Chapter 1.6 — Things Left Buried

Los Angeles sprawls.

For the bankers and executives, its center is the new downtown — skyscrapers and windows harsh in pushing back the sun. Flashy, gleaming, and corporate.

It rumbles out of this for miles, into a sizzle of stucco, tamales and mariachi bands. Into fields of concrete and grass where earthquakes have claimed buildings, and no one has swooped in to build on the graves.

Always something. Stumpy apartment buildings and corner convenience stores give way to more skyscrapers. Miles and miles of something, laced together by a square street grid, omnipresent palm trees maintaining some semblance of consistency.

Deep in the midst of the sprawl, far from the shining new downtown, are the few blocks of crumble where Michael Vaughn spent a year of his life. He has not been back until today.

The center is the bar. Nameless — unless you count the ancient neon Budweiser in the dingy window — because the rusty bolts above the door haven't held a sign in years, it is the center because people go there. Here, that is enough.

Outside, the street threatens in the dark, desolate and lurky. It makes him wish he hadn't locked his gun in the glove box, and there is some relief, training aside, when his hand reaches the loose old metal knob. There is a trick to it — pull to the right as you turn, jiggle a little if that doesn't work — but he knows this, and chipped-paint green opens easily.

The inside is dull by most standards, vibrant compared to the outside. Shops on both sides, and their strings of unsuccessful tenants, crowd it at the entrance. Beyond them, it fans out, spares enough space for two worn-felt pool tables and a small wooden stage.

A lot of blues from that stage. Aged skill from old men in flannel shirts with credentials to play what they did, waiting for people to drink enough to tip well. Stumbling young renditions of "The Thrill is Gone," which somehow fit just as well, because for most of the clientele, it is. The stage is silent tonight. Instead, Dylan tangled up in blue from the jukebox and clacking from the pool tables.

He felt mismatched here seven years ago, and the suits were cheaper then. Feet shuffle on smooth concrete, eyes scan, and she is exactly where he expected, matching because she fits in everywhere.

He is here for many reasons. Because her pain still tumbles inside him. Because he is the only person who knows where to look in the sprawl. Because he is the only person looking. Because of guilt.

Old words.

———

She broke the news on an old plaid couch with his lips on her neck. Pushed at his shoulder, told him to stop; there was something important she needed to say.

"They had an opening in Moscow. Infiltration op. I leave next Wednesday."

"What?" The only response, a torrent of shock rushing across his face. "How long have you known?

"They called me in this morning." She locked her eyes, sad and storming, on his. "Michael, I'm sorry it had to end this way."

"What do you mean, end?" He stood with this, stalked across the tiny apartment. Felt the need to move.

"As much as I'd like to play the, 'as soon as I get back game,' you know and I know that I can't even guarantee we'll see each other again. This was inevitable. I thought you knew that."

He had known. He had also spent a lot of time forcing it from his mind. Ignored it, and eventually enough days went by without this happening that he'd allowed himself to think it never would.

Pointless, foolish even, to ask her to stay. But there are few other options when the rock you've been holding suddenly crumbles. Flows through your fingers. Scatters all over the floor.

"Then stay. Find a way to stay."

A half-snort, half-laugh. All sarcastic. "Sure. Tell the CIA 'thanks, but no thanks.' I came in to be a field agent. You knew that going into this. You knew it wouldn't last."

He ceased pacing with that, turned to face her. "Quit the CIA."

"You can't be serious. I've barely been in a year. They won't just let me up and quit. And that's assuming I want to quit. This is why I came in. I've been waiting a year for this."

"And so now what? Time's up, goodbye, nice to know you? Did the last year not mean anything to you?"

"It did, Michael. It did." She paused. "But I don't exactly have a choice here."

"They made you wait a year. Things change in a year. There has to be some room for flexibility."

"Yes, there is. But I can't march in and tell them that I can't go to Russia because I'm involved in a serious relationship with another agent. In case you forgot, we're not supposed to be doing this."

"There's a way. There has to be a way." And then his private fear. "You know what they're going to want you to do. Beautiful woman, your background. That's inevitable, Chris."

