“Work.” Rita paused. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Angie raised the open cone to her mouth, ran her tongue along the seam of the papers. “If it’s such a shit job, why don’t you quit?” Angie asked as she rolled it between her palms.
“I’m not sure it’s the kind of job I can quit.”
“Mob?” Angie asked softly. “Because if so, listen, I know a cop who—”
“It’s not like that. I, uh, I work for the DHS now. I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”
“Oh.” Angie fell silent for a minute, until the gathering sense of dread nearly convinced Rita that she’d confessed to something inexcusable. Working for The Man. They both understood—it was expected of them, like marriage and babies to so many other young women—but even so. “Okay.” Angie’s tone fell oddly flat. “Thought I’d heard the end of that when I got out of the Army.” She extended her arm and placed the joint on the bedside unit. “Phone.”
“What?”
“Phone.”
Rita looked over the edge of the bed, picked up her purse. “What?”
“Give it here.” Angie took it, flipped it upside down, and popped the battery. “Glass?”
“Don’t wear it.”
“Okay.” Angie reached over her side of the bed and picked up her own phone. She held it where Rita could see it as she popped the battery. Then she pulled a thickly quilted craft bag out from under the bed and swept the phones and batteries into it, then closed it and shoved it in a bedside drawer. “I don’t think they could have done an in-and-out here while we were gone. Wouldn’t bet on it in future, though. So I think we’re alone now. Just us and the stars above, like back when we were in camp.”
Rita shivered. They’d been in the same Girl Scout troop: sent to the same weird summer camp down in Maryland, with other girls whose folks had serious faces and didn’t talk about what they did. “You know we were nearly the only girls there whose parents didn’t work in Spook City?” Spook City was the huge, formerly NSA-only compound at Fort Meade where the CIA and a bunch of other secret agencies had moved after 7/16. It had taken her years to figure that out: why she and Angie and a couple of others had perpetually felt like they didn’t quite fit in. “Little lone wolves,” Kurt had jokingly called them when Rita told him about it.
“Of course.” Angie sniffed. “I just want to be able to talk to you without the NSA on the party line.” It was an old joke: We’re the NSA. We love to listen. We’re the only branch of government that does. Alternative version: We’re the phone company. We don’t listen. We don’t have to: we’ve got the NSA to do it for us. She placed a hand on Rita’s shoulder. “Do you need help, Rita?”
“I need—” Rita licked her lips. “No, I don’t think there’s anything you could do to help. Not right now. No, wait, yes there is.” She reached out awkwardly, groping for Angie’s shoulders. “I had no idea you were here. Or that you still wanted me.”
“A happy accident.” Angie pulled her close and nuzzled up against her neck. “Stay with me?”
“Always.” Rita clung to her: a drowning woman who had just discovered a life raft. “And this time I mean it.”
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
Angie lived in a one-bedroom condo on the outskirts of Philly, in a suburb that was fitfully trying to redevelop. Rita spent the weekend with her, happier than she had been in years. The apartment was sparsely furnished. Angie’s parents hadn’t quite disowned her when she came out, but things had been tense. With the GI Bill benefits paying her way through her night school classes and electrician’s apprenticeship, she’d scrimped and saved every spare dime to pay off the mortgage early. The walls were mostly bare, except for the framed certificates holding Angie’s electrician’s license and her honorable discharge (Private First Class, 704th Military Intelligence Brigade). There was a stack of old dead-tree books in the bathroom: Rita was amused by the discovery that the sole reading matter they had in common consisted of dog-eared copies of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and a handful of government security manuals.
On Saturday night, Angie insisted on glamming up with Rita and taking her clubbing. On Sunday morning they lay in, Rita aching from unaccustomed exertion. There was a bittersweet edge to it. “I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be on assignment here,” Rita told her.
“We’ll sort something out.” Angie leaned against the headboard. “You don’t get to escape again, girl.” Her grin was wicked, inviting complicity. “What were we thinking?”
“We were thinking guilty thoughts and trying not to get caught making out. Typical fucked-up teenagers.” Rita squinted, casting a judgmental gaze upon her earlier self. “I don’t know if we would have clicked if we’d tried dating back then. Too young, too much external pressure. I had a bunch of growing up to do. Also”—she shrugged—“it gets better.”
“You’ve changed for the better, too.” Angie tugged her close. “I can’t believe you were single—”
“Like I said: I had a bad breakup, then the whole DHS thing happened. I was being single, and then I was being kept busy.”
“Do you still feel single?” Angie asked, and kissed her slowly.
“No,” Rita said, when she caught her breath again. “I don’t feel single.”
“My girl.” Angie giggled briefly.
“Yeah,” Rita said fondly, and tangled her fingers in Angie’s hair. A thought struck her. “Listen, just do me a favor and don’t change your relationship status on FB just yet.” Angie froze. “I mean, not yet, not in public. People are watching. I’ve got a feeling.”
“Have I been misreading this?”
“No. But my, uh, employers might. Listen, how about the day after tomorrow? Wait that long? So I can, uh, so I can report the contact, so they don’t think I’m hiding anything. Otherwise they might think it’s a security infraction…”
Angie unwound very slightly. “Your employers are bastards.”
“Some of them are Fundamentalists. The spooks love that kind of straight-arrow puritan programming. I am not exaggerating: only a few years ago they’d have been telling me I’d burn in a rather hot place for this, or require an extra-strong course of aversion therapy or something. If they were following their churches’ doctrines, that is. Most of them aren’t that crazy, but you can never tell.” She kissed Angie again. “So, like, because of security I’ve got to report this, but I’ve got to be discreet. Don’t be surprised if you’re doorstepped by a couple of MIB in the next week or two. Background checks.”
“I’ll pass.” Angie made a wave-off gesture. “Remember the twitch-your-toes trick for spoofing polygraphs? I’m current. Anyway”—she smirked—“I can always mistake them for Mormon missionaries, can’t I?”
“You—” Rita sighed. “I should be getting back.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”
“No, like I said, I’m on call from midnight. Like being on watch. I have to go back to my hotel room before then or I’ll turn into a pumpkin or something…”