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Hunnigan looked at him like at the moment she was considering beating her head into a wall. “Leon, get out of this office and my hair before I castrate you and keep your balls in a jar on my desk.”
Leon merely looked at her blithely. “Ingrid. I’m starting to think I’m doing all the heavy lifting in this friendship.”
She let out a long sigh, leaning back in her chair on the other side of the desk. “With friends like you, who the fuck needs enemies?” She adjusted her glasses. “Go occupy yourself. You’re a nightmare in the field, you’re a nightmare here. You’ve got an hour and a half before you’re permitted to call it quits for the day. Go home and run your mouth at your wife. I hope she hits you with a frying pan.”
Leon smiled at her. “Wife’s out of town. I’m your problem now.”
“For fuck’s sake I hope not,” she gusted. “Where’s Claire?”
“Amsterdam,” Leon said. “Presenting at some NGO do-gooder aid conference thing, and probably getting high as hell in her downtime. It’s just me and the dog.”
Hunnigan had the presence of mind to look a bit confused, as opposed to annoyed. “You have a dog?” she asked.
“Against my will, yes,” Leon said.
Hunnigan rolled her eyes some. “I’m surprised. You strike me as a dog person. They annoy the fuck out of me. How long have you had the dog?”
“Several months, now,” he replied. “I came home one night and my wife informed me she’d procured a dog. It wasn’t my druthers, either. Dogs are fine and all, but I didn’t expect to have to juggle one around all the other shit in my life.”
“What kind of a dog is it?” Hunnigan asked, tiredly.
Leon gazed back at her evenly. “A corgi.”
A corner of her mouth pulled up at him. “I’m trying to picture you with some kind of idiotic midget of a dog and the image is…incongruous.”
Leon sighed. “Yeah. Claire’s unhealthily attached to him. I feel like she likes the dog better than me.”
“Let’s be real here,” Hunnigan said in amusement, “what do you really bring to the table, as a man? Most women would prefer a dog.”
“Aside from dick, I don’t really know,” Leon said. “I think if it weren’t for the thing in our pants, women would probably just imprison or murder most men.”
“Yeah, well,” Hunnigan said, “I knew by the ripe old age of about ten or so that the thing in your pants held zero interest to me, so at this point in my life I’m still trying to figure out what purpose men serve to us.”
“If you ever figure it out, let me know,” Leon said. “I’m itching for a higher purpose.”
“You’re itching for a beating,” Hunnigan rectified. “Or me finding something for you to do. It’s 3:30. Go be someone else’s problem until you can tear out of here screaming at 5 PM.”
“But I like being your problem, Ingrid,” he said.
“No shit,” she said dryly. “You’ve been my problem since you were like 25. Get out of my office. I mean it. I’ll have you shipped to Antarctica next week if not.”
“You think the DSO would notice if I tried to smuggle back a penguin?” Leon asked, standing from the chair in front of her desk. “Wife’s obsessed with penguins. I’d be on the good boy list forever if I delivered one to her.”
“Get out, Leon,” Hunnigan said, matter-of-factly.
………………………………………………………
Leon had in fact found other things to occupy himself with before he could tear out of DSO headquarters at 5 PM screaming, but then it was time for the screaming induced by his mind-numbing, rage-causing commute through DC rush hour traffic to home.
The commute made him want to roll down his window and fire an unregistered firearm into the air. It made him want to jerk the wheel into a guard rail. Many times over the years he’d told himself it was not appropriate to drag someone out of their vehicle and beat them to death. He was losing enamel on his teeth from the amount of gritting he did during his commute. He felt like the drive was giving him high blood pressure.
But he shut up and endured it because Claire had not wanted to live in a city, and a full half of his life had been trying to make Claire happy. He’d known when they were looking at houses all those years ago that the commute was going to make him a miserable motherfucker that had one more thing to hate about DC and his life. Then he would get home and Claire would be happily watering her plants, or cheerfully making dinner, or sitting out on the back deck enjoying life and he reminded himself that all of this was worth it if she was happy.
