Liar's Market

“Yes, I heard. Drum’s being promoted. That’s great.”

“I guess,” Carrie said.

“You’re not pleased about it?”

“I’m happy for him. It’s what he wants. It’s a little tough for Jonah, though. Drum’s hardly around now, and I can only imagine he’ll be even busier once he takes on the Deputy Director’s job. Like you said, these are crazy times. Plus, poor Jonah has to give up the friends he’s made here.”

“And how is my godson? I mustn’t forget, by the way, Lorraine sent along some little goodies for him. I’ve got them in my suitcase back at the hotel.”

Carrie smiled. “I hope you get a chance to come over and see him while you’re here, Tom. He’s a great little guy. He’s just bloomed in kindergarten this year. Absolutely loves school. Our flat is covered with his paintings and drawings.”

“An artist, like his mom. But kindergarten? Already? Seems to me he was just taking his first steps.”

“I know. I can hardly believe it myself. Come September, my baby’s going to be in first grade.”

“Big changes. And what about you, Carrie? Are you okay? It’s not easy, I know, being a diplomatic dependant in a strange city.”

“It’s a great city, though. Impossible to be bored. Mind you, I’m a little tied down by Jonah’s half-day schedule. He’s at school from one to four each afternoon, and I try to help out there whenever they need an extra pair of hands, so it doesn’t leave a lot of time for gallivanting. Still,” she added brightly, “I have been busy this past winter. I re-registered at Georgetown for a remote study program, and I’ve gone back to the thesis I abandoned after Drum and I got married.”

“No kidding. That’s great. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well, I think. I hope. It’s kind of hard to tell. Can’t see the forest for the trees and all that. But I’d already done a good chunk of the first draft, and I had a lot of original research from when I was with the Peace Corps. My advisor seemed to think I’d be able to pull it together.”

“You were running some kind of a gallery out there in Africa, weren’t you?”

She nodded. “We helped local artists set up a cooperative to market their sculptures and paintings to tourists. My thesis dealt with marketing art from the Third World, so I had really good primary source material. It needed to be updated, of course. New trends emerge in seven years. But Oxfam here in London has been promoting developing country art and handicrafts for some time now, and they’ve been really helpful.”

“So you’ve been able to finish?”

“Well, you know what they say, a thesis is never really finished, only abandoned. But I’m working up the courage to send it to my advisor. If he thinks it’s ready for prime time, I should be able to defend it when we get back to D.C.”

“Carrie, that’s great. Drum must be so proud of you.”

“Oh, I guess so…” She glanced over to the window where Drum stood watching them expectantly. “I think we’re being beckoned.”

Drum reached out to her as they approached. Senator Watkins, spotting the movement, broke off in mid-sentence, his face opening up into the guileless smile seen in countless election year posters. Drum drew Carrie close into the circle of his free arm. He was just over six feet tall, so that she tucked neatly into his side, as a good accessory should.

“Sweetheart, I’d like to introduce Senator Paul Watkins. Senator, this is my wife, Carrie. And of course, you know Tom Bent. Tom, we were just about to send out a search party.”

“Well, it’s a wild, wet day out there, but I can safely report that Harrod’s managed to relieve me of a sizeable chunk of change and my marital shopping obligations have been successfully discharged.”

Watkins’s huge, fleshy hand swallowed Carrie’s. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs. MacNeil.” His face was flushed, his bald head perspiring. He nodded at Tom, then turned back to give her a long, appraising once-over before shooting a mischievous wink at Drum. “Aren’t you the lucky man, Mr. MacNeil?”

Tom gave Carrie’s arm a gentle squeeze, and when Carrie risked a glance at him, she saw his eyes roll subtly. She felt better, knowing she had at least one ally here. Tom knew what some people said about her improbable marriage to Drummond MacNeil and he was sympathetic.

And maybe the senator didn’t mean to imply anything, anyway. Maybe she was just overly sensitive—although, in point of fact, she’d actually heard the words “trophy wife” whispered behind her back on more than one occasion. It was one of the hazards of marrying a much older man. Everyone presumed you were the bimbo he’d dumped his long-suffering first wife for. And Drum had, in fact, been married before, but he’d been widowed two years when Carrie had met him in Africa. It didn’t matter. To anyone who didn’t know her, she was just the young airhead who decorated his arm and who’d given him the heir his first wife hadn’t.

