“I know what you’ve been up to in your professional life . . .” I said, “but what about the rest of your life? If you even have time for a personal life.”
I kept my eyes focused on the paperwork and waited. Normally I didn’t ask Targets that kind of question because I already knew their personal life. My own morbid curiosity had just asked Henry that, not my better judgment. I wanted to hear him lie; I wanted to be reminded of the man I was sitting across from . . . more like I needed to be reminded of it. When he hmmm’d and hawww’d, conveniently forgetting to mention his wife, my resolve would be renewed and I’d forget all about the man who still remembered my Social Security Number and could look into my eyes with a sincerity that made me want to squirm.
“A personal life?” Henry took a sip of his beer then a longer one. “What I have outside of work seems to grow smaller and smaller by the day, and well . . . it’s called a personal life for a reason.” Henry shrugged, giving me some combination of an apologetic and sad look.
I wasn’t sure what irritated me more: that he hadn’t outright lied or that he’d gone all vague when I needed him to be anything but. Either way, I was irritated. That might have been why I said what I did next. “And how many of those personal lives are you living?”
Bitter bitch, get back into your cell before I send you to the electric chair.
If Henry flinched, I missed it. Probably because I was busy administering some good ol’ self-flagellation.
“What about you? What’s your personal life like these days?” he asked quietly.
My reply wasn’t so quiet. “They call it personal for a reason.”
Instead of taking my comment as cutting, Henry smiled. Actually, he grinned right before he laughed. “I should have known better than to show up in a suit and tie for a meeting with you, Eve. Next time I’m strapping on the full-body armor.”
Damn it if I didn’t try to hold it in, but a traitor smile broke on my face. “And next time, I’m bringing the grenade launcher. Let’s see how your body armor holds up to that.”
Henry lifted his beer and held it my direction. “Eve, you could bring nothing but that sad smile of yours, and it would blast through the most impenetrable suit of armor I could find every time.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I clinked my glass against his. “I’m not sure if that was deserving of a Cheers, but why the hell not.”
Right before we both took a drink, Henry said, “Against everything I’d always thought, here you are. Sitting across from me, sipping a beer instead of launching it in my face. I’d say that’s deserving of a Cheers.”
That wasn’t what I’d been referring to, not by a long shot, but as was becoming a pattern with Henry and me, he seemed to be talking about one thing and I was talking about something else.
YESTERDAY I WAS in California, sharing not one but two pints of Guinness with Henry Callahan as we finished my employment paperwork. Today I was in Tampa, exchanging the dry, hot air of California for wet, hotter air. I wasn’t a big Florida fan, but I spent plenty of time there. Lots of cheating, wealthy husbands in that state.
Henry got a call toward the end of our lunch “meeting” that he was needed urgently at one of his sister companies in Korea. I knew Henry traveled a lot and I’d be working other Errands when he was gone. While I had been okay with juggling a busy schedule, it was only because G promised I wouldn’t jet-set across the country every other week. Yet there I was, flying a few thousand miles for a measly Seven.
I’d been about to complain to G when she’d informed me of the new Errand . . . but then she said the magic words. The ones she knew would make me travel to the most remote part of the Arctic: wife beater.
Very little surprised me. I’d seen it all, lived it all, and worked it all. There wasn’t a vice scratching the underbelly of humanity that hadn’t gotten my hands dirty, but that kind of vermin—the wife beaters—gave a whole new meaning to why I did what I did. Every wife we Eves dealt with was looking for freedom, some just needed it more than others. Their lives depended on it. I wouldn’t ascribe the word noble to my work, but it sure as shit wasn’t something to be ashamed of either. That kind of Errand, with that kind of Client, had a succinct way of reminding me.
G hadn’t needed to ask twice if I’d take the Errand. Henry was out of the country for a week, and a wife beater needed a beating of his own.
It was only late afternoon when I slipped into my rental car outside the Tampa airport, but I’d passed the fatigue point several hours earlier. I was used to a crazy schedule, where sleep was an afterthought, but even though my mind had adapted to exhaustion, my body hadn’t. With my thirtieth birthday looming a few short candles away, I was reminded how, with every Errand I worked, I was that much older, that much more susceptible to wear and tear, and that much more in need of my exit plan. Closing the Callahan Errand would make my exit plan a reality. I’d be out of the game before I blew out those thirty candles. Hopefully, long out.