His father had always told him it was a man’s role to toil and endure everything life had to throw at him in the name of making sure a woman stayed unaffected and unbothered, going through life in a blissfully female and coddled way. Claire told him his father had probably warped his brain in ways she could not figure out how to unfuck. It did not stop Leon from trying to provide for her and ensure the largest concern in her day to day life was figuring out what to cook his domestically-challenged ass for dinner, or the volume of emails in her work inbox.
Realistically he would have been okay if she’d up and give up the job as well, but he knew she never would, and that Claire was not going to be content to be some kind of pampered stay at home wife. Her brain spun too fast. Her sense of justice was too strong. She was too fucking smart to just bake cakes and do laundry all day.
By the time Leon got home at 6:45, he’d uttered fuck in every configuration possible under his breath while enduring the commute from Hell. He parked the Porsche in its customary spot in the driveway—their next closest neighbor, about a mile away, had once told him he was insane for parking such an expensive vehicle in the elements. It was more male bullshit ingrained in him by his father; Claire got to park in the garage even though her truck was a beat-up hulk. He was not about to make her have to clean snow off her vehicle, or walk in the rain out to it. In theory if Leon didn’t have so much garage and shop shit he could park on the other side of the garage, but he figured that would not come to pass in their lifetimes.
Instead of walking up to the front door or the garage to punch in the code to open the door, he headed straight around the side of the house, through the back yard, to the outbuilding that served as his shop. He opened the door and stepped in, flipping on the fluorescent lighting high in the rafters above, and the lights flicked on over the expanse of shit he occupied his scant spare time with—project cars, piles of wood destined for being made into furniture, odds and ends. A Honda CB750 sat in the corner mostly in pieces; he’d finally convinced Claire to spend money on a project motorcycle and periodically she toiled away in the shop with him, several beers deep and cursing at the previous owners of the bike.
He stalked over for the cabinets above the work bench and pulled one open, moving things around inside until he found what he was looking for—the pack of Marlboro Reds he hid. He pulled the pack out, opened it, stuck one in his mouth, and then reached for the lighter laying on the workbench. He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag, letting it out with a gust.
The commute had fried him. He didn’t dare smoke when Claire was in the house. Once or twice, he’d nearly been caught. The amount of hell Claire would have given him if she’d ever caught him smoking would have been positively tidal in its nature. She released heaps of abuse on Chris, who brushed it all off and persisted in smoking a pack a day.
Leon leaned against the workbench in his suit, and looked around behind him. He found part of a piston head and pulled it over to the edge of the workbench, ashing in it, and then took another healthy drag of the cigarette, letting out a cloud of smoke. Fuck it felt good. He contemplated firing another one up right after this one.
In his slacks pocket his phone began to vibrate, and he reached to pull it out. Leon had last heard from Claire around 4; she was 6 hours ahead in the Netherlands and had been heading to bed, nervous about her and her coworker Calvin presenting the next day. Calvin had been a coworker of Claire’s for as long as Leon could remember, ten years older than her and unbothered by most things in life due to the fact that he was usually high as a kite. Leon had always suspected Calvin may have harbored feelings for Claire that went beyond simple friendship; he’d always noted how well they got along and joked around and felt a twinge or something inside. Claire had always insisted the last thing on earth Calvin was interested in was her, and Leon, knowing men, had skeptically taken her at face value. Finally about ten years ago Claire had told him that once, in her early twenties, new to the TerraSave game she’d actually tried to come onto Calvin and he’d shot her down in the name of preserving the work environment. Claire had shrugged and said she thought Calvin was a life-long bachelor, and that he was not going to sign onto any detail that forced him to change anything about himself or how he lived his life, and that had been that. Leon supposed he was relatively put at ease that the man she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time with for work-related purposes had been so upright or disinterested in her he’d been able to look at a 23 year old Claire coming onto him and shoot her down.
Leon could not have managed it. He would have been halfway to the bedroom, shedding clothes the entire way. He suspected 99% of men out there would have.