She stared at her fingers a moment with that, twisted them around each other. Something unforgettable in her eyes as she frowned and glared at him, and maybe, he thought, it was her private fear as well.

"I can't be the woman you want me to be. You fall in love with a fucking spy and now you want me to stick around — and what, be barefoot and pregnant? You want the little house with the white picket fence? It doesn't work. Not in our world. You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael. You should know that better than anyone."

A strange thing happens when deep fears reach air. Stranger still when they are mixed with desperation. Anger erupts. Inhibition comes quickly.

"Fine. Go." He walked to the door, but it was not enough to cool down. "Go over there and screw some missile programmer. Be a whore for secrets. I asked, Chris. Damn it, I asked."

He'd walked out after that. Didn't see her again for seven years.

———

She stands out for one reason only. In an overwhelmingly beer-and-whiskey place, she drinks vodka on ice. A surprise to Vaughn, although it shouldn't be; he has always associated her with a billion brands of beer and a good time. A dark, glossy ponytail ends between her shoulder blades. New jeans, black t-shirt, elbows resting on the bar and eyes staring into her drink.

She takes a substantial sip as he approaches, and either it doesn't burn or she does not acknowledge it. She does not acknowledge him, either, as he claims the stool to the right of her, sliding his hands onto the scuffed wood counter.

The bartender is middle-aged and rather portly, but quick. "What do you want?"

"Nothing for me. Thanks." He tries to dismiss the man with his hand, but the gesture is ineffective; the bartender stands and stares for a second.

"Have a beer, Michael. You already stick out like a fucking sore thumb."

"I'll have a Bud, then."

She waits until the bartender slides it in front of him to speak again.

"You here to gloat, or rub it in? You called it, Michael." Another sip, her hand firm around the tumbler. Her drink, he thinks, is perfect for bitter words. "Nope. I know you. You're not here to gloat. You're here because of some fucking guilt trip."

Bullseye, Chris. "I'm here because I thought maybe you needed a friend."

"All of my friends are dead."

She tilts the glass, drains the remnants, the cubes rattling back to its base as she rights it, the important contents gone. The glass goes back to the counter with a subdued clink, and she motions to the bartender.

He watches a bead of condensation form on the tumbler and drip down the side, making a faint rainbow against the dim lights.

"Chris, you know I didn't mean that. We both said a lot of things we didn't mean."

"Obviously, you meant it at some level, or you wouldn't have said it." Her tone is level, but somehow the words are still scalding. "I didn't drive here, and I can drink like an adult. So you can take off in your good suit and feel like you tried."

His eyes trace the circular grooves in the counter for awhile. "Look. I just thought maybe you'd want to talk."

"I've done a lot of things I don't like to talk about, Michael. That tops the list. And what makes you think I'd want to talk to you, of all people?"

Because I'm the only one here, damn it. "Chris, I'm sorry. If I could take it back, I would."

"Great. You're only seven fucking years late. And what the hell makes you think you can just apologize for something like that?"

"Oh, come on, Chris. You think what you said didn't hurt?"

The little bitter laugh, at this. "I don't recall ever calling anybody a whore. You're still single, aren't you?" He nods, short. His beer is empty. "At least we were both accurate."

"Not accurate, Chris. Not at all. Shit, you think I meant that? How could you possibly think I meant that? I was scared. I was desperate, damn it. I cared about you."

She softens a bit at this. Slides her hand across the top of her head, stares down into the glass. "It wasn't perfect, but we were doing pretty good. Right up until the end. How'd we fuck it up so quick?"

"You left." Simple and infinitely complex.

"I had to leave. I didn't have to leave like that. You think I wanted to leave you? If I had known how serious things were going to get, I never would have pushed it in the first place."

"So I was supposed to be some fling before you went away forever?"

"Well, yes. I mean, what did you think? You knew I was training to go into the field. You knew they were going to send me as soon as soon as they had a slot."

"I thought about it a lot at first. And then after a couple months went by, I guess I thought they weren't going to send you. I started to push it from my mind."

