Christmas story 2020

Blood Pudding

Chapter Three: As Sharp as Any Thorn

I blacked out. Again.

But I'm back. Awake. Still not dead, still dying. Still sorta believe I'm dead — falsely. I yell weakly but my voice hardly echoes in the large room. The carol I heard earlier is long gone, the carolers too, I assume. No one seems to be anywhere near. I should have yelled when I heard the singers but I didn't. I don't know why. I wasn't thinking straight.

And maybe, maybe I'm okay with what's coming, maybe I even welcome it, or part of me does. I've been more alone than I knew it was possible to be for five years. Except for a moment, a couple of strange sunlit days. But I will get to that, to them; I will, I promise. Need to sneak up on it, on cat's feet, gently, gently.

— Let me get back on track. Where was I?

Right, the lowlights.

So, the lowlights, the lowlights. Right.

I can't say I'm in any hurry to tell these, although I'm on the clock. Maybe I should say this first. The devil — call her, say, the Director of the CIA — doesn't steal your soul all at once. You'd never just give it up, forfeit it. No, she steals your soul a little at a time, drip by drop, bleeds it out of you slowly, so slowly you barely notice it going, as I'm barely aware of my own blood seeping out of me now. You must know all this already. How could I tell you anything about it? An old, old story, I guess. Ha! — Sorry.

Let's just say I'm still not thinking straight. I'll close my eyes. Not sure I'm seeing straight either. Getting dark in here.

Anyway, when I started working alone as a spy — after my ex left me — there was a new CIA director, and I made the mistake of liking her. It was just one of those things: sometimes you like a person without the intervention of reason. You just do. And I just did. Mostly I do, I admit. Like people, that is. — I'm warming up to you, notice. But it's a serious liability for a spy.

Still, I knew better. — But it didn't matter; I couldn't leverage my own knowledge, make it operative. It was there, but idle, so idle I might as well have been ignorant. I reckon part of it was that the Director knew about me — and about my ex, and The Director sympathized. Never trust the Devil's sympathy. Never. — God, I am an idiot sometimes!

The Director told me that my best hope was to just do my job, do it well, mission by mission, and she promised me she'd do what she could to perhaps arrange a partnership between my ex and me, some joint mission. She hinted about my ex's psych evals but without revealing anything specific, just suggesting that we should stay apart for now. The Director told me to be patient, that I shouldn't rush, push.

But you know, don't you, that I have a hard time not rushing, pushing? Eager, that's me. But I tried — and I managed it. My wife was too important. So, I put my head down and got to work. Patiently.

My early assignments were all 'gateway' assignments; I see that now. They were meant to move me carefully in the right direction, — right by the Director's lights. So, most were just data grabs. I'm good with computers; you might even say that I am personally akin to them. You might say that. So, I went undercover to steal data, data I took myself to be stealing back, or data that would allow the CIA to stop human trafficking, or arms deals, you know, really bad stuff. The missions, all brief, went smoothly enough. I kept telling myself that I needed to wait, and eventually, I would get that mission with my wife, and maybe, just maybe, we could figure things out. I didn't have to do much that twisted me inside, not on those early missions. I lied, of course, but I told myself that since I was a good guy, those lies and deceptions were white. And maybe they were — off-white. Like my hat. Not that I wore a hat, but, you know, it's a figure of speech.

What I did not notice was the cost of losing touch with truth, losing touch with the stability of truth. Even if the lies are white, off-white, that doesn't mean they don't stain you, steal a little soul with every lying breath.

A person's relationship to the truth should be immediate, automatic. If you have to pause to orient yourself on it, you are disoriented.

Sorry, this is no time for lectures — and it is crazy to lecture you, especially about this sorta thing. Sorry, sorry. I just needed to say all that to myself, lecture myself. I spend a lot of time brooding alone, and I'm not used to the company. I'm a poor neighbor and friend these days. And a poor brother. — I'm drifting; I'll do better.

So, where was I? — Right. So then I got missions that required more than a few lies, they required extended deceptions, deeper covers. I found those hard, and, even with my gift, I nearly got myself killed on a couple of the earliest missions of that sort. As I said, I tend to like people. And I tend to see some good even in evil people.

I have the curse of participation: I can't help but see things from other people's points of view, can't help but try to understand others from the inside. See things the way they do. I start to participate in other's lives. That made deep cover especially messy for me. Each mission pulled me apart. But I managed it, even though I was nauseated constantly, lost weight on missions, rarely gained it back between them — in part because I drank more than I ate when I wasn't working. I coped. Bourbon on ice. My heart on ice. I drank alone when awake and dreamed of being with her when asleep, dreamed of running down a grassy slope or exploring a woodland path together. Of just being, being together. Together in sunlight. Idyllic, innocent. Impossible.