He succeeded in getting his phone out of his pocket and looked at it, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and the familiar photo of Grace and Emily in their matching sunglasses was on his screen. He swiped and answered, holding the phone up to his ear. “Yes?” he asked, taking the cigarette out of his mouth.
“Well hi to you too,” Grace said in amusement. “You busy?”
“Nope. Just trying to bring my blood pressure back to normal after driving home,” Leon replied, taking a drag.
“I see,” Grace said. “So the check engine light’s on in my car,” she went on. “All day today I was scared it was going to blow up or something. What would cause a check engine light to come on?”
“Lots of things,” Leon replied. “Given that you drive a four year old Subaru, I bet it’s a sensor. Subarus are generally pretty reliable. You check your oil recently?”
“I mean the mechanics did, at my last oil change,” Grace said.
“You’re capable of pulling a dipstick out of an engine and looking at it,” Leon said, ashing the cigarette. “Do it once in a while. Car driving okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Grace said.
“You could always find out what code it’s throwing,” Leon went on, taking a drag. “Easy enough.”
“I—I don’t even know what that means,” Grace said, chagrined.
“Buy a code reader,” Leon said. “You plug it into your dash. New cars are 90% computer and anything wrong is going to give you a code. You can take it to an auto parts store and they’ll do it for you. I bet it’s your O2 sensor,” Leon said. “Something small and piddly. Dealership can take care of it for you. But you should buy a code reader, for yourself. So you know what’s going on with your car and mechanics can’t take advantage of you.”
“I mean I just take it to the dealership for service and do whatever they tell me to do,” Grace said.
“You probably don’t even need to do all that,” Leon said. “They’re just high-grossing you. O2 sensor. That’s my guess.” He let out a cloud of smoke.
“As long as my car doesn’t explode,” Grace said.
“No. I’m giving you an explosion-free guarantee,” Leon said. “But check your oil. Dump some in if it’s low. Just in case.” He squinted against the cigarette smoke. “What else is going on?”
“Well,” Grace said with a sigh, “work’s busy. Some big racketeering case. Stuff with Emily. She read a book about kakopos and now she won’t leave me alone about going to New Zealand.”
“I wanna go to New Zealand, too,” Leon said. “It’s one of the few places I’ve never been, probably because they’re a rational and peaceable place and the last thing they need is me with a gun. The fuck’s a kakapo?”
“Some kind of big, endangered parrot?” Grace said. “I dunno. She really wants to go.”
“So go. Go to Hobbiton, for me. I long to see it before I die,” Leon said.
“That’s right, you do like The Lord of the Rings,” Grace hummed. “Tickets to New Zealand are like 3k a piece, Leon. Not for entry-level FBI agents.”
He brought the cigarette up to his mouth, pausing. “You wanna go to New Zealand?”
“Not bad enough to let you try to pay for it,” Grace said knowingly. “Em will live. What she really wants to do is not go to school, which is a new thing.”
Leon took a drag. “Oh? I thought she liked school.”
“I think she does,” Grace said, “but she’s getting picked on. There’s a mean girl.”
“Uh-oh,” Leon said. “You need someone to yell at shithead parents?”
“No,” Grace said, “the school’s aware. I guess this girl is like…I dunno. I dealt with them in school, too. I was always picked on. I was always the new kid with all the moving around me and Mom did, and mean girls just…honed in on me. Tormented me. I guess they’re starting early with Em, too.”
Leon took one last drag of the cigarette before butting it out in the piston head turned ashtray, and reached for the pack behind him, intent on another. What the hell. What Claire didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her and would let her allow him to continue breathing. “I dated the mean girl, in high school,” Leon said.
Grace made a noise. “Leon. Really? I—I can’t picture that. Were you mean, in school?”
“No,” Leon said, lighting the second cigarette. “I was friendly and bumbling. Made friends with everyone. I didn’t know I was dating the mean girl. I just followed her around with stars in my eyes doing everything she yelled at me to do. Years later, after she’d dumped me, people started telling me the horror stories. Apparently every time I turned my back she was tormenting someone, ruining someone’s life, making fun of someone.” He exhaled smoke. “She wasn’t exactly nice to me, either, so I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
Grace sighed. “I’m sure this girl making fun of Em will grow up and be pretty and popular and, like, the head of the cheerleading squad. Nobody seems to have any consequences in school. The worst people thrive.”