She pauses, watching the bartender pour her another drink. Continues after he places it in front of her. "See, I thought about it. Every damn day I thought about it. How some day I was going to have to tell you I had to leave. I thought a lot about breaking it off, but maybe I got lulled into thinking I wouldn't have to leave, too. That maybe they'd never need me."

"So we were both pretending. Did it ever occur to you to not break it off?"

She turns to stare at him, darts a quick glance around the bar, then continues. "You can't be serious. It's been seven years since I've even been in the country, and the only reason I'm here is because of this." She waves a hand over her abdomen, then moves it back to the glass. "Almost everything I did was quiet ops, highly classified. You mean to tell me you would have waited, indefinitely, with no word? There was no way I could have done that to you, or me."

She snaps her head suddenly to look past him, as the back of the bar erupts in raucous cheering. A man by the pool table raises his cue and shouts, "Pay up, bitch!"

Vaughn waits for the place settle before speaking. "Do you ever just stop and think about how absurd this all is?"

"How absurd what is?"

"What we do. Why we had to break up. That they expect us to appear completely normal, and really — "

" — we're as fucked-up as it gets. Try going over there. The job is all you are. I remember waking up one morning and just thinking, 'I would kill for a beer and a cheeseburger.' And at the time, I was Katia, or Olga — " she scrunches her nose at this " — or who knows who, so of course it was out of the question. That's the worst part. It's not what you have to do. It's what you can't do."

The bartender wordlessly deposits another beer in front of him before she continues. "You know, Michael, you're the last person I thought I'd hear say that: absurd."

He stares into the beer bottle for a minute. And you are the last person I thought I'd be discussing this with. "You remember Jimmy Piersall?"

"Jimmy, with the hair thing?" She flits fingers across the top of her head. "Yeah. Whatever happened to him?"

"Shuffling papers at Langley. But do you remember how he came in, all 'I'm going to save the world?'"

She giggles, which he knows means the alcohol is finally beginning to kick in. "Yeah. And I remember thinking, 'Jimmy, you're the last person in the world that's going to save the fucking world.'"

He chuckles briefly, but presses on. "But didn't you feel a little bit of that, when you came in? That maybe you weren't going to save the world, but you were going to help?"

"Sure. I think we all do."

"Lately, I feel like things are just spinning in place. Like what I do has no impact, and everything I've given up was just a worthless sacrifice."

"Michael, what we do — " She turns to him, eyes lazy. " — is important. That's all I've got at this point."

"Are you drunk?"

She laughs, loose and natural. "Getting there. You?"

"I don't think so."

"Fuck you. I had a huge head start."

Maybe he is drunk, he realizes, because this is hilarious as hell. His laughter sounds almost alien after months of scant use. Hers is guttural, deep, and she stares into her lap, a sad smile on her face, when it finally dies. When he looks down, his hand covers hers, and he slides it away slowly.

"You know, just because you came here and we had a good laugh, this doesn't make everything better all of a sudden." She pauses to stare at the bare hand for a moment before continuing. "God, I was so angry with you when I left."

"Because of what I said?"

"Yes. But more because — " she frowns slightly " — you ruined the last normal week I had. Damn it Michael, we should have been together. We should have come here, gone to the beach, hit a Kings game, fucked like rabbits. Anything. But we should have stayed together until the end."

He overlooks the tiny jolt of her last suggestion. "And ignored the fact that you were leaving?"

"Not ignore it. You had every right to be upset. You had every right to be sad. But you didn't have to be unreasonable."

"Chris, we could go around in circles like this all night. It isn't going to change the past."

She frowns, looks at her half-empty tumbler. "You're right. That doesn't mean I'm going to forgive you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Then I suppose I shouldn't ask you, either. I am sorry, Michael. You should know that. I said what I said because I knew it would hurt you. I was upset, and I shouldn't have pushed you like that."

"I suppose we could call a truce."

A tiny, cynical smile shoots across her face at that. "Can we? Can we really ignore it?"

"I don't know, Chris. I really don't know."

