——
Lil can’t see her husband. He’s in emergency surgery. Paul she doesn’t dare ask after, not when she sees two men in tank-shaped suits in the waiting area very patiently not reading the newspapers open in their hands. She doesn’t want to go all the way up to Grand Central. She doesn’t want to say to the Metro North ticket clerk behind those bars of bronze, “One-way to Valhalla.” She takes in a movie. Cries through it. It’s about someone with cancer. A real tearjerker. She can taste the hospital onscreen. Lil orders a nice dinner in a little place down on Greenwich Street, where the grid of the city collapses against the shore of the Hudson River. Doesn’t eat it. Tips 50 percent for some privacy. Indigo skies go gray. Nine o’clock, she’s crying in the lobby of St. Vincent’s. Not for her husband. Not for Paul. But her husband, he’s the one she decides to see.
Lil washes her hands at the restaurant. Again in the ladies’ restroom. She takes her husband’s hand now because he’s unconscious, breathing hard as though deep in his still body he’s running from somebody. She pulls her hand back, but it’s too late.
——
Nick Mamatas is the author of three novels—Move Under Ground, Under My Roof, and Sensation—and of over sixty short stories, many of which were collected in You Might Sleep . . . Nick’s fiction has been thrice nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and as coeditor of Clarkesworld, he’s been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
John Langan
—
I
“You know how much they want for a Coke?”
“How much?” Vasquez said.
“Five euros. Can you believe that?”
Vasquez shrugged. She knew the gesture would irritate Buchanan, who took an almost pathological delight in complaining about everything in Paris, from the lack of air conditioning on the train ride in from de Gaulle to their narrow hotel rooms, but they had an expense account, after all, and however modest it was, she was sure a five-euro Coke would not deplete it. She didn’t imagine the professionals sat around fretting over the cost of their sodas.
To her left, the broad Avenue de la Bourdonnais was surprisingly quiet; to her right, the interior of the restaurant was a din of languages: English, mainly, with German, Spanish, Italian, and even a little French mixed in. In front of and behind her, the rest of the sidewalk tables were occupied by an almost even balance of old men reading newspapers and youngish couples wearing sunglasses. Late-afternoon sunlight washed over her surroundings like a spill of white paint, lightening everything several shades, reducing the low buildings across the avenue to hazy rectangles. When their snack was done, she would have to return to one of the souvenir shops they had passed on the walk here and buy a pair of sunglasses. Another expense for Buchanan to complain about.
“M’sieu? Madame?” Their waiter, surprisingly middle aged, had returned. “Vous кtes—”
“You speak English,” Buchanan said.
“But of course,” the waiter said. “You are ready with your order?”
“I’ll have a cheeseburger,” Buchanan said. “Medium rare. And a Coke,” he added with a grimace.
“Very good,” the waiter said. “And for madame?”
“Je voudrais un crкpe au chocolat,” Vasquez said, “et un cafй au lait.”
The waiter’s expression did not change. “Trиs bien, madame. Merзi,” he said as Vasquez passed him their menus.
“A cheeseburger?” she said once he had returned inside the restaurant.
“What?” Buchanan said.
“Never mind.”
“I like cheeseburgers. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Just because I don’t want to eat some kind of French food—ooh, un crкpe, s’il vous plaоt.”
“All this,” Vasquez nodded at their surroundings, “it’s lost on you, isn’t it?”
“We aren’t here for all this,” Buchanan said. “We’re here for Mr. White.”
Despite herself, Vasquez flinched. “Why don’t you speak a little louder? I’m not sure everyone inside the cafй heard.”
“You think they know what we’re talking about?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh? What is?”
“Operational integrity.”
“Wow. You pick that up from the Bourne movies?”
“One person overhears something they don’t like, opens their cell phone, and calls the cops—”
“And it’s all a big misunderstanding, officers, we were talking about movies, ha ha.”
“—and the time we lose smoothing things over with them completely fucks up Plowman’s schedule.”
“Stop worrying,” Buchanan said, but Vasquez was pleased to see his face blanch at the prospect of Plowman’s displeasure.
For a few moments, Vasquez leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, the sun lighting the inside of her lids crimson. I’m here, she thought, the city’s presence a pressure at the base of her skull, not unlike what she’d felt patrolling the streets of Bagram, but less unpleasant. Buchanan said, “So you’ve been here before.”
“What?” Brightness overwhelmed her vision, simplified Buchanan to a dark silhouette in a baseball cap.
“You parlez the franзais pretty well. I figure you must’ve spent some time—what? In college? Some kind of study-abroad deal?”
“Nope,” Vasquez said.
“Nope, what?”
“I’ve never been to Paris. Hell, before I enlisted, the farthest I’d ever been from home was the class trip to Washington senior year.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“Uh-uh. Don’t get me wrong: I wanted to see Paris, London—everything. But the money—the money wasn’t there. The closest I came to all this were the movies in Madame Antosca’s French 4 class. It was one of the reasons I joined up: I figured I’d see the world and let the army pay for it.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
“We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Not because of the army.”
“No, precisely because of the army. Well,” she said, “them and the spooks.”
“You still think Mr.—oh, sorry—You-Know-Who was CIA?”
Frowning, Vasquez lowered her voice. “Who knows? I’m not even sure he was one of ours. That accent . . . He could’ve been working for the Brits, or the Aussies. He could’ve been Russian, back in town to settle a few scores. Wherever he picked up his pronunciation, dude was not regular military.”
“Be funny if he was on Stillwater’s payroll.”
“Hysterical,” Vasquez said. “What about you?”
“What about me?”