“Maybe,” Leon said. “I kind of think they all turn out to be people who peaked in school. Can’t run your shitty jock attitude or mean girl bullshit out in the real world. People get tired of it fast.”
“Yeah, maybe. I just hate it for Em. Now she acts like she doesn’t want to get out of the car in the morning. She worries about what to wear because she says she doesn’t want to look like, and I quote, a baby. I don’t know what to do for her. I couldn’t stop myself from being picked on in school, and now it seems I can’t stop it for Em.”
“Is it time for angry grandparents visit?” Leon asked. “Me and Claire to roll up and cloud up and rain all over somebody’s parade? Claire doesn’t really have a mean bone in her body but I will absolutely Agent Kennedy the fuck out of some school officials, parents, and probably even a brat of a child. I don’t care.”
“No,” Grace said, “that’s not necessary. We don’t need you glaring at a child. I’ll figure it out.” Then she laughed a little. “Claire may not have a mean bone in her body, if you really think so. She was flying along doing 100 once and a gravel truck pulled out in front of her and she went on a rage and called the driver a pole-smoking cunt with me and Emily in the truck, among other things.”
Leon smiled some. “She’s harmless. Foul-mouthed, but harmless. I’m not.”
“Yeah, yeah. You guys are both kind of insane and scary,” Grace said. “Anyway. I need to figure out dinner and get Em in the bath.”
Leon took a drag. “Yeah, I need to do that too. Claire’s out of town. I’m left to feed myself.”
“No red meat,” Grace warned. “Be responsible. Don’t be doing things Claire would yell at you about.”
Leon looked at the cigarette in his hand and smiled. “Of course not. I’m on my best behavior, over here.”
……………………………………………………………
Eventually he made it into the house via the back door, and Spud came running out of wherever he’d been holed up, jumping up and down excitedly. Leon let him out the back door—he wasn’t going to run off, and never had—and continued into the house, tossing his keys down on the kitchen counter. He sighed and began turning on lights; the sun was going down earlier and earlier as fall settled in. The next step was getting out of his suit. He walked across the house and into the bedroom.
He shed the suit and pulled on some jeans, an old Faith No More t-shirt, and then pulled on the sweater Claire had made him over that. She joked he needed to be forcibly separated from it in order for her to wash it; he did spend a lot of time in it. He’d never had anyone make him something like that, and he was continually impressed she’d persevered and produced it. It was a well-made sweater. He felt like it didn’t look any different than any cable-knit sweater you saw in a store. He would have worn one every day if she saw fit to produce them, weather permitting.
He wandered back across the house to the back door, opening it. He saw Spud’s stunted form running around aimlessly in the gathering darkness. The zoomies, Claire called it. “Spud!” he hollered, and Spud continued zipping around. “Spud, you dumbass, get in here. You want food or not?” Leon said, and at the mention of the f-word, Spud came zooming across the yard, up onto the back deck, darting into the house excitedly. He followed Leon, panting excitedly, as Leon went into the laundry room and procured his food bowl and scooped some of the kibble out of the bin into it. Spud was half-jumping in excitement as Leon set the food bowl down, and he heard frenzied crunching as he walked away, into the kitchen. With a sigh, he pulled open the fridge and considered his options. He gazed at the wall of Busch cans with its smaller wall of Coke cans, and then began to rifle through Tupperware containers. He found the remnants of some creamy, lemony pasta thing with chicken Claire had made—he couldn’t remember what she’d called it, but they’d eaten it about 5 days ago and the leftovers were getting long in the tooth, so Leon was going to throw himself on that grenade. He stuck the Tupperware in the microwave, and Spud ambled out from the laundry room, full of kibble.
