LEAH made it all the way to the 405 before she pulled into a convenience store and pressed her forehead to her steering wheel, her eyes tightly shut. He looked so good, he sounded so good. And every time he looked at her, all she could think of was sex. The really fabulous sex she’d only experienced with Michael. No one else could do it like him.
This was really all so unbelievable—all the times she’d thought and dreamed about Michael, and now here he was, walking around, pretending he’d been some super-secret spy.
What really hurt is that during the day, she’d catch sight of him and see something as familiar as an old pair of pajamas, and her heart would swell, and she would find herself longing for those days.
But then she’d remember that he was trying to convince her that he had dumped her because he was a spy, of all the ridiculous, stupid things he might have said—and she smashed any feelings that were trying to rear their ugly heads like bugs.
She found little satisfaction in the fact that everyone was calling him James Bond and making really crude jokes about his Mini-Me.
It didn’t matter, because the bottom line was that whatever was going on with Michael, Leah was going to have to put their past solidly behind her. It was the only way she’d make it through two months of production with him. She had to make it. Last night, she had contemplated quitting— but she’d quit because of him before, and it had cost her a career. She had never recovered professionally from her meltdown, and she’d be damned before she’d let him take that from her again.
She lifted her head, pushed her hair from her eyes. “Still . . . it’s so weird,” she said aloud.
She got out, walked into the store, and got a soda. When she returned, she turned the key in the ignition. The engine made a strange chugging sound, then nothing. “Oh man,” she muttered, and got out to pop the hood.
BRAD arrived a couple of hours later in his VW van. That was one good thing about having him as a roommate—he did know a thing or two about cars. He had her up and running in about fifteen minutes, and Leah bought a six-pack and brought it home for him. They ended up on the back porch—which was actually a concrete slab in a postage stamp of a yard, surrounded by cinder-block walls. Her lopsided origami peacock joined them, complete with a smoke stuck in its beak, courtesy of Brad, who clearly had no appreciation for fine arts.
Brad had gotten a tiny part in an indie horror film, and was happy that, even though he’d play a spewing ghoul, his face would not be covered with a mask.
To celebrate, Brad put some chicken on a rusty barbeque pit. While the chicken grilled, he went over his lines with Leah, practicing the spewing ghoul part in the backyard until Leah was laughing so hard she could hardly stand up. They had just finished the last of the beer and the chicken when the phone rang. Brad answered and handed the phone to Leah.
“Who?” Leah mouthed.
Brad shrugged. “Some guy named Rex.”
Rex. Rex. She’d known a Rex in New York, Michael’s friend . . . wait just a damn minute. Not him, too.
Leah grabbed the phone from Brad and slipped inside through the patio door. “Hello?”
“Hey Leah Kleinschmidt, it’s Rex Anderson. Remember me?”
How could she forget Rex? He had a boat, and she and Michael used to hang out with him and his flavor-of-the-month girlfriend off Long Island on the weekends. “Of course I remember you!” she exclaimed. “How long has it been? Five or more years?” she asked, in spite of knowing full well just how long it had been.
“At least that long. So how’s it going out there in L.A.?” he asked jovially. “Do you miss Broadway?”
Leah slid into a chair at the scarred kitchen table. “A little. So I suppose you heard that from our pal Michael, huh?” she asked, unwilling to discuss the precipitous decline of her career since she’d last seen him. “I’m guessing you called to tell me that good ol’ Mike was a spy, right? And since it seems like all his friends were involved, I bet you were a spy too, huh?”
Rex chuckled. “You were always a firecracker. Mikey warned me you still were. Well here it is, doll—I did call to tell you that Michael was a spy, or as we like to call it, an operations officer. Me, too. Now the difference between me and him is that Mike isn’t a spy anymore. He left the agency, but I’m still with them. I’m in Langley now, and if you want to check that out, you can call the number I am going to give you. It’s the CIA, and when they answer, you will ask for me, and they’ll put you through.”