She folds her hands together, rests her head in them for a moment, then lifts it and looks beyond him to scan the rest of the bar. He watches the clouds pass over her eyes, wonders if she is thinking the same thing he is.

"Maybe we should try."

She is.

———

Drinks are finished silently. She laughs, a little unsteady, as she clanks the tumbler down on the counter.

"I think my liver's had enough punishment for the night. What about you?"

Vaughn nods, turning to halt his quiet peripheral study of the new lines on her face, then waves to the bartender. "Can we settle, when you get a chance?" A little louder than he'd intended.

"You're so not ready to drive home."

"I'll walk it off."

"Michael, you've had — " she starts counting on her fingers, then abandons this task with a lazy smile " — a lot of beers. You're going to be walking for awhile."

"You still in the same place?"

"Yeah." Careful, despite inebriation, the mark of good training. "They've got this nice little program where they sublet your cruddy apartment while they send you halfway around the globe."

"Then let me walk you home and we'll see where I'm at from there."

She chuckles. "Sure, because two drunks are able to defend themselves so much better than one."

It may be a bad idea. But it feels like a good night for bad ideas.

———

Damp emptiness greets them when they step through the chipped green door. The remnants of a thunderstorm — puddles along the sidewalk, humidity seeping about their feet — seem to soften the harsh darkness of the street. The breeze carries a chill, good for drowsy skin.

They begin the walk to her apartment silently, upholding the stillness like the others around them. A small group now, but the population here will increase as the night goes on — become more belligerent, disrupting the silence. It is a nighttime place.

For now, they are two of a handful, feet spat spat spat on the wet pavement, through the little crunchy piles of broken glass. Past the old movie theater with the empty white marquee and soap on the ticket-taker's windows.

Most of the businesses of their time are gone, boarded up or replaced by other establishments struggling to survive on the margin. The deli, he is pleased to note, has somehow survived. Others — record store, drug store, laundromat — have been replaced by others of their own kind. New names, signs slightly brighter, waiting for the cycle to inevitably end their existence.

The street darkens before they reach the intersection and spatter across the street, ignoring faded crosswalk stripes. She halts for a moment when they reach the curb, presses a hand into her abdomen and slumps a bit in the middle.

"You okay?" It is the first thing he has said since they left the bar. He takes a step toward her and instinctively, but consciously this time, places his hand in the middle of her back.

"Yeah. Just give me a sec."

"Are you sure you should drink this much with...that?"

"Yes, Michael. Vodka. Doctor's orders." She giggles and straightens, but does not move away from the heat of his hand. "Come on."

Her apartment complex is an old affair, burgundy bricks and black metal fire escapes. She can afford better now, but he suspects she feels comfortable hidden in the crumble she has been a part of for so long. He wonders if she was a part of the crumble in Moscow.

Up a few weathered concrete steps slowly, and then they stop at the door to the building. He removes his hand from her back.

"Do I have to give you a sobriety test?" She grins and throws the door open into a narrow hallway. "The couch is yours if you want it."

He shakes his head. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

"At least come up and get some coffee into you."

It is at this point that he begins contemplating the meaning of the word truce. This continues — with no resolution — as he follows her silently through the dingy yellow walls of the hallway, into the musty elevator, and down an equally dingy second-floor hallway, until they reach number seventeen.

Perhaps it does. Perhaps it is habit. It certainly is mutual, instinctive even, when she slips up to him and they meet in an old kiss.

Long. Deep. Soft. Old. Perfect.

She presses warm against him, and he slides his hands down her back, around her waist, pulling her closer. She tastes dry-drunk, remnants of vodka stinging his tongue. She tastes awful. She tastes real.

Eventually, she pulls back, takes a deep breath. "Do you still want to come in?"

A new meaning to the question.

"Are you sure?" Am I sure? "What about tomorrow?"

"Fuck tomorrow." A nice motto, he thinks. Something for t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers.

Her hand shakes a little as she tries to force her key into the aging lock. Finally, she succeeds, and the door creaks open. It has been seven years, but not much inside has changed.