Leon looked down at the dog staring up at him. “What?” he asked, pointedly. “Mom’s gone. You’re stuck with me,” he informed Spud. Claire told him that no man that was as indifferent to a dog as he professed to be spoke to said dog in full sentences. Leon pulled open the fridge and looked at the cans of Busch, then thought better of it and opened the cabinet, pulling out the bottle of Glenlivet 18, and pouring himself a glass.
Fuck it. Wife gone, leftovers and aged scotch it was.
He went over to the kitchen table and began to eat the leftover pasta out of the Tupperware, scotch in front of him. He supposed with Claire gone he could actually listen to some music on the stereo in the house, without her grousing about the screaming, droning nature of said music. He stuck a bite of pasta into his mouth, and looked down, chewing. Spud was in his customary spot right next to Leon, looking up at him pitifully.
Leon sighed a little around chewing, and fished into the pasta for a hunk of chicken. “Up,” he said to Spud, chicken in hand. “C’mon. Up.” After a moment Spud obediently hopped up a little and onto his hind legs, sitting on his dog butt with his front paws in the air, and Leon tossed him the piece of chicken. Spud caught it and lowered himself back to the ground, chewing furiously. Claire had told Leon if he was going to persist in feeding Spud scraps from the table, he needed to teach him some tricks. Spud had learned up about a month ago. Leon was contemplating roll over next.
Leon was gaining on polishing off the leftovers when his phone vibrated in his pocket again, and he reached into his jeans and pulled it out. He had a text from his eldest brother Riley, and he opened it, chewing, then blinked. I’m a grandpa, again. Luke’s wife Jenna had the baby. Emrys Abigail Kennedy, 8 lbs, 2 oz. Leon looked at the accompanying pictures, Riley in all his dad-body glory and glasses holding a blanketed lump in his arms, his nephew Luke and his wife together, her in the bed with the baby in her arms, Luke standing next to her in his work coveralls beaming.
Congrats, grandpa, Leon texted back. Mom looks alright.
Easy labor, for her first one, Riley replied. No two days of labor like I was.
It’s that massive fucking head of yours, Leon replied. Surprised you didn’t get stuck. He closed the text conversation and opened Venmo. He looked into the friends portion of his account and scrolled through the long list of family members until he found Luke, bringing him up. Leon took a drink of scotch and paused for a moment, then Venmoed his nephew two grand. He took another bite of pasta and set his phone down, chewing, looking off into space. He continued eating in peace until the pasta was gone, and then got up and went over to the sink, rinsing the Tupperware out and sticking it in the dishwasher. He stood there for a moment, contemplating. Was he still hungry? Maybe he should parse the leftovers out; if he ate them all in two days there’d be nothing else until Claire came home and he’d be left to eating sandwiches and frozen pizza.
He contemplated it a minute more, then decided he could live with the amount of food he’d eaten and picked up his scotch and his phone, heading for the living room, Spud in tow. Leon turned on the stereo and paired his phone to the Bluetooth, and then began to scroll through Spotify, trying to decide what he wanted to listen to. He settled on Thou, which Claire practically covered her head with a pillow any time she was subjected to it. The guitars and screaming started, and Leon sat down on the couch contentedly, taking a drink of his scotch. Spud ambled over and jumped up on the other end of the couch. Leon’s phone buzzed in his hand.
Uncle Leon, what the fuck? Luke’s text read. You want to tell me why you randomly sent me 2k?
Your wife just gave you a child, Leon replied. Buy her something nice.
Like this isn’t necessary, but sure, Luke replied.
Most things I do aren’t necessary but I do them anyway, Leon texted. I’m your elder. Don’t question me. Just go buy Jenna some earrings or something.
He set his phone down and put his feet up on the coffee table, scotch in hand.
………………………………………………….
Leon was on his third scotch and had moved on to listening to God Alone. He could usually get away with them in the house; Claire said they sounded a little like they were trying to make actual music. He was engaged in a usual pastime, looking at Reddit. He’d recently found the Scrungly Cats subreddit, and it could amuse him for long periods. Cats were fucking weird. He almost wanted to get one to participate, but he didn’t know how to find the kind of weird gremlin cats that were featured on the subreddit. Maybe he could go into the humane society and ask for the weirdest, ugliest cat they had.
