#shake

Leon ambled down the hallway, hands in the pockets of his slacks, whistling softly through his teeth.  It was a typical day in the DSO offices, which meant absent of being sent to put down a small uprising in a foreign country, or getting sent to mop up another viral spill, or maybe getting sent somewhere to die of boredom as a security detail for the President, he had absolutely nothing to do.  Sure, there were things he <em>could</em> do.  He could do weapons training.  He could spar.  He could absolutely annihilate himself in the gym.  But that meant changing out of the suit, and he was admittedly too lazy to that today.  So he’d been up to his usual—bullshitting, pestering Ingrid Hunnigan until she told him that she actually <em>was</em> busy and to leave her alone or she’d castrate him, and reading oddball shit on Wikipedia on his phone.

Inside Leon felt like if the average American taxpayer saw the dumb shit they were financing to the tune of his stupidly large paychecks, they’d probably drag out the guillotines.

He stopped outside a halfway closed door and pulled a hand out of his pocket, reaching up to rap on the door.

“Yes?” Sherry called from inside.  Leon pushed the door open all the way and stood there in the doorway, looking at her with a smile.  “Oh.  It’s you.  Hi,” she said, looking at him from the array of screens in front of her.

“Just me,” he said, coming in to lean against the desk.  “Overpaid and bored out of my mind.”

Sherry tilted her head at him, smiling.  “You’re forever lurking around here causing problems.  Maybe that’s why they send you out so much.  To give us all a moment of peace.”

“Maybe,” Leon said nonchalantly.  “Did you know that on some Danish island I can’t pronounce the houses all have seaweed roofs and the women make them?”

“Really,” Sherry said in dramatic appreciation, leaning back in her chair.  “You been on Wikipedia again?”

“Like the name of the island has one of those weird conjoined As and Es and one of those Os with a line through it,” Leon said.  “Your guess is as good as mine.  I wonder how the women feel having to be roofers.”

Sherry was amused.  “You and Claire should go do trivia.  Like bar trivia.  I know some of the analysts go every week.  They have a team.”

“I am not hanging out with those nerds,” Leon said evenly, “and I don’t think I’m smart enough for trivia.  Claire could probably do numbers.  I’m just reading stupid articles on Wikipedia.  They practically handed her the key to the college when she graduated.”

“Well <em>I</em> don’t know anything about Danish islands with women roofers,” Sherry said.  “So you know more than me.”

“I doubt it,” Leon said.  “I hear you have vacation next week.”

“Why yes,” Sherry began cheerfully and primly, straightening some things on the desk, “I do.  Finally got it approved, all the way up the food chain.  They’re letting me leave the state.  I just have to check in.”

In time, over the years, once Simmons was gone—a euphemism, Leon considered, for what had really happened to him—Sherry was granted a little more freedom, but the government still fussed over her like she was either a hot house flower or an asset that needed constant management.  She’d been permitted to move off an installation and get an apartment, to finally begin an adult life after so long in captivity of the government, but they still held her leash tight.  Never once had she been permitted to leave the country in a leisure sense, and when she was permitted to go places she either had to check in or had a trailing security detail.

Leon had his own opinions about this, but Sherry seemed cheerful enough, so he tried not to come down with the embittered government lapdog routine too much.

“So what’s the occasion?” Leon asked.

“Oh, I told Claire,” Sherry said, raising her eyebrows.  “Did she not tell you?”

“Forever out of the loop,” Leon sighed.  “Forever in the dark.  Claire’s maintaining relationships with everyone in my life and I never have any idea what’s going on. She talks to my family more than me.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Sherry said, again prim, looking at him with a smile that was somehow reproachful.  “I’m going to New York.  Jake’s coming into town.”  Her smile grew.  “He’s taking me to see Taylor Swift.”

Leon pulled a face, then winced dramatically, putting his hand over his chest.  “Yikes.  That’s my idea of hell.  Mueller listens to the same stuff I do.  Is he going to <em>survive</em> a Taylor Swift concert?”

“He offered,” Sherry said brightly.  “So I guess he’ll be okay.  It is going to be funny seeing him there all in black, or some scary band t-shirt with like incomprehensible metal writing on it.”

“Last time I talked to him we were both gushing over the new Whores album,” Leon said, and Sherry looked bemused and rolled her eyes.  “Taylor Swift is going to be aural torture.  It’s going to kill his soul.”

“Oh, he tells me all about the weird shows he goes to when he’s home in Berlin and not working,” she replied, then let out a little sigh.  “It’d be nice to visit <em>him</em>, someday.  I mean, he shows me around the neighborhood on Facetime, his apartment, at shows, all of that.  I can’t seem to get them to let me go.  You’ve been to Berlin, right?” she asked.

“I have,” Leon said, raising his eyebrows and letting a gust out.  He shifted to sit on the edge of the desk.  “I think they’re a people more predisposed to the industrial and wearing black than to something like Taylor Swift, but it’s a nice place.  It doesn’t surprise me Jake chose it as his home base.  It seems somehow fitting.”

“Well,” Sherry said with a sigh, leaning back in her chair, “maybe I’ll get there some day.  I’ve always wanted to go to Europe.  Tour the sights.  I remember when I was a teenager, at the installation, I’d watch <em>Rick Steves’ Europe</em> on PBS and it all seemed so cool, and fascinating.”

