An Unforgettable Lady

Smith pushed a hand into his hair. It had grown in since he'd been working for Grace. He needed to get it cut again.

"I'm thinking about giving up this job."

"Why do you want to pull out?" When he didn't answer, Eddie said, "What's going on?"

Smith was reliving what it had been like to discover Grace was gone. Part of his horror over what had happened was his own failure. When he'd left the bathroom, he'd been distracted, dawdling with those rings, thinking about marriage, for Chrissakes. Because he hadn't been focused on the job, it had taken longer than it should have for him to figure out she'd left and that delay was bald evidence his objectivity was shot to shit.

The first rule in the security business was pretty damn straightforward: Always know where your client is. She'd risked her life by taking off without him, but he'd compounded the danger by flaking out. It was precisely what he'd feared would happen, a perfect storm of bad thinking on both their parts.

"Boss? You still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here." Smith sat on the edge of the bed.

"Doesn't she need you anymore?"

He deflected the question. "Turned out she was being tailed by her half-sister."

"She's got a half-sister?"

"She does now. I'm running a check on the woman but so far, she is who she says she is."

"But why are you leaving? Did they find the killer?"

"No."

"Boss, do you want to tell me what's really going on?" When he didn't reply, Eddie said, "You worried about being involved with her?"

Smith opened his mouth but the lie sputtered and died on his tongue. "Is it that goddamn obvious?"

"No, I've just known you too long. Hey, not that you're asking, but that's a good woman, there. And she's got the eye for you. Like you're wearing her home address on your chest, you know what I mean?"

"You're getting real poetic as you age," Smith said, growing uncomfortable with the conversation.

"It's the writing course."

"Look, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Hey, Boss?"

"Yeah, Eddie."

"It's about time you settled down."

"Men like me don't settle down. You know that."

"Don't you ever think about it?"

Not until recently, Smith said to himself.

"You know," Eddie barreled along, "Black Watch can keep going without you. Tiny, he's as on top of the boys as a hammer on nail heads."

"Now you're into metaphors?"

"That was a simile, Boss."

After he hung up, Smith began pacing around the room, realizing that somehow, in the midst of all his discipline and self-control, he'd lost his way.

For years, he'd had one and only one goal. He wanted to make a lot of money doing what came naturally to him without getting himself killed. It was a simple and straightforward kind of life, assuming you knew how to handle yourself with a gun, which he did. But, after years of succeeding admirably, he was confused and conflicted. Black Watch and all it stood for felt arbitrary.

Holding Grace in his arms did not.

He tried to remember when he'd last taken stock of what he wanted or needed as a man and thought about something she'd thrown at him when they'd been arguing once. She'd told him he was a ghost. That she wouldn't miss him because he'd never really been in her life.

She was right, he thought, on a practical level and maybe in some deeper, more troubling way. What had he really given her except pleasure? And some heart ache? She didn't even know his real name, for God's sake.

Come to think of it, he hadn't used his real name in years.

A ghost.

It dawned on him that maybe he'd disappeared awhile ago and it was only now he was noticing. Perhaps he'd just been hiding behind the drive to succeed in his peculiar, violent, and dangerous line of work. After all, what could possibly be more distracting, if you didn't want to think about yourself, than protecting other human lives?

He wondered when the dissolving had started. Way back when he'd escaped his father's brutality? During his stint with the Rangers? Or was it during those shape-shifting years right after he'd left the military, when he'd relied on aliases and subterfuge so his enemies couldn't find him?

More likely, it was an accumulation of all the shadows he'd masked himself with.

How fucking ironic, he thought. The culmination of his life's work was to make himself disappear.

He thought back to what Eddie had said about settling down, starting over. The idea would have struck him as ludicrous coming from anyone else, except maybe Tiny. But if he unplugged from Black Watch, then what? What would he do with his hours, his days? Would he and Grace ever be able to have a life together? As he contemplated the expanse of time ahead of him, he felt the choices he had as a deadweight on his chest.