A text popped up, and he looked at it with a furrowed brow and then looked at his watch. It was 9:15, which meant it was approximately 3 AM in the Netherlands. Why was Claire texting him? He opened the text, brow still furrowed.
Woke up to pee and I’m so nervous about tomorrow I kind of think I may throw up, her text read.
You’re going to be fine, Leon texted back. If you can present alone at the UN, you can make a presentation at a conference with Calvin in tow. Let him do the talking. Just stand there and look good.
Funny, he wants ME to do all the talking, Claire replied. Oh Jesus my stomach is in a knot. I hate this shit. I hate this aspect of the job, and it seems like they make me do it more and more as I get older.
You’re going to be fine, baby, he replied. It’s 3:15 in the morning there. You need to go back to sleep. It’ll all be over tomorrow, and then you and Calvin can go be menaces in the street.
Claire was typing back. Kind of menaces, she texted, and then: I know for a fact weed will be involved, but every time I’ve been in Amsterdam I’ve never had more than like a night of downtime. I want to go to the Anne Frank house, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh museum. If Calvin doesn’t want to do that shit I’ll leave his ass in the dust to smoke weed.
Leon smiled a little. Yikes, museums. Given the choice I’d probably stay behind and smoke weed too.
Oh you would not, Claire replied. You’re constantly going on about how pot made you paranoid as a teenager. You’d be right there looking at the works of Dutch masters with me.
Leon’s smile grew. I would rather shoot myself in the foot, but sure.
You’re impossible, she groused via text. How’s Spud?
I set him free in the woods, Leon said. He’ll figure it out.
Don’t piss me off, she fired back. You better be pampering him like the little prince he is.
He’s laying here passed out, Leon replied. Which is what you should be doing. Go back to bed, Claire. You’re going to do great tomorrow. You’ve done a million things like this. You’ve met heads of state. You’ve spoken to parliaments and Congress. It’s going to be fine.
Fine. There was a pause as she typed. We need to fast forward this trip to the part where I’m high looking at Van Gogh paintings. I’m going back to bed. Goodnight. I love you.
Love you too. Sleep well. You’re gonna be fine. He looked at his phone for a moment longer, and no further from Claire was forthcoming, so he took a drink of his scotch and went back to Reddit. Jesus, what was that cat doing? He didn’t know cats could make that face.
…………………………………………………..
Eventually at approximately 10:30 PM Leon realized if he continued to stay up, drink scotch, listen to raging music, and look at Reddit he was probably going to regret it tomorrow. The frustrations of the morning commute were gaining on him, as was a long day sitting around in a suit hoping they didn’t ship his ass somewhere.
He ambled around the house, turning off lights, and upon thinking better of it and experiencing the swimmy feeling in his head, he got a glass of water. Oops. Too much scotch.
He made his way to the bedroom and disrobed for the second time that night, stripping down to his underwear and heading into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth, and for one moment contemplated his once weekly face shave. Nah. He’d do that tomorrow. He turned out the light in the bathroom and went over to the bed, pushing back the blankets and getting in. He looked over at Claire’s side, at her three abandoned glasses of water, at her stack of books she was reading. She claimed the water tasted stale the next day, but she was not great about clearing away former glasses.
Spud jumped up on the bed, his tags jingling. For a moment he circled near the foot of the bed, then stopped circling and began to approach Leon. Leon watched him approach, then circle a few times next to him in the bed. Spud laid down next to Leon, and rested his head on Leon’s shoulder. Leon looked out to the room with a sigh, and then down at the small dog next to him.
“I’m a poor substitute for Mom, buddy,” Leon informed Spud, who merely let out a doggy gust of his own and settled in. Leon reached over for his phone and unlocked it, then opened the camera and flipped it to the front facing camera. He snapped a photo of Spud laying on his shoulder and Leon was half in the photo, and then he went to the family group chat. He sent the picture, along with I think someone misses Claire.