Leon looked at her, keeping his face benign.  It wasn’t fair.  Sherry deserved to go on every trip to Europe she wanted to.  “Y’know,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her, “why doesn’t Mueller just move here?  You guys have been doing this long-distance whatever forever.  It wears on you after a while.  I am sure the people in your life would like it if you guys made it more official and he wasn’t just some merc who blew into town every once in a while.”

“Oh, people?” Sherry asked, arching her eyebrow back at him.  “What, like <em>you</em>?  Forever telling me to find a nice banker or high school teacher or whatever and get married and settle down?”

“I mean,” he said, “yeah.  Like I’d like to see your life a little more fulfilled.  See you a little more provided for.”

Sherry laughed a little, high and bright.  “Leon, it’s not 1940,” she said.  “I’m a busy woman too.  I have things going on.  I can provide for myself.”  She shrugged with her eyebrows.  “Jake’s happy there.  He says the US reminds him of Capitalist Disneyland hell.”

Leon drew his brows together.  “Jesus, am I the <em>only</em> one around here who’s not a raging Socialist?  That sounds like something that could come out of Claire.  I had to stop her from sticking basically protest signs in our front yard.”

“Oh, I am sure they weren’t protest signs,” Sherry said in amusement.

“No, but they’d probably put us on the No Fly list and cause me to have to report in for some kind of government re-education somewhere,” Leon said.  “I had to stop her from walking over and having an argument with someone loading groceries into the back of their car that had too many stickers on said car of a political bent that Claire didn’t agree with.”

Sherry laughed.  “Sounds like her.  I don’t think the US is for Jake.  He’s okay with coming to visit, but he’s glad to leave.”

Leon frowned.  “You’re here.  He shouldn’t be glad to leave at all.”

“Oh—you know what I mean,” Sherry said in exasperation.  “He <em>is</em> sad to leave me.  I think he’d love it if one day I could go there.”  She smiled some.  “In my European era.  Maybe someday.”

Leon was still frowning.  He felt like she had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being permitted to slip the government’s grasp to start a life overseas, but he hoped he was wrong.  Maybe someday.  In Sherry’s face, hope sprang eternal. “What do I know,” he said, throwing a hand up in the air.  “He must love you.  I would not suffer Taylor Swift.  I’d die.”

Sherry looked at him slyly.  “Didn’t you take Claire to that festival, years ago?  What was it again?”

Leon looked tired.  “Bonnaroo.  She’d just let me back in her life.  We were in our thirties.  I was relatively desperate to do well and make her happy and prove that she wasn’t betting on a losing dog.”  He sighed.  “She was over the moon.  An inebriated, high, dancing whirling dervish overjoyed by banjos and other shit that made me want to climb a wall.  I spent four days surrounded by hippies, pot smoke, mud, and music that made me feel like I needed to be missing half my teeth and living in a trailer.  I’d never been happier to return to DC and civilization.”

“<em>Leon</em>,” Sherry chided, but she was laughing.

“It felt like something that happened to me, but I kept my mouth shut and endured it because Claire was running around absolutely having the time of her life in a tie-dye shirt and cut off shorts.  I felt every bit the former-Catholic-government-square I am.  I did it once.  I don’t think I’d do it again.  I’m too old for that kind of shit now, anyway,” he said with finality.

Sherry was looking at him knowingly.  “Oh stop.  You’re 46.  You would <em>absolutely</em> go to something like that again if Claire wheedled you hard enough,” she said.  “You’re a sucker. You can’t say no.”

“I think not,” Leon said, coolly.

“Oh I think so,” Sherry returned, cutting her eye at him with a smirk.  “Wonder who’s at Bonnaroo this year, or maybe next year?  Maybe Claire needs to be reminded.  Sent a flyer.”

“Kid I’ll kill you,” Leon said.  “Do not remind her of it.  Do not make me spend another four days in Bumfucknowheresville, Tennessee, all sweaty and listening to music that confuses me.”

Sherry rolled her eyes and pushed her chair back close to her desk. “Don’t make me mad,” she said.  “I’ll do it.  I’ll get her so excited for Bonnaroo you’ll be right back in Tennessee.”

“I’m out of here,” Leon said abruptly, pushing up off the desk.  “I don’t have to take these threats lying down.  Go see your Taylor Swift and subject Mueller to the torment.  I’m going to go scare the interns.”

Sherry was laughing again, setting herself back up at her desk.  “You’re terrible,” she said.  “You leave those interns alone.  Someone is <em>always</em> yelling at them.  I feel bad for them.  They’re all like scared cats.”

“Good,” Leon said brightly, heading for the door.  “I’m about to roll up there and put the fear of Jesus in them.”

Sherry balled up a piece of paper and tossed it at his retreating back.  “Oh stop,” she chided.  “Go find something to do.  Go beat someone up.  I’m sure someone’s willing.”

“Abernathy did get mouthy with me this morning,” Leon said, stopping at the paper bouncing off his back.  He put his hands on his hips and looked at the wall, considering.  “Maybe I could sucker him into sparring.  He goes down easy.  Always has.”

“Go be his problem,” Sherry said.  “Leave those interns alone.  Be nice.”

“I’m not nice, Sherry,” Leon said in a reminding tone, starting for the door again.

“Oh sure,” she called at his retreating form.  “You let me paint your toenails when I was a teenager.  You tell me not to take my car to the dealership and that you’ll fix it.”