7

In the morning she has smudges under her eyes and she's unusually quiet, but he cannot bring himself to ask and hear her lies and accept them, so he stays silent, too.

She finds a package outside the door around noon- there is no postal service that day. They scan it as best as they can without the proper materials and then they bite the bullet and open it, wincing before realizing that it wasn't some sort of explosive and, even better, "It's not a body part."

Instead, there are car keys. Car keys that belong to a very expensive car. And ownership papers in his alias's name.

It's them, he knows it. She looks pleased.

No one has ever tried to buy him off. He feels sick. And cheap. And she is beaming at him. "How nice!" she exclaims, clapping her hands together.

He stares at her in disbelief. "Who are you?" he spits out, dropping the keys on the table and stalking out of the room She doesn't follow him and he can picture her face perfectly- stunned horror, sitting back, mouth ajar, her fingers brushing her jaw. She will blink rapidly a few times and remember who she is and inhale sharply, erasing all evidence of displeasure. He stalks into their room and realizes that he has no haven. This house belongs to someone else, and, by extension, her. He has no where else to go. Trapped. And now the serial killer comes in and hacks him into tiny pieces, wraps him up in paper lunch bags and deposits him in various garbage bins around the town, missions written on the side and phone calls with their bins' numbers at the end, Jack the
Ripper style. No one would notice he was dead because he might be dead anyway. Dead and in possession of a really nice car. A really nice car whose purpose was expressly to buy him off and keep him quiet so that he didn't interfere with their asset's work. He's hardly in position to refuse it, but he wonders when he valued himself so poorly that he could be bought for the price of a really expensive nice car. He was born and raised a Catholic and imbued with the fear of God, the devil and hell. By accepting the car he was selling his soul. He is too far gone, anyway. What does it matter anymore? Nothing will save him from hell's fires at this late point, no matter how many masses his mother attended or candles she lit or rosaries she said. She calls into the bedroom that she's going out, and doesn't offer more than that and leaves, her heels clicking determinedly across the parquet hallway and hesitating by the door, waiting to see if he'll say something. "Goodbye!" she tries valiantly.

He'll let her suffer. She can handle it.

Irritable: "Can you stop that?" Caught off guard: "What?"

"The staring. It's annoying." Long exhale. Digusted.

"Staring?" Blankly. Not seeing anything. "Yeah. Like you expect something." "What are you talking about?" Perfected hard stare. "You stare at me like I've been condemned and you're waiting for me to repent."

And the images come: conviction, final blessings, execution. "I was just looking at you."

Disbelief; paranoia has taken its toll. "I don't know what you want from me." Stuttering. "Want from you? When have I asked for anything?" "I know you!" Lies. "I know what you're thinking." No. If they knew what you were thinking, things would be very different. Decides to play along: "All right, then, what do I want?" "The home and the garden and the yard." "And you don't?" Since when? Who was this person? "But you keep expecting me to lead you to it!" "Wrong." "Then what?" "I'm not the brains behind this. I'm going along." "Yes, and that's all you ever do." Acid eats away. "What, you'd like it better if I arranged things?" "You never give me any direction-" "Since when have you followed my directions?" "- so I have to guess at what would keep you happy." A crime. "And no matter what I did, you never were. You still aren't. And I can't stand it!" "How am I expected to be happy, Sydney?" Blasting into Technicolor. The use of names brings it home. "The fact that we've been globe-trotting for seven months? The terrorist missions? The fact that we're fugitives?" She flounders; eyes of Mary Magdalene, the liquid eyes of a repentant sinner. "I never- I never meant for this to happen."

There are no eleventh hour heroics on his part. He has no valiant courage that can withstand. His self-loathing rises as he goes to comfort her, knowing that he loves her more than anything in the truest sense of the phrase, and it is not healthy.

In the morning he lies quietly in bed with his eyes closed, feigning sleep while she clicks around in her heels. She needs no alarm and awakes without fail at eight on the dot. They both moan a bit at the idea of her leaving- a habit- and she'll nuzzle into him before throwing the covers off and bounding out of bed. Cold air seeps in every morning. He doesn't complain.

He likes to listen to her- the run of the faucet in the bathroom as she washes her face, the rustle of her clothes as she gets dressed, the clink of jewelry as she selects what to wear, the spritz of Chanel Nº 5 that completes the transformation. She goes out to the kitchen to prepare her coffee and he can hear her movements through the quiet flat. She comes back and sits next to him, leaning over so that her hair brushes his cheek and he can feel the material of her clothes against his arm. She kisses his cheek and murmurs unimportant things, and he focuses on her voice. Carefully, before she leaves, she presses her lips to his gently, so as not to smear her make-up.

Mostly he wanders around the city, in his car or on foot, keeping a low profile. He passes by where she works at least twice daily, nervous at their separation and savoring it just the same.

When she comes home she's bright and cheery and almost herself again, only she's picked up a nasty habit of smoking cigarettes and drinking hard liquor. This, he knows, is her penance. She swallows the acrid smoke and chokes down vodka to make herself pay, corporal punishment. When he takes the cigarette from her hand, she lights another without missing a beat, when he removes a glass from her lax grip she's at the bar before he can return.

The phone calls start in the middle of January, at all hours, late, early, midday, and he is not allowed to answer them. Mostly they are made to the mobile phone of Julia Thorne, but they occasionally jingle the landline. The ones that call the penthouse are the important ones.

Those deserving of that title know who they are. They are not used to not knowing what's going on and they are not used to waiting.

Coming back from the dead, however, is a possibility.

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