Awwww, Grace replied almost immediately. Fair, she was an hour behind on central time. Poor buddy. He looks so sad.
He’s stuck with me. I’d be sad too, Leon replied.
Oh stop, Sherry chimed in. You guys can keep each other company.
Sherry, are you going to be in the office in the morning? Leon asked.
Yes. I’m helping with an op, Sherry replied.
Good. I need someone new to bother. Hunnigan threatened to castrate me, Leon texted.
Do you, like, even work half the time? Grace texted. I feel like you make way too much money to just be wandering around an office bothering people. I don’t make shit and there’s always a pile on my desk every day.
Don’t tell the taxpayers, Leon replied. Everyone junior to me always seems to have plenty to do. If I’m not out in the field, I’m useless. He yawned. Old man bed time. Goodnight, blonde girls.
Sherry sent some heart emojis, and Grace sent a gif of Homer Simpson disappearing into a bush. Leon set his phone down on the bedside table, plugged it in, and then turned out the light. He laid there and felt Spud’s exhaling breath on him, and then closed his eyes.
…………………………………………………………
The buzzing of his phone on a hard surface awoke him. He squinted into the darkness; it was an unknown time, not light out. Spud had moved over onto Claire’s side of the bed. Leon lifted his head some, looking around. Either Claire was doing her usual of pretending time zones didn’t exist or the DSO was informing him he needed to report in to be sent to Bumfuck Nowhere to clean up a mess.
Fumblingly he reached for his phone and unplugged it, and saw that it was 3 AM. He had texts from Claire. Just business as usual, then, aside from the other usual business of being a tool of the government. Squinting at the brightness of his screen, Leon unlocked his phone and opened the text.
There was a picture of Claire and Calvin together, Claire in her glasses with her hair down and curled, Calvin looking older than he was when Leon first met him, half of his dark hair stubbornly hanging on against the encroaching grey all over and in his moustache. They were both smiling, and the accompanying text said T-minus twenty minutes until we go in that hall and make asses of ourselves.
You’ll be fine, Leon said. Calvin’s starting to look like an old man.
He IS 59, Claire replied. None of us are young, anymore. Why are you awake?
Because I am a dutiful husband and you texted me, Leon replied. You rather I slept through it?
Maybe not, but you should be asleep. I was just texting to text because I’m so nervous I could shit a brick. There was a pause but she was typing. I saw the pic of you and Spud in the group chat. You like him, admit it.
The relationship between this dog and I is a mystery, Leon replied. No one will ever understand. I’m not going to understand shit either in the morning if I don’t go back to bed.
Fair, Claire texted. Just ignore my nervous texting. I’m going to throw up in a trash can after this. Go back to sleep.
Relax, sweetheart, Leon texted back, squinting at his phone screen. It’s going to be fine. Good luck. Just think, museums and getting stoned. You can do this.
He waited for a reply and none was forthcoming, so he set his phone back down and rolled over in the bed. He felt Spud kicking some on the other side of the bed. Leon closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
…………………………………………………………..
He awoke at 5:30 AM naturally, without the aid of an alarm. Leon winced a little and lifted his head. He could definitely feel that too much scotch. It hit different at 52 than it had at 28 or so. Once Spud realized he was awake, he began to excitedly move around, in anticipation of kibble. Spud was an intensely food-motivated dog. Claire said he was getting fat.
Speaking of Claire, Leon rolled over and picked up his phone, noting the texts from Claire. He’d slept through them, but he unlocked his phone and looked. Presentation done, read one text. T-minus approximately 5 hours until we can blow this popsicle stand for weed and the museums. Calvin said he’d go, read the next.
Have fun, Leon replied, wagering she was still in the middle of aid conference pow-wowing. I just woke up. Time to get ready for work. I’d rather be getting dragged to a museum.
Don’t forget to feed Spud, came Claire’s reply.
