Spies #2

While hanging out at my friend Penelope Rubix’s house a few years ago, I discovered in her father’s desk drawer a wad of currency from a range of nations. (I made this discovery while searching for a stapler. I know, I know, this is just the sort of lame excuse you would expect from an amateur spy, but it’s true.) Upon asking Penelope why her father—we’ll call him Mr. X—would possess such a stash, she replied that he goes overseas a lot on business.

On business.

I knew exactly what those words meant. My suspicion only mounted when I asked what her father did for a living.

“He works with computers,” she said.

I wasn’t sure whether she thought I was stupid, or whether she was really that naïve. “Working with computers” is the spy’s equivalent of the adulterer’s “staying late at work.”

Following this incident I began to make other curious observations in relation to Penelope’s family. For instance, every time I called her via her family’s landline, I heard a slight clicking sound before the call connected. Hers is the only phone I have ever noticed do such a thing.

I questioned Penelope about her father’s prior occupations. Turns out Mr. X used to work inside a government base. Mr. X’s office was not open to civilians, including his family. Because of this, Penelope knew very little information about what his job entailed.

(I, by contrast, knew much about what his job entailed. From the little information I’d been given I was easily able to conjure the rest: Mr. X places his eye to a retinal scan, pausing in the next room for a thermal x-ray, before taking an elevator to the subterranean levels of the building. [If an agent in training were to accompany him one day, she would watch in confusion as he swiped a pass card over a scanner while simultaneously depressing the “door close” button. “Where are we going?” she’d ask. “The basement,” he’d reply. “But there is no basement!” “Precisely.” And she attempts to quiet a tremor that begins to overtake he fingers as the elevator descends and a cold stare enters Mr. X’s eyes.])

Mr. X quit working at the base eight years ago for no apparent reason. As if we, the American public, are meant to believe that spies can become non-spies by “quitting.” No, the truth is they move higher up the ranks, so high that they are no longer even allowed to admit they work for the government.

When the body of information verifying his secret agent status had accrued, I confronted Mr. X during a game of cards, asking him point blank if he was a spy. He was slow in answering, and a mercurial haze settled in his eyes.

“You got me,” he said. “I kill people for a living.”

His mischievous grin was chilling. I couldn’t discern whether he was toying with me or plotting to break into my house that night and strangle me.

“I better watch out then,” I said, grinning in kind. This is called repartee. Among the arsenal of spy skills, repartee is just as valuable as a silenced pistol or tight leather pants. I laughed, effectively breaking the tension that had amassed in the room.

“I’m joking,” I said.

“I know,” he responded.

We continued playing cards, matching move for move, navigating through other conversation topics. I avoided Mr. X’s gaze for the rest of the night.

And I’m still alive. The amateur spy must understand the advisability of playing dumb when a situation demands it, rather than ending up dead in a bathtub, as Sidney Bristow’s boyfriend did on the very first episode of Alias. I may have uncovered a bona fide conspiracy, but this knowledge is worthless if I play the idiot and “out” an American agent.

What I would really like to say is, if I have uncovered conspiracies in the lives of friends and loved ones (and there are more examples to come), it is not illogical to extend speculation to others we know. Perhaps it reveals the true nature of our existence, when we begin to question whether our friends’ lives—and our own—aren’t really so mundane as we believe. And if we are not so mundane as we believe, then our lives can hold up to a bit more inspection, a heightened curiosity. We must be skeptical of our neighbor’s ordinary façade and of our friends’ seeming monotony. A bit of digging will reveal the truth.