I had been spying alone for well over a year and had still not had any joint mission with my ex, my wife. The Director kept hinting that it would happen soon but it never did. That was the carrot. I was the stick. I somehow never even ran into my ex. Not in DC, where I was living, not even in Langley. Not once. I knew where her apartment was, of course, but I had promised myself not to show up there. I would not rush, push. Psych evals, and all. And she had to know where I was: if she wanted to see me, she could find me. I drove by her apartment building now and then but managed never to stop.

Before I started spying alone, when I was spying with her, I shot a man — and believed I killed him. I had to kill him or he would have killed her. But it turned out he wasn't dead, so when I started spying alone, I still technically hadn't killed anyone. That changed two years in. On a deep-cover mission, I blew it, got too close, participated too much, and the mark made me. He was going to kill me but, as I said, I have a gift. I killed him to save myself.

I scrubbed my hands a lot after that mission. Literally. They were so raw and red I could hardly handle things, could hardly hold my bourbon glass, although the cool of the ice soothed my hands a bit. A few months later, I killed someone who wasn't trying to kill me but was trying to kill an innocent bystander. I realized that I was getting better at the deep-cover missions, that I was no longer participating so much in other's lives. Other people started to become objects, just objects, devoid of subjectivity, especially on missions. But the objectification bled into my downtime. I had a disastrous visit with my sister and her husband in Chicago. They started pushing me about my wife, my ex, blaming me for not trying to fix things, and I...I pushed back, blamed back, but as Agent Me, not as brother and brother-in-law. I haven't returned. My sister's called but I don't return the calls. That visit marked the end of my interaction with my family. My dad died before my wife walked away; my mom at the end of my first year of spying alone.

That's a whole story of its own.

I know that sounds bad and it was. I love my sister. A lot. But see, just before we fought, I found a notepad sheet beneath the bed in the guest room. On it, in my wife's handwriting, was her name. First, her wedded name, then her maiden name, several times over. My ex had been there, in Chicago, in that guest room, and no one had told me or seemed to plan to tell me. I still haven't forgiven them for that. They've never told me what my ex was doing there, or even how she was when she visited. Nothing. Zero. Nothing from them; nothing from her.

It hurt, pierced me deeply, deeper than any thorn.

Sigh. — But I should forgive them. I do forgive them. They had to have had reasons. Maybe the reasons were good reasons, or good enough? I can't ask for forgiveness if I won't give it, right? Or understanding? For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

— Don't be surprised. I went to church a few times as a kid. I took a Religion class in college. And I'm good at remembering: that's sorta my gift. I've had a lot of long nights in moldy, cheap hotels — only lumpy, don't-ask-don't-tell bedspreads, and with only a Gideons to keep me company. I read at it. — Besides, that passage — it's the ancestor of Hamlet's hoist with his own petard, isn't it, sorta?

I forgive them, my sister and brother-in-law, but I was hurt, jealous twice over — that my wife had chosen to see my family and not me, and that my family chose her reasons and not mine, chosen to keep her secrets and not to share with me.

Damn it. Fuck secrets.

— Sorry, sorry, sorry. I don't talk like that normally. Sorry. There are several CIA habits I never really took up and casual cursing was one. You have to draw lines somewhere in this business or you lose yourself altogether. I did draw some lines. Drew them and stayed inside them. Kept me somewhat together.

I'm garrulous for a corpse, huh? A chatterer. I'm the ghost of my own Christmas present. Present, you know, not past and not future.

I don't mean to ramble but it seems to help with the pain if I talk — talk about it. I've got this talking thing, you know, like Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything. I spiral. Now and then. I just say anything.

Not my wife. My ex. Silent as the grave. Mostly. — What did that notepad sheet mean? The names? And you wonder why I can't decide, wife or ex.

Uhh...my head hurts. I can dimly see my feet but not feel them. I must have hit my head when I fell, hit it on something...

After that visit to Chicago, I went numb all over. Unfeeling. Dead. I made it clear to the Director I was willing to take any mission. I just needed to work and to work constantly. The Director nodded and took me at my word. She sent me to New York. A mission to New York City.

I came to LA on a mission. I said that or implied it, didn't I? It was supposed to be simple. I was to meet a woman, the daughter of a man, Brighton, the CIA believed to be selling secrets to North Korea. The CIA had introduced me to her, undercover of course, utilizing a dating site. They did a lot of background work on her, on Karen — on her use of the site, romantic history. I fit the general description of men she preferred. I grew a beard since she liked beards. The analysts at Langley did their job.

Karen contacted me and I began to interact with her online as if I was in LA too. I flew in to meet her. We were to attend a holiday charity event together. Her father, already rich, was tightly wired into LA's monied set. Karen was very close to her father. I was to use her to get to him. — But it wasn't that simple. You knew that was coming, huh?

I had no idea that my wife had been in deep cover herself, for months, and that her mark would end up being Brighton's contact, that my mission and hers would accidentally criss-cross. The CIA didn't know it, the Director didn't know it. I didn't know it, my ex didn't know it.

But that's not the story I meant to tell now. I'll get to it. It's the end.

I meant to tell you about that mission to New York City, and what happened afterward. Those two things are the middle. We're past the beginning now.