How could I forget? He’s practically tap dancing next to me, Leon fired back, and then set his phone down, swinging his feet to the floor. Sitting up made the amount of scotch he’d drank readily apparent. He was never going to fucking learn. Haltingly he made his way to the bathroom, flipped on the light, squinted like it was his first day on earth, and took a leak. On the way to the closet he looked at his face in the mirror. It was the same disgruntled, ugly mug it always was, and quite frankly now that tomorrow was here, he didn’t feel like shaving it today, either.
To the closet he went, into another suit that he’d spent entirely too much money on just to look like he was about to deliver a eulogy at a funeral. Dress shoes in hand, he paused at the mirror to try to make sense of his hair.
Spud was prancing ahead of him as he crossed the house, the nub of his tail wiggling excitedly at the prospect of kibble. Leon needed ibuprofen and a probable attitude adjustment he didn’t feel compelled to give himself in the absence of Claire. He was an asshole every day at the office, today would be no different—now just with scotch ache. Spud was jumping up and down as they entered the kitchen, and Leon looked over at him gruffly as he rifled in the cabinet for ibuprofen.
“Same shit, different day,” he said to the dog. “How are you this fucking jacked for the same kibble every morning?” He emptied some ibuprofen from the bottle into his hand and swallowed them dry; Claire told him this was hard on his liver and other organs. Leon figured his liver had been begging for relief since about age 22 or so; some ibuprofen was the least of his concerns. He fed Spud, and opened the fridge to grab a Coke, cracking it and draining half the can in a few gulps. He eyed the Tupperwares inside the fridge; one of them he was fairly positive was the leftover meatloaf from his last Red Meat Allowance day. That was dinner. He was going to house all of it, no matter how much was left, even if it was half a meatloaf.
Leon closed the fridge, listening to Spud excitedly and hurriedly crunch his breakfast. He brought the can of Coke up and took a drink, mentally steeling himself for the soul-crushing slog in a vehicle through DC to the offices. He let out a sigh, and before turning away from the fridge his eyes alit on one of the pictures on it, and he looked at it for a moment.
It was he and Claire, from a million years ago, when Claire lived on Long Island and he shuttled himself to see her every chance the government gave him. He was young in the photo; 29, maybe 30. There wasn’t much he could do about his own presence in the photo; he looked young but his ugly mug was still his ugly mug, and Leon could never shake the feeling that the moment his body started growing facial hair was around the time he started looking like a cross between a used car salesman and a sleazebag. His arm was around Claire, and her eyes were halfway squeezed shut, huge smile on her face, mouth open in a laugh. They’d been in some bar in NYC. Calvin, the very coworker Claire was in the Netherlands with, had taken the photo. In the photo, Leon’s head was angled towards Claire, and it kind of looked like he was saying something to her or about to.
It was one of his favorite pictures, not because of his own unfortunate presence in it, but because of how happy and carefree Claire looked. He had no doubt she was probably multiple beers deep in the photo, but she had that million-watt smile that could light up a room, her freckled face alight with mirth.
He thought of endless useless hours in DC in a suit, thought of being put through his paces in the field. He thought of the commute that inspired dreams of violence inside him, and the phone buzzing in the night, and him never knowing what it would be. He thought of having signed his soul away to the government at 21.
And then he thought of coming home to Claire and her million-watt smile from behind her laptop in the office, from over food in a pan on the stove, from over the spray of the hose as she watered her ever expanding collection of plants, from over the knitting needles in her hand as she made his sweater.
His father had told him it was the man’s job to put up with all the bullshit and toil on, so the woman could go through life unburdened and unbothered.
He thought of Claire, and her smile, and her bumbling around Amsterdam high as a kite, looking at art. She’d be home in three days.
Standing there in the darkness of the kitchen illuminated by the light from the laundry room, Leon contemplated that it was worth it. On he trudged as the grumpy, mean, asshole curmudgeon he was, all so Claire could do whatever the fuck it was she wanted to, really. He didn’t usually see fit to stop her.
He thought of her smile, unchanged over the years, and left the kitchen, letting the thought buoy him against the trials and tribulations of the day ahead, of long hours of frustration and government service.