Taylor Smith - Liar's Market

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.”

She sighed. “That’s the worst thing about this life, isn’t it? The poor kids have to keep making new friends.”

People who married into the business knew what they were getting into, Carrie thought—theoretically, at least. But the kids had no choice in the matter. Drum had been an Army brat himself, but he was philosophical about it. The tough ones survived it just fine, he always said, and the weaklings were going to stumble whether or not they stayed in one place all their lives. Carrie wasn’t sure about that, but she had noticed that relationships in Drum’s life all seemed vaguely disposable. Was it the impermanence of his childhood friendships that made him always seem to be holding something back even now?

The Gunny held up a finger for her to wait while he dealt with the girl at the window. She’d straightened and seemed to have finished what she was writing. Carrie peeked over her shoulder. It looked like a consular registration form.

“All done?” the Gunny asked.

“I think so,” the girl said, sliding the white card into the metal drawer under the triple-paned window that separated her from the Marine.

The Gunny pulled a lever and the drawer slid back to his side of the glass. “Looks good,” he said, picking out the form. “I’ll leave it for the consular section to file tomorrow. They’re all gone for the day now.”

“Thanks a lot for letting me in.” The girl slipped her pen back into the bag slung over her shoulder. “It took me longer to get over here than I thought it would, but I promised my parents I’d do this.”

“No problem. We wouldn’t want you to have to tramp back over here again tomorrow.”

“Is it supposed to rain again?” she asked, buttoning up her tan raincoat.

“That’s what I hear. Welcome to jolly old England.”

“Rats. I guess we’ll have to do some museums.”

The Gunny’s buzzed head gave a nod. “You don’t wanna lose that umbrella. You’ll be needing it.”

Watching the girl tuck a few loose hairs into her knit tam, Carrie felt a sudden plunge in the pit of her stomach. They were about the same height, and although their coloring up close was different, dressed in rain gear as they were, they would be almost indistinguishable from a distance.

It gave Carrie the sort of brief shock she got every time her own reflection surprised her in passing a mirror or window. She’d had an identical twin sister once. When they were small, they were always dressed in matching frilly outfits, to be cooed at and admired in their tandem stroller.

“It made me so proud,” her mother used to say with a sigh. “My two little Strawberry Shortcakes—identical and perfect.”

As if anything less than a matched pair fell somehow short of the mark, Carrie had felt ever since.

Isabel, her twin, had died when they were eighteen—about this girl’s age, by the look of her. But even now, more than a decade later, the pain of losing her other half could still overwhelm her unexpectedly, like the phantom ache of a severed limb.

The girl in the lobby smiled shyly at the Gunny and Carrie in turn. “Well, thanks again. Bye.”

Carrie returned her smile and the Gunny gave a brief salute. As the young corporal at the front door unlocked it to let the girl out, Carrie turned back to the window.

“Anyway, Gunny, on the softball thing, I guess it depends how long the commitment is. We’ll be here till the end of the school year, for sure. I will, anyway. Drum says he may have to head back to Washington earlier. But if it means Jonah can be on a team with Connor, I’d try to hang in as long as possible and let him do that.”

“That should work out okay. We’re going to set up the schedule so the games are all done by the end of June. A lot of people are in the same boat, what with transfers and summer vacations. It makes for a pretty short season, but at least the kids get to play.”

“That would be great.” It was one last thing she could do to help Jonah through the transition they were about to make, Carrie thought—one that might turn out to be even more disruptive than a move from London back to Washington, if she followed through on her growing resolve to make some real changes in her life. “Put Jonah down then. He’ll be so happy when I tell him.”

The Gunny grinned and started to reply, but just then, a sharp bang shattered the hollow stillness of the empty lobby. Three or four more ear-splitting cracks followed in rapid succession. To Carrie’s ears, it sounded like firecrackers exploding outside, but to the two Marines in the lobby, it obviously meant something else altogether.

“Weapons fire!” The Gunny’s sidearm was already out of its holster. “What’s going on out there?” he hollered to the corporal at the door.

The young Marine had his nose to the glass, but he ducked back and pasted himself against the interior marble wall, his eyes huge. “We got a shooter, Gunny! It looks like at least one civilian’s down.”

“Oh, shit!” The Gunny grabbed the phone beside him and started yelling for backup.

Karen Ann Hermann had just left the embassy grounds, rounding the concrete barriers at the perimeter. She was running very late, but at the zebra crossing, she hesitated, confused by the glare of lights on the wet pavement and by the honking cars whizzing by on the rain-slickened road, all of them coming from the wrong direction.