#vanderspice

When Vanderwood says “hi”, he slightly  exhales. The air comes out with a barely perceptible whistle, treacherously betraying something that feels like excitement. Methi had studied speech habits for several years at the university and, if she desired, could dig into it with the meticulousness and scrupulousness inherent in her work. Their work, because the being an agent is, of course, not a common hobby, but at least something in common.

No, wrong.

Agents can’t have anything “in common”, except, maybe, their loyalty to the agency. Tattooed snakes on her side whisper about it, wrapping old ugly scars with their smooth scaly rings, hiding the truth. After the years she became quite like a snake too, and Methi wonders: if she opens her mouth, will her tongue come out split?

Sometimes she asks herself, what’s the point? Why drag herself up from the swamp of self-deprecation and helplessness ten years in a row, why do something, complete the tasks, take new ones and finish them again? Like a squirrel in a wheel. Until her legs and hands give up, until her heart stops and she is replaced by someone else.

And then no one will say “hello” in return.

From this thought everything inside hoots somewhere down, as if she flies painfully familiar to earth from a height of hundred meters, and the sky is spinning somewhere high, somewhere as far away as their first task together. Seven once asked how they met, but she could hardly have told  him properly: confidential information. About how and why he was shortly appointed as her bodyguard at the end of the mission, about the information hunted by intelligences of the three countries, about how they ran away from the chase many times, and about how she darned his wounds with dental floss, while sitting in the old bathroom knee-deep in icy water.

When Vanderwood recounts this, he looks away. Methi looks away too: she doesn’t  have enough courage to see something she will later regret. She may want to, a lot, to see confirmation that the vacuum she feels is not only her own. So that somewhere in there she may find a familiar fear, a well known excitement, and she may hope and be deceived, but only until she sees. Distance is an axiom, it is an indisputable taboo around which they both have to tap dance, trying not to cut themselves and stay alive.

Because if one of them dies, all this becomes meaningless.

She often asks herself: when did it start? After the first mission together or six months, a year later? Or was it just because of all the variety of things that surrounded her and flashed like a dirty kaleidoscope, only his tired and gloomy face, this whistling “hello” with a quiet sigh and the habit of folding his arms on his chest remained … permanent?

Permanent is a scary word.

Consistency is not a thing an agent can afford. Agent can afford cars, equipment, an apartment, trinkets, anything you can buy with money, but not a heart or at least a cork to shut up a hole inside. Consistency did not imply end, but end could very much come at any time: for crossing a deadline, because of higher-up’s bad temper, because of negligence or by chance.

It would have helped her a lot if this longing had found a way out: just a couple of words, a couple of  glances caught in time. Then she could have gotten it straight, then, probably, she would have felt … what?

“You look washed-out”

He throws it at her like a calm statement, and Methi wants to believe that he just knows her well. It’s not permissible to lose a professional grasp for emotional mimicry, especially now that all that fragile house of cards is ready to fall apart. Methi looks at her hands, head seeming empty for a few moments: they are thin and pale. It’s no wonder that they cannot hold or do anything, except picking up cards.

Her own hypocrisy smothers, it cools in her stomach like a tangle of hungry snakes, as if tattoo on her side wraps, twists and breaks her in two with blood, crunch and a slimy creak of strained guts. Then he awkwardly coughs and leans slightly, still holding hands crossed on his chest. He considers. Contemplates. Methi does not see: she is scared to look up and deprive herself of this semblance of caring custody he gives her, or to look into the eyes of all that she can only speculate. Yet she feels an attentive, analyzing gaze on her nose, on her brows, on her lips.

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

She does not lie and lies at the same time: she is really tired, but not from work.

“I hope this does not affect your performance”.

Methi wonders if she was expecting something else? She wants to laugh and hurt herself, to put pressure on that abrasion in her heart and make blood come out. They must not have it another way. They could and can not. Methi clings to her mask with thin hands of hers, holds it tightly like a tick, and she finds the strength to smile and raise her eyes. If she imagines, that glasses are her protection, then it probably won’t hurt at all.

“Okay,” his answer reaches her, and when their glances cross, “I’ll make you a coffee.”