Nysmith welcomed her with the subtle opening line "the bed's over there." She had completed the mission as planned, and she no longer had to hear about how Nysmith's ex-girlfriend didn't like to have sex with him when his dog was in the room. All there was to do now was wait for Vaughn.

* * * * * *

Michael didn't like it: If there was anything he felt more uncomfortable doing than buying tampons, it was buying condoms—especially when you were in a gift shop full of people, especially when you were with someone who felt compelled to loudly discuss the options with you.

"So... what? Latex, no?"

"Yeah, yeah. That's fine," he whispered.

He nodded frantically and moved away from the condom rack (and he didn't think there would be such a wide selection at a hotel gift shop; three or four brands, yes. But this...) He had hoped that by heading toward the register, he had indicated that he was fine with whatever was in her hand, and there was no need to review further selections. But it didn't happen like that; Beavoduer wasn't satisfied. She tugged at his shirt, but he continued to get in line.

"Okay. So Durex? LifeStyles? Trojan?" she called out.

He had made a mistake by moving so far away—it only caused her to talk louder. An older couple in shop regarded them with a dirty look; a younger couple by the register regarded them with a mock dirty look.

He hurried back. "Trojan's fine," he said in a hushed voice.

"Ultra pleasure, ultra texture, very sensitive, shared sensation, ribbed?

"Whatever."

"Or do you need magnum?"

"Uh."

"All right. How about flavor?"

"Flavor?"

"Strawberry, chocolate, mint, cinnamon."

"Umm..."

"Oh." He saw her look at him with newfound clarity. "You're probably not into that."

Michael was tired of Beavoduer thinking he was some sexless stiff (pardon the oxymoronic pun). He had to do or say something to convince her that he was a... he was a... sexpert (this was a Weiss word, and he resented that this was the only word he could come up with). Anyway, he had to prove that all this—the condom shopping and the going-back-to-the-hotel—was worth it, and that Beavoduer wouldn't regret going through all this trouble when they could have easily had a quickie, good or bad, back at the club (even though he knew they weren't really going to do anything. He only wanted to make her believe.)

"No. Just that it's your call. You want it fresh or sweet or spicy?" He tried to say it with a sexy husk in his voice, but it came out sounding really corny anyway. Oh well... it was good enough.

"Mint, then," she said.

"Okay."

She took the Trustex mint-flavored condoms to the register.

"You know, we sell singles of those," the cashier remarked, referring to the twelve count box Beavoduer was purchasing.

"No. That's all right," she said. "We're going to need more than a few."

Michael wondered how the hell he got in this situation, and why the hell he was so anxious to get out of it. What was wrong with this picture?