Nor did it help now that Drum suddenly took it into his head to kiss her far more warmly than their surroundings warranted, letting his gaze linger on her in the kind of long, wistful glance she’d rarely seen since they’d left Africa—and virtually never in the last couple of years. What was that all about?

Drum turned back to the senator with a sigh and an uncharacteristically silly smile on his face. “You’re right, Senator. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

Carrie didn’t dare risk glancing over at Tom Bent to see what he made of that.

It was approaching six when the senators finally began to gather up their coats to return to their hotel and freshen up before the ambassador’s dinner. After Tom Bent had herded them all out to their waiting cars, Drum accompanied Carrie down the elevator to the embassy’s main floor and out through the solid steel door that divided the secure area from the public lobby.

As he held up her buff-colored Burberry raincoat for her to slip her arms into, the smoked glass lobby windows rattled under an ominous peal of deep, rolling thunder.

“Are those the shoes you came in?” Drum asked.

Carrie gave her Manolos a rueful glance. “Yes. I’m an idiot. I’ve been sloshing around for the past two hours.”

“Well, make sure you grab a cab. Don’t try to walk in this weather.”

She nodded, tucking her hair inside a dark chocolate-colored beret and slipping her hands into soft brown kid-skin gloves. “Do you know what time you’ll be home?”

“Pretty late, I imagine. Don’t wait up for me.”

“The story of my life,” Carrie said, with no real trace of bitterness.

She was long past questioning his late nights, and complaining was a waste of time. Drum said it was a hazard of his profession. Generally speaking, that was probably true. Generally, but not always. At this point, Carrie had given up trying to reconcile his work with the lingering scents that sometimes accompanied him when he slipped into bed late at night—scents of passion Carrie hadn’t shared and perfume she didn’t own, scents a shower couldn’t quite mask. Lately, he’d been gone more and more, caught up in crisis after crisis as terrorist threats continued to mount. He could make Carrie feel positively un-American for questioning anything he did. She no longer bothered.

She reached up to offer the kind of perfunctory peck on the cheek that was habitual by now, but he held her close, once again giving her a more lingering kiss than a public venue and seven years of marriage normally inspired. His arms stayed around her as he studied her.

“What?” she asked, resisting the urge to squirm out of his grasp.

“Nothing. I just wanted to look at you. You’re really something, you know that?”

She frowned. “Drum, are you all right?”

He smiled and kissed her once more, lightly, then released her. “I’m fine. I’d better get back upstairs and get a little work done before I have to go baby-sit those visiting clowns. I’ll see you at home.”

“Right. See you later.”

Carrie watched him walk back to the heavy steel door, where he slipped his hand under the keypad cover and entered the four-digit security combination. The lock clicked and he wrenched the handle open, pausing briefly to give her a last look and a wave before disappearing back into the secure womb of the building.

Exhaling wearily, she slipped her handbag over her arm and headed for the front doors, but before she’d gone a few steps on the marble tile, a muffled voice called her name. Carrie looked around for the source of the hail and saw a familiar figure waving her over to the reception window.

At this hour, with the embassy closed for the day, the civilian receptionist had left and the Gunny was alone on duty behind the bullet-proof glass. A Marine corporal stood by the front doors, opening them and then re-locking them behind staff leaving the building.

The last public straggler was still at the window with the Gunny. A young woman, she was hunched over at the counter, madly writing on a white file card. Her wet umbrella was propped against the wall, while her coat dripped water on the gold-streaked marble tiles.

“Hey, Gunny,” Carrie said, smiling as she walked gingerly over to the booth, taking care to avoid the death-trap puddles on the slippery floor. “What’s up?”

His voice crackled back at her through the speaker set into the glass. “I heard you were going to be in the building, but I was on the phone when you came in. I been working on the team rosters for the kids’ softball league. Is Jonah gonna go out for Pee Wees?” The Gunny’s son Connor was Jonah’s best buddy and the two boys often slept over at each other’s flats.

“He wants to,” Carrie said, “but you know we’re going home this summer?”

“Yeah. Connor’s really bummed about that.”